What Scares Me and, More Importantly, What Scares YOU?

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

The List Challenges website depicts “A List of 100 Common (And Not So Common) Fears. Maybe some of yours are on it. A few of mine certainly are!

 

Among the fears identified on the List Challenges list are the fears of heights, dogs, diseases, dying, spiders, flying, snakes, crowds, elevators, being pregnant, and a lot more.

What scares me?

 

The uncertainty of life: We are here today and gone tomorrow, but we don't know when “tomorrow” may come.

 

Being trapped: Despair, followed closely by madness, seems likely to be the end results of being trapped; when there is no way out, there is no hope; when there is not hope, sanity seems certain.

 

Pain: Each of us has his or her own pain threshold. For some, it is lower than for others but, at some point, we will have had more than enough, more, maybe, than we can handle. When and where the threshold is—well, we wouldn't know that until we'd passed it.

 

Torture: To be tortured implies that one is bound or caged, as no one would suffer torture willingly, and if we are immobilized or confined, we have neither freedom nor control; we are helpless at the hands (literally) of a sadist. Watching another person being tortured might not frighten as much as horrify.

Heights: A height reminds us of the precariousness of our existence, of how quickly, completely, and irrevocably our existence—our minds, hearts, dreams, and intentions—can be wiped out within seconds, should we fall.

Now, what about you?

What sacres you? Make a list. Then, ask yourself what the fear is about. For example, if you fear darkness, why? What does darkness imply, or represent, to you? Blindness? Vulnerability? Loss of control? Helplessness? All of the above?

Once you have your list and you have identified what each specific fear may “mean” to you, ask yourself how you could visually represent the fear and its “meaning” to an audience. What images would you choose? How would you convey them?

Here's how I would visualize my own:

The uncertainty of life: A patient lies in bed, on his back. He turns onto his left side. A patient nutrition representative enters the room, picks up the patient's tray, on which the meal delivered earlier remains untouched. It is a meal that could be served for lunch or dinner. The representative shakes his head, looking with pity upon the sleeping patient, the leaves, removing the tray. The patient rolls onto his right side. The vital signs monitor's alarms sound, the numbers on the multiple displays spinning impossibly fast, as various lights flash. The monitor shows flat lines. In bed, the patient twists, sits rigidly upright, collapses, writhes, frothing at the mouth, his eyes bulging. The vital signs monitor melts, catching fire. A clock shows a second hand sweep past noon or, perhaps, midnight: the lighting of the room makes it impossible to tell which. The patient's body relaxes, goes limp; his eyes stare at nothing.

Being trapped: A mine collapses. Inside, pinned beneath fallen rock, a miner struggles to free himself. After a strenuous struggle, he quits, out of breath and weak. He sees a saw just out of reach. The mine remains unstable. A fall of rock shoves the saw within the miner's reach. Grimacing, he cuts off the leg beneath the rock, ties a tourniquet around his amputated calf, and crawls down the tunnel of the mine. He passes out. Awakening later, he is weaker from blood loss, but he manages to crawl toward a shaft of sunlight, hopeful that he has found a means of escape. As he continues to crawl, another collapse of the mine occurs, burying him and crushing him to death.

Pain: A surgeon tells a missionary who preaches at a remote African mission that his injury has become infected with gangrene and that his leg must be amputated. Fortunately, medical supplies are available, and the surgeon has everything he needs—except an anesthetic. The surgeon tells four men he has recruited as assistants to “hold him down.” To the missionary, the surgeon says, “Star praying, padre.”

Torture: A Chinese soldier is assigned the task of filming the torture of a Chinese man who tried to assassinate a politician. The failed assassin has been condemned to die the death of a thousand cuts. The soldier photographing the horrific torture wants desperately to avert his eyes but cannot. He winces as the first cut to the condemned man's body is made.

Heights: A woman taking a selfie poses at the edge of a 2,000-foot cliff. Unnoticed to her, a rat scampers over nearby rocks. “It's funny,” she says aloud, “how we fear one thing and not another. I mean, I'm terrified of rats, but heights mean nothing to me.” She adjusts her stance, moves her camera in and out, adjusting the range. The rat dashes forth from a crevice. Seeing it, she jumps backward and falls to her death, her body tumbling down the jagged face of the cliff.

Now, ask yourself what to change, if anything. Add details? Delete details? Change an angle? Show blood? Viscera? Switch between everyday incidents and the building horror you are showing? Have two people trapped in different ways? Two people experiencing different kinds of pain? Two people being tortured at the same time but in different ways? Two people climbing a cliff, one of whom falls? Change the character's age, sex, or social class? Change the setting so that, perhaps, torture occurs in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel or the fall from a height involves a helicopter instead of a cliff? Change the time that the horrific incident takes place? It's not a mine, but one's own mind, in which the character is trapped? Work up several scenes before deciding on which is most horrific. Then, change your description into a full, dramatic scene and use it in your novel, short story, or film script.

The Thrill of It All, Part 3

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Writers are often encouraged to “show” rather than to “tell,” as if their novels and short stories are motion pictures.

It can't be done, of course, any more than Las Vegas, Nevada (famous for its miniaturized reproductions of such world-famous landmarks as the Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty), can reproduce an actual beach (although Mandalay Bay certainly makes an attempt to do so.)

The closest a novelist or a short story writer can come to “showing” action is to describe it in active voice (of course), using action verbs and lots of figures of speech. (Three masters of descriptive writing who come readily to mind, by the way, are the late Ray Bradbury, the late H. G. Wells, and the very-much-alive Frank Peretti. The late William Peter Blatty isn't bad, either, although his descriptions tend to be a bit on the weighty, even rather tangible, side.)

In addition, writers can be, and often are, inspired by movies, just as screenwriters often adapt novelists' books to the big screen or allude to them, more or less directly, in their films. Quentin Tarantino pretty well summed up the state of affairs when he said, “I steal from every movie ever made.” (He meant, of course, that he is inspired by the work of other moviemakers.)

