Playing with Words

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Cozy mystery titles are BIG on wordplay. Paula Darnell's DIY Diva Series is a case in point. The first book of the series, Death By Association, takes place in a guard-gated community governed by a homeowners association.

 The next volume in the series, Death ByDesign, features protagonist Laurel McMillan's Perfect Pillows class—and a not-quite perfect murder.

 

The third novel in the series, Death By Proxy features mistaken identity. Her forthcoming series, A Fine Art Mystery, explores an art cooperative in Arizona; the books' titles are also based on, or reflective of, plays on words. The first is Artistic License to Kill.

Using wordplay can also be an effective way of triggering ideas for plot horror ideas for novels.

Hostel Takeover, for example, suggests a setting and a motive for horror. Settings, of course, often, in turn, suggests characters. A hostel would be the temporary home of young travelers (typically ages 16 to 34).

By researching hostels, additional plot ideas can be obtained. For example, in some such establishments, sleeping quarters are segregated by sex; in others, bedrooms are open to guests of both sex. Some hostels offer more amenities than others, and hostels, in general, offer benefits, but also have disadvantages, when compared to hotels or motels. Many are independent, but some are units in a chain or are affiliates of larger organizations (Zostel and Hosteling International, for example).

 Before writing a horror novel based on a hostel as a setting, it's a good idea to check out movies or other novels that have used hostels as their settings, such as Hostel and Hostel: Part II. There's no need to tread familiar ground.

The second part of the title, Takeover, is important, too; in fact, it may well be the key that distinguishes your own story from other horror stories that feature hostels as their settings. The idea of a hostel (and of a hostile) takeover suggests the acquisition of a hostel, against the will of the current owner, by a bidder or through a proxy fight.

In a horror story, of course, the owner is apt to resist the takeover by more than legal means, and much of the horror could stem from his or her resistance. It's not difficult to imagine possible twists: maybe the owner loses the takeover and kills off the hostel's guests to create such a bad impression of the place that its future is doomed.

Perhaps the focus is on the owner's efforts to fend off the takeover by any means necessary, including murdering the management, stockholders, or bidder. Another possibility is to adopt the bidder's point of view and concentrate on other means of takeover than financial expedients after the initial offer is refused. From either point of view, the scenes practically write themselves: collapsing bunk beds, exploding ovens, blood showers, bizarre “guests,” murderous interlopers, ghosts of the dead . . . .

The takeover could, indeed, be hostile, with guests and employees meeting grisly fates and prospective guests being killed even before they arrive at the establishment. A combination of approaches is also a possibility.

Quite a lot can be suggested by simply wordplay.

The Horror of Objective and Subjective Threats

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Some horror fiction, both on the page and on the sound stage, features threats which are both objective and subjective. Just as objective threats can vary, so can subjective ones. If there is the threat of a loss of limb, or of mobility, or of stamina, or of life itself, there is also the threat of such losses as trust, of scruples, of faith, or of sanity.

These dual threats are depicted or dramatized through conflict: the villain or the monster is the agent by whom the objective threat is presented, and the physical threat, in turn, causes the subjective threat.

 

The outcome of conflict involving these two types of threat is resolved in one of at least seven ways:

1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat.
3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat.
4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
5. The protagonist overcomes the subjective threat, but the resolution regarding the objective threat remains unknown.
6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown.
7. It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat.
   
   
   
   
   

In the hands of skilled writers, these seven permutations can seem to multiply, as various twists are put upon each threat and each possible outcome.

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories often involve both objective and subjective threats. The outcome of the stories' conflicts vary across the spectrum of possibilities.

1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat. Hop-Frog and Tripetta, of “Hop-Frog,” not only overcome the threat of violence and possible death at the hands of the cruel king they serve, escaping after immolating the villain and his courtiers, but they also overcome the subjective threats to their pride and self-respect posed by the king's dehumanizing conduct toward them. Their victory is double; they regain both their physical freedom and their autonomy and self-esteem.

2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat. The protagonist of Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” imagines that an old man with a “vulture's eye” is a menace. He vanquishes this perceived objective threat by killing the old man. However, the police, alerted by a neighbor who'd heard the victim's screams, arrest the killer, and readers realize that the protagonist has not vanquished the subjective threat of his own madness—nor is he likely to escape the additional, real objective threat of prison or, possibly, hanging.

