Benefits of Alternate Endings: Pick One

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

It was fashionable in Hollywood, at one time, to produce movies that have alternate endings. Hollywood executives hoped that, by trying out two or more endings for the same movie on test audiences, they could determine which one viewers enjoyed most, which might translate into more ticket sales (i .e., dollars) at the box office.

For short story writers and novelists, however, there may be other benefits to devising possible alternate endings. In doing so, however, authors should follow Aristotle's dictum (and Edgar Allan Poe's advice) that a story's ending should end in a manner that does not destroy the integrity of the rest of the plot.

Devising possible alternate endings to a story can also assist writers in selecting the most appropriate, effective, and memorable ending possible from an array of alternatives.

In addition, imagining possible alternate endings can, perhaps, improve the story, because a new possibility might round out, explain, or otherwise complete the narrative in a more believable or otherwise satisfying manner than the original ending. (We're speaking, now, of works in progress, rather than published, stories.)

Imagining alternate endings could also produce unexpected or better twist endings than the one a writer originally had in mind.

“The Cone” by H. G. Wells

Current ending: Raut, who has cuckolded Horrocks, is doomed when a blast-furnace cone lowers him into the furnace, while Horrocks pelts the adulterer with hot coals.

Alternate ending: Horrocks seizes Raut by the arm, shoving him into the path of an oncoming railway tram. (This incident occurs earlier in the story, but, at this point, Horrocks is terrorizing Raut and, at the last minute, pulls him to safety; revised, the original story would end with this incident, without Horrocks pulling Raut from the tram's path.)

“The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce

Current ending: An entry in Morgan's diary reveals that the creature he hunts is invisible because its color is imperceptible to the human eye.

Alternate ending: Both Morgan's friend Harker, who witnessed Morgan's death and Morgan himself are insane, the former because of his fantastic testimony at the coroner's inquest concerning the cause of Morgan's death, the latter because, in writing of the incident in his diary, he described it in a manner that is consistent with Harker's account of the occurrence. On suspicion of having killed, and possible brainwashed Morgan, Harker is arrested and held for trial.

“Dracula's Guest” by Bram Stoker

Current ending: Horsemen frighten off the werewolf guarding and keeping an English hotel guest warm in a forest and take him back to the hotel; they were dispatched at the request of a Transylvanian count named Dracula.

Alternate ending: The horsemen arrive to find the Englishman's throat torn out by the werewolf feasting upon his corpse.

 

"The Signalman" by Charles Dickens

Current ending: The narrator learns that a signal-man, seemingly mesmerized by something he saw, was struck and killed by an approaching train after ignoring the engineer's repeated warnings to get off the track.

Alternate ending: The train strikes the signal-man, but investigators cannot find his body; on the anniversary of his supposed death, the signal-man again appears on the track and is struck, but, afterward, investigators cannot find a body.

The Z Plot

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Although it would be ludicrous to suggest that a story could follow a “Z” plot, the concept is, nevertheless, a good reminder that thrillers and chillers should move from one action scene to another at a fairly fast pace.

What is a “Z” plot? It's an imaginary sequence of action that is on the fact that, in English, readers read from left to right and from top to bottom. In other words, their eyes, in reading, trace the figure of a “Z.” Sometimes the stem (the diagonal line connecting the upper and the lower arms of the “S”) is shorter; other times, longer, than typical, depending on the length of the paragraph the combined sentences of which make up the stem of the letter. For example, a short paragraph produces a short stem; a long paragraph, a long stem:

Think of the paragraph as representing a scene. Each point at the beginning or the end of the arm of the “Z” represents a point of possible change. Perhaps the first point would be to establish the setting, while the second point would be to introduce the protagonist. At the third point, maybe you would contrast two supporting characters. The fourth point might be that at which you relocate the main character. These four points, regardless of the length of the scene (represented, in the “Z” plot by a paragraph), would make up the entire scene. However, the next scene, with its four points, would provide opportunities for additional, perhaps different (depending on the scene's purpose), plot changes, such as changing the pace of the story (with a longer or a shorter scene), using dialogue between tow or more characters to inform the reader of necessary background material, having circumstances or an incident impede the protagonist, and arranging for the antagonist to confront the protagonist (or vice versa). The next scenes would, likewise, present opportunities, at each of their four points, to change the plot again, again, again, and again.

