Saturday, June 30, 2018

Plot Generators: The Key to Writing a Series of Novels

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

As its name suggests, a plot generator generates plots for a series of stories, such as those which are shown on a television show. Occasionally, the title of the series references its plot generator. The plot generators are sources of both the conflict (and often the villains) and the explanation of the series' bizarre events. In addition, plot generators determine the type of the threats (e. g., science fiction, fantasy, horror).

Well-known examples of plot devices include:

The Time Tunnel (1966-1967) Time machine (i. e., the Time Tunnel)
Star Trek (1966-1969) Mission (to explore new worlds)
The Prisoner (1967-1968) Village (island prison)
Land of the Giants (1968-1970) Planet other than Earth
The X-Files (1993-2002) X-Files (unsolved cases involving bizarre paranormal or supernatural events or agents)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) Hellmouth (mystical gateway between Earth and hell)
Haven (2005 - ) and Arrow (2012- ) (first season) Troubles (a mysterious affliction suffered by the “Troubled”)
Supernaturals (season one) (2005) John Winchester's notebook
Flash (2014- ) Particle accelerator explosion
Supergirl (2015 - ) Prison

Since Chillers and Thrillers is concerned with horror fiction more than with science fiction or fantasy per se, we'll limit our discussion of plot generators to those used in the horror genre: The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Haven, and Supernaturals.




For The X-Files, the plot generator is the X-Files (unsolved cases involving bizarre paranormal or supernatural events or agents). These mysterious files involve FBI agents Fox (“I want to believe”) Mulder and skeptical Dana Scully in investigations of alleged alien abductions, supposed government conspiracies, mysterious murders, ghosts, murderous computers equipped with artificial intelligence, UFO crashes, a eugenics program, pyrokinesis, psychics, astral projection, age reversal, miracle healings, werewolves, unseen forces, human hibernation, and reincarnation—and these investigations all occur in the first of the series' eleven seasons.



The Hellmouth, an inter-dimensional portal between Earth and hell, is the plot generator in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The current slayer, Buffy Summers, is the one and only slayer in 1997, when she dies at the hands of The Master, a centuries-old vampire trapped inside The Hellmouth. Although she is resuscitated shortly after her death, her demise triggers the activation of her replacement, Kendra Young, who has come to the United States from Jamaica to assume her duties as the “new” slayer under the tutelage of Buffy's Watcher (mentor), Rupert Giles, the librarian of Sunnydale High School in Sunnydale, California. Kendra is replaced, in turn, by Faith Lehane, the slayer who assumes Kendra's role as slayer upon Kendra's death. First with Kendra, and then with Faith, Buffy became the first slayer in history to share her title and responsibilities with another slayer equipped with her own supernatural powers.

The Hellmouth is located beneath Sunnydale, California. In addition to its being an inter-dimensional gateway to hell, the Hellmouth also enhances supernatural energy, causing bizarre, dangerous incidents to occur with regularity. Due to the intensified supernatural energy caused by The Hellmouth, the portal also attracts demons. Numerous attempts are made to open The Hellmouth, but none succeed until the end of the series, when Buffy, Faith, and Potential Slayers (girls who have the powers of the slayer but who have not been activated as such) open The Hellmouth's Seal. After the Sunnydale Hellmouth is destroyed, Giles tells Buffy and her friends that another Hellmouth exists in Cincinnati.



In Haven, Maine, when the characters of Haven known as The Troubled undergo emotional crises, they experience The Troubles, which are characterized by supernatural incidents, including weather phenomena, the perception of one's worst fears, and the realization of personal fantasies. The Troubles began 350 years ago, when Haven was founded, and have been occurring ever since. In some cases, The Troubled can be treated or controlled, if not cured, through medication, temporary confinement, a job change, or other means.



Supernatural's John Winchester, monster hunter, records information about his prey in a journal that had previously belonged to his father, Henry. After John's death, his sons, Dean and Sam, whom he trained to follow his own unusual occupation, use the journal as a guide. Not only does the journal contain myriad entries concerning particular demons, monsters, ghosts, and other supernatural entities, but it also provides information concerning Azazel, a powerful demon to whose defeat John had dedicated his life. After season nine, the journal is used only infrequently, although it remains a resource throughout the series and is employed once more in season thirteen, as Dean and Sam seek information about the Hell Gate and the Princes of Hell. 

Each of these plot generators has several elements in common with the others, suggesting those that any such device should be or include:
  • the facilitation of encounters with a variety of paranormal and/or supernatural entities or forces
  • a source of conflict between the protagonists and antagonists
  • information concerning the paranormal and/or supernatural threats the protagonists encountering, including, in some cases, the means for overcoming them
  • a history that predates the plot generator itself and often includes previous protagonists who used or were affected by the device
  • the opportunity for the plot generator itself to become the subject of a book published by the permission of the show's creator, producer, production company, owner, or other authorized authority, as in the case of Supernatural: John Winchester's Journal.
For novelists or short story writers who are interested in developing a series of related sequels, the creation and use of a plot generator is an effective, imaginative way to accomplish this goal.


