Clayton (“Blaze”) Blaisdell, Jr.: A Study in Characterization

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the flyleaf to Richard Bachman’s* novel Blaze (2007), the protagonist is “one of the most sympathetic criminals in all . . . literature.” This estimation may be equal parts hyperbole and objective assessment, but few would argue, it seems, that Blaze is, in fact, a compelling character. What makes him so? The novel is a study in characterization. Much of the effect is achieved by Bachman’s demonstration of Blaze’s perceptions of other characters and of situations. Mildly retarded and altogether psychotic (he hears voices that no one else hears), Blaze frequently accepts everyone and everything at face value, seldom analyzing, evaluating, or passing judgment on anyone or anything. His matter-of-factness, which is surely as much an effect of his retardation as it is of his pureness of heart, nevertheless creates an image of him as being, despite his criminality, one who is--or seems to be--unaffected, if not always altogether guileless. Nevertheless, he is a criminal. As such, Blaze is, on one hand, a sympathetic soul, while, on the other hand, despite his pathetic thoughts, hopes, fears, and dreams, he is also revolting. To have created such a character is an accomplishment suggestive more of a Stephen King than of a Richard Bachman.

The first chapter opens with “George was somewhere in the dark. Blaze couldn’t see him, but the voice came in loud and clear, rough and a little hoarse. George always sounded as if he had a cold. He’d had an accident when he was a kid. He never said what, but there was a dilly of a scar on his adam’s apple.”  Although George is unseen, we are led to believe that he exists as more than a voice: “George was somewhere in the dark,” we are told. Moreover, the use of such adjectives as “loud” and “clear,” “rough” and “hoarse,” to modify the sound of George’s voice helps to establish the thought that the character is as real as the young man, Blaze, who hears him speaking. Finally, the reference to George’s past accident provides a speck of back story that helps to present George as a real person, like Blaze.

George also reacts to Blaze’s actions. When Blaze seeks the wrong automobile--to steal, as it turns out--George corrects him: “Not that one, dummy, its got bumper stickers all over it. Get a Chevy or a Ford. Dark blue or green. Two years old, No ore, no less. Nobody remembers them. And no stickers.” Again, the details also help to sustain the notion that George is more than merely a memory and that his voice is more than simply a hallucination. The voice advises George about specific details concerning the automobile: it should not have bumper stickers on it, it should be either “a Chevy or a Ford,” it should be no older than two years, .and it should be “dark blue or green.” George even calls Blaze a name, “dummy,” which is, although insulting, characteristic of Blaze’s condition and not one that he is likely to have applied to himself, for retarded people seldom know of their own accord, without being told so by others, that they are retarded. These techniques make George seem as real a character as Blaze. As George continues to direct, counsel, and insult Blaze, the illusion that he is real continues: “That’s your left. . . . Your right, dummy. The hand you pick your nose with.” George keeps Blaze on track when Glaze’s thought begin to stray and even tells Blaze how to hotwire the car.

It comes as something of a shock, then, when the cat is let out of the bag, and we learn that “George is dead.”

Blaze remembers, for a time, that his former partner in crime is deceased, but, “the next morning,” George is back--in Blaze’s head, at least--reminding Blaze to tuck in both of his shirttails and telling him to wipe out the tire tracks in the snow outside the shed in which Blaze has hidden the stolen car. One minute, Blaze remembers that George is dead (“George had been dead since that crap game in the warehouse”), but the next minute he seems to forget, thinking that George is alive (“George was inside drinking coffee by the stove”). By his alternating between these conflicting ideas, Blaze indicates his own confusion, indicating to us his madness, and this strange disoriented state of mind is compelling: we are intrigued at what it is like to perceive as Blaze perceives, to think as Blaze thinks, and to experience the world as Blaze experiences it, partly real and partly illusory at the same time or in quick, alternating sequences. Although Blaze has committed a crime, stealing the automobile--and, we suspect, will almost certainly commit far worse ones, if he has not already done so, before we met him, as it were--we are both repelled by his behavior and sympathetic toward his plight. In short, Blaze is a fascinating character.

Bachman presents his world as it seems to be to Blaze, and, in doing so, allows us, from the safety of our homes, sane and sound of mind ourselves, to see--or, at least imagine--what it would be like to be out of our minds. Who could resist such a character as Blaze? Bachman is counting on our not being able to do so. (The movie Ed Gein [2000], starring Steve Railsback, offers a good motion picture example of the same technique.)


*Yes, I know that Stephen King is Richard Bachman (unless Bachman is King). The question is whether King (or Bachman) knows this. Maybe King’s own schizophrenia, in supposing himself to be two people (even if he knew and knows he really is only one) helped him to create the psychotic and somewhat schizophrenic Clayton (“Blaze”) Blaisdell, Jr. Ever think of that?

"Terminal Freeze," Blow By Blow

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

I just finished reading Lincoln Child's novel, Terminal Freeze.  It's 320 pages long.  I read it in five hours.  That's 64 pages an hour, or a little more than a page a minute.  I'm not bragging, just making a point.  By using the same method that I use, you can read novels quickly, too.  Why would you want to do so?  You can read more of them, gaining a better perspective on either an individual's entire collection of work, a better understanding of the entire genre itself in which he or she works, or a better appreciation of both an individual author's work and the genre to which the work belongs, all with a minimum investment of time.  In addition to reading the novel, I also wrote one-sentence summaries of each of its chapters as I went, so that, by the time I'd read the entire novel, I had a summary of the entire story, which enhances my memory of what I've read and provides a handy dandy means of evaluating and critiquing the novel, should I ever wish to do so.

If you'd like to follow the method of my madness (or the madness of my method), here's what I do when I want to speed up the reading process:

1. First, read the blurb. A blurb is the text on the inside of a hardback book’s flyleaf (the paper cover in which hardback books are usually wrapped) or on the back cover of a paperback. by reading them, you’re saving yourself from having to read maybe fifty, or even 100, PAGES of the novel itself, and you will know the main character’s name, the setting, the basic storyline, and the names of lesser, supporting characters.
2. Realize that a chapter can be summarized in one sentence. Then, read the chapter only until you can summarize it in one sentence.
3. After each chapter, write a sentence that summarizes what it presented
4. Keep a list of characters’ names, brief phrases that identify them, and the names of the places in which the action takes place.
5. Skip most of the description and exposition. Read just the dialogue. By reading just the dialogue, you will be able to keep track of the story well enough to summarize it. Only dip into the descriptive or expository blocks of text when you need to do so to reestablish a sense of continuity and context--maybe twice or so every four or five chapters. You will find that you are skipping entire pages of the text and still know what’s going on.
6. After reading and summarizing each chapter and updating your list of characters and settings, stop! You are done with the book. 

Here is the result of my application of this process to Terminal Freeze:

Chapter 1: The face of a melting glacier near Alaska’s Mount Fear falls away, revealing the mouth of an ice cave.

Chapter 2: Scientists exploring the cave find a monstrous beast (a gigantic cat) frozen in the ice.

Chapter 3: Although Usuguk, who travels south with his people, warns the scientists to leave the region, declaring that they have trespassed upon holy land, defiling it with their presence, the scientists refuse to leave.

Chapter 4: Kari Ekberg, a Hollywood location scout, arriving at the scientists’ research station to prepare for a docudrama about the discovery of the frozen beast, is given a tour of the facility--except for the northern section, which is off limits to her and everyone else, including the squad of soldiers who maintain and guard the post.

Chapter 5: As they escort Ekberg to the ice cave to see the beast, two scientists, paleoecologist Evan Marshall and evolutionary biologist Wright Faraday, explain their expertise to her.