Writers are a bit handicapped, dealing in words, rather than moving images. Nevertheless, a few techniques can help a writer translate other people's ideas, words, and images into the writer's own ideas, words, and images.

Some horror movie posters use red letters to attract viewers' attention. This device works best, perhaps, when the red letters are integral to the movie's plot. Think of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel the Scarlet Letter, Stephen Crane's novel the Red Badge of Courage, or Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Masque of the Red Death”: posters for any movie version of these literary classics would almost certainly feature red letters in the posters' titles or captions.

One way that writers can accomplish a similar feat is to describe bloody graffiti. Here's an example:

Except for the peeling paint, the long, high wall of the building forming the left side of the narrow alley was featureless and nondescript—well, except for the peeling paint and the ominous word, spelled out in foot-tall, dripping, crimson letters: MURDER.

(Yes, a novel can include red letters, in all caps, bolded and italicized.)

 Some horror movies' titles include effective plays on words. A couple, Shutter and Shutter Island, use a homonym for “shudder,” a word that alludes to a reaction to fear: when one is sufficiently frightened, he or she is apt to tremble, or shudder. Although “shutter” means something quite different than “shudder,” the words sound enough alike that the connotative associations of “shudder” are transmitted to “shutter.”

Obviously, writers can use homonyms and other plays on words in their writing, but they shouldn't overdo it; the “punch” of a play on words comes from its unexpectedness coupled with its curious appropriateness. By overusing wordplay, writers defeat their own purpose.

Here's an example:

The reporter's use of “cereal” instead of “serial,” whether a puerile attempt at wit or an honest mistake that somehow escaped the proofreader's review of the article, was both shocking and ghastly: the report was about a killer who preyed upon children, after all.

The poster promoting Intruder prominently displays severed human body parts. One way that a writer can do the same thing, while avoiding plagiarism, is to describe the parts as realistic-looking props in a novelty shop's display window:

Scattered among the playthings spilled from the children's toy box in the novelty shop's display window were a man's “bloody” severed head and a dismembered forearm bearing a tattoo of a woman's name surrounded by a bloody pink Valentine heart.

Several horror movie posters depict skulls. In a few such posters, the skulls are composed of a variety of smaller images that, together, make up the image of the skull. It would be difficult for a writer to describe such a composite image (and it might take several pages). Instead, the shape, as a whole, could be described, supported by descriptions of only a few of the smaller pictures that make up a couple of the parts of the skull. Perhaps the skull could be a mosaic or a collage:

For the final exam, Jason's art teacher, Ms. Fenway, had assigned her students to create a collage, which had given him the perfect excuse to buy a dozen magazines devoted to horror. Unfortunately, now he had to cut them to pieces, excising pictures that, together, he could assemble so they'd form a giant skull. He'd already glued down the coronal suture, using the stitches from the back of one of Frankenstein's monster's hands. How, he cut out a decapitated head, a loop of intestines, a nest of vipers, and a seductive incubus, dark images all, to form the left ocular orbit; its twin would be made up of a single picture: a jack-o-lantern bearing part of Michael Meyers's face. When the collage was complete, Ms. Fenway would (a) have a heart attack, (b) give him an “A,” (c) suggest his parent hire a psychiatrist, or (d) all of the above.

Pictures similar to those which appear on posters for Halloween, Black Christmas, or other holiday-themed horror movie posters could be described as posters in pop-up stores devoted to particular holiday sales:

Santa looked especially old as he faced off against the demonic snowman. The human head on the Christmas tree was a novel, if rather grotesque, ornament. The blood leading up to the chimney on the snow-covered rooftop suggested that Santa had come to a bad end. The snow globe didn't replicate a blizzard, but a deluge of blood. Thaddeus Gorman smiled, as he set the hammer aside. The posters he'd hung by the chimney with care created a festive, if eerie, air to his pop-up Christmas shop. He was ready, now, for business!

Possibilities are virtually endless, but two things are required:

1. Avoid plagiarism. A horror movie poster can inspire, but it shouldn't be copied, even in words. Instead, let the design, the use of color, the images, the text, and the other elements of the poster suggest similar (or even opposite) ideas. It's the ideas you want. Ideas cannot be copyrighted; specific creations based on ideas can, and usually are, copyrighted.
2. To describe the pictures you have in mind, don't use the same devices as the posters use. Change the ways you use and “display” word pictures. Instead of a poster's use of red letters in a string of text, describe only a single word, written as graffiti on a wall; in place of a poster's display of body parts next to a cash register, describe them as items among a child's toys; rather than employing a poster's exhibition of a skull made up of images (possibly of characters and settings and actions in the movie the poster promotes), show them as pictures cut out of a magazine as material for a collage: pictures similar to those on horror movie posters can be altered and appear as posters in a pop-up Halloween or Christmas shop. Use your own ideas (not the movie posters' or mine, as described here). How? Use your imagination.

There's more to learn from analyzing thriller (and horror) movie posters. We'll do just that in a future Chillers and Thrillers post.

Scenic Posters

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

A common formula for many horror stories, whether written on the page or enacted on the soundstage, consists of five acts:

1. The status quo is portrayed.
2. A series of bizarre incidents occur.
3. The protagonist discovers the cause of these incidents.
4. The protagonist, often aided by friends, uses his or her knowledge of the cause of the incidents to put things right.
5. A return to the status quo is shown (although the ending may also hint at a possible sequel).

As in describing a scene in order both to represent and to dramatize it, it can be helpful to draw inspiration from a horror movie poster (the book cover, as it were, of a film), this same process can be useful in generating scenes which comprise the bizarre incidents which occur in act two (and, perhaps, later as well). Remember that the scenes so created must be causally related, although their ultimate cause will be withheld until act three.