 

Friday, June 29, 2018

Dramatic Images

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Instead of writing descriptions, filmmakers project images. As Alfred Hitchcock points out, style consists in the arrangement of the images; the images themselves mean “nothing,” he says. A paraphrase of Alexander Pope gets Hitchcock's point across well: Style is proper images in their proper places. (For more on Hitchcock's view of style, see my post, “Alfred Hitchcock on the Importance of Style in Cinematic Storytelling.”)

In this post, let's take a look at a few specific images (motion-picture stills) of scenes from a variety of horror films, ascertaining their effects. By learning to convey thought, emotion, and suspense through the use of imagery, horror novelists and short story writers may create more effective descriptions, for artists often learn from their counterparts in other media and genres.

To focus specifically on the images themselves, we'll consider them out of context from the rest of the scene in which they appear, examining them only in terms of themselves.



In this image, a man (Jack Torrance, we learn in the movie version of The Shining) looks menacing. His appearance is unkempt, his hair uncombed, a few strands straggling over his brow. He hasn't shaved recently, so his cheeks, chin, jaw, and upper lip bear stubble. His eyes gaze madly under arched eyebrows. His face is visible between a broken-out door panel, suggesting he may break through the barrier separating him from whomever he's menacing. There's not much between him and his intended prey. Were we to summarize the idea that this single movie still communicates to the audience, we might say “menace.” However, the image also communicates such emotions as fear and suspense.



In a still from the movie Veronica, two young children, a boy holding a telephone and a girl clutching a doll, cling to a woman—presumably, their mother—who stands in a living room, holding a cross aloft. Due to her stance and her direct, unflinching gaze, the woman looks brave and confident, in contrast to the expression of fear on the children's faces. Due to the association, in horror fiction, of a cross or crucifix with vampires, we may conclude that one of the undead is her likely adversary and, from her reliance upon the cross, a symbol of Christianity, that she is a woman of faith. The image suggests that the conflict is of a supernatural nature, a contest, on one level, between human beings and vampires, but on another level, between God and demons, since it is demons who animate the corpses that feed on human blood. Through the window behind the woman and the children, we see three stories of an adjacent building, which suggests that the woman and the children live in an apartment house. What little furniture we can see—a lamp, a shelving unit, part of the arm of an armchair—suggests that the woman is a member of the middle class. The contrast between the everydayness of setting and the supernatural foe against whom the woman defends the children enhances both worlds—those of the everyday and of the supernatural.


Various camera angles suggest various emotions. Novelists and short story writers can use this technique to create similar effects as those created by filmmakers. In this image, from The Birds, a victim of one fowl attack (yes, pun intended) sits on the floor, staring in shock, her hair disheveled and a bloody scratch across her forehead and right cheek. Her jacket and skirt have been ripped, and her right leg is smeared with blood. She looks exhausted, frightened, and dismayed. On the floor, a seagull approaches her, while above it, a second gull flies toward her, suggesting the woman's ordeal is far from over. The dark shadow behind her, on the blood-splattered wall, emphasizes her disheveled hair and her frailty. The picture also suggests the incongruity of her situation: she sits inside a house, the floor of which is partially covered with a carpet, but it is a home that offers no safety from a natural world gone mad. Although we think of our homes as secure refuges, this image shows us that they are poor havens against wild animals. Our safety is largely an illusion. The tilting of the camera has made the image stand out, because it offers an atypical view of the scene. Normally, we do not see things at such an angle, so the picture strikes us as different, and we are hard-wired to notice the unusual; our survival, we have learned, may depend upon our recognition of that which is unusual or singular.

Other camera angles allow filmmakers to represent additional cognitive, emotional, and thematic effects. Novelists and short story writers can adapt such techniques to their own narrative aims and needs.

Novels and short stories are not movies. That's one reason that films based on novels or, less often, short stories, are called “adaptations”: they must be adapted to the screen, or to cinematic storytelling. What works on the page may not work on the soundstage and vice versa. Novelists and short story writers who want to employ cinematic techniques must adapt these techniques to the printed page—that is, to the reading process, which differs in many respects from the viewing process. Readers are not audience members, just as moviegoers are not readers.

For one thing, readers read from left to right and from top to bottom, whereas the movement of the eyes of people watching a movie is more fluid, directed by color, intensity, the composition of images, on-screen action, relative sizes, the locations of characters, and many other elements. Even during moments when a scene is less active, viewers “fill in” the “spaces” between overt actions by visually considering the inactive or passive visuals included in the scene. For example, between a vampire's attack upon a woman and her children, a viewer's gaze might sweep the room, noticing the type and color of the drapes at the window, the building next door, a lamp or a bookcase, or a portion of an armchair. These observations are “automatic,” made while the viewer's gaze darts about the room until renewed action—the vampire's attack, perhaps—orients and claims the viewers' vision. In short, to be does not imply being singled out; to be seen simply requires that something be present in the scene.