3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat. William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist is a good example of this variation. Father Karras is questioning his religious faith until, in an act of self-sacrifice, he bids the devil to forsake a girl he's possessed and possess him instead. However, when the devil makes the jump from the girl into the priest, Father Karras foils his adversary by leaping to his death from the upper-story window of the girl's bedroom, in which the exorcism had been being conducted. Although the objective threat of possession by the devil overcomes Father Karras, the priest retains his faith.

4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat. During the American Civil War, Second-Lieutenant Brainerd Byring of the Union Army succumbs to his on imaginary fears when, on an isolated portion of terrain over which he stands guard, he encounters a dead enemy soldier. Byring fancies that he sees the Confederate soldier's body moving slowly, stealthily toward him. A captain and a surgeon find Byring the next morning.

He has driven his own sword through his heart, after hacking the dead Confederate's cadaver. The enemy soldier's weapon lies on the ground, unfired, and his body is rotten enough to indicate that he has been dead some days before Byring “killed” him. The fight hinted at in Ambrose Bierce's “The Tough Tussle” has been entirely Byring's own; he has survived neither the objective struggle with the corpse nor his delusion that the body was alive, that the dead Confederate soldier was, indeed, sneaking up on him under the cover of darkness to kill him.

5. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown. The protagonist of Poe's “The Pit and the Pendulum” avoids the objective threat—execution—when the Inquisition that has imposed the sentence of death upon him is defeated by its enemies and he is rescued. It is unclear whether he also triumphs over the terrors of helplessness and the horrors of physical and emotional abuse. The story's ending does not say or even imply.

6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown. In H. G. Wells' short story “The Cone,” the protagonist, Raut, avenges himself upon Horrocks, the adulterer who has cuckolded him, by causing his wife's lover to fall into a furnace. The objective threat to his wife's violated fidelity has been ended, but the murderer himself may not as easily be rid of the humiliation and rage that appear to have driven him to this desperate act. Even if he does vanquish these emotions, he may have to struggle with another subjective threat, for he seems horrified at the terrible crime—the sin—he has committed: “God have mercy upon me!,” he prays, saying, “O God! what have I done?”

7. It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat. Legs and his companion Hugh Tarpaulin escape the mad, self-proclaimed King Pest and his courtiers, who have taken refuge from the plague in the basement of an undertaker's shop, but it is unknown whether the rash sailors also escape the plague that has disfigured the afflicted. They might, in fact, be taking the disease aboard the very ship from which they earlier departed, for the narrator of Poe's “King Pest” informs readers,

the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the street, and made a bee-line for the “Free and Easy,” followed under easy sail by the redoubtable Hugh Tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and puffed after him with the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

 

If they have not escaped the plague, it is doubtful that they will escape the terror that it will bring and, if the rest of the crew they infect understand that it was they who infected them, it is unlikely that they will escape the ire of their fellow seamen; indeed, a new objective threat may arise, one which costs them their very lives. They may have merely escaped one type of death to flee into hands of a death of another kind.

These seven variations on the theme of an objective threat coupled with an often-related subjective threat provide a fertile foundation for a multitude of treatments so that no story needs to be like another, even if they are based on the same dynamics—or, indeed, a specific dynamic within the seven-fold group of dynamics. Likewise, the same writer can produce a story from any one of the objective-subjective threat pairings or from the same one, treated differently.

Using Typical Genre Elements to Generate Horror Story Plots

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

By isolating the types of characters, actions, settings, processes, and motives or causes upon which horror movies are typically based, we can devise a plot generator.

Although this is a basic list, a starter, as it were, which can be extended by further considerations of horror, both on the sound stage and on the page, it suggests the method.

Who? What types of characters generally appear again and again in the horror genre?

Protagonist, antagonist, victim, authority figure, expert, parents, siblings, tormentor, extraterrestrial, supernatural being

What? What types of actions do many horror stories represent? In other words, what type of activity occupies the characters? What do they do, on a sustained basis, throughout the film or most of the film?

Filming, capturing, escaping, experimenting, rescuing, conceiving, avenging, exploring, invading

When? Where? What settings (times and places) are typical of horror fiction?

Isolated property, closed public property, private property, laboratory, spaceship, suburbs, school, town, forest

How? What processes are typical of the horror genre? In other words, what type of series of actions forms the basis, or vehicle, of the story's plot, as opposed to the actions of the characters themselves? What propels the story as a whole?

