Making Every Word (or Image) Count

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

The opening sequence of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) is well known to many moviegoers. Each moment in the sequence keeps viewers' attention, enhances the victim's humanity, characterizes the victim (or alternately dehumanizes her) or her companion, intensifies viewers' emotions, establishes contrasts that heighten emotion and sharpen theme, suggests despair, and/or leads up to the victim's savage and horrendous death. The blue font indicates how the action sequences accomplish these tasks.

A young blonde woman runs, Chrissie Watkins, along a fence, or what is left of it, pursued by a young man. Is he a threat? Does he mean her harm? Is he a stalker?

This sequence of action creates suspense, as the viewer, having no clue as to why the man is chasing the woman, wonders whether she is in danger.

He trips, falls, but is again on his feet in a second, and the pursuit continues. Chrissie glance back, over her shoulder, as she runs, shedding her denim jacket. Beneath her sweaters, her breasts bounce as she runs, suggesting she is braless. The man continues his pursuit.

Chrissie may shed her jacket because it impedes her range of motion, slowing her down. The motion of her breasts calls attention to her femininity and her sexuality, suggesting a possible motive for the man's pursuit. Is he intent upon rape?

She pauses to remove a shoe, before stumbling onward, her pursuer giving chase, as he doffs his sweatshirt.

Perhaps she removes her shoe for the same reason she removed her sweater: it slows her flight.

Chrissie pulls off her sweater; she is, indeed, braless. Viewers see her bare breasts bounce as she runs. Although she continues to flee from the man following her, viewers begin to suspect the couple are playing a game, as she has voluntarily removed her shoe and top.

The suspense dissipates, as viewers realize the couple are playing a game of sorts. Chrissie is not in danger. (However, since she soon will be, this segment of the film's introductory sequence creates a false expectation for viewers.) Her braless states suggests she is a modern, “liberated” young woman who is comfortable in her own skin.

As the man tumbles down a hill at the side of the trail, Chrissie, now completely nude, runs toward the ocean, her buttocks drawing viewers' gazes.

When suspense is unavailable, nudity can keep viewers' attention. The fact that she has chosen to be naked suggests she is a carefree young woman, just as the game of flight-and-pursuit she plays with her friend suggests she is playful.

She enters the surf and dives into the sea. She is a strong swimmer, and, by the time her friend arrives on the beach, removing more of his clothing, she is nearing a buoy some distance off shore.

The young man remains only a figure, rather than a character, he's little more than a prop; the introductory portion of the film remains focused on Chrissie. For this part of the film, at least, she is the protagonist.

Projecting her leg into the air, her foot extended straight, in a manner similar to that of a ballerina standing on her toes, she lets herself sink into the ocean. For a moment, she is lost to sight.

The positioning of her leg indicates Chrissie has a sense of humor.

A closeup shot shows her resurface, mouth wide as she gasps for breath, water streaming down her face. She smiles, before turning as she dog paddles, to look west, toward the sun, which is low on the horizon. Sunset is on its way.

Although she is in her element and is enjoying herself, Chrissie hasn't much time left: symbolically, the near-sunset indicates that the end is near for her.

On the beach, her friend is a silhouette against the wash of the surf, a stretch of low land, and a sky in which scattered clouds are illuminated, yellow and pink in the setting sun. He falls as he struggles to remove a shoe. Perhaps, given his clumsiness, he is drunk.

It seems clear that he is not the type of man who is apt to be able to rescue a damsel in distress. He cannot even take care of himself.

Chrissie resumes swimming, her gliding silhouette seen from below the calm, blue waters as she performs the breaststroke. Then, the back of her head and her arms are seen at a distance, as she continues to swim.

Seen from this perspective, below and at some distance, Chrissie is dehumanized. She might as well be a maritime animal, a fish or a seal, as a human being.

Pausing for a moment, as the camera shows her closeup, she turns her head from side to side, smiling.

Her moment of joy will contrast sharply and dramatically with her coming horror and pain.

She sinks below the surface of the ocean, kicking her legs and waving her arms. The camera views her from below. Her pubic hair is a dark, triangular patch, her breasts discernible as a pair of firm, buoyant mounds topped by her nipples.