Readers are more active participants in the storytelling process. They are not likely to envision specific “props” in a story or a chapter's scene. If the writer wants the reader to see” something, he or she must present it, must describe it. Each particular character, object, or action must be described to be “seen,” “heard,” “felt,” “tasted,” or “smelled.” This necessity presents several problems filmmakers do not have. Long, detailed descriptions tend to bore readers. They don't want the story's action to be bogged down by the descriptions of a scene's particulars.


Therefore, any detailed description must be as short as possible and must be set up as integral to the story. Sometimes, an introductory sentence or two (or less) is enough. The transition should explain the importance of the description and provide a specific point of view so readers know why a particular description is important to the viewpoint character:

The horror of her situation created an impression as indelible as a photograph. Wendy could never forget Jack, his hair uncombed, a few strands straggling over his brow; the stubble of beard on his face; his wild, arched eyebrows; the madness in his predatory gaze; his face, shoved between the broken-out door panel announcing his intent to break through the barrier at any moment. Her bathroom refuge had been inadequate and flimsy. She trembled, even now, at the thought of how vulnerable she'd been in the face of her husband's madness.

Another technique is to make the symbolic significance of the description (kept, again, to a minimum) explicit at the beginning of the paragraph and, again, describe the scene from the point of view of one of the characters involved in it:

The fate of her children depended on her faith in God. Only He could protect them now. She held the cross up, before them, like a shield. In the center of their apartment's living room, her son, gripping the telephone, her daughter, clutching a doll, clung to her. She must be staunch in her faith, unbending and resolute. She stood her ground, her unflinching gaze, her faith in God, and her love for her children giving her courage and confidence. This was her home! In this contest, between vampire and family, mother and children were going to win, God help her.


The scene from The Birds is filmed from an omniscient point of view, which gives the action the appearance of objectivity and disinterest, or impartiality. In describing this scene in a novel, a writer could maintain this point of view, shortening the description:

Melanie sat on the floor, her back to the wall, staring in shock. Her hair was disheveled, and bloody scratches marred her forehead and cheek. Her jacket and skirt had been ripped, her right leg smeared with blood. Exhausted, frightened, and dismayed, she watched the seagulls that had invaded the house. One bird approached, walking across the carpet; above it, a second gull flew toward her. Her ordeal was far from over. Her safety was an illusion: a mere house couldn't protect her from nature gone mad.

Alternatively, this paragraph could be written from the limited third-person point of view:

Melanie sat on the floor, her back to the wall, staring in shock. Her hair was disheveled, and bloody scratches marred her forehead and cheek. Her jacket and skirt had been ripped, her right leg smeared with blood. Exhausted, frightened, and dismayed, she watched the seagulls that had invaded her house. One bird approached, walking across the carpet; above it, a second gull flew toward her. My ordeal is far from over. My safety's an illusion: a mere house can't protect me from nature gone mad.

The process doesn't seem that difficult when we already have images supplied to us by movies, but when we have to plan a scene ourselves, we have to be able to assume the task not only of writer, but also of director. Before we can accomplish this undertaking, we have to learn at least some of what directors know, such as camera angles and their uses; storyboarding principles; the principles of cinematic style; and how to communicate primarily through images, rather than through words.

At the same time, we have to remember that novels and short stories are not inferior to motion pictures. They're merely different, and both media influence the other. Indeed, novels and short stories have powerful techniques and tools not available to moviemakers. A judicious use of them can only enhance novels and short stories. By adding techniques of filmmaking that enhance written storytelling, however, novelists and short story writers add to their ability to tell their stories more effectively.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Underscoring Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror movies aren't about stubbing one's toe. They're about life-and-death struggles, about suffering life-threatening injuries, about being driven insane.

But they can be about subtler, but equally horrific, experiences, although they seldom are.




In my own urban fantasy novel, A Whole World Full of Hurt, one scene is about some worm-like monster that consumes a woman from within, on her wedding day, as she stands at the altar, about to exchange vows with her husband-to-be. The subtext relates to a bride's anxiety about entering a lifelong relationship and her questions, largely unconscious, perhaps, about what could go wrong with such a union.

Every scene in a horror novel should have a deeper layer, a theme beyond the literal horror, that goes to the heart of being human in a hostile world. (For example, the scene previous to that which involves the bride on her day of days concerns a college student who feels guilty about not spending enough time with his younger brother; collecting for the newspaper from one of his kid brother's peskier customers is an attempt to rectify such neglect, but it doesn't go well.)

By coupling scenes of horror with existential situations and predicaments, writers give symbolic significance to such action scenes, thereby enriching the story. Stories, even horror stories, are about people (i. e., characters), after all, not about mere incidents in themselves.




In A Whole World Full of Hurt, the scene involving the worm-things came to me, from who-knows-where—my imagination, the stockpile of horrific imagery I've accumulated over the years, my own unconscious fears?—as I wrote the scene. I hadn't planned it. I had worked out the structure of the novel, knew who most of the characters were, and had the setting firmly in mind, but the monsters, the plot twists, and the thematic significance of various scenes presented themselves out of the ether, if you like.