Besides the actions indicated above, writers can use these points of the “Z” plot to heighten suspense, bolster the protagonist (or the antagonist) with reinforcements or assistants, capture a character, have a character escape, pursue a character, bring about a character's return home or to an earlier point of departure, characterize a character, have a character learn something important, or change a character's attitude, beliefs, feelings, perspective, or values.

Although the structure of your story's your plot, in reality, is unlikely to resemble a “Z,” helping to think of the progress of the action in such a manner could help you to remember to change the course of action frequently not only throughout the story as a whole, but also during each and every one of its scenes. As a result, it's unlikely your readers will become bored; in fact, they should be as excited as hell!

Make Sure that Your Story's Monster Is Integral to Its Setting: Aristotle and Poe Insist upon It

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Judging by its trailer, the monster of The Sand (2015) is integral to the movie's setting:

A red plastic cup lying, half-buried in the sand, litters an otherwise pristine beach. Waves roll toward the shore, carrying, upon the surface of their waters, green slime suggestive of pulverized vegetation or algae, implying that nature, too, is a litterbug of sorts. A mechanical device, embedded in the sand elsewhere on the beach, among dunes and reeds, is a sign of the presence of human technology amid natural landscape features.

Night. Teenage boys in loud shirts cavort on the beach with teenage girls in bikinis and other abbreviated attire. A boy tosses beer from a red plastic cup toward squealing, grinning girls. While performing a handstand on the sand, Marsha drinks beer, upside-down, from the spigot of an upright keg. Another girl quaffs her beverage from a red plastic cup. A boy does flips.

Vance warns, “Don't use Facebook or MySpace. Nothing leaves this beach.” The party continues, in full swing.

The next morning, Kaylee looks over the beach from the lifeguard tower where she's spent the night. The crowd is gone. Only a few red plastic cups and the teens' sleeping bags and towels remain.

Text appears, informing viewers that “66% of marine species are still undiscovered today.”

A seagull beats its wings, as it struggles to free its feet from the sand. Kaylee, looking on, declares, “He's heavy.” She asks the bird, “Are you stuck?” and is startled to see the bird sink (or being pulled) into the sand until it disappears. “Oh, my God!” she cries, backing up.

Text: “Until now.”

Holding her hand above the sand, Kaylee, with Mitch, who also slept on the lifeguard tower, kneeling beside her, watches water “rain” from her palm.

Kaylee runs across the platform, warning Marsha, “Don't touch it!” Marsha's foot presses into the sand. A hand clutches the girl's wrist, pulling upward.

The screen flickers as Kaylee's boyfriend Jonah and a girl named Chandra, in the front seat, and Vance and his girlfriend Ronnie, in the back seat, sit in a convertible parked on the beach and look out toward the sea.

Mitch asks Kaylee, “So do you want to tell me what just happened?”

“You saw,” Kaylee tells Mitch.

Gilbert frowns as he looks at something unseen by the viewer.

Jonah tries to start his car, as Chandra yells, “Start the car!”

“The car won't start,” he says. The teens are trapped in the convertible.

"We're all going to die,” Mitch predicts.

This is crazy,” Gilbert declares.

Mitch tosses a life preserver.

Mitch, his feet wrapped in towels, runs across the sand.

A police officer approaches a girl lying on on a picnic table on the beach.

Chandra balances on an inflated raft as she walks across the sand.

Jonah lies prone on the beach, suffering and unable to move.

Vance leaps from the stranded convertible.

The police officer sprays Mace on the sand.

Energy crackles around the fingers and arm of a fallen figure—the patrolman?—who lies on the beach.