An inspiration for a scene might be the poster for Annabelle: Creation (2017). (In writing from movie posters, I usually select posters for movies I haven't seen, and I don't read a synopsis of the film. I want to be inspired by the poster's art; I don't want to steal the screenwriters' original treatment.) With this in mind, let's look at the way NOT to do this:

My senses on high alert, I stole glances to either side and over my shoulder, as I crept along the cold, damp corridor, feeling trapped by the ancient basement's gray stone walls, stone floor, and stone ceiling.

I was conscious of the tons of massive rock above me and of the cataclysm which would ensue should all that weight come tumbling down (not that it should), and I imagined the terrors that likely befell the poor lost souls shut away inside the subterranean chambers which opened off the warren of intersecting hallways—or would have opened, had they not been locked.

As I continued along the maze, I heard the grating of rusty hinges, as a great, thick iron door opened of its own accord. Its loud, high-pitched creaking noise made my heart shrink, even as I turned, staring with horror at the sight within the chamber thus revealed.

A girl stood, her arms raised and extended at shoulder level; her body limp; her legs, one of which wore a brace, together. She was pale, and her eyes were closed. Perhaps she was not standing, after all. She seemed to have recently died—after having been crucified. However, no nails had been driven through her wrists or ankles.

A chill of horror iced my spine, as I saw another disturbing anomaly: a doll seemed to float before her, positioned as though it were seated upon the girl's lap, although, of course, her hanging vertically from the wall precluded such a possibility. The doll must be pinned to the girl's dress.

But why would someone go to such trouble? The scene seemed some sort of bizarre tableau, but, if so, to what end? Or did it have a purpose? Perhaps the hole mise-en-scene was nothing more than the whim of a mind gone mad.

Run! For God's sake, flee this damned place!

At my peril, in my foolishness, my curiosity greater than my wisdom, I stayed, gazing at the figure of torment within the chamber to which the open door admitted my horrified gaze.

At the girl's feet, a small table had been overturned. I squinted, focusing my gaze, and drew back, horrified anew: the table, like the chair beside it, the doll, and, indeed, the girl herself floated! Suspended in midair, they were held stationary and aloft by a power both unseen and unknown.

The girl wore patent-leather shoes, which were all but invisible in the darkness of what, I realized now, was a window—or a long, narrow rectangular opening, without glass, within the chamber's wall, behind the female figure, unlit and indistinct. Its shape had added to the illusion that the girl had been crucified, for, in the dim light, it looked like a plank of wood to which her ankles might have been nailed, as her wrists, at first, had seemed to be fixed to the stone wall.

Aghast, I stumbled away from the open doorway, realizing my retreat only when my back encountered the immovable resistance of the corridor's opposite wall. As I continued to stare at the girl afloat against her chamber's wall, her eyes opened, revealing yet another horror: the whites were blood-red, her pupils elliptical and golden, as if ablaze with the fire of hell, an effect strengthened by the appearance, between her soft, pink lips of a split serpent's tongue!

The doll, the countenance of which was of a decidedly malevolent character, opened its mouth, and, in a voice more suitable to a demon than to a toy in the shape of a babe in arms, harshly croaked a plea both pathetic and horrendous: Help us!

Turning, I ran along the stony floor, the doll's croaking supplication seeming to reverberate throughout the underground hallways and subterranean chambers as if the labyrinth were the many mouths and throats of hell's damned souls crying in unison, Help us!

This description is too close to the picture on the poster to be used in a story of one's own, but, in writing it, I conceived an idea for a novel, or part of one, so the effort isn't necessarily lost, even though it didn't achieved its intended goal, which was to develop a scene that is inspired by, rather than merely repeats, a scene painted for a movie poster. It would be a mistake—and a significant, perhaps costly, one—to use the description I wrote of the Annabelle: Creation poster's picture in a story of my own; it is too close to the scene depicted by the poster and could, therefore, represent plagiarized content were it to be used as is in an independent work.

However, all may not be lost, even now, in this exercise.

Returning to my description (and to the poster), I can isolate the elements that are horrific and uncanny and repeat them in a new description that is sufficiently different to avoid copying the Annabelle: Creation artwork. So what are the poster's elements of horror and the uncanny? As I see them:

• isolation
• innocence mocked through parody
• religious faith mocked through parody
• victimization
• perversions of the Christian concepts of the crucifixion and the creation
• confusion created by a maze of underground corridors and chambers
• supernatural power displayed

With these elements in mind, a rewrite of the original description can perhaps salvage the scene, allowing it to be used in a work of one's own:

My senses on high alert, I stole glances to either side and over my shoulder, as I crept along the cold, damp corridor, feeling trapped by the ancient basement's gray stone walls, stone floor, and stone ceiling.

I was conscious of the tons of massive rock above me and of the cataclysm which would ensue should all that weight come tumbling down (not that it should), and I imagined the terrors that likely befell the poor lost souls shut away inside the subterranean chambers which opened off the warren of intersecting hallways—or would have opened, had they not been locked.

As I continued along the maze, I heard the grating of rusty hinges, as a great, thick iron door opened of its own accord. Its loud, high-pitched creaking noise made my heart shrink, even as I turned, staring with horror at the sight within the chamber thus revealed.

A boy lay upon an elevated stone slab inside a room resembling a tomb cut from a rock. He was naked but for a cloth laid over his groin. His arms were extended straight out, from his shoulders; his body was limp, his legs together. He was pale, and his eyes were closed. He seemed to have recently died—after having been crucified. Wounds from spikes driven through his wrists and ankles were crusted with the blood staining the altar upon which the body lay.

What had I stumbled upon? The result of the crucifixion of a child? What recent madness had happened here, in the bowels of a castle thought long deserted? Were the villains who'd committed this blasphemous murder still in secret residence? Was I being watched by the madmen who'd committed this unspeakable sacrilege?

Run! For God's sake, flee this damned place!