Chapter 6: In an underground bunker below Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains, Jeremy Logan, allegedly a professor of medieval history, reads a secret memorandum concerning the deaths of a team of scientists who had been encamped at Mount Fear.

Chapter 7: Emilio Conti, the executive producer, begins filming on location, explaining that the host of the docudrama will arrive before the crew ascends Mount Fear to cut the beast from the ice--live, on camera, before millions of viewers.

Chapter 8: The Hollywood team’s legal representative, Wolff, shows the scientists a contract that their leader, Gerard Scully, signed, authorizing them to extract and thaw the beast’s carcass, on live television, despite the scientists’ objections.

Chapter 9: Using a laser and a diamond-tipped drill, the television crew extracts a block of ice in which the beast is entombed from the ice cave’s wall and transports it to a climate-controlled vault to thaw before the eyes of their television audience.

Chapter 10: Conti interviews Marshall, dramatizing the setting and dialogue, but angering the scientist when he asks him about his “dishonorable discharge” from the army, despite his having been awarded the Silver Star, and his refusal to carry a weapon, and Marshall refuses to cooperate further.

Chapter 11: Faraday reports to his colleagues that tests he’s conducted indicate that the beast is not the saber-toothed tiger they’d supposed it to be; it is at least twice the size of such an animal.

Chapter 12: An examination of the carcass--or what can be seen of it inside the block of ice--proves inconclusive as to the animal’s identity.

Chapter 13: The docudrama’s host, Ashleigh Davis, arrives, by helicopter, along with her trailer, which has been trucked in aboard an eighteen-wheeler driven by Carradine, an ice road trucker.

Chapter 14: Logan, identifying himself as a hitchhiker, who was picked up by Carradine on his way to deliver Davis’ trailer, introduces himself as the scientists gather to watch the docudrama host film a sequence of her show outside the climate-controlled vault.

Chapter 15: Marshal awakens to discover that a hole has been cut through the floor of the climate-controlled vault.

Chapter 16: Wolff locks down the compound so he can investigate and recover the carcass stolen from the vault, but the new arrival, Logan, is nowhere to be found.

Chapter 17: Faraday, having taken pictures of the hole in the vault’s floor, determined that the hole was made from above, not from below, as Wolff had supposed, which indicates that whoever sawed the hole through the floor knew the combination to the vault’s lock.

Chapter 18: Conti believes that the carcass was stolen through an act of sabotage to be disposed of and vows to make a documentary of the crime, asking Marshall to star in the film.

Chapter 19: Logan tells Marshall about the recently declassified memorandum concerning the deaths of the scientists at Fear Base.

Chapter 20: Josh Peters relieves McCoy Tyner, searching the compound for the carcass of the beast, and is attacked from behind and knocked unconscious.

Chapter 21: Faraday and the team’s graduate assistant, Ang Chen, tell Marshall of test results they’ve obtained on ice from the cave in which the creature was encased: it seems to contain ice--and a microscopic view of the photograph Faraday took of the hole in the floor suggests that the hole was made from teeth, not a saw, as if it had been chewed through.

Chapter 22: Logan reconnoiters E Level of the research facility, where he encounters the military leader, Sergeant Gonzalez, who tells him that the facility’s off-limits section had “extra berths” in it “that no military ever used” and is rumored to have involved the mauling by a polar bear of scientists who were involved in top secret work.

Chapter 23: After Marshall and his team’s computer scientist, Penny Barbour, put Conti, Wolff, and Ekberg on notice that the filmmakers will be sued if they libel or slander the scientists in their docudrama about the climate-controlled vault’s having been sabotaged, they inform the Hollywood executives that one of their men, Josh Peters, has been “torn apart” beyond the compound’s “security fence.”

Chapter 24: At Wolff’s request, Marshall examines the body, concluding that a polar bear could have killed Peters, but Wolff still insists that the creature’s carcass was stolen in an act of sabotage and suggests that Peters was killed to frighten the rest of them from continuing the Hollywood team’s search for the missing creature.

Chapter 25: Intent upon making a revised docudrama of the creature‘s theft and Peter‘s supposed murder as part of the sabotage of their original film, Conti sends one film crew to photograph the fearful reaction of the rest of the crew to the news of Peter’s horrific death and a second crew to film Peters’ corpse before it is put into cold storage.

Chapter 26: Logan discovers a notebook--perhaps a journal--that one of the scientists on the earlier, catastrophic, aborted mission kept while at Fear Base.

Chapter 27: A he prepares to leave the room in which Peters’ corpse is temporarily stored., having photographed the body, cameraman Ken Toussaint encounters “the face of nightmare.”

Chapter 28: Faraday reports to Marshall his suspicion that the ice that encased the creature was unusual and melted below the freezing mark, allowing the animal trapped inside, which may have been alive rather than dead, to escape after its ice prison had melted.

Chapter 29: Trying to pitch a screenplay to Davis, Carradine escorts her to her trailer, where they hear a loud knocking, which turns out to b Toussaint, hanging from one of the trailer’s window awning support arms, who, although he first appears dead, screams, “It plays with you! And then when it’s finished playing--it kills.”

Chapter 30: Toussaint, who has survived the attack upon him, describes his attacker as huge and equipped with many teeth; Peters’ corpse is missing; Wolff refuses to allow Carradine to drive the crew to safety in Davis’ trailer, which he offers to tow behind his eighteen-wheeler.

Chapter 31: Logan tells Marshall that the dead scientist’s journal hints at horrific events at Fear Base, and Marshall decides to take a snowmobile to visit the Tunits to see whether they can shed any light on the incidents, past and present, that have occurred at the research facility.

Chapter 32: When Allan Fortnum returns from shooting images of the Hollywood crew’s horrified reactions to Peters’ death, Conti gives the cinematographer his next assignment: stand by to film the monster as it tears its next victim apart--but Fortnum refuses to be party to this outrageous task.

Chapter 33: Both Davis and PFC Donovan Fluke, who escorts to her new accommodations, which are closer to those of the military troop attached to Fear Base to afford her better protection, are attacked by the monster.

Chapter 34: Visiting the Tunits’ settlement, Marshall finds it deserted except for Usuguk, who has remained behind to speak to the scientist, certain that Marshall would come.

Chapter 35: Sergeant Gonzalez orders the camp evacuated; everyone will ride in Davis’ trailer, which Carradine will tow with his eighteen-wheeler; meanwhile, Gonzalez plans to hunt for the beast; when Marshall returns, his colleagues plan to meet with him; only Conti and Ekberg refuse to leave, staying to film yet another revised docudrama.

Chapter 36: After Marshall tells Usuguk how he had accidentally killed his friend during the war in Somalia and had refused to cover up his mistake, thereby earning a dishonorable discharge, Usuguk agrees to accompany him on his hunt for the creature, but only as an unarmed advisor--and the shaman won’t share what he knows about the slaughter of the earlier scientific expedition party.

Chapter 37: Sergeant Gonzalez and his two men, Marcelin and Phillips, remain at Fear Base to hunt the beast after everyone else but Creel, Faraday, Scully, Marshall, Logan, Conti, Ekberg, and Wolff leaves in Davis trailer, which is towed by Carradine’s big rig.

Chapter 38: Conti and Ekberg plan to follow the soldiers, filming their hunt of the creature.

Chapter 39: Marshall returns to the nearly deserted research facility with Usuguk and learns of the monster’s killing of Davis and Fluke; Usuguk tells the others that he was the sole survivor among the earlier research party, “the one who got away.”

Chapter 40: The military troop, commanded by Sergeant Gonzalez and accompanied by Creel, the roustabouts’ foreman, follow the beast’s bloody tracks through the base‘s power station, and it attacks the group, killing Creel, after which Gonzalez retreats.