Kaylee leaps from the lifeguard's tower, onto the sand.

Text: “like a monster.”

Kaylee waves her and shakes her head, saying, “I don't believe in monsters.”

Jonah jumps back into the convertible.

Vance falls onto the beach.

A boy is pulled into the beach as he struggles, clutching the bench of a picnic table.

Kaylee screams.

Night. A blonde in a red bikini backs up, screaming, as she stares, horrified, at a gigantic tendril of light sweeping across the sky. A car, the driver's door open, is parked beside her. The tendril whips down. She ducks, and the tendril slams the car door shut.

Against a black background, the film's title appear in large red, centered letters:

The Sand

An Anything Horror review of the movie posted on Horrorpedia is mixed. The film jumps the shark, so to speak, when the monster is introduced: director Isaac Gabareff apparently couldn't leave well enough alone. He had to “give us the Big Monster,” and one which he doesn't seem to have been able to afford, at that: “the money spent on attempting this wouldn’t pay for a Pizza Hut meal,” which, unfortunately, makes it look “cartoonish.”

There are other problems with the special effects, too, reviewer Phil Wheat, of Nerdy, complains: “especially during a couple of the bigger, and gorier, death scenes.” However, there's a silver lining: “it’s [a] testament toThe Sand‘s production that the low-budget nature of the effects don’t detract too much from the overall experience.”

Another reviewer has trouble with the plot, Luke Owen of Flickering Myth finding it “full of padding, a hammered[-]in love triangle and rather unfunny jokes.”

For his part, reviewer Christopher Stewart of UK Horror Scene finds the characters flat, the final girl somehow awkward, and the romance cringe-worthy. Stewart disagrees in part with the Anything Horror reviewer concerning the monster's credibility, seeing “the monster effects” as “decent” overall, although, he argues, “they don't seem entirely integrated into the scene and come off a little cheap looking.”

This movie itself shows how the monster in a story can (and, in the opinion of Chillers and Thrillers, should) be an integral part of the setting. It shouldn't be merely an afterthought tacked onto the environment, but should arise from the story's setting as naturally and believably as a shark rises from the depths of the ocean, as a bear bounds across the floor of a forest, or as an eagle swoops down from the sky.

It seems that the octopus-thing or the squid-thing, or whatever kind of thing the “undiscovered marine species” specimen-thing is (actually, it turns out to be a giant electric jellyfish), is clearly integral to the setting; it comes from the sea, onto the beach, to attack the teens during spring break. All the pieces fit; there are not only unity and coherence, but also integration and relevance. Of course, whether the effects are “integrated into the scene” as seamlessly and naturally as the could and should be is another question.

Moreover, the movie's posters also indicate that the monster is, indeed, integral to the setting.

One poster shows Kaylee running across the beach, leaning well forward. There's a full moon in the dark sky, but the sand is dark and looks more like both mud and water than sand as such. Indeed, at first glance, it appears that Kaylee is running upon the surface of the ocean, especially since the illuminated tentacle of the monster rises from the sand beside her. Beneath the title, in solid, block red letters is the caption, “This beach is killer.”

Another poster shows a blonde wearing a bikini top resembling seashells; she is buried in the beach up to her waist. Beneath the sand, two of the monster's illuminated tentacles stretch toward her, even as a third seems to attempt to surround her. On her knees, Kaylee reaches toward the other girl, as a third teen, perhaps Chandra, walks slowly toward the victim. A patrol car is parked behind Kaylee. Above the trapped teen, who stretches her arms overhead, the caption appears, in capitals, all red, above the film's sand-colored title: “This beach is killer. The Sand.”

