Styling the Thriller

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

In his “Introduction” to the 2006 Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night, James Patterson, playing the role of editor, reminds readers that the varieties of thrillers is deep and wide, including “the legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, and military thriller, but they have “common ground” in “the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness.” In short, a thriller must thrill (iii).

James Patterson

Thrillers are also fast-paced, Patterson says, and their protagonists achieve “an objective . . . at some heroic cost. The main character's “goal can be personal (trying to save a spouse or a long-lost relative) or global (trying to avert a world war) but often it's both.” There may be a ticking clock (iii). A thriller, he maintains, may “build rhythmically to rousing climaxes that peak with a cathartic, explosive ending,” or a thriller may “start at top speed and never let off” (iii). Thrillers tend to be well-researched and to use “accurate details.” At the end, readers “should feel emotionally satisfied and better informed” (iii).

The collection includes thirty short stories by thirty-three well-known writers, among them Lee Child, James Rollins, David Morrell, John Lescroart, Eric Van Lustbader, F. Paul Wilson, Brad Thor, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. In many of the tales, well-known protagonists make another appearance: Jack Reacher (“James Penney's New Identity”), Joe Kowalski (“Kowalski's in Love”), Repairman Jack (“Interlude at Duane's”), Nick Neumann (“Assassins”), NYPD's Detective Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta (“The Fisherman”).

Often, the situations on which a thriller is built is as at least as interesting as the story's protagonist and villain, and those in Thriller are, generally, intriguing, even if they are familiar, in large part because of the way their authors handle them. The stories are based on such situations as “an explosion at the U. S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay” (34), street gangs (53), an unexpected storm (68), an empath (89), the setting of a trap for a dangerous former FBI profiler (178), prison life (259), Balkans intrigue (292), a road trip (342), and the theft of an Inca sacrificial knife (542). Most are close to twenty pages in length.

“James Penney's New Identity”

In Lee Child's story, “James Penney's New Identity,” the divorced protagonist is fired from the factory job at which he's worked for seventeen years, because of downsizing. Unable to pay for his new Firebird, Penney burns down his house. The fire also destroys the homes of two of his neighbors. With six weeks' pay in his pocket, from his last check, Penney leaves town. After spending the night in a cheap hotel, he wakes to find that his Firebird has been stolen. He goes to the local police station to report the theft, but sees a wanted poster with his photograph on it; he's wanted for arson and criminal damage. He flees, and, wen a driver offers him a ride, he accepts.

The driver, Jack Reacher, is a military police officer who has false identification documents, which he seized from Edward Hendricks, an Army liaison officer he'd arrested. He lets Penney have a set of the documents, handcuffs him, and, Penney posing as his prisoner, are passed through a police roadblock after the authorities check their identification and record their names.

The men separate, and Reacher disposes of the corpse in the trunk of his car. Lee leaves it to his readers to make the connections between the story's rather over-the-top set of coincidences and figure out their collective significance.

“Gone Fishing”

We don't learn the first names of the on-the-lam duo of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's “Gone Fishing.” They've stolen an Inca sacrificial knife from New York City's Natural History Museum. They'd made a deal to sell the stolen artifact to Lipski, a psychopathic criminal fence, who'd planned, in return, to sell it to a wealthy collector. After stealing the knife, though, Woffler and Perotta decide to cut out Lipski, the “middleman,” and fence the item themselves; failing to find a buyer, they'll melt the knife down for its rubies and gold.

First, however, they plan to lie low and have rented a mountain cabin surrounded by woods near Passumkeag Lake, New Hampshire. On their way to their destination, Perotta annoys Woffler by needlessly drawing attention to them by speeding, sending his hamburger back twice at a restaurant, staring at a tough ex-con in the restaurant and spewing rocks and dust over him as he peels out of the parking lot, and honking at a psychedelic VW bus bearing “Honk if You Support Pro-Choice” bumper stickers.

Soon after their arrival at the cabin, they hear a knock at their front door, but no one is there. They imagine they've heard the sound—then, there's a second knock. Investigating, Woffler sees footprints at the edge of the woods, leading into the forest. At Perotta's insistence, Woffler follows the footprints into the woods. Both men wonder whether his partner plans to double-cross him and abscond with the stolen relic. Perotta also wonders whether their mysterious stalker is the ex-con. Although Perotta also suspects Lipski, he thinks the fence an unlikely suspect. He also dismisses Lipski's potential buyer, who wouldn't know of the theft yet.