Her sexuality is highlighted by this shot, but it is, at the same time, darkened by the lack of light, both below the surface of the ocean and in the dusky sky above. She is undoubtedly a beautiful and sexy woman; her death will seem all the more a waste. She could be a mother. Instead, she will become a corpse. Sexuality and life are established, through her nudity, as contrasts to her upcoming demise.

At the surface again, she smiles. Then, her head jerks back and she is pulled violently downward. Her eyes widen in surprise. She turns her head slightly to her right, looking puzzled. Her head dips below the surface, before reappearing. She looks panic-stricken. In a splash, she vanishes beneath the waves. When her head pierces the surface, her mouth is open, her eyes shut tightly, a grimace of terror and pain freezing her features.

Chrissie feels surprise, followed by shock, followed by horror and pain, as she realizes she is in the grip of an adversary too ferocious and powerful to resist and that, alone at sea, she is on her own.

A splash, and she is pulled across the water, past the buoy, only her head and shoulders visible above the water. She struggles. Her body is pulled to the right. She straightens, and her body is again pulled to the right. Water churns around her.

It is as if, clinging to the buoy, she hopes against hope, even in her hopeless situation, to survive somehow. Of course, she has no chance.

On the beach, her friend sleeps, as Chrissie continues to struggle for her life against her unseen adversary. She is launched toward the buoy and clings desperately to its platform. It turns, and, cast off, she swims toward shore, but, a moment later, she is seized. Her face flashes with anguish amid the roiling water, as she cries out. She is taken underwater.

This seems to be her last moment: she is buried, as it were, at sea, the closure of the water above her body a metaphorical closing of her grave.

Her friend continues to sleep on the beach, despite the breaking waves that wash over his lower body. The sky is now nearly dark.

The near-darkness suggests both the young man's sleep (and his unawareness of Chrissie's death) and Chrissie's own demise.

In well-made movies, regardless of their genre, every moment of screen time contributes to the film's overall effect while moving the movie forward. The same is true of well-written novels, although, sometimes to their detriment, novels are allowed more leeway than movies, probably because feature films cost millions of dollars to produce, while novels typically cost those who write and distribute them far less. A tightly written novel, though, in which every chapter, paragraph, sentence, and word contributes to the narrative's overall effect while moving the story forward is apt to be a superior one. Whatever their medium, one type of artist can often suggest ways to improve another one's work, regardless of its medium. The opening sequence of Jaws, like the movie's other scenes, has a lot to teach those willing to study and to learn.

Nightmare Posters

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

What scares an audience? In selecting such frights, it's best to tap into general or universal fears. After all, a horror novel is written for a general audience.

The Internet is a good source for identifying the objects of such fears, some of which make sense, while others, the phobias, are irrational (at least from the point of view of those who don't suffer from one of them). Either rational or irrational objects of fear are acceptable fodder for the fiction of fear, aka horror stories.

Besides Internet lists, movie posters themselves are great sources for identifying general or universal fears. They should be: they're selling them, in the form of films.

By analyzing a horror movie poster, a writer can determine which particular fear the poster is tapping, but he or she can also obtain a few other valuable bits of information, learning a few tips about how to put a scary story together and how to emphasize its frightening aspects.

In analyzing such posters, one should focus only on the poster itself, without referencing anything from the film. That way, one is not biasing his or her interpretation of the poster itself with external information.

The poster for the movie Alien is a good example.

Before we consider it in detail, let's list a few facts about art and design upon which such posters rely:

Readers of English are taught to read from top to bottom and from left to right.

Artists appeal to the senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell), and sight, the chief of the senses, involves a variety of elements: color, distance (yes, we “see” distance, using depth perception), size, shape, and intensity (light or dark).

The central image (the selling point) is positioned near, but slightly off, center. Often, this image is of a model, who is shown larger or more intensely than other models, if others are pictured in the poster. Unless the context suggests otherwise (a Playmate, on the cover of Playboy, for instance), a female model is directed at women who are about the model's own age and economic station, while a male model is aimed at men of about the model's own age and economic level. The idea, it seems, is that the poster invites the viewer to imagine him- or herself in the model's place, relying on his or her wanting to be like the model.

Posters frequently use what Hollywood calls “props” (short for “properties”), objects which may have thematic or symbolic significance.

The overall design of the poster moves the viewer's gaze so that it ends up on the product.

Posters are divided roughly into thirds, horizontally, vertically, or (rarely) diagonally, so that there's a foreground, a mid-ground, and a background.