In “The Philosophy of Composition,” wherein Edgar Allan Poe explains how he write his celebrated poem The Raven, Poe says he began the process with the particular emotional effect in mind that he wanted to create (horror, of course), and then chose each and every other element of the poem, it plot, its structure, its meter, its rhyme scheme, the raven's increasingly eerie refrain, and, of course, the setting so that, individually and together, these elements help both to create the preconceived effect and to maximize its impression upon the poem's readers. Like Aristotle, who warned against a tacked-on ending, or deus ex machina, insisting that the end of a story should be pertinent and seemingly inevitable, given all that had gone before, and led, to the culmination, the effect itself.

By ensuring that the characters, including the monster, are integral to the story's setting, writers can gain a sense of inevitability for their denouement that is as apt and satisfying as that of Poe's raven. The elements of The Sand, the monster included, do lead up to and emphasize the effect that the film, as a whole, produces. In this, the movie succeeds well, however well or poorly the film the “monster effects” themselves may be “integrated into the scene.”

Damsels (and Villains) in Distress

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman 

 

Horror movies often put characters in compromising situations—circumstances or conditions in which they are, for one reason or another, vulnerable, if not, indeed, helpless. Often, these characters are young women, both because many devotees of the genre are young men and because people, in general (at least according to horror maestro Edgar Allan Poe), find “the death of a beautiful woman the most poetic woman . . . unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world” (“The Philosophy of Composition”).

Writers employ an array of devices to render their damsels in distress vulnerable or helpless, including, among others, youth and inexperience (Carrietta White of Stephen King's Carrie), being disabled (Marty Coslaw of Dan Attias's film adaptation of Stephen King's Silver Bullet), being injured (Paul Sheldon of Rob Reiner's adaptation of Stephen King's Misery), being unconscious (Nancy Thompson of Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street), having an overly active imagination (the narrator of H. G. Wells's “The Red Room”), having sex (Tobey of Mitchell Lichtenstein's Teeth), being lost in unfamiliar surroundings (the Carter family of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes), being confused (Emily Callaway of John Polson's Hide and Seek), and having a debilitating condition (Berenice in Edgar Allan Poe's “Berenice” and the narrator in his “The Premature Burial”).

Such conditions not only render a victim or a potential victim vulnerable or helpless, but these circumstances also make the characters in jeopardy sympathetic to readers or moviegoers. To be stalked and injured or killed is, of course, terrifying in itself, but to be hunted and attacked while one is inexperienced, disabled, injured, unconscious, in flagrante delicto, lost and disoriented, confused, or suffering from a debilitating condition only adds to the sense of panic readers and moviegoers experience on behalf of potential or actual victims.

Making a character vulnerable or helpless through circumstances, conditions, or situations isn't the only way that writers of horror heighten suspense. They can also create villains who are so unusual or who suffer from such extreme conditions themselves that their own compromising situations make them uncontrollable. Some of the ways that writers use to accomplish this end include making their villains psychotic (Jack Torrance of Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining), making them possessed by the devil or demons (Regan MacNeil of William Friedkin's adaptation of William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist), and showing them to be confused (Grace Stewart of Alejandro Amenabar's The Others). Of course, there are also the two traditional standbys: making the villain an extraterrestrial (Sil of Roger Donaldson's Species) or of supernatural origin (the ghost in Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist).

Characters + Twist = Outcome

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

It's possible to analyze the plot dynamics of horror fiction, whether a particular narrative or drama takes the form of a novel, a short story, a narrative poem, or a movie), in a variety of ways.

In the scheme proposed in this post, two (occasionally, more) characters are involved in a relationship of some sort, and an unknown, unusual or extraordinary twist causes or facilitates a significant outcome, which may or may not be catastrophic.