At my peril, in my foolishness, my curiosity greater than my wisdom, I stayed, gazing at the figure of torment within the chamber to which the open door had admitted my horrified gaze, until, aghast in contemplating the sight, I stumbled away from the open doorway, realizing my retreat had been underway only when my back encountered the immovable resistance of the corridor's opposite wall.

Now, as I continued to stare at the unfortunate boy, his eyes opened, revealing yet another horror: the whites were blood-red, his pupils elliptical and golden, as if ablaze with the fire of hell, an effect strengthened by the appearance, between his soft, pink lips, of a split serpent's tongue!

The features of his handsome face distorted, as a malevolent hatred akin to rage animated the corpse, its mouth opening as a voice more suitable to a demon than to a child, harshly croaked a plea both pathetic and horrendous: Help us!

Turning, I ran, finally, in headlong flight, along the stony floor, the demon-child's croaking supplication seeming to reverberate throughout the underground hallways and subterranean chambers, as if the labyrinth were the many mouths and throats of hell's damned souls, crying in unison, Help us! although, in their infernal state, neither deliverance nor succor was possible. All that was left them was this tableau of the damned, by which they not only tormented the living, but also continued their unholy protests against the Almighty whom, even in thethroes of their eternal torment, to curse and vilify.

This second description, inspired by the poster and by the unsuccessful attempt to capture in words, while avoiding copying, which would result, if included, as originally written, in my own, otherwise original work, in plagiarism, now works, for it is different enough to be my own, a work inspired by, rather than merely copied from, the original poster. It is itself original, instead of simply derivative.

Conveying Fear

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror posters are like the covers of horror novels, except the former's production quality is usually far superior to that of a paperback's cover art.

Extending the comparison, we could say that the movie's trailer is cinematic equivalent of the blurb on the inside flap of the dust cover or the back of a paperback. Both introduce the main character, the villain, and the conflict, the trailer in dramatic, audio-visual terms, the blurb in narrative, linguistic fashion. The former has immediacy; the latter, not so much.

Today, both posters and book covers often have only a marginal relationship to the story's plot. (Those of yesteryear seem to have been more closely associated with the story.) In general, the trailers and blurbs are more trustworthy indicators of what happens in the movie or the novel.

Contemporary movie posters (more than present-day novels' cover art) seek to tap into their viewers' emotions. Whether the movie's an action-adventure film, a comedy, a detective movie, a fantasy, a horror film, a mystery, a romance, sci-fi, a western, or some other genre or a hybrid of some sort, its poster will tap into such feelings as awe, delight, wonder, fear, and bewilderment, suggesting that the film that the poster advertises will immerse viewers in such emotional experiences.

Huckleberry Finn, which is undoubtedly one of the great comedy masterpieces of American—or world—literature usually features an image of the adolescent hero rafting along the Mississippi River; Sherlock Holmes anthologies usually confront us with a close-up of the detective in his deerstalker cap, smoking his pipe; romance novels depict glamorous fashionistas being swept off their feet by bare-chested macho men; many a Western novel portrays a gunman of some sort or a solitary rider shown in silhouette against a dusky sky. In some cases, the cover art suggests emotion. Movie posters almost always do.

Find out how a movie poster suggests fear—and what type of fear it suggests—and you are well on the way to knowing how to convey such fears yourself in the stories you write.

Selecting a poster that implies a story is helpful, but, of course, the story it suggests has to be appropriate for the larger story you're telling, the larger narrative of which it, as a scene, would be a part.

Let's try a couple examples.

Here is a movie poster for The Conjuring (2013). What type of emotion does it convey? How does it convey this emotion? In other words, what artistic or rhetorical techniques are employed to convey this emotion? These are my responses to these questions. (Yours may differ.)

Emotion = fear of the unknown

Techniques: symbolism, color, contrast

Using this analysis, write a descriptive paragraph, of 150 words or fewer, that accomplishes what the poster achieves. (In writing, description is the counterpart to the movie camera.) Then, you may want to break the paragraph into shorter ones. Here is one possibility:

The white flame burns brightly, lighting the darkness and the face of the frightened woman holding the match. Framed by her blonde tresses, her face is tense.

Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, as she stares into the darkness beyond the faint light, straining to see, as she strains to hear.

Between her forefinger and her thumb, the match quivers, its reduced flame flickering. Its faint light is all that stands between her and the unknown.

Soon, it will go out, and the darkness will swallow her again, and the thing for which she searches, lost in the gloom—will it lunge? Fall upon her? Rip, rend, and tear her?

Already, the flame is small and unsteady. Her hand shakes.

The darkness and the thing in the darkness wait. (131 words)

Here's a poster for the intended Halloween Returns film, which “was cancelled when Dimension Films lost the rights to the Halloween franchise.” Although the movie was never made, the poster suggests a scene that could fit into an original story. Since an original story couldn't use the characters from the Halloween series, the Laurie Strode character and the Michael Myers figure would have to be generic or fashioned after the characters of one's own story. This time, our description is a bit longer and more detailed.

Emotion =apprehension, anxiety

Techniques: juxtaposition, colors (“lighting”), contrast

She wore a blue sweater, not only because it was cool, but also, and more importantly, because the color had a calming effect on her. Her therapist, Ms. Phillips, had recommended pink, telling her that prison walls had been painted this color because of its proven soothing effect. But Jamie associated pink with femininity, and she linked femininity to helplessness. After all, His victims had all been women.

She slipped the point of the blade into the thick skin of the pumpkin. (If only her own shin were as thick!) She slid the blade deeper (just as He had done), and, with a twist of her wrist, cut across the surface of the orange orb. Pulp (like the deep tissues of her body) and juice (like the blood that had flowed from her that night) showed inside the squash.

Carving the pumpkins was supposed, like the pink blue sweater, to calm her. “Using a knife,” she had challenged her therapist, “to carve up pumpkins is supposed to have a calming effect?” “Yes,” Ms. Phillips had reassured her. (Therapists, Jamie had learned, were most reassuring.)