Chapter 41: Usuguk, a former soldier who had been stationed at Fear Base, tells the others how another, smaller spirit-beast killed the scientists of the earlier expedition and declares that the larger one awakened by the present expedition is an invincible and immortal guardian of the mountain in which Fear Base is installed--it cannot be killed, but it will kill them all.

Chapter 42: After crossing a frozen lake, the tractor-trailer is caught in a gust of wind that slams it into a rock and breaks one of the fuel tanks; the other tank is only one third full, and there is not enough fuel to take them the rest of the way to their destination, Arctic Village.

Chapter 43: Inside the base’s power station, the soldiers try to electrocute the creature, but to no avail.

Chapter 44: Following the soldiers, Conti, Wolff, and Ekberg find the bloody trail and Conti films Ekberg’s reaction to seeing the head that the monster had ripped from Creel’s body.

Chapter 45: Faraday finds that the monster’s white blood cell-rich blood makes it impervious to bullets but is hypersensitive to--and may be killed by--sound, so maybe they can convert the secret wing of the base into an echo chamber; meanwhile, Sergeant Gonzalez’s attempt to raise Conti and Ekberg on the radio is unsuccessful.

Chapter 46: Conti, having forbidden Ekberg to respond to Gonzalez’s radio call, orders Wolff and Ekberg to investigate a stairwell with him, and they feel pressure inside their skulls as the monster approaches them through the darkness.

Chapter 47: As Usuguk tells the party his people’s legends concerning the monster, Gonzalez, Sully, Marshall, Faraday, Phillips, and the shaman find an already-built echo chamber in the secret section of the facility.

Chapter 48: The creature kills Conti, but Ekberg escapes.

Chapter 49: Ekberg radios Marshall, advising him of Conti’s death and of her own risk, and, while Scully seeks batteries to operate the echo chamber’s sound equipment, Marshall rendezvous with Ekberg to protect her from the monster and lead her back to a site outside the echo chamber, where the monster can be ambushed.

Chapter 50: As the monster pursues them, Marshall and Ekberg retreat toward the ambush site, only to learn that no batteries are available and that the scientists have had to connect the sound equipment to a power source inside the echo chamber itself, which is farther than Marshall had anticipated.

Chapter 51: The sound equipment fails to stop the creature (as does a barrage of bullets), which attacks Scully, who is operating the sonar weapon, and tears him limb from limb.

Chapter 52: Marshall retreats with the sonar weapon into the echo chamber, where the sound is magnified, and, using a different set of “harmonics,” kills the monster with the sound waves, which cause its head to explode.

Chapter 53: Against all odds, Carradine’s big rig manages to haul the trailer to Arctic Village.

Epilogue: Logan suggests that the first beast was the second creature’s pet and that the latter had been searching for the former when it became encased in the wall of the ice cave.

Fever Dream’s Opening Paragraphs (Chapters 1 through 20: Recap)

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The opening paragraphs of Chapters 1 through 20 of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Fever Dream (like the rest of those which introduce the novel’s other 60 chapters) use a variety of techniques to accomplish several purposes. As I have observed in previous posts concerning this topic, these techniques and purposes include:

• Setting the scene
• Using figures of speech, such as similes, metaphors, images, and personifications to create atmosphere or tone
• Involving the reader in the action
• Beginning the narrative in media res
• Creating a sense of immediacy (or “you-are-here”) for the reader
• Generating, maintain, or increase suspense
• Contrasting nature with civilization
• Linking action to characters’ emotions
• Identifying points of view
• Characterizing characters by associating them with particular places
• Introducing new or recurring characters
• Alluding to past events in characters’ lives
• Planting clues or red herrings
• Describing places important to the action or theme
• Linking one distant location to another, both of which are scenes of the story’s cosmopolitan action
• Creating, maintain, or intensify conflicts
• Posing rhetorical questions, both explicit and implicit, for the reader’s consideration

A Sidebar Approach to Writing

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a "sidebar" is "a short news story or graphic accompanying and presenting sidelights of a major story" or "something incidental," such as a "sidelight (a sidebar to the essay's central theme)."

Many book-length commentaries and analyses of popular entertainment products offer, more or less as fillers, occasional sidebars that provide behind-the-scenes information, summaries, or little-known facts about the various topics that the commentaries routinely cover in their murder to dissect. Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is no exception, offering, as it does, 22 such sidebars, among them speculations concerning “Spike’s Nature,” an account of “The Unaired Pilot,” and “Vampire History.”

From a writer’s perspective, perhaps some of the more interesting (and potentially valuable) sidebars are those that deal with characters’ back stories, histories regarding settings, and proposed plotlines. These items present a handy, dandy way of enriching one’s own narratives: pretend that you are a fan of your own work and that, as such, you buy a book (or a magazine) about the narrative of which you are an aficionado. Imagine, also, that you are the writer (or one of the writers) of the commentary and develop sidebars of the sort that you think fans of the narrative you’re writing your book about might enjoy, particularly ones associated with characters’ back stories, histories regarding settings, and proposed plotlines. Write them about your story, and, presto, you’ve developed some ideas for future chapters of your novel in progress or (should you be so lucky) your ongoing series of novels.

For example, let’s assume that your story takes place in ancient Rome and that you want to create a sense of horror mingled with terror. Perhaps you decide to have a present-day visitor to the catacombs get stranded in the underground burial chambers overnight. This situation (and setting) cries out for a sidebar treatment in which you summarize the history of the local catacombs and given a succinct, but ghastly, description of the place.

If your character is (or knows) a famous person of the period, a sidebar concerning the famous man or woman--perhaps he is an emperor of a visiting queen--will help keep your fictitious portrait of him or her both accurate and intriguing, provided that the sidebar contains not only pertinent facts but also a spicy anecdote or two concerning the historical figure.

An artifact could also deserve sidebar treatment. Again, the facts and anecdotes you include in your sidebar will help you to keep on track and be interesting as you describe and explain the significance of the relic or objet d’art.

Learning from the Masters: M. Night Shyamalan

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman



One hates to beat a dead horse, but M. Night Shyamalan isn’t dead--not yet, not quite: people with more money than they know what to do with continue to fund his “films.” Usually, Chillers and Thrillers’ “Learning From the Masters” series analyzes successful stories, whether in print or on film, but one can learn from artistic failures, too, of course--it’s generally just less pleasurable.

I saw Sixth Sense, which I think is a good thriller, and Signs, which I wasn’t as enthused about, whether it is regarded as a science fiction film, a horror film, or a monstrous hybrid spawned by both. Then, I watched the last film by this alleged filmmaker that I ever plan to see, whether on the screen or courtesy of a DVD: The Happening, in which, despite its title, nothing happens--at least nothing believable or meaningful.

What’s wrong with Shyamalan’s films? They are predictable (there will always be a more-or-less unbelievable “twist” to the plot at the end of the story, a supposedly surprise ending that most moviegoers see coming from the beginning, especially now that they’ve learned, as it were, to expect the unexpected: the child psychologist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe (in The Sixth Sense) is a ghost; security guard David Dunn (Unbreakable) is a superhero; water hurts aliens (Signs); the village (in The Village) is the laboratory, as it were, for a modern-day experiment; the lady trapped in the swimming pool returns to the Blue World (The Lady in the Water); plants become serial--or is that cereal--killers (The Happening).

The films are superficial. There’s nothing to them. Their themes are sophomoric--or maybe just moronic.

The characters, like the plots and themes, also lack depth. They’re cardboard cutouts mouthing annoyingly unrealistic and, at times, exceedingly tedious dialogue--and dialogue about either inconsequential matters or incredible ones. Some of them are even Shyamalan himself, poorly disguised.