That's often not the case with me and with many other writers. Ideas come from everywhere, bidden and unbidden. One source is news, especially, if you're a writer of dark fantasy or horror (if there's really a difference between the two) is bizarre news.

Here's an item, for example, that might easily suggest the basis for a novel of fear and trembling. Part of a headline in a Daily Mail newspaper proclaimed, “Women's breasts 'eat' themselves after they finish breastfeeding.” Remove the quotation marks from around the verb “eat,” and the word acquires a literal, rather than a figurative, meaning: breasts actually consume themselves. By “eating” cells “left over from . . . breastfeeding,” a process known as “phagocytosis ,” breasts revert from their engorged, milk-producing state to their “natural state in a matter of days,” undergoing a type of self-destruction, the article informs us.



Male anglerfish (circled) attached to female; he will atrophy to little more than parasitic testicles.


In itself, this process could make a remarkable short story, if not a novel, but it could also be extended to other anatomical parts that essentially commit suicide after they've completed the process for which they've evolved to perform: the completion of ovulation, gestation, or ejaculation could cause the ovaries, the uterus, or the testes to cannibalize themselves or to be cannibalized by the body. That's pretty much what happens with the male anglerfish.

Different stories would result according to whether a woman or a man knew, ahead of time, the fate that ovulation, gestation, or ejaculation would bring or remained ignorant of this effect until the process was complete. If a person knew in advance that her ovaries or uterus would self-destruct or his testicles would consume themselves or be consumed bu their bodies, what type of character would sacrifice this part of him- or herself and why? Who would refuse to accept this fate and why? What effects would the decision have, either way?




Other news items that might suggest equally bizarre horrors are the one reported under the eye-catching title “Tapeworm Removed From Woman's Breast 5 Years After She Swallowed Live Frogs.” What kind of woman swallows live frogs? A carnival sideshow performer? A starving woman who raids a frog farm (yes, there are such places)? An overweight woman on a tapeworm diet? What would possess a person to embrace such an extreme measure—besides entertaining a rather kinky audience of voyeurs, staving off starvation, or losing a few pounds of unwanted weight? Such a story cries out for psychological and sociological exploration.


The important thing, though, is to associate the horror of the story and its scenes with character and theme. That way, your short story of novel will have something to present besides blood and guts; you will underscore the horror of your story by making it symbolize something meaningful beyond itself. You will emphasize your terror by making it represent something about human beings (your characters) that most people didn't realize or, in rare cases, perhaps didn't know at all.




Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Want a Revolution? Try Being a Reactionary

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman




Written horror fiction is a dying breed. There are plenty of reasons for this state of affairs. Anyone and everyone can write and deliver-on-demand a printed or electronic version of as many horror novels as he or she wants, selling them through Amazon, Google, Barnes & Noble online, or some other website.

Talent doesn't much matter, nor does familiarity with the history of the genre, nor does respect for the genre or its readers. Just put it out there, and nobody will buy it. (Sales are spectacularly dismal for any but established writers, and sales are dismal enough for 99 percent of them). However, the sheer volume of “novels” now available in cyberspace clogs publishing arteries, offering so many choices that readers are apt to make none at all, unless its a novel by somebody like Stephen King, whose best work seems to be far behind him.

We prefer movies to books, because we're more visually than cognitively oriented, preferring images to words. Besides, we don't have to use our imaginations or think much when we watch a movie: the writer, director, actors, special effects team, and others have done most of the work for us. Watching a movie, as opposed to reading a book, is almost pure entertainment and unadulterated pleasure. Reading, by comparison, seems a laborious, often unrewarding, burden.

Novelists have tried to emulate screenwriters, writing tighter scenes, eschewing exposition and long-winded dialogue, foregoing interior monologues and stream-of-consciousness, restricting themselves, more and more, to the limited third-person point of view, avoiding “head-hopping,” and making something happen every other page or so. They strive to show, avoid telling, and still—readership declines and declines. Some statistics have suggested even moviegoing isn't as popular as it once was, although it's way more popular than reading. Times change, and written horror, the horror of the pages, as opposed to the soundstages, is a casualty of these changing times.

I'm not blaming technology. Times, as I said, change. Those who don't change with them—well, we know what happens to organisms that fail to evolve. Emulating the techniques of the screen isn't enough. Novels—and novelists—are on their way out. (That's why Borders went bankrupt and Barnes & Noble may be next.) No, they won't be gone overnight. (The dodo was last seen alive in 1662.). But novels and novelists, it seems, are doomed. Their day has come and is just about gone.