The top of the table at which she sat, carving pumpkins, was littered with seeds, with bits of pumpkin flesh, and with ornaments: ghosts and pumpkin heads (or headless pumpkins), and spiders' webs. “You have to get back into the holiday,” Ms. Phillips had suggested. “Make it yours again, instead of His.”

Spluttering candles were her only light. Behind and beside her, her house was dark. The light was enough to see by, enough to carve by. She Wasn't Afraid Of The Dark. That's what the candlelight proclaimed.

This was her third pumpkin. She'd carved traditional faces in them: big triangular eyes, a smaller upside-down triangle for a nose, and a grinning mouth missing all but two upper and a lower tooth. They were pumpkin-children old enough to lose their baby teeth in favor of the adult teeth to come. Innocent pumpkin faces, like her own was once, a long time ago, before He had returned home, not cured, no, but different. Worse. Much worse.

Behind her, in the gloom, a silent Figure moved as quietly as a black cat. Wearing a white mask that seemed to glow, even in the faint light of the candles, only His face—His mask—was visible. His dark clothing made Him part of the room's darkness. Only His mask, which hid His face, and the blade of the butcher's knife He held in His right fist, at His side, ready, were visible.

Halloween had come, and He'd come with it, to do a bit of carving of His own.

Amid the pain, He was going to make her smile; He was going to make her grin . . . again. (458 words)

Such exercises might raise the hair on the nape of your neck and your arms; they might send chills along your spine; they might inspire a story or enhance one you're already writing.

Dramatic Images

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Instead of writing descriptions, filmmakers project images. As Alfred Hitchcock points out, style consists in the arrangement of the images; the images themselves mean “nothing,” he says. A paraphrase of Alexander Pope gets Hitchcock's point across well: Style is proper images in their proper places. (For more on Hitchcock's view of style, see my post, “Alfred Hitchcock on the Importance of Style in Cinematic Storytelling.”)

In this post, let's take a look at a few specific images (motion-picture stills) of scenes from a variety of horror films, ascertaining their effects. By learning to convey thought, emotion, and suspense through the use of imagery, horror novelists and short story writers may create more effective descriptions, for artists often learn from their counterparts in other media and genres.

To focus specifically on the images themselves, we'll consider them out of context from the rest of the scene in which they appear, examining them only in terms of themselves.

In this image, a man (Jack Torrance, we learn in the movie version of The Shining) looks menacing. His appearance is unkempt, his hair uncombed, a few strands straggling over his brow. He hasn't shaved recently, so his cheeks, chin, jaw, and upper lip bear stubble. His eyes gaze madly under arched eyebrows. His face is visible between a broken-out door panel, suggesting he may break through the barrier separating him from whomever he's menacing. There's not much between him and his intended prey. Were we to summarize the idea that this single movie still communicates to the audience, we might say “menace.” However, the image also communicates such emotions as fear and suspense.

In a still from the movie Veronica, two young children, a boy holding a telephone and a girl clutching a doll, cling to a woman—presumably, their mother—who stands in a living room, holding a cross aloft. Due to her stance and her direct, unflinching gaze, the woman looks brave and confident, in contrast to the expression of fear on the children's faces. Due to the association, in horror fiction, of a cross or crucifix with vampires, we may conclude that one of the undead is her likely adversary and, from her reliance upon the cross, a symbol of Christianity, that she is a woman of faith. The image suggests that the conflict is of a supernatural nature, a contest, on one level, between human beings and vampires, but on another level, between God and demons, since it is demons who animate the corpses that feed on human blood. Through the window behind the woman and the children, we see three stories of an adjacent building, which suggests that the woman and the children live in an apartment house. What little furniture we can see—a lamp, a shelving unit, part of the arm of an armchair—suggests that the woman is a member of the middle class. The contrast between the everydayness of setting and the supernatural foe against whom the woman defends the children enhances both worlds—those of the everyday and of the supernatural.

Various camera angles suggest various emotions. Novelists and short story writers can use this technique to create similar effects as those created by filmmakers. In this image, from The Birds, a victim of one fowl attack (yes, pun intended) sits on the floor, staring in shock, her hair disheveled and a bloody scratch across her forehead and right cheek. Her jacket and skirt have been ripped, and her right leg is smeared with blood. She looks exhausted, frightened, and dismayed. On the floor, a seagull approaches her, while above it, a second gull flies toward her, suggesting the woman's ordeal is far from over. The dark shadow behind her, on the blood-splattered wall, emphasizes her disheveled hair and her frailty. The picture also suggests the incongruity of her situation: she sits inside a house, the floor of which is partially covered with a carpet, but it is a home that offers no safety from a natural world gone mad. Although we think of our homes as secure refuges, this image shows us that they are poor havens against wild animals. Our safety is largely an illusion. The tilting of the camera has made the image stand out, because it offers an atypical view of the scene. Normally, we do not see things at such an angle, so the picture strikes us as different, and we are hard-wired to notice the unusual; our survival, we have learned, may depend upon our recognition of that which is unusual or singular.

Other camera angles allow filmmakers to represent additional cognitive, emotional, and thematic effects. Novelists and short story writers can adapt such techniques to their own narrative aims and needs.

Novels and short stories are not movies. That's one reason that films based on novels or, less often, short stories, are called “adaptations”: they must be adapted to the screen, or to cinematic storytelling. What works on the page may not work on the soundstage and vice versa. Novelists and short story writers who want to employ cinematic techniques must adapt these techniques to the printed page—that is, to the reading process, which differs in many respects from the viewing process. Readers are not audience members, just as moviegoers are not readers.

