Friday, October 25, 2019

Ambrose Bierce's Puddle-Jumper, "The Flying Machine"

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Recently, I've become more and more interested in flash fiction. To my delight, Fight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales contains such a story: Ambrose Bierce's “The Flying Machine” (79).


The tale, which consists of 110 words, describes a prototypical flying machine's unsuccessful maiden flight. Despite the machine's failure, its inventor's assurance to the crowd of onlookers that the machine's “defects . . . are merely basic and fundamental” is enough to get them to invest in the construction of “a second machine” (79).


The editors, Stephen King and Bev Vincent, see the witnesses' willingness to subscribe to the second machine's construction as evidence of their gullibility. In their opinion, the spectators are duped by the inventor, a con artist who claims to have built a machine that is able to fly. King and Vincent could be right. As they point out, Bierce was both cynical and misanthropic, after all. Perhaps “The Flying Machine” is merely a literary expression of the declaration, sometimes erroneously attributed to showman P. T. Barnum, that “there's a sucker born every minute.”


A comic book version of Ray Bradbury's short story "The Flying Machine"

Another possibility—one that the late optimistic Ray Bradbury might have preferred—is that, despite the flying machine's failure, people are willing to finance the apparently impossible; in doing so, they often find that they have financed the next technological marvel, whether a flying machine, artificial intelligence, or a cure for the common cold.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

What's in a Phrase?

In a previous post, we considered how to use horror movie posters to generate plot ideas. In this post, we'll take a look at using commonplace phrases to do the same.


Let's stay with the “bug” them. By typing “bug” into the Internet search engine of my choice (Bing), several links appeared, including this one: Phrases, which lists these commonplace phrases that include the word “bug” and the meaning associated with each:

  • bug off
  • bug out
  • bug in her bonnet
  • bug someone
  • bug storm
  • cute as a bug's ear
  • snug as a bug in a rug

At first, not many of the phrases may seem to inspire ideas for horror plots (or even scenes), but, of course, the phrases are raw material; we have to work with them a bit. Let's take “snug as a bug in a rug,” for example. Let's jettison the “snug as” portion of the phrase, paring it down to “a bug in a rug.” instead of the denotative, or dictionary, meaning of “rug,” let's go with a figurative use. Toupees are sometimes referred to, usually derogatorily, as “rugs.”

Could a toupee-manufacturing company plant a bug inside its hairpieces? Sure—but why? Maybe the bugs aren't really insects. Maybe they're miniature microphones that someone plants in the toupees of certain men ho wear “rugs.”

Okay—but why? The bald men are spies or suspected terrorists or masters of organized crime. Maybe the toupee company is a CIA front that makes “special” toupees for only a select few clients.

Sounds good, maybe, but why go through all the trouble of making toupees instead of using more traditional ways to bug persons of interest?

No one, least of all a spy, a suspected terrorist, or a master of organized crime, is likely to suspect there's a listening device in his toupee. It's the perfect hiding place—as long as the wig stays on the suspect's head, which I likely to be most of the time that he's in public.

There's another possibility, too. If the “rug' isn't a toupee, but a merkin, the story takes on a whole different tone. It could take a satirical or even an erotic twist. A merkin, after all, is a pubic wig, a toupee worn down under (mostly by women).

Now the client is likely to be a female spy, a female terrorist suspect, or a female head of organized crime. The possibilities aren't endless, but they're sure different than those that are likely to be inspired by a male character's wearing of a toupee.

Maybe you don't like either possibility, that of the toupee or that of the merkin. Besides, we might wonder, where's the fear in such a conceit? There could be one, if the bug is set to self-destruct, Mission Impossible style, after so many hours or days, killing its wearer out at the same time. Some suspense, or even terror, could flow from the thought that the presence of the bug, over time, scrambles the brains of the surveilled suspect—and those around him or her. Perhaps the government agency that sells the implanted toupee or merkin knows that this effect will occur; maybe they discover it as the “bugs” are put into use. Alternatively, maybe the “bugs” have this effect only on some suspects, and the government agency must discover why and how to prevent the effect from occurring.

The possibilities are many, and they have all resulted from brainstorming about a phrase that includes the word “bug.”

Of course, if you don't like the results of using “bug” phrases, you can always substitute a word associated with another horror trope or theme and brainstorm about phrases containing this (or these) term(s).


To find such tropes, check out images of horror movie posters. You'll find that many of them contain the same types of images, such as dolls (Abandoned, Dolls, Worry Dolls, The Doll, Finders Keepers, Doll in the Dark, Child's Play, Annabelle, The Devil Doll); heads (Pumpkinhead, Hatchet, Shrunken Heads, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Hostel); eyes (The Eye, Would You Rather?, The Crawling Eye, Candyman 3, The Theater Bizarre, The Return, Cat's Eye).