Thirty minutes pass. Woffler has not returned to the cabin. Perotta hears what might have been a scream and, arming himself with a flashlight, sets out on his partner's trail. Along the way, he sees what he thinks is a mushroom, then a shell; the object, he realizes to his horror, is, in fact, a severed human ear.

Fleeing, he becomes lost. He suspects the stalker is Lipski, after all; suspicious of Woffler and Perotta, Lipski has followed them. A bloody hand seizes Perotta, but he shakes it off and hastens from the area, still lost. His flashlight illuminates a severed foot, then a decapitated head. A voice threatens to do to Perotta hat was done to other victims.

Natural History Museum, New York City

The story skips forward. Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, NYPD, is on the scene as local investigators bag the body parts. Police have determined that the victims are Woffler and Perotta, employees of New York's natural History Museum. Local police have found the men's wallets and Ids and the stolen knife and called the NYPD, having heard of the heist. D'Agosta warns a local police officer that there will be more victims and that the murders of Woffler and Perotta ave nothing to do with the sacrificial knife they stole, but the officer does not believe D'Agosta.

The story skips ahead again, as the serial killer, The Fisherman, sits inside his psychedelic VW bus, parked by the side of the road leading out of town. A passing car, noting the bumper stickers on his bus, honks. Thankful to God that He has given him another opportunity to “serve” Him by killing and dismembering “another killer of the unborn,” the murderer drives onto the road and follows the carload of his next victims.

Techniques

Child and the writing team of Douglas and Preston use their own techniques to craft their stories, techniques that help them to build their thrillers.

Detective Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragmet

Child uses a straightforward approach, in which he straightforwardly moves from one incident to the next, using a journalistic style in which, despite his stories' intense emotions, seems to present “just the facts,” as Dragnet's Sergeant Friday was fond of saying to witnesses recounting their stories. This happened, and then this, followed by this next thing. His technique lulls the reader into accepting the events, even when they would become hard to believe otherwise. Just what are the chances that a wanted arsonist would encounter a murderer disguised as a police officer—and a military police officer, at that? Whatever they are, the odds become even less likely when the killer just happens to have a few sets of fake Ids in the trunk of his car, the one inside which he's hauling his victim's dead body. However, thanks to Child's disarmingly straightforward, matter-of-fact style, readers are likely to pass over so,me of these “details” or at least pretend to turn a blind eye to them. Child's style, in short, helps readers to maintain a Coleridge an “willing suspension of disbelief.”

Preston and Child pile up details—a lot of them—while tossing half a dozen suspects at readers. The story's incidents snowball, but, at the same time, have a relationship with the other incidents of the story, incidents bound to other incidents and to characters, and characters tied to other characters and to incidents. What is a simple story, when everything is unraveled at the end, seems complex and mysterious in the telling. Who's out there, in the woods (and the swamp), stalking the pair of robbers? The ex-con? Lipski, the fence? Lipski's prospective customer? One or the other of the two robbers himself, intending to double cross his partner in crime? The vengeful spirit associated with the stolen Inca knife of sacrifice? These suspects are linked through the crime Woffler and Perotta have committed; through their road trip; through Perotta's making “scenes” along the way, by speeding, harassing a waitress, eyeballing and dissing an ex-con, and honking at a VW bus parked alongside the highway, during the robbers' drive from New York to New Hampshire; and by the remote cabin they rent in the deep woods. Everything is related, but only one set of relationships, in the end, counts. Preston and Child keep their readers guessing by a style that draws relationships everywhere, at all times.

The juxtaposition of a museum in a world-class city with the barbarism of The Fisherman is also a technique that increases the emotional thrill of the horror in the woods.

Plotting by Phrase

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Language is the chief connection between our minds and the world at large. It is the means by which we perceive and conceive ideas, interpret experience, and communicate our attitudes, beliefs, emotions, thoughts, and values. In civilized society, it takes the place (at times) of assault and warfare in which not discussion of differences, but might, makes right.

In addition, language contains nuggets of wisdom, encapsulated knowledge, hard-won understanding, good advice. Often in the form of clever or pithy phrases, language is a reminder of what has been found to be true or useful, and, with some thought and imagination, offers a treasure trove for writers in search of ideas. Since Chillers and Thrillers is devoted to horror fiction and to, well, thrillers, this post considers a few of the phrases that could inspire plots for stories in these genres.