For one thing, readers read from left to right and from top to bottom, whereas the movement of the eyes of people watching a movie is more fluid, directed by color, intensity, the composition of images, on-screen action, relative sizes, the locations of characters, and many other elements. Even during moments when a scene is less active, viewers “fill in” the “spaces” between overt actions by visually considering the inactive or passive visuals included in the scene. For example, between a vampire's attack upon a woman and her children, a viewer's gaze might sweep the room, noticing the type and color of the drapes at the window, the building next door, a lamp or a bookcase, or a portion of an armchair. These observations are “automatic,” made while the viewer's gaze darts about the room until renewed action—the vampire's attack, perhaps—orients and claims the viewers' vision. In short, to be does not imply being singled out; to be seen simply requires that something be present in the scene.

Readers are more active participants in the storytelling process. They are not likely to envision specific “props” in a story or a chapter's scene. If the writer wants the reader to “see” something, he or she must present it, must describe it. Each particular character, object, or action must be described to be “seen,” “heard,” “felt,” “tasted,” or “smelled.” This necessity presents several problems filmmakers do not have. Long, detailed descriptions tend to bore readers. They don't want the story's action to be bogged down by the descriptions of a scene's particulars.

Therefore, any detailed description must be as short as possible and must be set up as integral to the story. Sometimes, an introductory sentence or two (or less) is enough. The transition should explain the importance of the description and provide a specific point of view so readers know why a particular description is important to the viewpoint character:

The horror of her situation created an impression as indelible as a photograph. Wendy could never forget Jack, his hair uncombed, a few strands straggling over his brow; the stubble of beard on his face; his wild, arched eyebrows; the madness in his predatory gaze; his face, shoved between the broken-out door panel announcing his intent to break through the barrier at any moment. Her bathroom refuge had been inadequate and flimsy. She trembled, even now, at the thought of how vulnerable she'd been in the face of her husband's madness.

Another technique is to make the symbolic significance of the description (kept, again, to a minimum) explicit at the beginning of the paragraph and, again, describe the scene from the point of view of one of the characters involved in it:

The fate of her children depended on her faith in God. Only He could protect them now. She held the cross up, before them, like a shield. In the center of their apartment's living room, her son, gripping the telephone, her daughter, clutching a doll, clung to her. She must be staunch in her faith, unbending and resolute. She stood her ground, her unflinching gaze, her faith in God, and her love for her children giving her courage and confidence. This was her home! In this contest, between vampire and family, mother and children were going to win, God help her.

The scene from The Birds is filmed from an omniscient point of view, which gives the action the appearance of objectivity and disinterest, or impartiality. In describing this scene in a novel, a writer could maintain this point of view, shortening the description:

Melanie sat on the floor, her back to the wall, staring in shock. Her hair was disheveled, and bloody scratches marred her forehead and cheek. Her jacket and skirt had been ripped, her right leg smeared with blood. Exhausted, frightened, and dismayed, she watched the seagulls that had invaded the house. One bird approached, walking across the carpet; above it, a second gull flew toward her. Her ordeal was far from over. Her safety was an illusion: a mere house couldn't protect her from nature gone mad.

Alternatively, this paragraph could be written from the limited third-person point of view:

Melanie sat on the floor, her back to the wall, staring in shock. Her hair was disheveled, and bloody scratches marred her forehead and cheek. Her jacket and skirt had been ripped, her right leg smeared with blood. Exhausted, frightened, and dismayed, she watched the seagulls that had invaded her house. One bird approached, walking across the carpet; above it, a second gull flew toward her. My ordeal is far from over. My safety's an illusion: a mere house can't protect me from nature gone mad.

The process doesn't seem that difficult when we already have images supplied to us by movies, but when we have to plan a scene ourselves, we have to be able to assume the task not only of writer, but also of director. Before we can accomplish this undertaking, we have to learn at least some of what directors know, such as camera angles and their uses; storyboarding principles; the principles of cinematic style; and how to communicate primarily through images, rather than through words.

At the same time, we have to remember that novels and short stories are not inferior to motion pictures. They're merely different, and both media influence the other. Indeed, novels and short stories have powerful techniques and tools not available to moviemakers. A judicious use of them can only enhance novels and short stories. By adding techniques of filmmaking that enhance written storytelling, however, novelists and short story writers add to their ability to tell their stories more effectively.

Projecting Yourself Into Your Setting

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

To make a setting real to his or her readers, a writer must make the place come alive, as it were, make it present and believable. Most writers have learned various techniques by which to accomplish this purpose. I use the one delineated here. If it works for you, adopt it. If not, devise an approach that works for you.

1. Using your favorite Internet image browser, view “scary” (or “horrific” or “frightening” or “terrifying”) images; pick one to consider.
2. If you can enlarge the image, in Paint, Photoshop, or on your monitor, do so; you want to be able to see details and to project yourself into the photograph (or the illustration or painting--photos, I think, tend to be best).
3. Jot down your initial impressions. (I am considering an image of “Spooky Steps,” which I accessed on Flickr.) Here are my initial impressions: the rails are rickety; the steps are merely short planks set into a hillside; the steps ascend a fairly steep, long slope, through a woods; the woods are monochromatic--grays accentuated with white and black--and look desolate; the steps, ascending between the rickety rails, seems to guide, or even channel, whoever would use them; and a question presents itself--why are there steps here, anyway? Not many hills are homes to steps, especially hills in woods!
4. Project yourself into the picture. Where are you? Is anyone with you? Is anyone else here or nearby? Why are you here? Why is anyone else here? What is your purpose? Why did you come here--or were you brought here, possibly against your will? When did you arrive? How long will you stay? Feel your environment: Is it hot? Humid? Arid? Overcast? Raining? Snowing? Windy? Mild? Do you hear noises or sounds? If so, what is their source? Can you tell? If not, why not? Any rustling sounds? Squeals or snarls? Growls or howls? Moans, groans, sobs, or whimpers? Grunts? Any smells? A stench of some kind? Decay, perhaps? A burnt smell? Maybe a burnt flesh smell? The scent of something unknown and nameless, but sickening? The smell of blood, maybe? Is there a dreadful taste in your mouth? If so, why? What is its origin? How do things look? The sky behaving itself--or shifting and pulsing and turning weird colors? Maybe there are clouds and they look like bulging bubbles, about to break, or like persons, places, or things you know--or don’t know. Is there something running along a ravine or over the rugged terrain, through the dense and twisted underbrush? Get physical with your environment. Grasp the rickety handrail. Feel its roughness, maybe pick up a splinter or two. Does the rail sag or sway beneath your hand? Is it raspy against your flesh? Does it creak under your touch? Test one of the steps with your foot. Creak? Sag? Break? What is the hard-packed earth between the steps like as you step on it? When the soil between the steps is disturbed as you ascend the steps, does it crumble?  Does it produce dust? Feel the stress in your knee joints and the weight upon your feet. Feel your leg muscles flex as your legs stretch and bend. Is your heart beating fast? From exertion--or fear? Can you hear it? Are you breathing hard? Sweating? Does perspiration make you cold? Does it sting your eyes? Is your brow furrowed? What do you see along the way, as you ascend the steps? What do you see at the top of the hill? What do you hear, feel, smell, taste?