Like most people, I'm a movie fan, although I find I watch fewer and fewer each year, and I watch the few I do watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu. I prefer to see them streaming into my living room, on my big-screen TV, than to go to all the trouble and bother of leaving home, driving to a theater, waiting in line (or buying online so I don't have to wait in line), finding a seat (usually, an uncomfortable one with limited space for my arms and legs), being interrupted by late arrivals and talkative neighbors, and being blasted by sound that's much louder than necessary, even for me (and I'm hearing impaired). If I want to buy snacks or visit the restroom, my moviegoing experience is much worse. Then, at the end of the movie, I have to file out of the theater, find my car, and drive home, through the fairly heavy traffic of Las Vegas. (And, oh, yes, pay about $10 for the ticket, not to mention the round-trip cost of gasoline and the snacks, if any, I buy.) No, thanks, I'd sooner stay at home and watch a movie from the comfort and convenience of my living room couch.

I'm suggesting that movie theaters may be on their way out. The future of fiction (i. e., movies), it seems, is streaming—but it isn't.

What is the future of fiction? Who knows? Nobody has a crystal ball, including the few who have crystal balls. Maybe movies will happen inside the theaters of our skulls, as sounds and images are uploaded to our brains, either by wire or through wireless technology (I prefer the latter—I think).

Instead of dreaming at night, we'll watch the streaming movies of our choice. For those who enjoy nightmares, horror movies will likely be available. During the day, we might be immersed in 3-D holographs. (Princess Leia was ahead of her time.) Instead of a movie's coming soon to a theater near you, it will be coming at once, all around, or inside, you.

Maybe on our way to or from work, if we're still working outside our homes—or working at allwe'll be able to upload a movie trailer or two. A few forward thinkers also suggest our fiction may be written by robotic devices using linguistic-mathematical logarithms, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI). (The “fake news” of our own day suggests that non-fiction may be produced and delivered in much the same way.)

Once the few remaining, die-hard horror novelists, the Stephen Kings, the Peter Straubs, the Bentley Littles, and the Whoever-Elses, expire, the horror genre, as far as the novel is concerned, at least, is likely to become extinct. Movies will probably continue to be made, promoted, released, watched, and critiqued until something more evolved comes along. Then, they, too, will go the way of all celluloid.


The process is already in progress. This trailer from 20th Century Fox (courtesy of IBM's AI program, Watson) is about a superhuman AI. To create the trailer, Watson analyzed “100 horror movie trailers, studying each scene and looking for common ground,” before selecting 10 of them from the 90-minute movie Morgan that Fox had produced. The whole process took Watson a mere 24 hours. Humans take as long as a month to make a trailer. Watson cheated, though: a film editor had to piece “together the scenes,” because the AI program lacks the ability to “understand and calibrate . . . emotions,” Morgan's director, Luke Scott said.

Jim Smith, a fellow with Machine Vision—IBM Research, said a lot must happen before Watson or any other AI program could develop an entire movie, if such a program is ever able to accomplish such a feat at all. It's unlikely AI will “be able to create art,” Smith believes, because it is incapable of the “original thought . . . essential in creativity.”

Yes, all this may (or may not) happen, but, in the meantime, as comic book writers are fond of writing, what, if anything, can be done about the current, stagnant state of horror novels?

We need a revolution of sorts, and that's the problem. Historically, revolutions in art start as reactions against the art of the status quo. In painting, impressionism started as a reaction against traditional artistic conventions. Other times, innovations occur within a revolutionary cycle itself, as when Vincent van Gogh “carried Impressionism to its limits by using expressive colors [and] Fauvism went one step further in using simplified designs in combination with an 'orgy of pure colors.'” Likewise, Expressionism can be considered “a German modern art version of Fauvism.”

New forms of painting also originated as reactions against commercial transitions, such as that which occurred when an industrial economy began to replace the earlier agrarian economy: “Art historians tend to interpret this new movement [art nouveau] as a natural reaction to the Industrial Revolution.” In turn, the Industrial Revolution might also have affected art nouveau, as Art Deco, which followed art nouveau, represented a “simplified” movement that was “closer to mass production.” 


Surrealism turned inward, seeking to emphasize the importance of the unconscious mind. It wasn't restricted only to painting, however; it also influenced literature and film.

A reaction against abstract art, popular art, or pop art, sought “to bring art back into the daily life of people” and took, as its subject matter, “objects from everyday life.”

Literature has long allied itself with painting, as it has with the other arts. It has also long been allied with theology, philosophy, history, geography, psychology, sociology, and, more recently, with the sciences. In fact, one of the great strengths of literature—perhaps its greatest—is that it unites human experience, bringing together a wide variety of interests that, although seemingly unrelated, have a common source in humanity itself, in individuals, society, and culture. In fiction, human beings truly are “the measure of all things.”

Too often, writers are caught up in the moment, not only representatives, but also prisoners, of their own times. It is by venturing out of one's habitat, by setting forth to explore new lands, that creativity is excited and originality is awakened. By writing the same thing over and over that has proved to have a market, writers (and publishers)and, yes, readers as well—sell and buy the same sort of fiction over and over again. Why take a chance on writing something new, on publishing something different, of buying an unknown quantity, when we already know another Stephen King novel, no matter how familiar the characters, setting, plot, and theme, will be a New York Times bestseller. We get the type of horror fiction we want and, some might suggest, deserve.