The first is “Nantucket sleigh ride,” which is defined as:

An obsolete and dangerous method of whale hunting in which a small boat manned by rowers and a harpooner, or a series of small boats tied together, would be attached to a whale by means of a harpoon and would then be towed by the creature at high speed across the water's surface, until the whale eventually became exhausted.

Although it's unlikely that such a technique is used today, it (or something similar to it) could be used, with a gargantuan monster of some kind substituting for the whale. Think of a group of sledges, instead of boats, fastened together and attached, perhaps by a harpoon, to a Tyrannosaur rampaging across eastern Alaska, western Canada, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, California, Arizona, or western Mexico (areas all once part of the island of Laramidia).

The object of such an enterprise might be the same as the Nantucket sleigh ride of yesteryear: to tire one's prey so that it could be killed (or captured, perhaps). How'd the T Rex come to reside in modern-day western North America? That's a matter for a different post, although the cloning of dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park certainly might point the way, as could the discovery of a live specimen tucked away in the corner of some as-yet undiscovered niche of Canada, Alaska, or Mexico (id such a place still exists).

The term “miner's canary,” referring to “a caged bird kept caged in mines because its demise provided a warning of dangerous levels of toxic gases,” also suggests so,me plot possibilities. In a horror story or a thriller, the canary, of course, wouldn't be a canary; it would be a person or even a group of people, maybe a whole town of people. Unknown to them, their community might be located at the edge of a dangerous area, perhaps one that is radioactive; perhaps one in which a group of hostile extraterrestrial creatures are held captive; perhaps one in which the portal to another dimension exists, leaving he earth at risk of invasion by the bizarre, but highly developed, inhabitants of this otherworldly plane—or whatever other scenario one's imagination develops.

“My spider sense is tingling,” a phrase that has entered the language courtesy of Marvel Comics's The Amazing Spider-Man, also suggests a possibility or two—for me, alas, just one: suppose a person had a “spider sense,” an intuitive perception that danger was nigh and that this sense had a physical way of conveying its impressions, such as causing—I don't know—say, a tingling sensation?

But then, this person develops paranoia (backstory needed; see the video clip, above), which sets his or “spider sense” tingling for any, all, and no reason, so that he or she constantly perceives him- or herself to be in imminent danger. If this person is also a highly trained assassin or warrior, danger might well ensue—but because of his or her paranoia; in other words, this character becomes the source of danger he or she perceives.

Plenty of the other phrases listed on the Phrases website, mixed with a bit of imagination, can produce similar ideas for plots. Visit the site, and dig in!

Sketching Characters

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Falling Down: The adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world

Think of a few literary characters or movie characters who made an indelible mark on you. Ask yourself, why do I remember these particular characters when I've forgotten so many others? What makes these characters, but not others, memorable?

Probably, you will identify certain characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and even views of the world. The characters you admire will probably have acted honorably, valorously, heroically. Those you recall, perhaps with a shudder, feeling fear, disgust, or horror, as evil or dangerous probably strike you as contemptible or loathsome because of, paradoxically, their characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views. While the admirable characters support others, the contemptible are usually interested in serving only themselves. More specifically, though, how are characters sketched by writers?

Most are collections of personality traits. These traits are then implied through the characters' actions, or behavior, including the words they speak, that is, through dialogue. In movies and, more than ever before, in novels, behavior is the means by which personality traits, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views are shown.

In the thriller Falling Down (1993), William Foster, an unemployed engineer, sees society as “falling down” right before his eyes. While the movie leaves no doubt that society is, in fact, in a state of partial collapse, it is also true that Foster himself is “falling down.” He's lost his job. His marriage has ended in divorce. His ex-wife, Beth, has been awarded sole custody of their daughter Adele, and has secured a restraining order against Foster, who has a penchant to act aggressively, even violently, toward others, including, apparently, Beth herself. Foster has lied to his mother, with whom he stays, telling her that he is still employed. In fact, he carries an empty briefcase around town, wearing out shoe leather as he wanders more or less aimlessly until he conceives of the idea of visiting Adele on her birthday, despite the restraining order that has been issued against him and Beth's clear demands that he avoid contact with her and Adele.

Throughout the film, as Foster encounters escalating example after example of the increasingly extreme societal decline he is convinced has overtaken life in Los Angeles and, perhaps the United States as well, he himself collapses further and further psychologically and he reacts to the instances of social decline with more and more extreme behavior, ratcheting up his aggression and violence, revealing himself to be a truly unstable and dangerous man.

