Conveying Fear

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror posters are like the covers of horror novels, except the former's production quality is usually far superior to that of a paperback's cover art.

Extending the comparison, we could say that the movie's trailer is cinematic equivalent of the blurb on the inside flap of the dust cover or the back of a paperback. Both introduce the main character, the villain, and the conflict, the trailer in dramatic, audio-visual terms, the blurb in narrative, linguistic fashion. The former has immediacy; the latter, not so much.

Today, both posters and book covers often have only a marginal relationship to the story's plot. (Those of yesteryear seem to have been more closely associated with the story.) In general, the trailers and blurbs are more trustworthy indicators of what happens in the movie or the novel.

Contemporary movie posters (more than present-day novels' cover art) seek to tap into their viewers' emotions. Whether the movie's an action-adventure film, a comedy, a detective movie, a fantasy, a horror film, a mystery, a romance, sci-fi, a western, or some other genre or a hybrid of some sort, its poster will tap into such feelings as awe, delight, wonder, fear, and bewilderment, suggesting that the film that the poster advertises will immerse viewers in such emotional experiences.

Huckleberry Finn, which is undoubtedly one of the great comedy masterpieces of American—or world—literature usually features an image of the adolescent hero rafting along the Mississippi River; Sherlock Holmes anthologies usually confront us with a close-up of the detective in his deerstalker cap, smoking his pipe; romance novels depict glamorous fashionistas being swept off their feet by bare-chested macho men; many a Western novel portrays a gunman of some sort or a solitary rider shown in silhouette against a dusky sky. In some cases, the cover art suggests emotion. Movie posters almost always do.

Find out how a movie poster suggests fear—and what type of fear it suggests—and you are well on the way to knowing how to convey such fears yourself in the stories you write.

Selecting a poster that implies a story is helpful, but, of course, the story it suggests has to be appropriate for the larger story you're telling, the larger narrative of which it, as a scene, would be a part.

Let's try a couple examples.

Here is a movie poster for The Conjuring (2013). What type of emotion does it convey? How does it convey this emotion? In other words, what artistic or rhetorical techniques are employed to convey this emotion? These are my responses to these questions. (Yours may differ.)

Emotion = fear of the unknown

Techniques: symbolism, color, contrast

Using this analysis, write a descriptive paragraph, of 150 words or fewer, that accomplishes what the poster achieves. (In writing, description is the counterpart to the movie camera.) Then, you may want to break the paragraph into shorter ones. Here is one possibility:

The white flame burns brightly, lighting the darkness and the face of the frightened woman holding the match. Framed by her blonde tresses, her face is tense.

Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, as she stares into the darkness beyond the faint light, straining to see, as she strains to hear.

Between her forefinger and her thumb, the match quivers, its reduced flame flickering. Its faint light is all that stands between her and the unknown.

Soon, it will go out, and the darkness will swallow her again, and the thing for which she searches, lost in the gloom—will it lunge? Fall upon her? Rip, rend, and tear her?

Already, the flame is small and unsteady. Her hand shakes.

The darkness and the thing in the darkness wait. (131 words)

Here's a poster for the intended Halloween Returns film, which “was cancelled when Dimension Films lost the rights to the Halloween franchise.” Although the movie was never made, the poster suggests a scene that could fit into an original story. Since an original story couldn't use the characters from the Halloween series, the Laurie Strode character and the Michael Myers figure would have to be generic or fashioned after the characters of one's own story. This time, our description is a bit longer and more detailed.

Emotion =apprehension, anxiety

Techniques: juxtaposition, colors (“lighting”), contrast

She wore a blue sweater, not only because it was cool, but also, and more importantly, because the color had a calming effect on her. Her therapist, Ms. Phillips, had recommended pink, telling her that prison walls had been painted this color because of its proven soothing effect. But Jamie associated pink with femininity, and she linked femininity to helplessness. After all, His victims had all been women.

She slipped the point of the blade into the thick skin of the pumpkin. (If only her own shin were as thick!) She slid the blade deeper (just as He had done), and, with a twist of her wrist, cut across the surface of the orange orb. Pulp (like the deep tissues of her body) and juice (like the blood that had flowed from her that night) showed inside the squash.

Carving the pumpkins was supposed, like the pink blue sweater, to calm her. “Using a knife,” she had challenged her therapist, “to carve up pumpkins is supposed to have a calming effect?” “Yes,” Ms. Phillips had reassured her. (Therapists, Jamie had learned, were most reassuring.)

The top of the table at which she sat, carving pumpkins, was littered with seeds, with bits of pumpkin flesh, and with ornaments: ghosts and pumpkin heads (or headless pumpkins), and spiders' webs. “You have to get back into the holiday,” Ms. Phillips had suggested. “Make it yours again, instead of His.”

Spluttering candles were her only light. Behind and beside her, her house was dark. The light was enough to see by, enough to carve by. She Wasn't Afraid Of The Dark. That's what the candlelight proclaimed.