Until AI can write movie scripts for us to play inside our heads or surround us on every side, if we want something different, readers are going to have to demand it, writers write it, and publishers publish it. Maybe the history of recent art movements among painters can suggest some ways writers can write some new forms of fiction, horror and otherwise. Our world suggests, more than ever, perhaps, many things to which horror novelists (and moviemakers, for that matter) could react, if they've a mind to do so.

Otherwise, look for yet another "blockbuster" by Stephen King, Peter Straub, Bentley Little, or Whoever-Else; it's probably being written, published, or distributed this very moment.



Sunday, June 24, 2018

"Teeth" and the Horrors of Sexual Repression

 Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


Although on a literal level, Teeth, a movie about a teenage girl with a toothed vagina, or a vagina dentata, is—there's no polite way to say it—imbecilic, on a figurative level, the film, despite its sophomoric plot, offers more than its mixture of horror and comedy: it has something significant to say about the effects of sexual repression on teenage girls. 

It's difficult for young male moviegoers to envision, much less to appreciate, the social and psychological pressures teenage girls are under. By virtue of their having been born female, rather than male, they're subject to social expectations concerning sex that do not apply to males. Girls, after all, can become pregnant; males cannot. Therefore, women are encouraged to avoid sexual intercourse until they're married, when, having wed, they've acquired a potentially secure means of providing for the welfare of their children. Indeed, unmarried women, especially teens, are discouraged from participating even in non-procreative sexual behaviors, which could lead to sexual intercourse.



Teenage boys rarely face such taboos, although, in the interests of sexual equality and political correctness, lip service may be given to the importance of their committing to abstinence until marriage as well, as they are encouraged to do in Teeth. It's obvious, however, that the boys don't take their vows very seriously, and most of them seek to have sex whenever possible. 

These prohibitions against premarital sexual intercourse are represented in the movie by the protagonist's devotion to her vow to abstain from sexual intercourse until marriage. Dawn O'Keefe doesn't merely commit to this goal, but she champions it in speeches to her abstinence group, The Promise.


Unlike other girls, Dawn is equipped with a sharp set of teeth in her nether region. They seem sentient enough to know when their territory, so to speak, is threatened with invasion. As a toddler, her future stepbrother Brad's curiosity gets out of hand while he's seated in a wading pool, next to Dawn, and her teeth bite off the tip of the forefinger he's inserted into her vagina.

Despite her sincere devotion to her ideals, teenage Dawn's resolve is tested. With Tobey, a boy to whom she is attracted, Dawn goes to a cave in which teenagers often retreat to have sex. Although she returns Tobey's kisses, she refuses to have sexual intercourse with him. Angry, he becomes aggressive. When he tries to rape her, Dawn struggles, and her head strikes the ground, dazing her. Tobey rapes her. Recovering, Dawn fights back, and her teeth bite off Tobey's penis. Horrified, Dawn flees the scene.



Feeling guilty and depressed at having succumbed to temptation, Dawn, nevertheless, addresses The Promise, but the pastor seems to see that she has been sexually active and ushers her away from the group. Returning to the swimming hole near the cave in which she involuntarily lost her virginity, Dawn throws her Promise ring, a symbol of her vow to preserve her virginity until marriage, into the water. She sees a crab crawling on Tobey's severed penis, and the horrible sight inspires her to research her condition.

Realizing she may be in possession of the legendary vagina dentata, she visits a gynecologist, asking him to examine her to determine whether there is anything inside her. When her gynecologist slips his bare hand into her during a pelvic examination, her teeth bite off his fingers. Terrified, Dawn flees the clinic on her bicycle.  


Her coy demeanor during her first visit to a gynecologist—and a male one, at that; her nakedness under the hospital gown she's made to don for the occasion; her humiliating position on the examination table, with her feet in the stirrups and her legs spread wide; her having to follow the doctor's repeated instructions to “scoot down”; and the cold, barren, antiseptic, clinical setting dehumanize and objectify her while, at the same time, they emphasize her sexuality. The scene brings home the way women, especially young women, are made to feel alien and “other.” Their sex even requires them to have a medical doctor who specializes in problems and issues related strictly to women. 

Horrified, Dawn flees on her bicycle from the scene of carnage, only to see a police officer driving Tobey's car. She returns to the swimming hole, where she sees police retrieving Tobey's corpse from the water. He appears to have died of shock and blood loss as a result of his injury. Her sexual repression has led her to take a boy's life, just as, indirectly, sexual repression may have prompted Tobey to commit rape, although, of course, ultimately, from a legal and societal point of view, both Dawn and Tobey are responsible for their own actions, despite the pressures, social, psychological, and sexual, under which the teenagers find themselves.