In the film, social decline is reflected by other types of decline as well—declines in technology, in government, in civility, in business relations, in attitudes regarding racial and gender equality, and in class privilege.

Heavy traffic

On a terribly hot day, the air conditioner in Foster's car won't work. He abandons the vehicle, leaving it in a traffic jam, and sets off on foot across the city.

My rights as a consumer

Wanting change to call his ex-wife, he asks for, but is refused, change for a dollar. He is told that he must buy something first. He reacts by breaking up the proprietor's merchandise and ranting about his greed. Foster also takes issue with the owner's pronunciation of “five” as “”fie,” insulting him by telling him that, as an immigrant, he should have “the grace to learn the language,” especially after all the money the United States has given the store owner's country.

Territorial dispute

Next, he encounters two Latin street thugs who try to rob him. Foster uses a baseball bat to beat them into retreat and picks up a gun one of them drops. Later, these thugs, accompanied by other gang members, spray bullets at Foster during a drive by, missing their target but wounding several innocent bystanders. When they wreck, Foster takes their cache of guns, shooting the diver in the leg.

Ganging up on D-Fens

At a park, Foster is accosted by an aggressive panhandler after he sees rude people shoving others as they storm a bus that has stopped to pick up passengers, a billboard decrying child abuse, and alcoholics openly drinking in public. He flings his briefcase at the panhandler, telling him he can have it. Inside, the angry panhandler finds nothing but a sandwich and an apple—the lunch Foster's mother had packed for him.

 Late for breakfast

Foster's attempt to order breakfast a few minutes after a fast-food restaurant has changed to its lunch menu elicits sarcastic, condescending remarks from the server and the restaurant's manager. Foster responds by shooting an automatic rifle into the ceiling and terrifying both the staff and the diners, before leaving. Although, once he resorts to gunfire, the manager fills Foster's breakfast order, he leaves the food behind, saying the fries are limp and cold and the hamburger looks nothing like the one shown in the oversize photograph that advertises it.

Not economically viableVisiting a swat meet to buy a birthday present for Adele, Foster observes a young black man in a business suit lamenting a bank's refusal to grant him a loan, crying to passersby, as he is being arrested, “I'm not economically viable.” He catches Foster's eye. “Remember me,” he says, and Foster nods.

Out of order

When he attempts to make a telephone call to Beth, a man rants at him from outside the telephone booth, demanding that he hurry. Foster reacts by shooting up the booth with an automatic rifle. “I think it's out of order,” he tells the terrified man.

Nick's back room: "I'm with you"

In an army surplus store, which Foster visits to buy a pair of boots to replace his worn shoes, he encounters the store's sexist, racist neo-Nazi proprietor, who insults a female detective and a gay couple before turning on Foster, when Foster denies being “just like” him, and attempts to hold Foster at gunpoint until the police he plans to summon arrive. Foster manages to kill the neo-Nazi befolatere continuing his trip across town.

Something to fix

Suspecting road work is not needed but is underway simply to waste taxpayers' money by providing work for the city's department of transportation workers, Foster uses a rocket-propelled grenade launcher he has taken from the street thugs to destroy a tunnel in order to give them some actual work to do.

Passing through

At a gold course, he shoots a golf cart after a golfer challenges his presence on the course, claiming that the links belong solely to him and the other members of the country club upon whose property Foster trespasses. The irate golfer's nitroglycerin pills are aboard the cart, which coasts downhill, into a lake, leaving the golfer, who has a heart attack when Foster shoots at the cart, to die “wearing [his] funny little hat.”

Obsolete; like it was before

After climbing a wall that surrounds an exclusive estate, Foster briefly kidnaps the caretaker, his wife, and their young daughter, as he hides from a helicopter flying over the area. When he learns that the estate is owned by a plastic surgeon, Foster says “the system” has betrayed him, rewarding the plastic surgeon, whose work, he implies, is merely aesthetic, rather than rewarding him, an engineer whose work in the defense industry protects America. When he realizes he has frightened the girl, he leaves the family, resuming his trek, now that the helicopter has left the area.

Officer down and the pier: all points converge

Finally, toward the end of the movie, after shooting Detective Sandra Torres, Foster holds his wife at gunpoint, intending, Sergeant Prendergast says, to shoot them.