Quick Tip: 12 Methods of Characterization

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

There are at least a dozen ways by which a writer can characterize his or her characters:

1. Comment directly: “John was as brave as he was reckless.”
2. Describe the character’s appearance: “John was square-faced, with penetrating, but kind eyes, which always seemed secretly amused at a private joke, but his firm jaw and thin lips belied any sense of frivolity.”
3. Use allusion, comparing a character to another familiar literary character, to a celebrity, or even to a famous cartoon or comic strip character: “John’s lantern jaw, narrow eyes, and beaked nose made him a living embodiment of the cartoon detective Dick Tracy.”
4. Show the character performing an action: “John jammed the .38 in the thug’s ribs.”
5. Use dialogue: “‘If you move, you’re dead; it’s as simple as that. I’m taking you back to face a judge and jury, to face justice,’ John said.”
6. Reveal the character’s thoughts: “The American judicial system was far from perfect, John thought, but it was better than those in countries in which a defendant was guilty until proved innocent.”
7. Describe the character’s emotions: “John was satisfied that the killer would be forced to pay for his crime, but he was sorry for the young woman he‘d killed and for the victim‘s family.”
8. Describe the character’s facial expressions and body language: “Arms crossed over his chest, an eyebrow arched, John scowled at the speaker,”
9. Let another character summarize his or her thoughts about the character who is being characterized: “Sue knew that John was a man of determination and courage, a man of honor and true grit.”
10. Let another character summarize his or her feelings about the character who is being characterized: “Sue felt safe when she was with John; she felt something else, too, something that made her blush.”
11. Link the character’s past to his or her present situation or circumstances: “Having served in combat had given John the steel backbone and granite will that would serve him so well in his present one-man vigilante war on crime.”
12. Use “props”: “Regardless of the suit or the occasion, John wore an American flag pin on his lapel.”
    

By the way, Happy New Year!

Quick Tip: Writing Means Reading

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

It seems self-evident that writers must be (not should be, but must, be) readers. Every writer worth his or her salt will tell anyone who wants to write (or, more likely, thinks he or she wants to write), that, to be successful as a writer, he or she must also read.

Stephen King, for example, reads a couple of hundred books or more every year. In fact, his reading has caused him to discover, among others, Bentley Little, a horror writer of no small talent himself. As the many blurbs he has written to help sell other writers’ works indicate, King is as much a fan of other writer’s work as readers are of his oeuvre. His love of reading is shared by his wife and fellow writer Tabitha and their children, one of whom, Joe Hill, has followed in his father’s footsteps, writing horror novels himself.

Writers should read every novel or short story (or see every movie) at least twice (although several times more is actually recommended), the first time for pleasure and to get a sense of the story’s structure, of how it is put together, and of how it attains unity. The second time, readers who would also be writers should read for technique.

How does the writer describe persons, places, and things? How does he or she create and maintain suspense? How are transitions used to tie action and scenes together? Are flashbacks used? If so, why, and, again, how are transitions used to tie past and present together? What figures of speech (metaphors, allusions, irony, symbols, and so forth), either explicit or implicit, are used in the story, and how and why are they used? Why is the action narrated in this, rather than some other, sequence? What can be gleaned from the writer’s choices of words and images? How does he or she fully involve readers in the action of the story? Why is the setting important, if not essential, to the characters, plot, conflict, setting, and theme? What is spicy or memorable about the dialogue? If the novel is a murder mystery or a detective story, what clues does the writer drop, when, where, how, and why? Which are red herrings? If the novel is a horror story, what mythos, legend, historical fact, or scientific discovery or theory grounds the paranormal or supernatural incidents or characters in the everyday world of commonsense realism, and how does the protagonist learn the truth of the monster’s origin or nature so that he or she can banish or destroy it?

Almost every writer has weaknesses as well as strengths, and both aspiring and established writers can learn from both. One of King’s weaknesses is his inclusion of extraneous scenes and exposition in his overly long plots; one of his strengths is his characterization, especially of the young. One of Little’s weaknesses is his novels’ unsatisfying, tacked-on or inconclusive endings; one of his strengths is his ability to create, maintain, and heighten suspense, often through the powers of his descriptions of menacing places. As a reader, learn to avoid the mistakes of writers and to adopt their strengths.

Then, read the novel or the short story or watch the movie again to discover all the wonderful tricks of the trade that you missed the first couple of times you read or watched the story unfold.

Developing Your Ability to Write Description

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Unlike scripts and screenplays, all short stories and novels depend upon their writer’s ability to write convincing descriptions. One might think of description as the equivalent of the writer’s motion picture camera. By describing what a character or narrator perceives, the writer shows his or her reader what is to be seen, just as he or she also provides whatever other sensations the reader perceives, whether sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations. The world is delivered to us by our senses. Therefore, to deliver the fictional world to the reader, the writer must appeal to his or her senses. Description is visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile.