At home, Dawn is further traumatized by her discovery that her mother, who is seriously ill and has collapsed on the floor, must be rushed to the hospital. This incident, like Dawn's first, forced sexual experience, marks the end of her childhood. Her mother is unavailable, which means that her experience and wisdom as an adult female is also unavailable to Dawn. The daughter becomes entirely responsible for herself, at least as a female, which puts even more pressure on her to act responsibly. 

The boy's half-hearted “devotion” to their vows of abstinence (and, therefore, their relative freedom from the social and psychological, if not the sexual, pressures placed upon them) is highlighted by the behavior of Ryan, who pretends to befriend Dawn, only to take advantage of her when the opportunity arises. She goes to him, disturbed by Tobey's death, the gynecologist's dismemberment, and her mother's condition. Although he pretends to sympathize with her and to comfort her, Ryan offers her a tranquilizer only so he's able to masturbate her with a dildo while she's in an acquiescent state of mind. Relaxed, Dawn's vagina dentata do not defend her as she engages in quasi-consensual sex.


When they have intercourse the next morning, the couple is interrupted by a telephone call from one of Ryan's male friends, and Dawn learns that the boys had placed a bet as to whether Ryan would be able to “score” with Dawn. In her anger, she bites off Ryan's penis with her vagina, leaving him to seek help from his mother. 

After her mother dies, Dawn learns that Brad continued to have sexual intercourse with his girlfriend Melanie at the O'Keefe family's house, instructing Melanie not to go to the aid of Dawn's mother after she had collapsed at home. (Brad is the son of Bill, who marries Dawn's mother.) Bent on revenge, she seduces Brad (who had previously tried to seduce her), bites off his penis with her vagina dentata, and leaves him, presumably to die of shock and blood loss, as Tobey had done. The previous times during which Dawn used her vaginal teeth to kill or maim, she'd been attacked, humiliated, or insulted; this time, she acts with premeditation, so this incident marks a wholly voluntary, conscious, and deliberate act, not an instinctive or reflexive reaction to sexual, physical, or emotional trauma. With this act, Dawn has crossed a moral line. She is no longer innocent; she has become as monstrous as those who have committed crimes against her. She is definitely now a criminal. 

After leaving home, Dawn is picked up while hitchhiking. Exhausted, she sleeps, awakening after nightfall. When she tries to get out of the driver's vehicle, the old man repeatedly locks the doors. He looks at her, licking his lips, and she, understanding his intentions, smiles seductively at him, implying that she intends to commit another murder.


Despite its comic elements, this seemingly simple horror movie is disturbing because it indicates how rigid expectations of sexual repression, reinforced by societal, parental, and religious support, can create psychologically pressures that can be dangerous to oneself and others. The movie does a good job of showing how a teenage girl, in particular, is affected, emotionally and otherwise, by such taboos. 

Francisco Goya's painting, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, suggests that terrible consequences can spring from irrationality. Teeth suggests that it is irrational, perhaps unnatural, to fetter young adults, particularly teenage girls, with ironclad expectations that, difficult to meet, place unbearable pressure on the young. It might be hyperbolic to suggest, as this movie does, that the result of sexual repression could transform a normal, “nice,” or “good” girl into a monstrous killer, but hyperbole gets attention, especially when the girl involved in the nightmarish situation is as likable, appealing, and familiar as the schoolgirl played by Jess Weixler, who, despite a silly script, does a good job of portraying the girl next door. The movie's theme saves it from being the clunker it would have been without the depth the movie receives from its explorations of vows of abstinence, sexual repression, on one hand, and underage, premarital sex in a permissive society on the other.

Saturday, June 23, 2018

The Bram Stoker Award: Some Concluding Thoughts

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


As I mentioned in the first installment of this four- (now five-) part series, it's unclear how prestigious the Bram Stoker Award is beyond the Horror Writers Association (HWA), whose members bestow the prize to writers (often among their own ranks) for “superior achievement” in the genre. 

The prizes were first awarded, in a variety of categories, in 1987. Winners receive a statuette made by Society Awards, the same firm that makes the Emmy Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the GLAAD Media Award.




It's surprisingly easy to become a member of the HWA. As the organization's website indicates, “You needn’t be an established professional writer to join HWA. Your demonstrated intention to become a professional writer is all that’s required to join HWA at the Affiliate level.” “Demonstrated intention” is indicated by “one minimally paid publication in any of several categories.” There are opportunities, at various other “levels,” for several other types of membership; one need not have written anything at all for the “Associate level” of membership, which is open to “non-writing professionals with an interest in the field (such as illustrators, librarians, booksellers, producers, agents, editors, and teachers).” The question doesn't seem so much who is eligible to join the HWA as who is not allowed.




Nomination for the HWA's annual Bram Stoker Award, “an eight-inch replica of a fanciful haunted house, designed specifically for HWA by sculptor Steven Kirk,” is also an easy process, open to many: “any work of Horror first published in the English language may be considered for an award during the year of its publication.” Currently, “the eleven Bram Stoker Award categories are: Novel, First Novel, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction Collection, Poetry Collection, Anthology, Screenplay, Graphic Novel and Non-Fiction”—something, it seems, for everyone. To add yet another opportunity to win an award, the HWA recently added a twelfth category: “Short Non-Fiction.”