End Credits

In addition to showing Foster's personality—his traits, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world view—as he reacts to various incidents which confirm his belief that society is “falling down,” even as his own psyche collapses, the film shows how inappropriate, unnecessary, and dangerous his reactions are by contrasting them with another character who encounters similar problems as those which face Foster. Using a foil, a character whose behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world view strongly contrasts with those of another, opposing character, is a tried and true means of characterization which Falling Down uses to good effect.

Prendergast is Foster's foil. Foster has “lost” a daughter; Prendergast has lost one through the girl's death. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce. Prendergast's wife, Amanda, suffers from anxiety, which makes her feel the need to control her environment and to order both her own and Prendergast's lives. Foster has been fired from his job. Despite less-than-ideal working conditions, Prendergast wants to remain on the Los Angeles Police Department's force, but Amanda wants him to retire to Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Both Foster and Prendergast see a collapse of social traditions, organizations, institutions, and mores, but—and here is the chief difference between these men who, to a large degree, live rather parallel lives—Foster feels cheated by “the system” and wants what he considers to be his due, whereas Prendergast is content to prop up society and to help to protect and defend it against its threats, including Foster himself. The use of Prendergast as Foster's foil more sharply defines the characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views of both the unemployed defense engineer and the detective.

Such techniques of characterization are widely used as time-tested ways of sketching characters because they are effective. By showing characters react to a variety of situations and incidents and by contrasting these reactions with those of another character who is the opposite in his or her characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views, writers create indelible characters who stand out as memorable individuals. Such an approach can be, and is, used in all genres of fiction, both on the page and on the soundstage.

Note: The subheadings are from the "Scene Index" for the film, as provided on its DVD release.

Now Available on Amazon: The Secret of the Silver Star!

My latest book, a young adult novel, The Secret of the Silver Star, which has a science fiction theme and contains elements of horror, but reads like a thriller, just went live on Amazon!

Synopsis

After his dad abandons him, Cass refuses to listen to his mother. He hangs out with the wrong crowd. He begins to bully other kids. Finally, when he vandalizes his high school, the judge gives him a choice: confinement in a juvenile detention center or a camping trip with his mom's brother, Uncle Gabe, a highly decorated, no-nonsense Special Forces soldier. Alone in the great, deep wilderness, they encounter a threat that will change Cass forever--if he's man enough to survive.

Futuristic Fiction

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

“The world is too much with us,” William Wordsworth warned, and it's true: we do get caught up in the day-to-day affairs of our everyday lives. As a result, we often miss the mystery and beauty of the natural world—and of the inner worlds of ourselves and others.

 

It is to escape the tedium of everydayness that men and women travel, devote themselves to arts or crafts, learn to play musical instruments, attend movies or sports events, concerts or plays, and, of course, read.

Reading takes us out of ourselves; sometimes, it also takes us out of this world, to times past or future, to strange worlds or other dimensions, or even, in the case of Dante's Inferno, to hell itself (not that such a destination is recommended, ordinarily.)

But what happens when the worlds of poetry, fiction, and drama themselves become too familiar to provide the escape from everydayness we crave? When the tropes and themes of genre literature themselves become too commonplace, they cannot alleviate the boredom of what The Mothers of Invention called our “dull, gray” existence.

Futurology, the study (or, perhaps, speculation about) of possible future situations, events, and states of existence based upon extrapolations from current ones, often rekindles the imagination. The future may not be exactly as futurologists envision it, but, even if it is not, their conjectures provide fresh visions of the way things could be, and that's all a writer of popular literature, regardless of genre, needs to rekindle his or her own imagination.

With thriller and horror fiction genres in mind, let's consider some of the possibilities that futurologists' ideas might suggest in the way of such elements of fiction as characters, settings, plots, motives, and conflicts.

There are astonishing technological marvels on the horizon, futurologists predict, including eye-controlled technology, paper diagnostics, designer antibiotics, ingestible robots, smart clothing, photonics in space, volcanic mining, a spintronics revolution, carbon-breathing batteries, super antivirals, diamond batteries, optogenetics, nano feasibility, an unhackable quantum Internet, biometric materials, the next generation of artificial intelligence, 3D printing in every home, designer molecules, a fully immersible, computer interface, and a self-sufficient ecosystem.

Whew! If that list doesn't suggest some fresh characters, settings, plots, motives, and conflicts that can be, as Stephen King defines horror, (a) disgusting, (b) horrific, or (c) terrifying, maybe there's no future for horror (or for the unimaginative aspiring horror writer, at least).