Movie: Hide and Seek (2005)

Characters: Dr. David Calloway and Emily Calloway

Relationship: Father and daughter

Twist: David is schizophrenic; he has an alter ego called "Charlie"

Outcome:  Charlie is killed after he attacks Emily (murder and attempted murder)

Movie: The Exorcist (1973)

Characters: Father Damien Karras and Regan MacNeil

Relationship: Father Karras, an exorcist, exorcises demon-possessed Regan

Twist: The demon possesses its true target, Father Karras

Outcome: Father Karras commits suicide, but Regan is delivered (deliverance)

Movie: The Others (2001)

Characters: Grace Stewart, Anne Stewart, and Nicholas Stewart

Relationship: Grace is the mother of Anne and Nicholas

Twist: Grace and her children are ghosts

Outcome: Grace discovers that she is in Limbo after having killed Anne and Nicholas and murdered herself (discovery of truth)

 

 Movie: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Characters: Malcolm Crowe and Cole Sear

Relationship: Malcolm is a psychologist; Nathan is one of his patients

Twist: Malcolm discovers he is a ghost (discovery of truth)

Outcome: Malcolm is able to rest in peace (acceptance)

Movie: Psycho (1960)

Characters: Norman Bates and his “mother”

Relationship: Norman is a motel owner; he lives with and takes care of his mother

Twist:  Norman is schizophrenic; “Mother” is Norman's alter ego, who kills a motel guest

Outcome: “Mother” completely takes over Norman's mind (destruction of personality)

Movie: The Most Dangerous Game (1924)

Characters: Sanger Rainsford and General Zarof

Relationship: Rainsford is Zaroff's guest

Twist: Zaroff hunts Rainsford

Outcome: Rainsford survives, after killing Zaroff (implied) (survival)

Edgar Allan Poe: Character Studies or Depictions of Aberrant Behavior?

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Egaeus, the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's “Berenice: A Tale,” which was published in the March 1835 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger, was considered, by some of the story's “early readers” to suffer from “monomania.” Indeed, Egaeus identifies this malady as the “disease” that afflicts him; the condition, he admits, is aggravated by his “immoderate use of opium,” a drug the use of which, for recreational or other purposes, was legal in Poe's day (although Poe himself did not use the drug):

. . . my own disease . . . . monomania . . . consisted in a morbid irritability of the nerves immediately affecting those properties of the mind, in metaphysical science termed the attentive. . . . I fear that it is . . . in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the general merely reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied, and as it were, buried themselves in the contemplation of even the most common objects of the universe.

Eventually, his gaze falls upon the teeth of his cousin, who suffers from catatonia and who, Egaeus believes, is dying. As he beholds her wasted image, contemplating “her thin and shrunken lips,” Berenice smiles. For Egaeus, her smile is one “of peculiar meaning, [revealing] the teeth of the changed Berenice.” Egaeus reacts with horror, proclaiming, “Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!”

At the time, psychology, as a science (even today, this classification is suspect among many scientists), was considered a division of philosophy. In Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) Imamnuel Kant (1724-1804) had recognized that psychology is unscientific because the object of its study (first identified as the psyche, or soul, and then as thought, or cognition, and then, later still, as human behavior) cannot be quantified. Later, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper (1902-1994) suggests that any scientific hypothesis should be falsifiable through experimentation or observation (the empirical method), a test that psychology often fails.

Be that as it may, even today, perhaps for the want of anything else, psychology retains authority in courts of law and other social venues. In Poe's time, the better educated among the general public might have been persuaded by the claims of early psychologists, just as they were by the pronouncements of phrenologists. In general, however, many of Poe's readers would have been ignorant even of the rudimentary psychology of their day. To them, Poe's accounts of the effects of certain clusters of behavior now considered to be symptomatic of particular mental disorders to which contemporary psychologists (but not their predecessors) have put a name would have seemed mysterious, because their causes were unknown (as, indeed, is the case with regard to many such conditions even now), which is why therapy frequently avails little as a method of “treatment.” (Drugs have proven a more effective means of treatment, in some cases, a fact which seems to support Dr. Thomas Szasz's contention, in The Myth of Mental Illness, that “mental illness,” as such, does not exist; what does exist, he claims, is aberrant behavior caused by organic problems.)