Just a few of the many phrases that contain the word “eye” or closely related words include:

  • up to your (my) eyeballs
  • your (my) eyes are bigger than your (my) stomach
  • a bird's-eye view
  • a feast for the eyes
  • a jaundiced eye
  • a roving eye
  • a worm's-eye view
  • all eyes are on someone (something)
  • an eagle eye
  • an eye for an eye
  • as far as the eye can see
  • bat one's eye
  • bawl one's eyes out
  • easy on the eyes
  • bedroom eyes
  • eye opener
  • eye to eye
  • eyes in the back of your head
  • eye popper
  • eyes only
  • get some shuteye
  • give your eyeteeth for
  • stars in your eyes
  • in the wink of an eye
  • keep a weather eye on
Possibilities are endless.



Saturday, October 19, 2019

Stories That Will Bug Your Readers

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Chillers and Thrillers has posted several articles about using horror movie posters as prompts to fire up the imagination. Such posters make good muses for writers in search of themes, especially if authors brainstorm about the posters without knowing the plots of the movies the posters promote.

By using the posters' images, visual and textual figures of speech, and captions, authors can work out plots of their own; at the same time, they can acquire clues as to what the posters' creators regard as their audience's fears, anxieties, and concerns with respect to specific themes.

In this post, bugs are the topic. There's something about creepy crawlers that many people find unsettling.


A poster for the 2011 film Millennium Bugs suggests that this movie is aimed specifically at Millennials, those who are born between 1980 and 2000 or so. According to this label, the members of the targeted audience would be between 31 and 11 years old at the time of the motion picture's release.


According to “Childhood Fears By Age,” children between the ages of 12 and 18 typically “fear for their safety, fear . . . sickness, fear . . . throwing up at school, fear . . . failure in school or in sports, fear . . . school presentations, fear . . . how they look to others, [and] fear . . . violence and global issues.” Those who are between the ages of 18 and 20 “fear . . . germs and [other threats to] health, fear . . . homelessness, fear . . . death, fear [failure related to] academic performance, fear . . . romantic rejection, fear [a lack of] life purpose, [and] fear . . . being an adult.”


Curiously, a “fear of bugs” is characteristic of children between the ages of five and seven, but it's easy to see how many of the fears of children between the ages of 12 and 18 (and, indeed, young adulthood) could involve a fear of insects as well. Insects can threaten safety, cause sickness, carry germs, and even precipitate death. In addition, the presence of bugs which one fears and loathes could cause people to “throw up” in the presence of others or hamper romance.


The list of childhood fears suggests that a horror story, whether movie or novel, would likely include junior high or high school children and be set, at least part, in the children's public or private school. Other characters would be the principal, an assistant principal, coaches, parents, maybe the school nurse, a janitor or two, and perhaps a bus driver.


The poster's caption, “What's bugging you?” further suggests that the story would involve psychological issues. The bugs might, in fact, symbolize the characters' emotional states, in which case the school counselor or a psychologist would also apt to be among the story's characters.


The poster for the 1985 movie Creepers suggests a different take on insects as villains. The poster shows a teenage girl. The right side of her face is pretty, but the skin has been eaten away on the left side of her face, as has much of the underlying issue and muscle. In fact, her skull shows through the top of her head; a hole through the exposed cranium offers viewers a glimpse of blue sky.

A swarm of insects flies against a full moon; as they approach, they become visible in detail, and viewers can discern that the swarm is composed of an unlikely assortment of various kinds of insects, some of which appear to be unfamiliar, perhaps never-before-seen species. They land in the girl's open, upraised palm.

It will make your skin crawl,” the poster's caption warns. “It” doesn't refer to the girl or to the insects (unless it alludes to the whole swarm), so it seems to suggest the movie itself. Either way, whether “it” refers to the film or to the swarm of insects the girl holds in the palm of her hand (and to the many others on their way), either will be enough, viewers are warned, to make their “skin crawl.”


Interestingly, this movie takes place in a school; the girl is herself a “school girl,” additional text informs viewers, but she is a teen with unusual abilities:

Horror movie enthusiasts know [director Dario] Argento as the master of modern gothic horror films . . . .

Now they can see what he does with maggots, spiders, killer bees, and a school girl who has telepathic powers over them all.

What she can do “will make your skin crawl.”

Much of the plot of a horror story built upon this theme is suggested by the poster, but there are questions yet to be answered, such as:
  • Who is this school girl?
  • How did she come by her strange power?
  • Why does she seem intent upon harming, perhaps killing, others?
  • Who are the “others” she targets?
  • Can she be stopped?