The first step in using the futuristic fiction approach is to research the type of technology in which you're interested as a writer. Start by gaining an overview of the technology. Then, learn whatever more detailed material you need to make your story accurate and believable. (Hint: Videos, such as those available on YouTube, are often quite sound academically and provide a moving, audio-visual rather than a static, learning approach, which some might prefer to reading.)

For example, suppose you're interested in eye-controlled technology. You might make a list of questions to research:

• How does it work?
• What uses does it have? (How has it been used? How else might it be used? In other words, what are its applications?)
• What benefits does it provide?
• What are its disadvantages?

As other relevant questions present themselves, research them as well.

How does it work?

Eye tracking records our point of gaze and our eye movements in relation to the environment and is typically based on the optical tracking of corneal reflections, known as pupil center corneal reflection (PCCR).

Eye-tracking technology can installed in personal computers, peripheral devices, or eyeglasses.

What uses does it have? (How has it been used? How else might it be used? In other words, what are its applications?)

There’s a chance that soon eye tracking will be a standard feature of a new generation of smartphones, laptops and desktop monitors setting the stage for a huge reëvaluation of the way we communicate with devices—or how they communicate with us.

“In the past year eye tracking technology moved from being a promising technology to being adopted in commercial products in a wide array of consumer segments simultaneously,” Werner says.

. . . VR headset companies are making large investments in eye tracking technology.

. . . eye tracking might make it a whole lot easier for gamers to interact with the gaming environment.

“There is an increasing interest in using eye tracking to help diagnose — and potentially treat –neurological disorders,” says Bryn Farnsworth, science editor at biometric research company iMotions.

With eye tracking technology, online advertisers will be able to measure exactly how many actual human eyes actually view their ads when they appear on the page.

What benefits does it provide?

“Eye tracking sensors provide two main benefits,” says Oscar Werner, vice president of the eye tracking company Tobii Tech. “First, it makes a device aware of what the user is interested in at any given point in time. And second, it provides an additional way to interact with content, without taking anything else away. That means it increases the communication bandwidth between the user and the device.”

What are its disadvantages?

1. The equipment is expensive.
2. Some users can't work with the equipment (for example if they wear contact lenses or have long eye lashes).
3. Calibrating the equipment takes time; [as a result] this problem may . . . cause the user to deviate from using the device.

Without developing a detailed synopsis, we can suggest some possibilities simply by breaking ideas into the three parts of any story: the beginning, the middle, and the end:

Eye-controlled Technology

1. Beginning: An art gallery stages an exhibition for an up-and-coming artist of the avant-garde.
2. Middle: An explosive device installed in the wall, behind one of the artist's paintings explodes.
3. End (Terrifying and Gross-out Elements): Sixteen people are killed, including the artist, as terrorists prove the efficacy of their latest innovation: eye-tracking technology that can be used as a trigger to detonate an explosive device. (A good title for such a story might be “The Tenth Gaze,” because the software used to detonate the bomb triggered its explosion in accordance with the tenth time someone gazed at a specific point on a particular painting.)

Note: Can eye-controlled technology be used to active an explosive device? I don't know, but it doesn't matter, because, in fiction, it can.

Next-generation Artificial Intelligence

1. Beginning: A next-generation robot is activated as it exits the assembly line.
2. Middle: Its programmed role as a “helpmate” is initiated.
3. End: Unhappy with its assigned role, the robot “commits suicide.” (A good title for such a story might be “Access Denied,” since the robot, in self-destructing, denies access to itself to a buyer.) In an alternate ending, the robot could allow itself to be purchased and then kill its owner, claiming the owner's residence (and perhaps his or her family) as its own.

James Patterson: A Master of Pacing

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In Murder Beyond the Grave, the world's #1 bestselling author, James Patterson, tells (or retells) two of the true-crime stories that originally aired on Investigation Discovery's Murder Is Forever: the book's title story and Murder in Paradise.

On the inside of the front of the flyleaf, the publisher summarizes each; since this post is concerned only with Murder Beyond the Grave, we'll limit ourselves to quoting its synopsis:

MURDER BEYOND THE GRAVE.

Stephen Small has it all—a Ferrari, fancy house, loving wife, and three sons. But the only thing he needs right now is enough air to breathe. Kidnapped, buried in a box, and held for ransom, Stephen has forty-eight hours of oxygen. The clock is ticking . . .