This was her third pumpkin. She'd carved traditional faces in them: big triangular eyes, a smaller upside-down triangle for a nose, and a grinning mouth missing all but two upper and a lower tooth. They were pumpkin-children old enough to lose their baby teeth in favor of the adult teeth to come. Innocent pumpkin faces, like her own was once, a long time ago, before He had returned home, not cured, no, but different. Worse. Much worse.

Behind her, in the gloom, a silent Figure moved as quietly as a black cat. Wearing a white mask that seemed to glow, even in the faint light of the candles, only His face—His mask—was visible. His dark clothing made Him part of the room's darkness. Only His mask, which hid His face, and the blade of the butcher's knife He held in His right fist, at His side, ready, were visible.

Halloween had come, and He'd come with it, to do a bit of carving of His own.

Amid the pain, He was going to make her smile; He was going to make her grin . . . again. (458 words)

Such exercises might raise the hair on the nape of your neck and your arms; they might send chills along your spine; they might inspire a story or enhance one you're already writing.

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The Things We Fear

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

They're big. They're repulsive. Shaped like sperm, they slither (as the title of the movie they advertise suggests), but they're red and meaty, too, visceral in appearance, and they remind one of parasites (or feces) as much as anything else.

They squirm their way up the exterior of a bathtub occupied by an oblivious damsel in distress. Her vulnerability is enhanced by her apparent nakedness and by her relaxed posture: she reclines inside the tub, only part of her calf and thigh showing.

Centered above the poster's imagery is the blood-splattered title, Slither, in black (the color of death). Despite the image of ablution, cleanliness does not deliver us from death, the poster suggests, not before or after sex, for, as Jim Morrison, late of the Doors, among others, has warned, “Sex is death.”

Her eyes, lost in deep shadows, look like sockets. Her lips are gone, showing her teeth, as her jaws gape in a silent scream.

Before her face, half of flesh, half of skull, a glass pane shatters. Shards fly off, in all directions, the missing piece at the lower right taking with it her cheek.

Perhaps, we think, the glass is not in front of her, after all; maybe she's on the glass or in it.

The poster's caption, “Rest in Pieces,” underscores our frailty, our vulnerability, our temporality as human beings. When death results from a horrific experience, we do not rest in peace, the poster suggests, but in pieces.

In any case, our destruction, our demise, is unavoidable, inevitable: it is, the movie's title assures us, our Final Destination.

We are fragile, our emotions, like our flesh itself, susceptible to trauma, to breakage. Abandonment is traumatic; it leaves us broken, shattered. The doll featured on the poster for Abandoned is a stand-in for innocence, for the faith of the young.

Its face is cracked. What should be laugh lines are fissures, wrought not by glee, but by a misery so deep and full of anguish that it produces tears of blood.

But death, who favors none, treating all the same, whether they are rich or poor, prince or pauper, male or female, young or old, awaits our coming, with a guarantee that, whatever one's fate has been in life, death is faithful; death will not abandon anyone; death embraces all.

The author of horror must be aware of the situations, events, and circumstances that frighten men and women, boys and girls. He or she should keep abreast of surveys and polls and current and historical events which identify or describe humanity's deepest, darkest fears, for disgust, horror, and terror, as Stephen King has pointed out, are the horror writer's stock in trade.

Such lists of fears come from a variety of sources, some of which may surprise us. One of the latest lists I've added to my continuing roster was supplied by Cornelia Dean, author of Making Sense of Science: Separating Substance from Spin. Her list, concerning the items of which she provides a few details, includes:

• the uncontrollable
• things imbued with dread
• catastrophe
• things imposed on us
• things with delayed effects
• new risks
• a hazard with identifiable victims
• things that affect future generations
• things we cannot see
• things that are artificial, synthetic, or otherwise human-made (32).

Moreover, she points out, “If we don't trust the person or agency telling us about the risk, we are more afraid” (32).

A story that focuses on one of these fears is apt to resonate with readers.

Futuristic Fiction

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

“The world is too much with us,” William Wordsworth warned, and it's true: we do get caught up in the day-to-day affairs of our everyday lives. As a result, we often miss the mystery and beauty of the natural world—and of the inner worlds of ourselves and others.

 

It is to escape the tedium of everydayness that men and women travel, devote themselves to arts or crafts, learn to play musical instruments, attend movies or sports events, concerts or plays, and, of course, read.

Reading takes us out of ourselves; sometimes, it also takes us out of this world, to times past or future, to strange worlds or other dimensions, or even, in the case of Dante's Inferno, to hell itself (not that such a destination is recommended, ordinarily.)

But what happens when the worlds of poetry, fiction, and drama themselves become too familiar to provide the escape from everydayness we crave? When the tropes and themes of genre literature themselves become too commonplace, they cannot alleviate the boredom of what The Mothers of Invention called our “dull, gray” existence.

