Copyright 2021 by Gary Pullman
We not only learn new skills but hone old ones by pausing in plotting, writing, and revision to practice our skill at plotting, writing, and revision. (In my opinion, a writer can always improve by practicing, until he or she reaches perfection like William Shakespeare.)
The exercises should be challenging; they should also be something we can crosscheck with the results established writers might have produced had they performed the same exercises. Oh, yes! They should also relate to horror stories or to horror movies. Here are three.
I. You Are What You Do
1. List several personality traits for your protagonist. Then, explain what your protagonist does, based on one or more of these traits, in a specific situation. For example, perhaps your protagonist wants to start life anew with her boyfriend, who refuses to marry her until he's paid off his debts.
2. Instead of explaining that a protagonist is in love with another particular character, show the protagonist being in love with this other character.
II. Do What You Will
Briefly identify a motive for each of these actions: (1) following a monster's trail; (2) exploring an allegedly haunted castle; and (3) spying on neighbors.
III. Defiance Punished
Identify three interdictions that, defied, result in a character’s suffering or death:
1.
2.
3.
Here's How They Did It
I. You Are What You Do
1. Asked to deposit a real estate client's cash down payment for a house he is buying his daughter, Marion Crane instead steals the money from her boss and runs away to meet her boyfriend (Joseph Stefano, Psycho screenwriter).
2. Scottie stared at Madeliene, as she sat across the room, unaware of him. An image of a painting flashed in his mind. The lady's portrait's contours fit those of the woman before him; it was a perfect likeness of her, he thought. Later, when he entered a florist's shop with her at his side, she seemed ethereal, more fantasy than reality, and the light was as luminous as the flowers were bright and beautiful, their fragrance an embodiment of the very scent of the woman herself. It was as if they alone existed and as if the shop were a sunlit garden, a paradise created for them alone (Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, Vertigo).
II. Do What You Will
1. following a monster's trail: to rescue a woman captured by the monster (James Creelman and Ruth Rose, King Kong)
2. exploring an allegedly haunted castle: to prove that the castle is not haunted (“The Red Room” by H. G. Wells)
3. spying on neighbors: to pass the time while recuperating from a broken leg (John Michael Hayes, Rear Window).
III. Defiance Punished
1. Glen Lantz is told not to go to sleep; when he does, he is killed (Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street)
2. Caroline Ellis is told not to enter a locked room; after she does, she is paralyzed and her body is possessed by a hoodoo practitioner (Ehren Kruger, Skeleton Key)
3. A character is told not to enter a closed area of a national park; when he does so, he is killed by a bear, and the animal then pursues his girlfriend (Adam MacDonald, Backcountry)