So how does Patterson keep the pace of his story moving? Here are several of his techniques:

Short chapters. Typically, a Patterson chapter is no more than 3.5 pages long, or about 320 words. The first page starts a bit past the halfway mark and contains 18 lines; each line contains approximately 11 words: 189 words (we'll round to 200). The second page is a full-length page, numbering 29 lines, or about 320 words: 29 x 11 = 319 words. The last page, a half page, numbers about 10 lines, or 110 words (11 x 10 = 110), for a rand total of 630 words: 320 + 200 + 110 = 630.

Short paragraphs. Most of Patterson's paragraphs are short, longer ones usually lasting no more than four or five sentences. The effect of short paragraphs, like that of short chapters, is to suggest that the reader is reading more quickly than he or she is likely to be reading, which could imply that the pace itself is quicker than usual.

Large font. Patterson's novels typically employ a larger-than-typical font size, which creates the illusion that one is reading faster than usual, which may, in turn, create the impression that the story's pace is unusually quick.

Present tense. Patterson writes in the present tense, which may create a heightened sense of immediacy, suggesting that the action is occurring before one's own eyes. What we see often seems to occur very quickly, almost instantly, whereas what we hear (and past tense implies we are hearing about, rather than witnessing, events) appears to present itself more slowly.

Brief descriptions. Only a sentence or two is used, enough to set the scene: “Flakes of snow drift in the air. Danny's breath comes out in bursts of visible vapor. Cars drive by, slicing through gray slush” (23 words). (As short as these sentences are, they could be even shorter: “Flakes of snow drift through the air. Danny exhales bursts of vapor. Passing cars slice gray slush” [17 words].) Brief descriptions do not drag the story; thus, the narrative appears to move more quickly.

“Head-hopping” economizes characterization, allowing the omniscient narrator to describe all characters' inner states.This technique helps move the story along, keeping it from bogging down, and, therefore, speeds the narrative's pacing:

When the man opens his arms to give Danny a hug, Danny awkwardly thrusts a hand out for a shake instead.

“How have you been?” Danny says, feigning a smile.

“Oh, you know,” says his longtime associate, who, unfazed by the rebuffed embrace, claps Danny on the shoulder. “Same o', same ol!'. . . .”

Maintenance of forward momentum: The story drives relentlessly forward: “Danny opens his mouth for more small talk, but the host cuts him off with a nod toward the kitchen. 'He's waiting for you in the back. Told me to send you in straightaway.'” (Italics added.)

Use of scenes: The action is staged in scenes, as if the reader were watching a film. Transitional phrases or sentences link the scenes: “Outside in a nondescript panel van, two police officers listen with headphones.” It's as if Patterson writes a screenplay first, which he then transforms into a novel or a novella.

Expository dialogue. Dialogue keeps the story moving by explaining what happened or is happening. In other words, dialogue acts as exposition: “Damn it,” says the first officer. “He's been made!”

Suspenseful dialogue. Dialogue also maintains suspense, which compels readers to continue to read and facilitates the sense that the pace is brisk: “Wait,” says the other. “This guy Danny is a slick operator. Let's see what he does.”

Brief back story. Patterson's characters tend to have brief back stories. Usually, the back story is presented as a flashback that is inspired by or otherwise associated with imagery or scenery related to the character's past. One's childhood neighborhood can evoke memories. As much as possible, such memories are presented in active voice, and only during the flashback is past tense used.

Interconnected action: All of the story's bits and pieces of action are interconnected:

Danny Edwards is summoned by Mitch, a mobster. Though a microphone Danny wears, police listen in on his conversation with Mitch. The police raid Mitch's office, arresting Mitch and Danny. Danny remembers his childhood. Danny works as a laborer in the construction business. Short on money, Danny asks his father for a loan. While visiting his father's home, Danny sees a wealthy neighbor, Stanley Small, of whom Danny is envious. After encountering Stephen at a marina, Danny learns that Stephen is worth $65 million. Danny decides to kidnap Stephen and bury him alive so Danny can demand a ransom from Stephen's family. Danny buys supplies at a lumberyard and builds a contraption (a coffin equipped with PVC tubing) that mystifies his girlfriend, Nancy Rish. Danny reconnoiters Stephen's house. Danny fills a milk jug with water and leaves Nancy in the middle of the night, without explanation. Danny deposits his coffin and supplies at a remote site. Danny takes Nancy for a ride, making her promise to return to the remote area at 3:00 AM to pick him up, but does not tell her what he is up to. Danny pretends to be a police officer, luring Stephen out of his house early in the morning. Danny kidnaps Stephen, forcing his victim to drive to the site where Danny has hidden the coffin and supplies. Danny records Stephen's plea to his wife to pay the ransom Danny demands for Stephen's release. Danny buries Stephen alive with only forty-eight hours' worth of air. Such interconnected action unifies the story, giving coherence to the incidents of plot, and allows a shorter plot, creating the sense of a faster pace.