Often, a poster implies a metaphor. The metaphor is usually related to an intangible quality, such as an emotion.

The text, if any, is the key to unlocking the meaning of the metaphor.

Not all posters contain all these features, but the features are common to posters (and other print advertisements in general).

Okay, back to the Alien poster.

The first thing we notice is the word “ALIEN.” Centered at the top of the poster, it's printed, in all-capital letters. The white text stands out starkly against the black background, both the size, the color, and the capital letters drawing our attention. We know that, by convention, all caps indicates shouting or screaming, but there's something else unusual about the word. It looks unfamiliar, or alien, because its letters are spaced, as if to suggest that the thought the word expresses is, like the word used to express it, strange and is being spoken haltingly, perhaps with awe or dread.

Centered below the text, some distance down the poster, is an oval object that resembles both an asteroid and an egg. The ambiguity of the object heightens the sense of the alien, or the unknown. 

It's egg-shaped, and there's some sort of substance oozing from a crack in it, but the substance doesn't resemble egg yolk; it looks gaseous or, perhaps, radioactive; the crack in it seems to resemble a grinning mouth; and the object's outer surface is pitted and cratered, and bears strange bumps. We've never seen an egg like this! In fact, maybe the object isn't an egg.

Maybe it's an asteroid. It appears to be made of stone. It looks hard as a rock. The pits and bumps resemble those that mark celestial objects. It seems to be oozing gas or radioactivity. It's located in outer space. Whatever it is, the thing is certainly unlike anything else we've ever encountered; it's alien to us.

In small letters, beneath the asteroid-egg, is a sentence: “In space no one can hear you scream.”

I feel a slight shudder every time I read that!

This sentence is a masterpiece of copywriting. It locates us; we are “in space.”

It isolates us: “no one can hear [us[ scream.” (Why do we scream? To sound an alarm, to signal the need for help, but, since “in space no one can hear” us, we're completely on our own: no emergency medical technicians, no police, no firefighters, no military personnel are coming to our aid. We are isolated and alone.)

The sentence also gets personal with us; the sentence assures us that “no one can hear you scream” (emphasis added).

Below the asteroid-egg, a green shadow appears, which resembles a strange rising sun, just as the top of a strand of the cargo net looks a bit like a mountain range along the horizon.

What's in the cargo hold? We don't know, but the poster suggests, whatever it is, it's scary and dangerous.

The sentence below the asteroid-egg also identifies the types of audience who would probably be interested in seeing the movie the poster promotes: “space” suggests that the film is likely to appeal to science fiction fans, while “scream” implies that people who enjoy horror movies might want to see this film.

All that is quite a lot to pack into a single sentence!

The poster is divided roughly into thirds horizontally: the word “ALIEN” and the space between it and the central object (the asteroid-egg) is the top layer, or background; the asteroid-egg and the sentence below it are the middle layer, or mid-ground; and the cargo net is the bottom layer, or foreground.

As the eye travels down, the viewer's gaze is led from the notion of the alien to a visual representation of it, and finally to the cargo net, which leaves the viewer with a sense of mystery and uneasiness.

Finally, the black background represents space, where “no one can hear you scream,” but it also symbolizes the unknown, another word for the alien, unifying the poster's theme and helping, once more, to drive home the theme of the poster: the movie is about something beyond human ken.

By analyzing this poster, we learn:

Art, design, symbolism, and text work together to tap into an audience's fears. (In a novel, such elements can, and should, also work together to achieve the same type of result.)

One of the fears many people have is of the unknown, or “alien.”

Ambiguity can be both a source of fear and a way to heighten fear.

Visuals (images, or in novels, descriptions) can generate or heighten fear.

Well-thought-out, well-written sentences can suggest a variety of ideas and feelings, producing several related effects.

Colors can express symbolic meanings or associations.

A lack of context creates mystery.

Placement in a poster (or arrangement, or composition, in a novel's scenes) can, and should, promote both the writer's message (be afraid; be very afraid!) and its emotional expression.

Sometimes, simpler is better.

A poster is a promise. See this movie, Alien, and you will be scared to death—and you'll enjoy it (both the movie and the fear it generates) if you like either sci fi, horror, or both.

It's up to the movie to deliver on this promise. Most people who've seen it, including critics, agree that the film is just as frightening as the poster promoting it indicated it would be.