Traveling, visiting, creating, reproducing, disturbing, working, persecuting, vacationing, possessing, exorcising, trespassing

Why? What are the motives of the protagonist and the antagonist? If one or both of these characters is (are) otherworldly (e. g., extraterrestrial or supernatural) or a physical force (e. g., energy or disease), what causes them to “act”?

Revenge, financial profit, escape, conquest, insanity, invasion, survival, destruction

Now, it is possible to generate plots by mixing and matching these typical foundational elements. Here are a few examples.

This example uses the first words from each category:

Protagonist films on isolated property while traveling during a vendetta.

To make the plot more concrete, substitute more specific terms for the generic ones; in doing so, it is all right to eliminate an element that no longer seems to fit; in the following revision, “traveling” has been omitted.

The camera operator is hired as a member of a film crew shooting a documentary concerning life inside a prison so he can avenge his father's death by killing the inmate who murdered him.

Here is another example, based on the third term in each of the categories. In this example, it was necessary to add a noun after “by creating”:

A victim escapes from private property by creating a ruse in order to be free.

Again, to make the plot more concrete, substitute more specific terms for the generic ones; in doing so, it is all right to add or alter an element if doing so is desirable and appropriate.

An enslaved woman escapes from an island resort by disguising herself as a guest so she can leave with other departing visitors.

Horror Movies Are Mysteries, Too

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Many horror stories are mysteries which typically follow a well-established format:

1. An unknown monster is killing people.
2. Often, as the killings continue, the protagonist, sometimes aided by friends or others, investigates; intelligence is gathered, clues are solved.
3. The monster is identified; it is known.
4. Knowledge about the monster is used to neutralize or eliminate it.
5. The status quo returns.

 

This same formula can apply to plagues:

1. An unknown disease is killing people.
2. Often, as the killings continue, the protagonist, sometimes aided by friends or others, investigates; intelligence is gathered, clues are solved.
3. The pathogen is identified; it is known.
4. Knowledge about the pathogen is used to neutralize or eliminate it.
5. The status quo returns.

 

Of course, many a detective story also follows this path:

1. An unknown murderer is killing people.
2. Often, as the killings continue, the protagonist, sometimes aided by friends or others, investigates; intelligence is gathered, clues are solved.
3. The murderer is identified; it is known.
4. Knowledge about the murderer is used to neutralize or eliminate him or her.
5. The status quo returns.
   
   
   
   
   

Where does variation come into play? The same variables that make the structure of fairy tales, as this structure is defined by Vladimir Propp in Morphology of the Folktale, makes the particulars fresh and intriguing, despite the sameness of the underlying formula's structure.

What is the monster? How is he, she, or it different than others of his, her, or its kind? Physically different? Emotionally different? Behaviorally different? Volitionally different? What motivates it?

Whom are the victims? Why are they targeted? How does the monster kill them?

Where do the killings occur? Why here and now, rather than elsewhere at another time?

What theme does the story suggest, and how does it do so?

A dictionary definition can help us to answer the question, What is the monster?

A dictionary definition does two things: it classifies, or groups, and it distinguishes, or differentiates. First, a dictionary definition tells to which group the term being defined belongs. What type of person, place, or thing is it? Then, a dictionary definition explains how it differs from the other members of its group. The group is the genus; the differences, the differentia.

Monster (n.): an imaginary creature (genus) that is typically large, ugly, and frightening (differentia).

 In what way is your monster “large”? Height? Length? Weight? Strength? Intelligence? Tall? Godzilla fills the bill. Long? What about the worms in Tremors? Heavy? The Blob! Strong? There's a reason King Kong was king of the jungle on Skull Island. Intelligent? The computer in Demon Seed or, for that matter, the extraterrestrial of Species sure turned out to be to die for.

What makes your monster “ugly”? Appearance (but be specific)? Behavior? (but, again, be specific)? Lack of emotion or twisted emotions? Other (specificity counts, always!)? Although Michael Myers, of Halloween, wasn't a bad-looking guy—some say he looks a lot like William Shatner, in fact—his penchant for murdering randy teens and sexually aroused young adults made him a lot less attractive, to be sure.