This poster also suggests many of the characters such a story would include: high school students, the principal, an assistant principal, coaches, parents, maybe the school nurse, a janitor or two, and perhaps a bus driver, but also, at some point, an etymologist and maybe a team of exterminators. In a story of this sort, the paranormal teen's motives will be a big part of the narrative.

The poster also suggests a few scenes:
  • A science teacher's classroom lecture on insects
  • A science fair
  • A field trip to a beekeeper's hives
  • The school girl's collection of her swarm

In plotting a novel or a movie about villainous insects, it's probably a good idea to research phobias related to bugs: entomophobia, acarophobia, or insectophobia, as well as more specific insect-related phobias such as arachnophobia (fear of spiders), isopterophobia (fear of termites and other wood-eating insects), acarophobia (fear of insects that cause itching), scolopendrphobia or chilopodophobia (fear of centipedes), xarantaphobia or myriapodophobia (fear of millipedes), myriadpodophobia (fear of decamillipedes [millipedes with 10,000 legs]), lepidopterophobia (fear of butterflies), melissophobia, melissaphobia, or apiphobia (fear of honey bees), spheksophobia (fear of wasps), muscaphobia (fear of flies), katsaridaphobia (fear of cockroaches), mottephobia (fear of moths), myrmecophobia (fear of ants), pediculophobia (fear of lice), skathariphobia is the fear of beetles,
necroentomophobia (fear of dead insects), and
cnidophobia (not a fear of insects per se, but, rather, a fear of stingers and of being stung).

(With so many insect phobias, it's clear that the the school girl in Creepers is well-versed in insect fear; the variety of bugs at her command allows her to terrify a large number of victims.)


Although phobias are regarded as “irrational fears,” psychologists have developed theories as to why people tend to fear insects in general. Their appearance in itself can be seen as disgusting, generating a response of repugnance. Some insects carry pathogens. Other causes of insect fear include “environmental” factors, “medical conditions and trauma,” “social isolation,” “depression,” and, strangely enough, “age.” “Fear of Bugs and Insects Phobia—Entomophobia or Acarophobia” explains each of these causes in more detail. For example,

static electricity, [the] presence of mold, pollen, household allergens[,] and formaldehyde[-]impregnated products can all manifest as unexplained dermatitis or skin irritations. These lead the sufferer to believe that an insect or bug is crawling on the skin.

Brainstorming about horror movie posters' images, figures of speech, and text, initially without any other context, can often suggest ideas for characters, settings, conflicts, scenes, and plot development. Then, tossing in a bit of research concerning the posters' theme can further and refine these elements. As a result, the writer's tabula rasa is a blank slate no more, and he or she is ready to start writing the next cinematic or literary horror masterpiece.

For example, what do you make of the following poster as a horror story prompt?



Note: No insects were harmed in the writing of this article.

Monday, October 14, 2019

A Word to the Wild

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

It is both entertaining and informative to type a word associated with the horror genre in one's favorite Internet image browser and see the resulting pictures. (Personally, I prefer Bing.)

"Creepy"
For example, I typed the word eerie. As a result, images of fog-enshrouded woods, a tunnel, a full moon gliding among clouds in a dark sky, and several abandoned houses appeared. (Other pictures showed up as well, but not in any number.)


"Eerie"

The results suggested the question, What is eerie about these pictures? What is eerie about—

  • fog-enshrouded woods,
  • a tunnel,
  • a full moon gliding among clouds in a dark sky
  • abandoned houses?

These objects are not eerie in themselves.


"Eerie"

They are only eerie as symbols, as representations of physical conditions and limitations and, at times, emotional conditions. For example, fog reduces visibility; it “blinds” us to some extent. When we are robbed of our senses in a wilderness (woods), we have cause for disquiet. Unable to see, we are unable to defend ourselves.


"Eerie"

Likewise, even the loners among us crave society to some extent. We are social creatures—and for good reason. Friends and acquaintances don't merely relieve us of loneliness and boredom; potentially, at least, they are also a source of protection and assistance. If a friend doesn't know first aid procedures, he or she can telephone for paramedics if we are ourselves disabled for some reason. A house, as a home, is a sanctuary in which family members live, united by love which includes concerns for our safety and well-being. An abandoned house suggests that the family who abandoned the house are gone; so is the security blanket of our parents and siblings. We are cast out, alone, and vulnerable.


"Eerie"

What about the tunnel and the full moon gliding among clouds in a dark sky?

Such images will suggest one set of ideas and emotions to one writer and another set, perhaps, to another author. However, in most instances, words connoting horror will themselves find visual expression in the images on the Internet. In so doing, they can help writers of horror isolate the fears and anxieties of their readers and to tap into those feelings by describing settings that contain what we may call the elements of horror.

Try lots of words and their synonyms.

Here are a few results using words other than 'eerie.”

Frightening


Grotesque



Horrible



Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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