In using similar techniques to identify and communicate the fear a novel's first sentence, its first paragraph, and its first chapter, indicating what will follow, are also promises that writers must keep.

Nontraditional Sources of Villainy

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In times past, horror writers often created monsters to represent "the other," that type of individual or group that was outside the norm or otherwise different from the members of the status quo.

Minority groups, people who lived alternate lifestyles, foreigners, individuals who subscribed to minority political views, poor folks, mentally ill persons, and others whose views, values, behavior, or even melanin levels didn't accord with the rest of "us" became the "them" whom the rest of "us" demonized; they were often the monsters who populated horror fiction, albeit in a modified, symbolic form.

Fortunately, for the most part, this type of demonization is rare now. We can only hope it vanishes completely.

Meanwhile, what seems to be taking the place of these traditional, admittedly racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and otherwise repugnant "villains" seems to be animals (the pit bull in Bullet Head), a sniper (Downrange), ghosts (Winchester), parents (Mom & Dad), a computer (Unfriended: Dark Web and Upgraded), a demon (Piewacket), a psychotic doll (Cult of Chucky), kidnappers (House on Willow Street), a dollmaker (Anabelle: Creation), and any number of other monsters, human and otherwise. The variety of villains shows that “the other” as a source for monsters is not necessary; there are plenty of other roots of potential villainy from which to draw. In fact, these alternative sources are limited only by the imagination. And that's a good thing.

Writing Monsters: A Review: Part 2

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In Writing Monsters, Philip Athans offers a number of definitions, his own and those of others, to suggest that the concept is fluid and open, at least to some extent, to individual writers' interpretation:

A monster is something alive and uniquely strange that we instinctively fear.—Alan Dean Foster

[A monster is] inhuman, it's animate, and it wants to destroy you. Many monsters are supernatural or [act] outside the norms of nature in some way, but that's not always necessary.—Richard Baker

A monster is something that is frightening because it is inhuman . . . . It may be incomprehensible.—Martin J. Dougherty

A monster is a species that is neither a part of the civilization of sentient people [n]or among the ranks of mundane flora and fauna,” and a monster is “scary.”—Philip Athans

Later, Athans, who often exemplifies the concept by reference to such animals as slugs, sharks, and lobsters describes them as as-yet-undiscovered animals.

He also suggests that the effect of monsters can be heightened by relating them to fears or phobias common, if not universal, to human beings, such as arachnophobia (fear of spiders), social phobia (fear of a hostile audience), pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying), agoraphobia (fear of the inability to escape), claustrophobia (the fear of enclosed spaces), acrophobia (the fear of heights), emetophobia (the fear of vomit or of vomiting), carcinophobia (the fear of cancer), astraphobia (the fear of thunder and lightning), and taphophobia (the fear of being burned alive).

Athans points out that readers know only as much about a story's monster or monsters as the author allows, and , as long as the writer is consistent with how the monster's characteristics, abilities, and behavior, readers will accept its existence within the story. It is best not to divulge too much information about the monster, he suggests, as readers will tend to “fill in the blanks” with their own ideas about the monster.

Typically, monsters, have a number of qualities, Athans says, among which are that they are frightening, mysterious, violent, predatory, amoral or immoral, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and terrifying in their appearance. Monsters usually isolate their prey, often defy humans' attempts to use technology against them, undergo some type of physical transformation, do not think like people (if they think at all), may be more intelligent than the average person, and are purposeful (they perform a task). Most monsters have otherworldly origins; they may come from outer space or hell. Others result from scientific experiments gone awry or from such natural processes as mutations of diseased states. They may come from underground, underwater, or other remote places.

Monsters may also be metaphorical. They can represent “ideas, feelings, dangers,” states of existence, the effects of bullying or greed, or any number of other real behaviors, conditions, or situations. Although Athans doesn't discuss Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this context, fans of the show are likely to know that its creator frequently made the series' monsters the metaphorical reflections of real-world problems. In the episode “Beer Bad,” for example Buffy Summers adopts the crude, almost animal-level behavior of a woman after she drinks enchanted beer. Her state of drunkenness is a metaphor for her uncivilized conduct. Likewise, in “Out of Sight,Out of Mind,” a high school student who is ignored by her peers actually becomes invisible, her invisibility a metaphor for her being neglected and unheeded. In the same way, Athans says, Godzilla is a metaphor for the atomic bomb. He is born of a test involving an underwater nuclear detonation, and he terrifies Japanese cities with his devastating radioactive breath.

