Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
Writers are often
encouraged to “show” rather than to “tell,” as if their
novels and short stories are motion pictures.
It can't be done, of
course, any more than Las Vegas, Nevada (famous for its miniaturized
reproductions of such world-famous landmarks as the Egyptian
pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty), can reproduce
an actual beach (although Mandalay Bay certainly makes an attempt to
do so.)
The closest a novelist or
a short story writer can come to “showing” action is to describe
it in active voice (of course), using action verbs and lots of
figures of speech. (Three masters of descriptive writing who come
readily to mind, by the way, are the late Ray Bradbury, the late H.
G. Wells, and the very-much-alive Frank Peretti. The late William
Peter Blatty isn't bad, either, although his descriptions tend to be
a bit on the weighty, even rather tangible, side.)
In addition, writers can
be, and often are, inspired by movies, just as screenwriters often
adapt novelists' books to the big screen or allude to them, more or
less directly, in their films.
Quentin Tarantino pretty well summed up the state of affairs when he
said, “I steal from every movie ever made.” (He meant, of course,
that he is inspired by
the work of other moviemakers.)
Writers are a bit
handicapped, dealing in words, rather than moving images.
Nevertheless, a few techniques can help a writer translate other
people's ideas, words, and images into the writer's own ideas, words,
and images.
Some horror movie posters
use red letters to attract viewers' attention. This device works
best, perhaps, when the red letters are integral to the movie's plot.
Think of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel the Scarlet Letter,
Stephen Crane's novel the Red Badge of Courage,
or Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Masque of the Red Death”:
posters for any movie version of these literary classics would almost
certainly feature red letters in the posters' titles or captions.
One way that writers can
accomplish a similar feat is to describe bloody graffiti. Here's an
example:
Except
for the peeling paint, the long, high wall of the building forming
the left side of the narrow alley was featureless and
nondescript—well, except for the peeling paint and the ominous
word, spelled out in foot-tall, dripping, crimson letters: MURDER.
(Yes, a novel can include
red letters, in all caps, bolded and italicized.)
Some horror movies' titles
include effective plays on words. A couple, Shutter
and Shutter Island,
use a homonym for “shudder,” a word that alludes to a reaction to
fear: when one is sufficiently frightened, he or she is apt to
tremble, or shudder. Although “shutter” means something quite
different than “shudder,” the words sound enough alike that the
connotative associations of “shudder” are transmitted to
“shutter.”
Obviously,
writers can use homonyms and other plays on words in their writing,
but they shouldn't overdo it; the “punch” of a play on words
comes from its unexpectedness coupled with its curious
appropriateness. By overusing wordplay, writers defeat their own
purpose.
Here's
an example:
The
reporter's use of “cereal” instead of “serial,” whether a
puerile attempt at wit or an honest mistake that somehow escaped the
proofreader's review of the article, was both shocking and ghastly:
the report was about a killer who preyed upon children, after all.
The
poster promoting Intruder
prominently displays severed human body parts. One way that a writer
can do the same thing, while avoiding plagiarism, is to describe the
parts as realistic-looking props in a novelty shop's display window:
Scattered
among the playthings spilled from the children's toy box in the
novelty shop's display window were a man's “bloody” severed head
and a dismembered forearm bearing a tattoo of a woman's name
surrounded by a bloody pink Valentine heart.
Several
horror movie posters depict skulls. In a few such posters, the skulls
are composed of a variety of smaller images that, together, make up
the image of the skull. It would be difficult for a writer to
describe such a composite image (and it might take several pages).
Instead, the shape, as a whole, could be described, supported by
descriptions of only a few of the smaller pictures that make up a
couple of the parts of the skull. Perhaps the skull could be a mosaic
or a collage:
For
the final exam, Jason's art teacher, Ms. Fenway, had assigned her
students to create a collage, which had given him the perfect excuse
to buy a dozen magazines devoted to horror. Unfortunately, now he had
to cut them to pieces, excising pictures that, together, he could
assemble so they'd form a giant skull. He'd already glued down the
coronal suture, using the stitches from the back of one of
Frankenstein's monster's hands. How, he cut out a decapitated head, a
loop of intestines, a nest of vipers, and a seductive incubus, dark
images all, to form the left ocular orbit; its twin would be made up
of a single picture: a jack-o-lantern bearing part of Michael
Meyers's face. When the collage was complete, Ms. Fenway would (a)
have a heart attack, (b) give him an “A,” (c) suggest his parent
hire a psychiatrist, or (d) all of the above.
Pictures
similar to those which appear on posters for Halloween,
Black Christmas, or
other holiday-themed horror movie posters could be described as
posters in pop-up stores devoted to particular holiday sales:
Santa
looked especially old as he faced off against the demonic snowman.
The human head on the Christmas tree was a novel, if rather
grotesque, ornament. The blood leading up to the chimney on the
snow-covered rooftop suggested that Santa had come to a bad end. The
snow globe didn't replicate a blizzard, but a deluge of blood.
Thaddeus Gorman smiled, as he set the hammer aside. The posters he'd
hung by the chimney with care created a festive, if eerie, air to his
pop-up Christmas shop. He was ready, now, for business!
Possibilities
are virtually endless, but two things are required:
- Avoid plagiarism. A horror movie poster can inspire, but it shouldn't be copied, even in words. Instead, let the design, the use of color, the images, the text, and the other elements of the poster suggest similar (or even opposite) ideas. It's the ideas you want. Ideas cannot be copyrighted; specific creations based on ideas can, and usually are, copyrighted.
- To describe the pictures you have in mind, don't use the same devices as the posters use. Change the ways you use and “display” word pictures. Instead of a poster's use of red letters in a string of text, describe only a single word, written as graffiti on a wall; in place of a poster's display of body parts next to a cash register, describe them as items among a child's toys; rather than employing a poster's exhibition of a skull made up of images (possibly of characters and settings and actions in the movie the poster promotes), show them as pictures cut out of a magazine as material for a collage: pictures similar to those on horror movie posters can be altered and appear as posters in a pop-up Halloween or Christmas shop. Use your own ideas (not the movie posters' or mine, as described here). How? Use your imagination.
There's
more to learn from analyzing thriller (and horror) movie posters.
We'll do just that in a future Chillers and Thrillers post.
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