Character’s motivations are sometimes unconvincing. In The Happening, the protagonist regards his wife as virtually unfaithful to him because she had lunch with one of her male coworkers once. That was it. That was all. Lunch. Only in a Shyamalan film does a shared meal equal adultery. However, it is this shameful incident--lunch with a colleague of the opposite sex--that has caused a bit of a rift between the main character and his better half and it is the overcoming of this rift in reunited love (if such a relationship can involve true love) is part of the thematic glue that bonds--or is supposed to bond--these two characters (who receive a child by way of informal adoption, after the child’s parents are killed) together so that, having recovered their respect and affection for one another after living through a hellish encounter with America’s flora, they can become, once again, a family. The sentimentality level sinks to new lows, even for Shyamalan.

Although Shyamalan bills himself as an auteur, he is really an amateur. Unfortunately, his first couple of movies were lucky forays into the world of mass entertainment, and he gathered, from them, a fan base of young bloods who are, well, too easily entertained. For them, the trite themes, the stilted and tiresome dialogue, the feckless characters, the false dilemmas, and the inevitable plot twists are enough--and more than enough--as long as the master’s movies contain some cool special effects and a wink and a nod to the moviegoers’ geekiness.

Shyamalan makes films for himself. If he were a good filmmaker, that would be fine. The problem is that, in modern America, there are too many like him or too many who are likeminded. As long as there are chills and thrills, the rest of the movie doesn’t have to amount to much in the way of art. The filmmaker’s box office receipts have proven that dreck, like sex, sells, and if there’s one thing Shyamalan has in abundance it’s dreck.

So, what lessons can be gleaned from Shyamalan’s failures?

Unless you’re Dean Koontz, be clear as to your genre.

Make sure something actually happens during your story’s action--and something important, not trivial.

Unless you’re O. Henry, resist the desire to employ a “twist” or “surprise” ending. (Brush up on Edgar Allan Poe’s masterpiece, “The Philosophy of Composition” to learn how to write a successful ending to a story.)

Develop satisfying, significant, or even multivalent themes.

Create sympathetic and compelling characters.

Provide credible motivations for characters’ conflicts.

Write credible, if not sparkling, dialogue.

Do not insult your audience! Respect their intelligence and their commitment to the art of fiction, filmed or printed.

Plotting From Blurbs

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Although they may not be novelists, publishing company employees who pen blurbs for books and motion pictures released on DVDs are themselves accomplished writers. They know not only how to summarize a plot (or enough of the plot, at any rate, to excite the reader’s or the viewer’s interest in reading or watching the novel or the movie), but they understand, also, such narrative elements as conflict, high stakes, suspense, and pace. Blurb writers know what readers and moviegoers want to read or see and why. Aspiring storytellers, whether of the horror genre or any other, can learn a thing or two of value from the blurbs that such writers produce and use these techniques themselves in plotting their own narratives.

Let’s take a look at a few blurbs concerning horror movies, taken directly from the backs of the DVD packages upon which the blurbs appear.

 

While awaiting her husband’s return from war, Grace [the main character is introduced and the basic situation is established] and her two children live an unusually isolated existence [an isolated setting enhances character’s vulnerability, especially when the characters are a woman and two children, living alone] behind the locked doors and drawn curtains of a secluded island mansion [the reiteration of the setting’s isolated, or secluded, nature and the mention of its location on an island emphasize the house’s remoteness and inaccessibility and the character’s helplessness; the “locked doors and drawn curtains” suggest secrets or the fear of threats or both]. Then, after three mysterious servants arrive [the same number as the house’s occupants, each of whom is characterized as being in some way “mysterious”] and it becomes chillingly clear [expect to be frightened!] that there is far more to this house than can be seen [such as ghosts?], Grace finds herself in a terrifying fight to save her children and keep her sanity [the stakes are high, indeed!, as is the threat with which Grace and her children are menaced]. -- The Others

 

. . . A skeptical writer [is] investigating paranormal events [the main character is introduced and the basic situation is established]. When he insists in staying in the reportedly haunted room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel [the adjective “reportedly” makes the reader wonder whether the room will prove, in fact, to be “haunted,” as it is alleged to be; a hotel is large enough, too, to offer some real chills] against the grave warnings of the hotel manager [if “dire warnings” are deemed necessary by the man who manages the place, it may well be haunted, the reader may suppose--or is the manager trying to pull some sort of bizarre practical joke or effect some strange fraud, perhaps by destroying the “skeptical writer’s” reputation as a debunker of the paranormal?], he discovers the room’s deadly secret--an evil so powerful, no one has ever survived an hour within its walls [apparently, the moviegoer is in for an equally harrowing hour in the “reportedly haunted room 1408]. -- 1408 

 

 . . An American nurse. . . has come to work in Tokyo [the main character is introduced and the basic situation is established; the setting, far-away Tokyo, a city in a foreign land influenced by an alien culture is also introduced]. Following a series of horrifying and mysterious deaths, she encounters the vengeful supernatural spirit that possesses its victims, claims their souls, then passes its curse to another person in a spreading chain of horror [will the nurse become the spirit’s latest victim?] Now, she must find a way to break this supernatural spell [her purpose, or goal, is identified] or become the next victim [the stakes are presented] of an ancient evil that never dies, but forever lives to kill [she is up against a formidable foe--something that is not only supernatural but immortal--and, of course, evil] -- The Grudge 

Although each of these blurbs is written somewhat differently, they all include these elements:

1. Introduce the main character.
2. Establish the basic situation.
3. Identify the setting (which is usually isolated).
4. Hint at mysterious secrets, spells, or incidents.
5. Identify high stake (such as protecting innocent children or saving one’s own life, sanity, or reputation).
6. Give the protagonist a goal (often related to the story’s stakes).
7. Suggest that the antagonist is formidable, powerful, ancient, and possibly supernatural.

By including such elements in his or her own stories’ plots, the aspiring (or, for that matter, the professional) writer of horror stories, novels, or screenplays is likely to capture, hold, and heighten his or her intended audience’s emotions, making the reader or moviegoer want to read or watch the novel or film from beginning to end--maybe several times over!

From Story Idea to Story

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

A common question that aspiring writers ask the pros is "Where do you get your ideas?" Stephen King claims he gets his in a little shop in Utica, but the true answer to the question is that he gets his ideas from the same sources as every other writer, aspiring or pro: from dreams, mental images, newspaper headlines, reading, anecdotes told by others, personal observations, song lyrics, classroom lectures, history--the list is all but limitless.

But what one more than likely means, perhaps, to ask by this question is "How do you develop your ideas into stories?" The answer is simple, really: bring together person, place, and thing.

• The person is the story's main character, or protagonist.
• The story's place is its setting.
• The story's thing is its theme.

What brings the three of them together is the story's conflict and the main character's attempts to resolve this conflict, which includes both his reason, or motive for doing.

Another way of= saying the same thing is to say that a writer develops a story idea into a story by answering six questions: who? (protagonist), what? (conflict), when? and where? (setting), how? (resolution), and why? (motivation and theme). Here's an example:

Idea: A girl is possessed by the devil.

• Who? Father Damien Karras, a priest who doubts his faith (protagonist)
• What? fights the devil (conflict)
• When? and where? in a Georgetown townhouse (setting)
• How? using exorcism (resolution)
• Why? to save a possessed girl's soul and retain his own teetering faith in God (motivation and theme).

That's how it's done and why.

(There's a fill-in-the-blank way of developing the scenes of a story, too, which I explain in "The Fill-in-the-Blank Guide to Writing Fiction").