Description not only sets the scene, but it can create a mood. It can set the story’s tone. It can even suggest the story’s theme.

To develop your writing ability, study the masters of the art of descriptive writing. Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, and, of course, William Shakespeare can teach anyone a few hundred tricks of the trade, but one should study all the writers the read, especially, perhaps, those whose work--particularly whose descriptions--they most enjoy.

Nothing can replace a study of the masters of description, but a few principles for effective description can be offered:

1. Analyze the elements of perception. For example, what do we mean when we say that we “see” something? What are the elements of vision? Intensity, color, texture, distance, shape, size, contrast, density, perspective--all of these and more are elements of the visual experience.

2. Learn the principles of composition. You’re not a visual artist, you say? Oh, but you are! You may not sketch or paint or sculpt, but you create word pictures, or images, and, therefore, you should know about such elements of composition as line, shape, color, texture, direction, size, perspective, and space. You should also know how to use such principles of composition as proportion, balance, harmony, orientation, negative space, color, contrast, rhythm, geometry, lighting, repetition, perspective, viewpoint, unity, the rule of thirds, the rule of odds, the rule of space, simplification, the limiting of focus, symmetry, the centering of focus, the movement of the viewer’s eye, and others to their best advantage in achieving your narrative purpose.

3. Learn the elements and principle of mise en scene, which term refers to the placement and treatment of all the elements which are to appear before the motion picture camera, including the elements of the setting, properties (props), actors, costumes, and lighting. Although, as a writer of short stories or novels, you won’t be filming a movie, the more you know about how other artists, whether they are set decorators, directors, illustrators, painters, photographers, advertising artists, or sculptors, create, the better you will be able to develop your ability to write descriptions.

4. Use non-verbal communication to communicate; in other words, learn how to communicate through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch as well as language. There’s a great scene in the “Bad Girls” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which the slayers Buffy and Faith enter a dark alley splashed with crimson. Darkness suggests death, and crimson, blood. On a nearby construction sawhorse, an amber caution light flashes. There is no need for dialogue, music, or sound at all, and if these elements re present, I certainly don‘t remember them. However, the viewer understands immediately that something dangerous is about to happen, and, sure enough, within moments, Buffy and Faith are attacked by a band of vampires. The symbolic use of color communicates on an unconscious, almost subliminal level, thereby enhancing the effect of fear that the scene evokes. For a masterful use of non-verbal communication in a short story, read Chillers and Thrillers’ article concerning Bran Stoker’s masterpiece of terror, “Dracula’s Guest.”

5. Use metaphor, simile, symbolism, allusion, and other rhetorical devices to suggest figurative meanings and to enrich your narrative by supplying psychological, philosophical, sociological, or theological associations and themes. A story that has depth is likely to be both more rewarding and more memorable than one that does not. In fact, it is such depth that makes classic stories classics. There are reasons that Hamlet and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are likely to outlast the popular plays and novels of the moment, and one of those reasons is narrative and thematic depth.

6. Determine your scene’s purpose before you write it, and use your purpose as a means of evaluating and revising your description. Descriptive writing makes fiction immediate and emotional, but its should also help to advance your narrative purpose. Is the scene meant to evoke a powerful emotion? Is its intention to present a conflict? To introduce a new character? To provide an explanation or to supply background information? Is the purpose of the scene to plant a clue or a red herring? Is the scene meant to introduce or develop a subplot?

7. Revise, revise, revise. A functional scene isn’t good enough. It should be the most interesting and best written scene of which you are capable. Consider how rewriting the scene could improve it. What detracts from the effectiveness of the description? Would a different perspective add interest? Could the characters do something more exciting while they’re getting the point across? Again, study the masters and see how and why their scenes and descriptions are interesting and dynamic.

8. Use your web browser’s image search engine to access online images or visit actual physical locations, and then describe them. A picture of an eerie cemetery will help you to describe an eerie cemetery. Painters and illustrators paint and draw from life; the least a writer can do is to describe what he or she sees on a computer screen or, for that matter, in the real world. Charles Dickens’ short story of horror and terror, “The Signal-Man” may have been inspired by the Clayton tunnel crash of 1861; its setting resembles the actual location of the crash. Motion picture directors usually take full advantage of natural settings, too, dispatching location scouts to find appropriate and dramatically effective filming locations. Short story writers and novelists can do the same, and many have.

9. Study great descriptive writers and learn from their techniques; make sure you include poets among the writers you study. Yes, we mentioned this a couple of times already; we’re mentioning it again. That’s how important it is. Some critics and instructors advise writers to avoid the use of adjectives and adverbs in writing descriptions, but even a cursory study of great writers, whether classical or popular, shows that successful authors have used, and do use, such modifiers in their descriptions (check the examples below). While it’s probably a good idea to be judicious in selecting and employing adjectives and adverbs, there’s certainly no reason to avoid them altogether. When a critic’s or an instructor’s advice runs counter to the actual practice of established writers, go with the writers’ practice, over the critic’s or the instructor’s recommendations, every time.

10. Practice, practice, practice!

We promised you a couple of examples.

Here’s one, from Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into every-day life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion,
that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the re-modelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Here’s a second, from Bradbury’s “The Sound of Thunder”: notice, in particular, his masterful use of metaphors and similes:

It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker's claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men like toys, while the snake neck coiled. And the head itself, a ton of sculptured stone, lifted easily upon the sky. Its mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers. Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger. It closed its mouth in a death grin. It ran, its pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes, its taloned feet clawing damp earth,
leaving prints six inches deep wherever it settled its weight. It ran with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and balanced for its ten tons. It moved into a sunlit arena warily, its beautifully reptile hands feeling the air.