We may not understand the workings of the soul or cognition or human behavior or whatever psychologists claim to study any better today than our ancestors did, but many members of the general public are satisfied by their belief that we do. By identifying the symptoms Poe's characters display, some contemporary literary critics and others have diagnosed the mental disorders from which these characters seem to suffer. However, again, these concepts and their bases would have been unknown to Poe and his readers.

The narrator of “Berenice: A Tale,” therefore, was not suffering from monomania. Instead, he suffers “from what is now called obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD),” a type of “anxiety disorder” characterized by

. . . recurrent, disturbing, unwanted, anxiety-producing obsessions (insistent thoughts or ruminations that at least initially are experienced as intrusive or absurd) or compulsions (repetitive ritualistic behaviors, or mental actions such as praying or counting, and purposeful actions that are intentional, even though they may be reluctantly performed because they are considered abnormal, undesirable, or distasteful to the subject.) The compulsion may consist of ritualistic, stereotyped behavior or it may be a response to an obsession or to the rules that the person feels obliged to follow. The obsession often involves the thought of harming others or ideas that the subject feels are gory, sexually perverse, profane, or horrifying (Campbell's Psychiatric Dictionary, ninth edition).

Admittedly, this summary of the disorder describes Egaeus's behavior almost to a “T.” He is undoubtedly obsessed with the teeth of his cousin, Berenice, so much so that, visiting her tomb, he rips the teeth from her jaws. As horrific as this revelation is, it is not the most horrible shock that awaits Poe's reader at the end of this tale of terror. For that disclosure, one must read the story for him- or herself.

In earlier posts, we've considered how an author, by withholding the cause of the bizarre effects he or she presents at the beginning and middle of a story (and continues to depict well into the final division of the narrative), before revealing, at last, the cause of these effects, can repeatedly generate fear while maintaining or heightening suspense. Partly by sheer luck—being active as a writer during a time when psychology had not yet made an attempt to identify, describe, and categorize mental disorders as a way of diagnosing and treating them—and, possibly, by design (Poe often does not identify the causes of his effects, leaving them mysterious through the lack of a complete context)—Poe accomplishes just these ends. “Berenice: A Tale” seems all the more mysterious, macabre, and horrific to those modern readers among us who are not well-versed in psychology. By dint of the narrator's strange conduct, which is not explained by the outdated concept of “monomania,” we are left in the dark as to the cause of Egaeus's bizarre behavior, making it seem all the more mysterious. (The same is true of those who reject the claim that psychology is a science and continue to regard it as little more than unfounded speculation.) There is no reason that writers today cannot, again, follow in the footsteps of Poe, emulating his genius as a storyteller who was given to the creation of horror stories in a class by themselves: present bizarre behavior without explaining (or explaining away) its cause.

For critics of psychology, including disbelievers in its mythological aspects, who reject the study of the soul, or of cognition, or of human behavior, or of whatever psychologists claim to study, as having a scientific basis, such “disorders” as OCD, can still have value, as types of exercises of the sort that the ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus (c. 371-c. 287 BC) developed in his Characters. Its pages describe thirty types of characters, including “The Flatterer,” “The Garrulous Man,” “The Boor,” “The Reckless Man,” “The Gossip,” and “The Superstitious Man.” The descriptions summarize the behaviors of these various characters, much as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (now in its edition) describes the symptoms of various “mental disorders.” Indeed, looking upon the DSM not as a clinical source, but as a writing resource similar to Theophrastus's character sketches, can provide a similar useful resource, minus the DSM's psychological trappings.

In future posts, we will consider more of the character types (i. e., “mental disorders”) among Poe's cast of grotesques.

Context and Conundrum

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Like all other types of fiction, the horror genre creates, maintains, and heightens suspense--in other words, keeps readers reading or viewers viewing--by withholding facts or other information that is vital to the perception, understanding, and appreciation of the narrative’s context. Because the reader or the viewer does not (yet) know enough to know what is happening (or, more commonly, why what is happening is happening), he or she is intrigued. He or she wants to know what will happen next and, ultimately, why the series of (usually bizarre) incidents is happening at all.