Warrants for Cardinal Traits

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In rhetoric, a warrant is an assumption or principle, often implicit, that connects evidence to a claim. For example, one might claim that women should be given the right to vote. Implicit in this claim is the principle that women, like men, deserve equal treatment under the law.

In fiction, there is an analogous relationship between one’s dominant, or cardinal, trait and the emotion that inspires this trait. One might say that the emotion is the cause of the trait and that the trait is expressed in the character’s behavior, even when a conflicting, but lesser, desire is present.

By implicitly (or explicitly) identifying the trait and the emotion that inspires it, a writer creates a character who is believable and realistic.

A few examples from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Buffy Summers feels compassion for others; therefore, she is driven, despite her desire to live a normal life, to accept her duty as a vampire slayer.

Rupert Giles feels guilt about his errant youth; therefore, he is driven to be responsible as an adult.

Angel feels remorse for his past misdeeds; therefore, he is driven to repent for them.

Xander Harris feels inconsequential; therefore, he is loyal to his friends.

Willow Rosenberg feels rejected by men; therefore she loves other women.

Cordelia Chase feels confident; therefore, she is honest--sometimes, brutally so.

By giving your own characters emotional warrants, as it were, that inspire their cardinal traits and expressing these traits in their behaviors, you, too, can make your own characters believable and realistic, adding, by their presence, greater verisimilitude to your story.

Note: Characters are very likely to have several or many other traits besides their cardinal trait. For example, Buffy is not only dutiful, but she is also immature, rebellious, independent, impulsive, protective, loyal, and courageous. However, her dominant trait is her dutifulness, and it is her dutifulness that is inspired by her compassion for others, causing her to sacrifice her own desire to live a normal life to protect and defend others, friends and strangers alike.

Redemption, Vengeance, Love, Hatred--Call It What You Will, It's Still Free Will

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Unlike animal behavior, human conduct is motivated (at times, at least). There is a reason for what people do or refrain from doing. The motives may be good or not so good, selfless or selfish, beneficial or harmful to ourselves or others.

To motivate a character, a writer (and, indeed, a director and an actor) needs to know not only what makes people tick in general but also something about the character he or she is depicting or portraying. For writers, such understanding is enhanced by knowing the character’s past, or back story. What happened in the past influences who we are and what we do in the present.

Like any other qualitative television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer delves into its characters’ pasts, depicting their back stories so that viewers can get to know and understand these characters as well as their creators do. In the process, fans learn what makes Buffy Summers tick; why Rupert Giles is (at first, anyway) a stodgy, all-work, no-play kind of guy; what happens in Xander Harris’ home life to make him the clowning, but loyal, friend; the reason for Willow Rosenberg’s geeky, shy vulnerability; and why Cordelia Chase is snobby and sarcastic but, at the same time, has “layers” to her personality.

Some of the series’ characters seek redemption: Giles, for an irresponsible youth that included practicing dark magic that led to a friend’s death at the hands of a demon that he helped to summon; Angel, for the misery, suffering, and pain he caused his many victims when he was a soulless, bloodsucking creature of the night; Jenny Calendar for her betrayal of Giles, Buffy, and Angel.

Others are motivated by their desire to live normal lives, including their attempts to fit into the larger world and to be popular with their peers (Buffy, Xander, Willow, and, each in her own way, Cordelia Chase and Anya Jenkins).

Still others--and, sometimes, the same characters, at different times--are motivated by a desire for revenge: Buffy, Angel, Jenny, and Willow.

Spike is often motivated by either hatred or love, or, sometimes by both, for the same character, at different times (Drusilla and Buffy, for example), but he is also energized, at times, by vengeance, boredom, loneliness, or sheer mischievousness. More than any other character, except perhaps Giles’ childhood chum, Ethan Rayne, Spike is the show’s trickster.

Buffy is a show that, although its writers recognize genetic inheritance as a factor in human behavior, also insists, rather passionately, that human conduct stems, more often than not, primarily from characters’ exercise of free will. They are what they do; they do what they are, but they both are and do, more often than not, because of the choices they make. They elect to take this action or that or to refrain from doing one thing or another. In the process, from the raw material, so to speak, of their genetic inheritance, they create themselves. Their choices are what make them realistic, believable, likable, or hateful characters, despite the fantastic nature of the series itself.

Buffy is by no means perfect; especially after season five, it is easy to detect flaws, both minor and significant, but the series remains, although uneven, worthwhile television, and its creator and its talented stable of writers have much to teach other writers about how to create complex, dynamic, and intriguing characters whose actions stem from moral conflicts, existential problems, the conduct of others, the social demands upon them, their own natural abilities and weaknesses, and, most of all, their own free will.

A Sidebar Approach to Writing

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Many book-length commentaries and analyses of popular entertainment products offer, more or less as fillers, occasional sidebars that provide behind-the-scenes information, summaries, or little-known facts about the various topics that the commentaries routinely cover in their murders to dissect. Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is no exception, offering, as it does, 22 such sidebars, among them speculations concerning “Spike’s Nature,” an account of “The Unaired Pilot,” and a “Vampire History.”

From a writer’s perspective, perhaps some of the more interesting (and potentially valuable) sidebars are those that deal with characters’ back stories, histories regarding settings, and proposed plotlines. These items present a handy, dandy way of enriching one’s own narratives: pretend that you are a fan of your own work and that, as such, you buy a book (or a magazine) about the narrative of which you are an aficionado. Imagine, also, that you are the writer (or one of the writers) of the commentary and develop sidebars of the sort that you think fans of the narrative you’re writing your commentary about might enjoy, particularly ones associated with characters’ back stories, histories regarding settings, and proposed plotlines. Write them about your story, and, presto!, you’ve developed some ideas for future chapters of your novel in progress or (should you be so lucky) your ongoing series of novels.

For example, let’s assume that your story takes place in ancient Rome and that you want to create a sense of horror mingled with terror. Perhaps you decide to have a present-day visitor to the catacombs get stranded in the underground burial chambers overnight. This situation (and setting) cries out for a sidebar treatment in which you summarize the history of the local catacombs and given a succinct, but ghastly, description of the place.

If your character is (or knows) a famous person of the period, a sidebar concerning the famous man or woman--perhaps he is an emperor of a visiting queen--will help keep your fictitious portrait of him or her both accurate and intriguing, provided that the sidebar contains not only pertinent facts but also a spicy anecdote or two concerning the historical figure.

An artifact could also deserve sidebar treatment. Again, the facts and anecdotes you include in your sidebar will help you to stay on track and be interesting as you describe and explain the significance of the relic or objet d’art.

For a Writer, Too, Two (Or More) Heads Are Better Than One

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Lawrence E. Miles, Lars Pearson, and Christa Dickson, includes a sidebar concerning “Spike’s Nature” in which the author (presumably Dickson, since she waxes poetic about “the sight of James Marsters half-naked [sic]) suggests that the series’ writers view the same character differently, creator Joss Whedon seeing the vampire as redeemable and Doug Petrie as unredeemable. Other writers also have their own points of view concerning Spike’s nature: “Any attempt to work out whether he’s good, bad, or just going through his second adolescence is doomed to failure,” the author or authors conclude, “because frankly it’s hard to find three episodes in a row which all agree” (203).

