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.