In fiction, context is created through the presence and unification of all narrative elements: characters, setting, action, dialogue, conflict, theme. By temporarily withholding information concerning one or more of these critical elements, providing details little by little, over a period of time, at predetermined, strategic intervals, a novelist (or, for that matter, a short story writer, a narrative poet, or a screenwriter or playwright) creates mystery. The mystery, if it is compelling--for example, it concerns an intriguing character, an important conflict, or an unusual theme (or, better yet, all three)--will cause the reader or the viewer to continue to invest his or her time in pursuing the story that he or she is reading or watching.

In horror fiction, after establishing a sense of everydayness and routine, the plot usually introduces a series of bizarre (often, increasingly bizarre) incidents that, at first, appear to have no bearing upon or association with one another. Finally, the protagonist learns the cause of these incidents and, using this newfound knowledge, and usually aided by friends, he or she sets things right, restoring the status quo. This is a simple storyline, but the withholding of key information, whether concerning characters, setting, action, dialogue, conflict, theme, or several of these elements, complicates the action, creating, maintaining, and heightening the suspense that keeps readers reading and viewers viewing. The plot might look like this:

Everyday Routine--> Bizarre Incident 1--> Withholding of Information Concerning Character--> Bizarre Incident 2--> Bizarre Incident 3--> Bizarre Incident 4--> Bizarre Incident 5--> Withholding of Information Concerning Setting--> Bizarre Incident 6--> Withholding of Information Concerning Conflict--> Bizarre Incident 7--> Bizarre Incident 8--> Bizarre Incident--> Bizarre Incident 10--> Discovery of Cause of Bizarre Series of Incidents--> Bizarre incident 11--> Bizarre Incident 12--> Use of Knowledge to Overcome Threat--> Restoration of Status Quo
 

Quick Tip: Let Your Setting Suggest Your Characters

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

A middle school literature textbook presents three lines of dialogue between two characters, asking students to imagine the words spoken in several very different settings, thereby hoping to impress upon them the importance of setting in establishing a context for how what is said is said. This is an interesting approach, and one that can also work for horror writers (or authors of any kind). For example. Imagine these lines of dialogue spoken in a cemetery:

Character A: Where’s Henry?
Character B: He has to be here, somewhere!
Character A: Yeah, it’s not likely he’s wandered off anywhere.

Is Henry a corpse?

Now, imagine the same lines of dialogue spoken in a supposedly haunted house:

Character A: Where’s Henry?
Character B: He has to be here, somewhere!
Character A: Yeah, it’s not likely he’s wandered off anywhere.

Did a ghost get Henry?

In a lifeboat on the open sea:

Character A: Where’s Henry?
Character B: He has to be here, somewhere!
Character A: Yeah, it’s not likely he’s wandered off anywhere.

Did Henry, perhaps delusional, leap overboard while the others slept?

In a spaceship:

Character A: Where’s Henry?
Character B: He has to be here, somewhere!
Character A: Yeah, it’s not likely he’s wandered off anywhere.

Did an alien stowaway capture or kill Henry?

Remember that almost every situation that involves more than one character (and some scenes which involve only one character) is likely to have at least two, and sometimes more, points of view, which allows at least two lines of development for the dialogue. For example, visitors to a cemetery (or even grave robbers) might enquire as to Henry’s whereabouts--or the whereabouts of his grave--concluding that he must be somewhere nearby, since corpses cannot “wander off anywhere,” or Henry could be another of their group, a third visitor (or grave robber). For that matter, Henry could be the son, or even a pet dog ,of one of the characters. Likewise, in the haunted house, Henry could be a ghost hunter or a ghost. He could be one of a group of homeless men who has suddenly somehow disappeared or a police officer who had been, a moment ago, investigating the place with his partner and a couple of backup police officers. Maybe Henry isn’t a delusional shipwreck survivor; instead, maybe he is a character in the delusion of one or more of the survivors and, as such, exists only in their fevered dreams. Likewise, Henry may not be a member of the spaceship’s crew or a passenger aboard the spaceship; he could be a live specimen of an extraterrestrial species that the astronauts have captured and are bringing home to earth for study. He could be a criminal who is being transported to a prison planet. He could be the one and only mechanic who is able to repair the ship’s faulty impulse-drive before the craft falls into the planet it’s orbiting.