In an earlier post, “Writing as a Schizophrenic,” I suggested that one way to layer a character (that is, to give him or her several, sometimes conflicting traits, making him or her a round and dynamic, as opposed to a flat and static, character) is to develop schizophrenia. Not real schizophrenia, of course. Vincent Van Gogh’s ear aside, there’s a limit at which an artist should draw the line when it comes to making personal sacrifices for the sake of his or her art (or the man or woman of his or her dreams). I meant imaginary schizophrenia or, even better, the sprouting of several heads, each with a mind of its own. By adopting different perspectives (political, religious, philosophical, and otherwise) and different points of view even among these perspectives (Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, conservative, moderate, liberal, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheistic, agnostic, dualistic, monistic, materialistic), one could add depth to one’s depiction of a character.

The authors of Dusted suggest another way of accomplishing the same enrichment of one’s characters: imagine him or her the way that several established authors might portray the same character. How might Stephen King depict your protagonist, antagonist, or other type of character? How might Dean Koontz represent the same literary person? How about Robert McCammon or Dan Simmons or Bentley Little? By sketching your character as other writers--and famous or at least well established ones, at that--might see him or her, you can yourself develop a richer understanding and appreciation of him or her. If the character is a complex one, you can even create various scenes that show his or her perhaps conflicting characteristics. Perhaps you started with a cartoon-style hero or villain. Now, he or she has developed into a dramatic persona worthy of William Shakespeare (or maybe King or Koontz, Whedon or Petrie).

Horror Settings

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror story settings often play upon the limits of human perception and the effects of such limitations upon human self-esteem, safety, and security.

Fog blinds, and blindness makes one helpless. A forest’s density of trees makes one feel trapped. An island or a space station is isolated, which cuts one off from others and the aid that they could provide. A cavern is dark; darkness blinds; blindness makes one helpless. A cavern’s passages are tight, which could make one feel trapped, and the passages are labyrinthine, suggesting that one may become lost and, therefore, cut off from others and the aid that they could provide. An unfamiliar place is unknown, and the unknown blinds one mentally, or cognitively, thereby making him or her vulnerable to potential injury or harm.

The antidotes, as it were, to the effects of such settings are, respectively, self-reliance; escape or rescue; being located; and knowledge (especially practical knowledge).

Therefore, some horror stories start at one of these extremes and end with the other extreme. For example, Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” starts with the sentencing to death of the protagonist and his imprisonment in his intended death chamber, the “pit” of the story’s title, and ends with the main character’s rescue by his enemy’s foes.

However, a horror story (or a thriller) might also start with the positive character trait--self-reliance, for example--and end with its destruction, as James Dickey’s novel Deliverance does. In this narrative, macho, self-reliant outdoorsmen are sodomized by a group of sadistic mountain men whom they encounter during a canoeing trip. Likewise, the adversary of William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist seeks to destroy Father Damien Karras’ faith when he attempts to exorcize an alleged demoniac. Another of my posts, “A Descent into the Horrors of Extreme Feminism,” discusses at length the importance of the cavern setting of the movie The Descent on both the film’s plot and characters.

Few contemporary horror stories succeed in exploiting a forest setting’s dark and foreboding character as well as The Blair Witch Project. As anyone who has ever gone camping overnight in a forest knows, campers are almost certain to hear furtive sounds, breaking twigs, and perhaps even snarls or growls. Unable to see what one hears, one can quite easily let his or her imagination run wild, and his or her imagination is able to picture horrors and terrors beyond anything reality is likely to offer. The forest, in this film, is a symbol of man’s helplessness before nature--especially a forest that, cutting the band of students off from the rest of humanity, leaves them not only to their own devices but also to their own wild imaginings. 

Regardless of the setting an author may select, he or she should examine it carefully for its symbolic, metaphorical, or other rhetorical significance, for by playing upon these implications, the writer can enhance the depth and richness of his or her story. In analyzing the proposed setting, the author may, in fact, find that another setting than that which he or she originally envisioned works better for his or her story in part, perhaps, because the alternative setting is more symbolically, metaphorically, or otherwise rhetorically profound than the first location that he or she considered for the narrative’s milieu. (The same is true for the story’s props: Poe, for example, originally envisioned a parrot as the foil to The Raven’s narrator, rather than the raven he subsequently selected as the poem’s avian adversary.)

Everlasting "Buffy"

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Although this post uses Buffy the Vampire Slayer to support its thesis, virtually any novel, television series, or motion picture and, indeed, many short stories could just as easily have been used, because, theoretically, my technique applies to any and all of them. The technique is simple. Identify loose threads, as it were, in such works which threads could be developed into additional stories. Then, making key changes, develop them into additional stories.

A few examples should suffice to show how this method could be employed.

• Amy Madison’s mother, Catherine, a powerful witch, is imprisoned inside a trophy in her daughter’s high school’s cheerleaders’ awards display case (“Witch,” season one, episode three). What might happen were Catherine to escape?
• At the end of “Teacher‘s Pet” (season one, episode four), a sac of praying mantis eggs is shown in a science classroom closet. Sooner or later, these eggs are bound to hatch and, when they do, to paraphrase Spike, wackiness must ensue.
• Marcie Ross, an invisible girl, is recruited by secret agents (perhaps of the Central Intelligence Agency), and schooled in assassination and infiltration techniques (“Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” season one, episode eleven). What becomes of her, following her graduation?
• Cain, a werewolf bounty hunter, is sent packing by Buffy after he tries to bag Oz (“Phases,” season two, episode fifteen). What becomes of the hunter?
• In “Go Fish” (season two, episode twenty), several fish-men, products of an experiment performed by their coach, swim out to sea after they have killed and eaten him. What becomes of the fish-men?
• 
  

Many other examples could be easily cited, but these are enough to demonstrate this simple, but effective, technique for spawning additional plots from their narrative forebears.

If you were using one of these unresolved situations, you would have to change the names of the characters and the setting of the story, of course, and make other alterations in order to avoid plagiarism. Inspiration is one thing; theft, another. For example, the imprisoned witch could become an imprisoned serial killer who escapes from a maximum-security prison and resumes his career as a serial killer, targeting families of law-enforcement personnel in various cities. Likewise, the praying mantis eggs could become time capsules that contain a deadly virus that had been eradicated in the interval between the burial of the capsules and their opening. Perhaps the culprit who buried the virus was a twisted scientist who, fearing the virus’ eradication, wanted to ensure its eventual return (following his own death, of course). His motive? Madness? Vengeance? Sadism?

Note: Since I’ve used Buffy to exemplify this technique, I ought to mention that Buffy itself uses this same method to generate stories, occasionally taking up storylines that earlier episodes left unresolved to use as bases for subsequent plots about the same characters or situations as appeared in the previous stories. For example, Riley Finn leaves Sunnydale after Buffy breaks off their relationship, but he turns up some time later, married to a fellow demon hunter, and regular viewers of the series thus learn his fate.

Theme as the Springboard to a Story's Plot

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Dorothy Gale discovers she's not in Kansas anymore

I usually start my stories with an inciting moment, the point in the action that launches the rest of the narrative forward. (In The Wizard of Oz, the film version of L. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, for example, the story begins when the protagonist, Dorothy Gale, runs away from home, because, had she not done so, she’d have been with Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, and the farmhands in the storm cellar and would have avoided the cyclone that carried her off to her adventures in faraway Oz.)

A story’s inciting moment can be virtually anything. I once had a list of a couple hundred potential inciting moments. A few on this list might have been:

• The protagonist receives a strange package.
• The protagonist makes a spontaneous (and, as it turns out, a poor) decision.
• The protagonist is abducted by strangers.
• The protagonist buys his girlfriend a present different than the one he’d intended to buy for her birthday.
• The protagonist awakens in a strange place, not knowing how he or she got there.