Any member of the HWA can nominate an author for placement on the preliminary ballot, and a panel of judges prepares a second preliminary “ballot” of potential winners. Then, “two rounds of voting by our Active members . . . determine first the Final Ballot (all those appearing on the Final Ballot are “Bram Stoker Nominees”), and then the Bram Stoker Award Winners.”




One should be skeptical of the value of a prize for “superior achievement” that is often awarded to the members of the organization who vote for the winner, especially when the contest is open to a wide segment of the population of published authors and any member can place a name on the ballot. Outside the HWA, how seriously is the Bram Stoker Award for Novel taken? Is the prize considered prestigious by anyone outside the HWA?




Obviously, the answers to these questions depend on the person (or organization) asked. Authors who've won one—or more—of the awards often boast of their “superior achievement” on their websites or in interviews and plaster their book covers with HWA badges. After all, one of the expressed purposes of the HWA is to promote its authors' works. Many successful horror authors are, after all, HWA members, and members pay dues. Therefore, the HWA itself and its author-members are likely to agree that the Bram Stoker Award is prestigious. Publishers, whose goal is to sell books, are apt to concur, as are other organizations, such as universities, with which a horror author may be affiliated.




On the other hand, fans (as opposed to groupies) are often a lot less impressed with the award; many a Bram Stoker Award winner's prize-winning novel has received low ratings on Amazon and other book-selling websites, and, as we've seen in previous posts, book reviewers and literary critics are often unswayed in their opinions of books and authors by the fact that a writer is a Bram Stoker Award winner. What matter to readers, reviewers, and critics is the reading experience and the quality of the book, not an award by a professional organization to which many of the award winners belong. If readers consider a book to be a stinker, its having won an award won't matter. For a literary critic, such as Harold Bloom, whose disdain for Stephen King is widely known, no number of such awards is going to change his or her mind about the quality and value of the award-winner's work or of horror fiction in general.




Die-hard fans and groupies, for whom a favorite author can do no wrong, are going to love a writer no matter what; whether he or she happens to have been awarded a prize isn't going to have much of an effect on such followers, so, for them, the Bram Stoker Award also isn't likely to matter much one way or the other.

The unavailability of the criteria by which the Bram Stoker Award is awarded also leaves the matter of its prestige open to question. The HWA doesn't publish the criteria its judges use to determine what constitutes “superior achievement,” so there's no meaningful basis for agreeing or disagreeing with their awarding of the prize to any particular author. The awarding of the award is merely a consensus of opinion based on who-knows-what?




Why has Stephen King, one of the most prolific and profitable authors of horror (or any other genre), with 350 million book sales, won no fewer than six Bram Stoker Awards, while his colleague and fellow HWA member, Dean Koontz, also a prolific and highly successful author of horror and dark fantasy, with 450 million book sales to his credit, has never won a single such award? Popularity cannot be equated with quality, of course, but is it really realistic to suppose that Koontz, who's been nominated three times for the award, has never once, in a career spanning half a century, demonstrated “superior achievement” in the writing of a horror novel, while, according to the HWA, King frequently does? It seems absurd that Koontz has been slighted in this way, while other, far lesser-known writers have received an award. What's going on behind the doors and curtain of the HWA? Politics? Nepotism? Cronyism?




King has been declared, by a few promoters, as having eclipsed even Edgar Allan Poe as the best horror writer of all time. While it is undeniably true that King has written far more than Poe wrote, quantity is not the same as quality.

Popular with ordinary readers and with literary critics alike, Poe not only wrote superb horror stories, but he also popularized and greatly improved the horror story, at the same time introducing psychological horror, and he invented the detective story. Both accomplishments are nothing if not “superior achievements.” The invention of an entire genre alone is a peerless feat. In addition, while serving as de facto editors of important literary magazines, he wrote both book reviews and essays in literary criticism and established specific criteria for writing both poetry and short stories that are still influential to this day.




Had the HWA existed in Poe's day, he might have been a member—indeed, he might have been a founder—and he probably would have won Bram Stoker Awards for Short Fiction, Anthology, Poetry Collection, and Lifetime Achievement—and deservedly so.




If the HWA wants its award to become prestigious beyond its own membership, winners, and publishers, the association should adopt a few reforms. Specific criteria should be developed and published, and these standards should lean heavily toward literary excellence. William Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus), Henry James (The Turn of the Screw, The Jolly Corner), Nathaniel Hawthorne (Twice-Told Tales), Edgar AllanPoe, Charles Dickens ("The Signal-man"), and other top-flight writers have, after all, written horror stories.

The awards should be occasional, rather than annual (“superior achievement” of any kind doesn't generally occur in a narrow field such as horror fiction, on a dependable, yearly basis).

The judges should be drawn from among scholars, literary critics, and professional book reviewers as well as HWA members. There's probably room for improving the processes for ballot inclusion and nomination, too.


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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