By exploring other possibilities than the one that comes first to mind, a writer can perhaps surprise, shock, or even horrify, the reader. The writers of The Others do just this, suggesting to their audience that the protagonist, Grace Stewart, and her children and servants are being haunted, whereas, in fact, as incidents toward the end of the film show, it is she, her son and daughter, and the servants who are the ghosts who are haunting the house’s mortal residents. Imagining the same lines of dialogue spoken by characters in different settings is a way to accomplish similar sleights of mind.

Frustrating Formulaic Fiction

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Genre fiction is formulaic fiction. It must be. There’s an unwritten law somewhere that requires it to be. (Or maybe it’s a written law.) Formulaic fiction fails to entertain after a while, because most people get tired of reading yet another variation on the same tired and tattered narrative formula, especially when the formula is fairly straightforward and simple. Formulaic fiction fails because it is predicable. A reader pretty much knows what to expect from the beginning and pretty much every time before something happens. Formulaic fiction is unimaginative, unoriginal, predictable, and boring. It’s a cliché. Actually, it’s a series of clichés strung together like so many faux pearls. There are no surprises, shocks, chills, or thrills because everything that happens is seen coming way before it actually arrives. Familiarity breeds contempt, and formulaic fiction, whether it’s adventure, detective, horror, fantasy, romance, science fiction, Western, or otherwise, is all too familiar to its readers. In a word, formulaic fiction is frustrating, but there are ways to frustrate formulaic fiction. In this post, we will consider a few techniques for doing so. Mostly, though, these methods boil down to this: become a Boy Scout. In other words, as a writer, expect the unexpected--from yourself and your characters. Formulaic fiction is formulaic largely because it is routine and repetitive rather than exploratory. It follows the same path over the same ground, leading around and around in the same concentric circles. To frustrate formulaic fiction, a writer must become a stranger in a strange land. He or she must choose the little-worn over the well-worn path. Better yet, he or she should choose from one of several other possible paths. Just as some moviemakers now make movies with one official ending, as it were, and several “alternative endings,” a writer should have several pathways (and possibly a few byways) from any major (or even minor) incident of the plot. Stories are, by and large, linear, but the any point from “B” to “Z” can end up as point “B.” Only after it is chosen, does it become the chosen one. Until then, several other incidents should compete for the honor and distinction of being this second incident. The same is true of incidents “C,” “D,” and so on, all the way to “Z” (or however many incidents make up the chain of actions, events, and situations that form the story’s plot). Let’s try an example. A man finds a love letter, in his wife’s hand, addressed to another man. Oops! What might he do?

• Confront his wife about the affair.
• Confront his rival about the affair.
• Confront both is rival and his wife about the affair.
• Leave his wife, without divorcing her.
• Divorce his wife.
• Kill his rival.
• Kill his wife.
• Kill himself.
• Kill both his rival and his wife.
• Kill both his rival and himself.
• Kill both his wife and himself.
• Kill all three parties--his rival, his wife, and himself.
• Show the love letter to his (and his wife’s) children.
• Show the love letter to his wife’s parents.
• Show the love letter to his own parents.
• Pretend he never found the love letter.
• Write a “love letter” of his own to his rival, signing his wife’s name (or using a photocopy of her signature).
• Do two or more of these options.

Of course, there are many other possibilities, some much more imaginative than any that we’ve listed, and some may suggest still others. The point is that, by listing these alternatives, the writer will have expanded his or her options considerably. If he or she chooses the more imaginative, even if it is also the more unlikely, option, his or her story will be correspondingly less predictable and, therefore, that much less formulaic.