In a previous post, I explain how Edgar Allan Poe wrote his famous narrative poem The Raven backward, by first determining the effect that he wanted to produce (horror) and then determining the details, of plot, tone, setting, and so forth, that would best help him to produce this predetermined effect. This morning, in the wee hours, as I lay half-asleep and half--awake, which is usually when the muse puts in her appearances--I hit upon another way to accomplish this same feat: One can write backward, so to speak, by first determining how the main character will change by the end of the story!

The change doesn’t have to be drastic, although it should be significant. The change may involve in alteration in the protagonist’s aspirations, attitude, beliefs, decisions, emotions, perceptions, reasoning, thoughts, understanding, or values. Whatever type of change occurs, however, it will derive from the experiences that he or she undergoes during the course of the story, and his or her change will constitute a lesson of sorts for him or her. In fact, I often think of the theme of a story as the lesson that the main character learns as a result of his or her experiences.

Looked at backward, so to speak, the story’s theme (the lesson learned, as reflected in the protagonist’s change of behavior) can be the springboard for the narrative’s entire action, a kind of inciting moment in reverse, as it were. In other words, by determining beforehand how the main character will change, a writer can then plot the story’s action in reverse, determining what will make him or her change and what lesson he or she will learn as the result of the experiences that he or she thus undergoes.

Job, in better days

Let’s take the Biblical story of Job (a horror story, if ever there was one) as an example. At the end of the story, Job’s understanding of God increases: Before the story, Job has a simple idea of God as One who rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior; by the conclusion of the narrative, Job learns that God’s will is inscrutable, or unknowable, and that He must be trusted despite human beings’ ignorance of His ultimate character, or, as Job phrases his newfound knowledge (the story’s theme), “The just shall live by faith.”

Job has not learned the lesson that bad things sometime happen to good people and not just to the bad guys. Therefore, he is puzzled when things go from good to bad for him, and his faith (trust) in God is severely tested. By knowing in advance that Job’s understanding of the nature of God is what will change as he learns his lesson (“The just shall live by faith”), the writer would be able to select the incidents of the plot, including those of the exposition (God points out Job’s faithfulness to Satan during an assembly of the heavenly host which the devil also attends); the inciting moment (Satan is allowed to test Job’s faith); the rising action (the increasingly horrific torments that Job must endure during the testing of his faith); the turning point (Job’s refusal both to curse God and to himself accept blame for the catastrophes that befall his fortune, his family, and himself); the falling action (God’s interrogation of Job out of the whirlwind); and the denouement (Job’s confession of both his ignorance of, and his faith in, God and God’s restoration of Job’s fortune, Job’s family, and Job himself).

By plotting backward, so to speak, from the story’s theme and using it as a sort of reverse inciting moment, the narrative’s sequence of action, including the elements of its plot, can be determined in such a way that this sequence of action will result in the protagonist’s change of behavior and the learning of his or her lesson. In addition, this approach allows the writer to connect plot to character much more closely, perhaps, than he or she might have been able to do had his or her story begun not with the final outcome (the theme of the story, which accompanies or leads to the protagonist’s change in behavior), but with a simple change in the routine of the protagonist’s normal, everyday life. Moreover, this approach helps the writer to ensure that everything that happens in the story is related to the character’s development and change and to his or her recognition of a new truth (the lesson that he or she learns).

Setting and Plot

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror story settings often play upon the limits of human perception and the effects of such limitations upon human self-esteem, safety, and security.

Fog blinds, and blindness makes one helpless. A forest’s density of trees makes one feel trapped. An island or a space station is isolated, which cuts one off from others and the aid that they could provide. A cavern is dark; darkness blinds; blindness makes one helpless. A cavern’s passages are tight, which could make one feel trapped, and the passages are labyrinthine, suggesting that one may become lost and, therefore, cut off from others and the aid that they could provide. An unfamiliar place is unknown, and the unknown blinds one mentally, or cognitively, thereby making him or her vulnerable to potential injury or harm.

The antidotes, as it were, to the effects of such settings are, respectively, self-reliance; escape or rescue; being located; and knowledge (especially practical knowledge).

Therefore, some horror stories start at one of these extremes and end with the other extreme. For example, Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” starts with the sentencing to death of the protagonist and his imprisonment in his intended death chamber, the “pit” of the story’s title, and ends with the main character’s rescue by his enemy’s foes.

However, a horror story (or a thriller) might also start with the positive character trait--self-reliance, for example--and end with its destruction, as James Dickey’s novel Deliverance does. In this narrative, macho, self-reliant outdoorsmen are sodomized by a group of sadistic mountain men whom they encounter during a canoeing trip. Likewise, the adversary of William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist seeks to destroy Father Damien Karras’ faith when he attempts to exorcize an alleged demoniac. Another of my posts, “A Descent into the Horrors of Extreme Feminism,” discusses at length the importance of the cavern setting of the movie Descent on both the film’s plot and characters.

Few contemporary horror stories succeed in exploiting a forest setting’s dark and foreboding character as well as The Blair Witch Project. As anyone who has ever gone camping overnight in a forest knows, campers are almost certain to hear furtive sounds, breaking twigs, and perhaps even snarls or growls. Unable to see what one hears, one can quite easily let his or her imagination run wild, and his or her imagination is able to picture horrors and terrors beyond anything reality is likely to offer. The forest, in this film, is a symbol of man’s helplessness before nature--especially a forest that, cutting the band of students off from the rest of humanity, leaves them not only to their own devices but also to their own wild imaginings.

Regardless of the setting an author may select, he or she should examine it carefully for its symbolic, metaphorical, or other rhetorical significance, for by playing upon these implications, the writer can enhance the depth and richness of his or her story. In analyzing the proposed setting, the author may, in fact, find that another setting than that which he or she originally envisioned works better for his or her story in part, perhaps, because the alternative setting is more symbolically, metaphorically, or otherwise rhetorically profound than the first location that he or she considered for the narrative’s milieu. (The same is true for the story’s props: Poe, for example, originally envisioned a parrot as the foil to The Raven’s narrator, rather than the raven he subsequently selected as the poem’s avian adversary.)

Cameo Characters Can Do More Than Advance Plots; They Can Be Compelling in Themselves

One of the more interesting (and creepiest) scenes I’ve read recently in a horror-suspense novel occurs in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s novel Cemetery Dance, which features a cult of zombies who live in New York City’s Inwood Hill Park.

The scene of which I write doesn’t take place on the island or even in New York City, however; it occurs in a restaurant, while the character eats his breakfast. A creature of habit, the diner has been coming to the same eatery for some time, always ordering the same breakfast, which he routinely eats while he reads the morning newspaper.

Something in one of the newspaper’s headlines or stories and other perceptions he experiences convinces him that God wants him to board the next bus to New York City, where, once he arrives, a divine plan will be made known to him. His intuition that he has been called as a servant of God is confirmed when he finds that all the money he has left to his name, which he carries in his wallet and pocket, is the exact amount of the one-way fare to his destination.

Needless to say, he serves a further narrative purpose once he arrives in the city, advancing the plot as his dubious service to the Lord edges the plot toward its climax. Otherwise, he is of no importance to the story; he is a cameo character.

Preston and Child, like other successful writers of horror and other genres, demonstrate in this scene the effectiveness of introducing not just any character but a compelling character to support or advance their plots, even when this character him- or herself is otherwise of minor importance in the greater scheme of things. Such a technique costs only a little thought and work, but it pays dividends, making one’s writing intriguing rather than merely perfunctory.

Horror Comics

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Not only Stephen King, but also Joss Whedon and many other writers of horror fiction cite horror comic books as inspirational to their own work, especially during such writers’ earlier years.

As a youngster, I must confess that I, too, enjoyed these tawdry, garish periodicals. Sold alongside comics devoted to “funny animals,” superheroes, crime detection, Western heroes, romance, and even classic literature, horror comics were the bad boys of juvenilia, the ones that even kids knew weren’t all that respectable and tended to keep separate from their collections of DC and Marvel.