Why is your monster frightening? It's hard to defeat, perhaps? It has amazing powers, maybe? It is absolutely relentless, possibly? It is supernatural or otherworldly? Other (specificity counts, always!)? The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, like the alien in Alien, had all these characteristics and more.

The same process applies to other characters, such as the protagonist, victims, experts, warriors or soldiers . . . . How do they differ from everybody else's? What makes yours unique? The expert in The Sixth Sense, the psychiatrist, differs from his peers (or most of them, at any rate) by his being dead.

A setting should be integral to the story's plot, of course. If it is, it can be used not only to frighten—it's a spooky place, after all—but also to symbolize, to suggest, and to reveal, even as it conceals. In The Descent, for example, the caverns through which the female spelunkers spelunk may symbolize the female reproductive system itself; the cave-creatures they encounter, their aborted fetuses. On the literal level, the underground passages also add to the characters—and the audience's—claustrophobia.

 

Plug your own versions of these characters and an appropriate setting of your own into the horror-movie-as-a-mystery formula and you, too, can offer a new wrinkle to the subgenre.

The Thrill of It All, Part 1

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Movie posters are ads, of course; they are designed to sell movie tickets. As such, writers can learn from these posters what their designers believe the movie's targeted audience is interested in. In other words, movie posters allow writers access to free audience analysis research (or, at the very least, expert speculation) on the part of industry insiders as to what prompts moviegoers to go to the sort of movies the posters promote.

Chillers and Thrillers has already analyzed several horror movie posters (and may do so again), but, in this post, we take a look at posters for movies that are sold as thrillers.

Although some thriller movie posters appeal to a few of the same elements as horror movies typically feature, thriller posters stress different focal points than many horror movie posters emphasize.

For example, thriller movie posters frequently highlight the protagonist and his or her dilemma. The size of the main character—often just his or her face (i. e., head)—is not to scale, to say the least: it is gigantic in comparison to the rest of the imagery; as such, the face stands out from the rest of the images. On the poster for Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo diCaprio) is represented by a gigantic face frowning out of the darkness; he is many times larger than the island facility shown below him, in a dark sea.

The protagonist is also emphasized over any other figures that are present (although, often, the main character is the only figure shown on the poster). On the poster for Law Abiding Citizen, the face of protagonist Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) face is larger than the body of the villain, Clyde Alexander Shelton (Gerald Butler).

There is also a suggestion of menace; the threat or danger, however, is often unseen. It is suggested by the imagery, including the protagonist's facial expression; the colors; and the caption, if any.

The plight of the protagonist is indicated in various ways. First, he or she is frequently alone, which means that the main character is unaided. The protagonist must fend for him- or herself, must gather intelligence, must formulate a battle or an escape plan, must administer first aid to him- or herself, must fight alone.

The very fact that the menace, if shown at all, is usually a dark, shadowy figure, perhaps hooded, and frequently armed, also suggests the protagonist's predicament: he or she is up against an unknown foe. It is difficult enough to fight against an opponent whose strengths and weaknesses one knows; it is much more difficult to combat a totally unknown foe.

Not only is the face of Jessica Allain (Lisa Walker) shown as huge in comparison with the poster's other images, but the shadowy figure who menaces her also wears a hood and gloves.

Thriller posters deprive viewers of a context, rendering the protagonists' situation mysterious. We don't know how the main character got into the present situation, and we have no idea how he or she will get out of the dilemma. To sharpen the protagonist's quandary, the poster's caption might pose a question, as the poster for Law Abiding Citizen does: “How do you stop a killer who is already behind bars?”

A poster may pinpoint the relationship that brings the protagonist face to face with his or her adversary, as Cold Comes the Night does: “She found a fortune. He found a target.”

Let's wrap up this post by listing the design features we've seen on the posters we've discussed:

• Make sure that your protagonist stands out from other characters.
• For as long as possible, merely suggest the menace that your main character faces.
• For as long as possible, withhold context: do not explain the cause of the protagonist's dilemma until the end of the story; this ploy keeps your readers guessing and maintains suspense.
• In dialogue or the protagonist's own thoughts, pose a rhetorical question or two (but not too many at once) to introduce or heighten suspense by hunting at the problems your protagonist faces or may face in the future.
• Deliver on the implied promises your use of each of these techniques creates in the minds of your readers.