Futurology, the study (or, perhaps, speculation about) of possible future situations, events, and states of existence based upon extrapolations from current ones, often rekindles the imagination. The future may not be exactly as futurologists envision it, but, even if it is not, their conjectures provide fresh visions of the way things could be, and that's all a writer of popular literature, regardless of genre, needs to rekindle his or her own imagination.

With thriller and horror fiction genres in mind, let's consider some of the possibilities that futurologists' ideas might suggest in the way of such elements of fiction as characters, settings, plots, motives, and conflicts.

There are astonishing technological marvels on the horizon, futurologists predict, including eye-controlled technology, paper diagnostics, designer antibiotics, ingestible robots, smart clothing, photonics in space, volcanic mining, a spintronics revolution, carbon-breathing batteries, super antivirals, diamond batteries, optogenetics, nano feasibility, an unhackable quantum Internet, biometric materials, the next generation of artificial intelligence, 3D printing in every home, designer molecules, a fully immersible, computer interface, and a self-sufficient ecosystem.

Whew! If that list doesn't suggest some fresh characters, settings, plots, motives, and conflicts that can be, as Stephen King defines horror, (a) disgusting, (b) horrific, or (c) terrifying, maybe there's no future for horror (or for the unimaginative aspiring horror writer, at least).

The first step in using the futuristic fiction approach is to research the type of technology in which you're interested as a writer. Start by gaining an overview of the technology. Then, learn whatever more detailed material you need to make your story accurate and believable. (Hint: Videos, such as those available on YouTube, are often quite sound academically and provide a moving, audio-visual rather than a static, learning approach, which some might prefer to reading.)

For example, suppose you're interested in eye-controlled technology. You might make a list of questions to research:

• How does it work?
• What uses does it have? (How has it been used? How else might it be used? In other words, what are its applications?)
• What benefits does it provide?
• What are its disadvantages?

As other relevant questions present themselves, research them as well.

How does it work?

Eye tracking records our point of gaze and our eye movements in relation to the environment and is typically based on the optical tracking of corneal reflections, known as pupil center corneal reflection (PCCR).

Eye-tracking technology can installed in personal computers, peripheral devices, or eyeglasses.

What uses does it have? (How has it been used? How else might it be used? In other words, what are its applications?)

There’s a chance that soon eye tracking will be a standard feature of a new generation of smartphones, laptops and desktop monitors setting the stage for a huge reëvaluation of the way we communicate with devices—or how they communicate with us.

“In the past year eye tracking technology moved from being a promising technology to being adopted in commercial products in a wide array of consumer segments simultaneously,” Werner says.

. . . VR headset companies are making large investments in eye tracking technology.

. . . eye tracking might make it a whole lot easier for gamers to interact with the gaming environment.

“There is an increasing interest in using eye tracking to help diagnose — and potentially treat –neurological disorders,” says Bryn Farnsworth, science editor at biometric research company iMotions.

With eye tracking technology, online advertisers will be able to measure exactly how many actual human eyes actually view their ads when they appear on the page.

What benefits does it provide?

“Eye tracking sensors provide two main benefits,” says Oscar Werner, vice president of the eye tracking company Tobii Tech. “First, it makes a device aware of what the user is interested in at any given point in time. And second, it provides an additional way to interact with content, without taking anything else away. That means it increases the communication bandwidth between the user and the device.”

What are its disadvantages?

1. The equipment is expensive.
2. Some users can't work with the equipment (for example if they wear contact lenses or have long eye lashes).
3. Calibrating the equipment takes time; [as a result] this problem may . . . cause the user to deviate from using the device.

Without developing a detailed synopsis, we can suggest some possibilities simply by breaking ideas into the three parts of any story: the beginning, the middle, and the end:

Eye-controlled Technology

1. Beginning: An art gallery stages an exhibition for an up-and-coming artist of the avant-garde.
2. Middle: An explosive device installed in the wall, behind one of the artist's paintings explodes.
3. End (Terrifying and Gross-out Elements): Sixteen people are killed, including the artist, as terrorists prove the efficacy of their latest innovation: eye-tracking technology that can be used as a trigger to detonate an explosive device. (A good title for such a story might be “The Tenth Gaze,” because the software used to detonate the bomb triggered its explosion in accordance with the tenth time someone gazed at a specific point on a particular painting.)

Note: Can eye-controlled technology be used to active an explosive device? I don't know, but it doesn't matter, because, in fiction, it can.

Next-generation Artificial Intelligence

1. Beginning: A next-generation robot is activated as it exits the assembly line.
2. Middle: Its programmed role as a “helpmate” is initiated.
3. End: Unhappy with its assigned role, the robot “commits suicide.” (A good title for such a story might be “Access Denied,” since the robot, in self-destructing, denies access to itself to a buyer.) In an alternate ending, the robot could allow itself to be purchased and then kill its owner, claiming the owner's residence (and perhaps his or her family) as its own.