Monsters introduce and sustain conflict throughout the story, but they also help characterize the human characters, showing them as tenacious, loyal, trustworthy, and as having the capacities to forgive and to join forces against a common threat. At the same time, they may exhibit self-centeredness, a capacity for exploitation, and vindictiveness.

It is important, Athans says, to provide monsters with an offense, a defense, and a “utility.” By “utility,” he means a signature behavior, such as the Blair Witch's “marking her territory [with bizarre] “stick figures” or vampires' needing to be invited into one's home.

With monsters, size is not important, as long as the monsters are frightening and have monstrous qualities and abilities.

Monsters must have a weakness or two so the human characters can kill or otherwise neutralize it. For example, vampires suck blood, can “live” for centuries, are extraordinarily strong, can turn into bats and fly, have hypnotic power, and can even levitate, but they can't abide crucifixes, sunlight, mirrors, or holy water; they have to be invited into one's home; and they can killed by being drowned or decapitated or by having a wooden stake driven through their hearts. When a monster is familiar to readers, writers must “tweak the trope,” Athans observes. An example he doesn't offer makes the point: Stephen King makes a crucifix's effect on his vampires depend on the faith of the character who wields it.

Athans suggests horror writers use the first-person or the limited third-person point of view.

Descriptions of the monster should involve as many of the five sense as possible. Readers respond best to horror stories that have visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory appeal. Only near the end of the story should the monster be fully revealed; until then, writers should rely on the other senses, providing only snapshots, instead of more detailed, glimpses of the monster so that it remains mysterious and terrifying. What a monster looks like, smells like, and feels like are often interrelated, Athans points out: “a slimy monster” is apt to “be shiny, to be heard slithering along, and to leave a trail of slime,” signs that warn people “not to touch the slimy thing.”

Use short sentences to increase pace and to suggest terror and hyperventilation, he suggests, and long sentences to reflect a character's breathlessness.

Athans also has a tip concerning the omnipresent cell phone. Isolate characters, and then banish their phones. They could have dead batteries, succumb to poor reception, get broken, or be left behind on purpose.

On Amazon, Writing Monsters has generated eighteen review. The lowest, two stars, found it a good basic guide for beginning writers, but not the manual the reviewer was seeking; he wanted a book that would guide him through the process of creating bigger (and badder?) monsters, rather than one that walks him through the process for creating them to :”exist at all.” The review is more about the reviewer's interests, unfortunately, than it is about the book that Athans actually wrote.

A middle-of the road, three-star, review found the book to generic, “a victim of its own wide-spectrum approach” that ended up being more about “how to write speculative fiction” than a “specialized work” concerned with monster-making. Perhaps this reviewer wanted less context and more hands-on material.

A five-star review reads:

Enjoyed this immensely. Great insights into the subject of monsters in fiction, their roles, suggestions on monster design, how to handle strengths vs. weaknesses, etc. I dislike zombies as monster du jure [sic] but I benefitted [sic] from the observations offered by the author who visualizes zombies as a force-of-nature, like Godzilla, with the real conflict of a zombie story between the people involved. Monsters, of course, figure into horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Notwithstanding frequent references to science fiction monsters, I believe science fiction requires some more in-depth examination of creature creation than this book can provide, [sic] however useful it may be, especially when aliens are involved. That's just a whole separate topic.. [sic] But an excellent book, [sic] I can't recommend it enough.

How would I rate Writing Monsters? It's an interesting, well-written book that offers food for thought in the creation and deployment of monsters. Perhaps a few writing exercises, at the end of each chapter, would have improved the work, but, overall, the author provides much for monster-makers to consider, the approach is easy to understand, and the book supplies solid tips. The final chapter reprints a short story, “The Unnamed,” by H. P. Lovecraft, whom Athans admires. Athans annotates the story, but his annotations do not zero in on the techniques of horror that Lovecraft uses in any detailed or comprehensive manner. This is an example of the overall criticism I have of the book: it offers a lot, but it lacks focus and detail, so it is more a survey than an analysis of monster-making. It deserves a place on one's bookshelf, as a basic guide or a series of reminders, which, unless we're Stephen King, we can all use from time to time.