There are exceptions to these general techniques, but there is also a reason that these methods have are general. Designers have found them to be effective; they work. They are adept at enticing audiences to buy tickets. They sell the work they promote. As such, incorporating them into the action of the thriller that you are writing can keep readers reading your stories and coming back for more.

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

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.”

What's in a Phrase?

In a previous post, we considered how to use horror movie posters to generate plot ideas. In this post, we'll take a look at using commonplace phrases to do the same.

Let's stay with the “bug” them. By typing “bug” into the Internet search engine of my choice (Bing), several links appeared, including this one: Phrases, which lists these commonplace phrases that include the word “bug” and the meaning associated with each:

• bug off
• bug out
• bug in her bonnet
• bug someone
• bug storm
• cute as a bug's ear
• snug as a bug in a rug

At first, not many of the phrases may seem to inspire ideas for horror plots (or even scenes), but, of course, the phrases are raw material; we have to work with them a bit. Let's take “snug as a bug in a rug,” for example. Let's jettison the “snug as” portion of the phrase, paring it down to “a bug in a rug.” instead of the denotative, or dictionary, meaning of “rug,” let's go with a figurative use. Toupees are sometimes referred to, usually derogatorily, as “rugs.”

Could a toupee-manufacturing company plant a bug inside its hairpieces? Sure—but why? Maybe the bugs aren't really insects. Maybe they're miniature microphones that someone plants in the toupees of certain men ho wear “rugs.”

Okay—but why? The bald men are spies or suspected terrorists or masters of organized crime. Maybe the toupee company is a CIA front that makes “special” toupees for only a select few clients.

Sounds good, maybe, but why go through all the trouble of making toupees instead of using more traditional ways to bug persons of interest?

No one, least of all a spy, a suspected terrorist, or a master of organized crime, is likely to suspect there's a listening device in his toupee. It's the perfect hiding place—as long as the wig stays on the suspect's head, which I likely to be most of the time that he's in public.

There's another possibility, too. If the “rug' isn't a toupee, but a merkin, the story takes on a whole different tone. It could take a satirical or even an erotic twist. A merkin, after all, is a pubic wig, a toupee worn down under (mostly by women).

Now the client is likely to be a female spy, a female terrorist suspect, or a female head of organized crime. The possibilities aren't endless, but they're sure different than those that are likely to be inspired by a male character's wearing of a toupee.

Maybe you don't like either possibility, that of the toupee or that of the merkin. Besides, we might wonder, where's the fear in such a conceit? There could be one, if the bug is set to self-destruct, Mission Impossible style, after so many hours or days, killing its wearer out at the same time. Some suspense, or even terror, could flow from the thought that the presence of the bug, over time, scrambles the brains of the surveilled suspect—and those around him or her. Perhaps the government agency that sells the implanted toupee or merkin knows that this effect will occur; maybe they discover it as the “bugs” are put into use. Alternatively, maybe the “bugs” have this effect only on some suspects, and the government agency must discover why and how to prevent the effect from occurring.

The possibilities are many, and they have all resulted from brainstorming about a phrase that includes the word “bug.”

Of course, if you don't like the results of using “bug” phrases, you can always substitute a word associated with another horror trope or theme and brainstorm about phrases containing this (or these) term(s).

To find such tropes, check out images of horror movie posters. You'll find that many of them contain the same types of images, such as dolls (Abandoned, Dolls, Worry Dolls, The Doll, Finders Keepers, Doll in the Dark, Child's Play, Annabelle, The Devil Doll); heads (Pumpkinhead, Hatchet, Shrunken Heads, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Hostel); eyes (The Eye, Would You Rather?, The Crawling Eye, Candyman 3, The Theater Bizarre, The Return, Cat's Eye).

Just a few of the many phrases that contain the word “eye” or closely related words include:

• up to your (my) eyeballs
• your (my) eyes are bigger than your (my) stomach
• a bird's-eye view
• a feast for the eyes
• a jaundiced eye
• a roving eye
• a worm's-eye view
• all eyes are on someone (something)
• an eagle eye
• an eye for an eye
• as far as the eye can see
• bat one's eye
• bawl one's eyes out
• easy on the eyes
• bedroom eyes
• eye opener
• eye to eye
• eyes in the back of your head
• eye popper
• eyes only
• get some shuteye
• give your eyeteeth for
• stars in your eyes
• in the wink of an eye
• keep a weather eye on

Possibilities are endless.