Horror comics were popular, though, no doubt about it, and with millions of others besides King and Whedon. What made them so were blood and gore and monsters, depicted in all their ghastly glory, of course, and the bizarre and macabre stories they told, but, more than anything else, it was the reader’s own imagination that chilled and thrilled him or her (mostly him; girls seemed to prefer romance and comedy titles).

The titles suggested the appeal of these comics: Adventures into Weird Worlds, Astonishing Tales of the Night, Baffling Mysteries, Terror Tales, Weird Monsters Unleashed, Monster Hunters, Tales of Terror, Chamber of Chills, The Haunt of Fear, Stories to Hold You Spellbound, Startling Terror, Weird Chills, Worlds of Fear: these narratives, told as much, maybe more, in pictures than in words, promised to transport the reader into new “worlds” that were “weird,” “astonishing,” “baffling,” and full of horror, suspense, and fear. Gone would be the mundane world of school, chores, church, sibling nuisances and rivals, bullies, and parents telling one what to do, to be replaced with wonder, mystery, adventure, chills, and thrills.

Like many others, horror writers have developed rationales for why people enjoy being scared out of their wits, probably in response to challenges from literary critics and others, demanding a justification for such fare beyond the “art for art’s sake” line. King offers an Aristotelian argument, contending that horror fiction exorcises the demons within the reader by letting him or her (mostly him) play the role of the monster or, at least, seeing the effects of the monstrosity that he himself often feels within, when it is permitted to go unrestrained. They are pleasant, perhaps, all that blood and all those guts, but they are cathartic as well. There is some truth, perhaps, in this Aristotelian explanation.

Whedon also offers a justification for his work, which, more often than not, is steeped in horror. His rationale for horror is along the lines of the argument that Bruno Bettelheim advances in The Uses of Enchantment:

I think there’s a lot of people. . . who say we must not have horror in any form, we must not say scary things to children because it will make them evil and disturbed. . . . . That offends me deeply because the world is a scary and terrifying place, and everyone is going to get old and die, if they’re that lucky. To set children up to think that everything is sunshine and roses is doing them a great disservice. Children need horror because there are things they don’t understand. It helps them to codify it if it is mythologized, if it’s put into the context of a story, whether the story has a happy ending or not. If it scares them and shows them a bit of the dark side of the world that is there and always will be, it’s helping them out when they have to face it as adults (The Monster Book, viii).

There is some truth, too, perhaps, in this explanation.

In previous posts, I have offered my own ideas concerning the reasons for the appeal of horror fiction, so I won’t repeat them here. For those who may be interested, these essays are available in Chillers and Thrillers' massive, ever-growing archives.

Back to the topic at hand, though: horror comics.

As anyone who has ever seen a tyke cowering behind the leg of his or her mother knows, for children, strangers are threatening. This is interesting, I think, because the same toddler who shrinks from a stranger will pick up a snake without the qualms that many an adult shows in handling serpents. As boys, my brothers and I frequently carried box turtles, garter snakes, and frogs with us in our pockets and sought to snare salamanders near a neighbor’s creek, although strangers were regarded as likely demons in human guise. Although, in more recent times, xenophobia has become increasingly politically incorrect, the fear of strangers seems innate, or inborn. Can nature or God be wrong?

Certainly not from the viewpoint of the cowering toddler--or of horror comics. The monster, especially when it is reptilian, insect (the word is both a noun and an adjective, for those who haven’t studied entomology or, for that matter, etymology), or alien (as in extraterrestrial), frequently represents the other who is not only “other” but who is also foreign and, therefore, unknown. Those about whom we have little, if any, knowledge are regarded as threats (it’s better to be safe than sorry) until we learn their intentions and their hearts. This may be a politically incorrect stance, but it’s helped us to survive for millennia and isn’t likely to go away any time soon. Besides, whether the monster in horror comics is equipped with tentacles, a seaweed mustache and beard, bony plates, horns, claws, insect parts, wings, or all of the above or is more human, but repulsive (an animated skeleton, for example, or a rotting, but somehow still living, corpse), it’s apt to be just as terrifying, unpredictable, and dangerous as the children within us have imagined strangers may be.

Like most subjects, horror fiction is divisible into stories about persons places, and things.

If the monster is the person, the setting is the place, and unfamiliar places are regarded with the same wary mistrust as strangers. Who knows what may lie waiting to ambush us in the dark recesses of an underground cave; among the thick, tall trees of an ancient forest; at the bottom of the murky sea; on far-flung, alien planets; or in any of the other fantastic and mysterious worlds promised in the titles of many horror comics and suggested in the artwork that adorns these periodicals’ covers and the pages within?

Things (or artifacts) also appear in horror comics. As anyone who’s watched the hit Syfy TV series Warehouse 13 knows, such artifacts are everywhere, and many are dangerous in the extreme--and Secret Service agents Myka Bering and Peter Lattimer haven’t located and stored them all for safekeeping yet. There are more, maybe many more, out there, waiting, as it were, to injure and maybe even kill the unsuspecting and the uniformed.

The themes of horror comics are often as simple and straightforward as the tales themselves that these publications tell: bad things happen to those who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, a little beauty of the feminine kind can be a dangerous thing (it tends to attract actual monsters as well as human wolves), a little beauty of the feminine kind can be a dangerous thing (it can get a guy killed), beauty (feminine or otherwise) can be seductive in a bad way, curiosity can kill more than just the cat, there’s no age restriction on potential victims as far as homicidal maniacs are concerned, a trusted and seemingly harmless friend (such as a toy) can turn on one, isolating oneself from the rest of the group is dangerous unless one is a lone wolf, religious faith (often in the shape of a cross) can deliver a believer from evil (and otherwise certain death), there are “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy” (dear Horatio), and creatures of the night are often in need of dental care and a good manicure. Horror comics tell cautionary tales, and there are quite a few to be told. Both King and Whedon admit that just about everything scared or scares them; the same is true of children (and many adults), as horror comic writers and illustrators were fully aware.

A few covers surprise the reader with visual allusions to the occult or classic literature (or, at least, classics of horror). Doorway to Nightmare 2, for example, includes the tarot deck’s Devil card, which features an image of a demon that looks suspiciously like Baphomet, and Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula., and even Cthulhu are frequent guest stars in horror comics.

As mentioned, boys more than girls, read horror comics, and the creators of these publications were aware of the demographics of their readers, which explains not only the sexism of the femme fatale and the seductive siren characters that frequent the pages of horror comics’ storylines but also the scantily clad beauties who grace their covers (usually in the company of a menacing monster). Even when climate or weather or atmospheric conditions do not warrant her doing so, the damsel in distress is likely to be clad in nothing more than a short, clinging dress with a low, low, low-cut neckline; a bikini; or, in some cases, only her birthday suit. Monsters had good taste in (and a hearty appetite for) women, and the imperiled ladies, no doubt, aroused the chivalry (among other things) in the boys who read such fare.

Moreover, the covers seem to issue a challenge to their adolescent male readers: Here is a lady in distress; are you man enough to rescue her? By introducing just a hint of sexuality, horror comics also seemed to prepare boys for a role that they would play as men that has nothing to do with slaying monsters, except that, for boys, women are monsters, an alien species with cooties that may be glamorous and alluring but one that is also something strange and unknown and, therefore, to be feared, until, that is, the humanity beneath the imagined scales and behind the make-believe glowing eyes and razor fangs can be rescued, accepted, known, and, finally, cherished, not only as human but as, indeed, one’s better half.