Clock: The time for which Stephen's supply of oxygen will last (forty-eight hours) provides suspense, which encourages readers to continue to read, or even to skip passages, thereby seeming to speed the pace of the story.

Factual tone: Most sentences are written as if they merely report objective facts: “Danny climbs out of the cab . . . . Danny reaches for the shovel . . . . Danny stabs the blade of the shovel into the loose soil.” This factual tone not only lends verisimilitude to the action, but it also economizes wording, making the pace seem faster.

Evolutionary Fiction

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the theory of evolution, species survive by adapting to their environment. For biologists—until recently, at least—the environment has been pretty much synonymous with the external, natural world. (More recently, a branch of psychology, evolutionary psychology, has suggested that certain mental processes and personality traits may have survived because they helped the human species to adapt to their physical environment and, therefore, to survive.)

Human beings differ from lower animals in several important ways, one of which is their possession not only of consciousness, but also of self-awareness, of consciousness of oneself as a self. Men, women, and children, in other words, live in two environments, that of the natural world without and that of the subjective world within, the world of beliefs, emotions, reason, will, and values.

In evolutionary fiction, a story begins when one or more changes in one or both of these worlds occur(s), disturbing the protagonist's equilibrium (his or her emotional balance, or calmness of mind), causing him or her to adapt to the environmental change(s) and thereby regain his or her equilibrium: in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dorothy Gale becomes dissatisfied with her family life (a change in the inner world of her emotions); as a result, she runs away from home (seeks to adapt to the change in her emotions); she develops independence by acting autonomously, dousing the Wicked Witch of the West with water, thus melting her adversary (adaptation); having come to appreciate her home as a result of her experiences in Oz (adaptation), she returns to her family and friends, whom she'd left behind in Kansas. Dorothy's adaptations to the change in her inner world (her emotions) changes her: she recovers her equilibrium because she changes (i. e., adapts to her environment). In The Wizard of Oz, emotion drives Dorothy to act.

The external world can also introduce change to which the protagonist must adapt. In Backcountry (2015), Jenn and her boyfriend, Alex, leave their home in the city, driving to a national park in Canada. Their arrival introduces them to a different environment, a forest, with different challenges than those with which they are familiar. (Alex has some experience in camping, but his many mistakes show that he is by no means the master woodsman he believes himself to be.) Among the challenges the couple face are those of an intrusive and aggressive stranger, Brad; mountainous and forested terrain; and a bear. Alex does not adequately adapt, so he does not survive the couple's ordeal. Ironically, Jenn, who knows less than Alex about camping, but who has better judgment and makes better decisions, does adapt to the challenges of their new environment, and lives. (Alex's many errors of judgment are identified in my post, “Backcountry: A Study in the Cause and Effects of Poor Judgment”). In short, Jenn's intelligence and common sense prevail, while Alex's smug self-confidence and overestimation of his knowledge and abilities fail.

A similar “test” of mental processes and personality traits occurs in the 1993 thriller, Falling Down, with William Foster failing to adapt to the changes in his environments, both internal and external, and Sergeant Prendergast succeeding in doing so in regard to his own, similar challenges. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce; Prendergast's marriage is on life support. Both men encounter hostility, unfairness, and social decadence. They have both lost children, Foster to his wife in their divorce, Prendergast to death. Because he cannot adapt to the challenges these changes introduce into his life, Foster is killed, while Prendergast, who does adapt to similar challenges in his own life, survives.

With these examples in mind, we can construct the formula that is typical of evolutionary narratives:

1. A change in the protagonist's environment, internal, external, or both, occurs.
2. Experiencing disequilibrium as a result of the change(s), the protagonist successfully adapts to the change(s) (comedy) or fails to do so (tragedy).
3. As a result of the success or failure of his or her attempt to adapt, the protagonist survives or perishes, respectively.

Perishing can, but need not, be literal. A protagonist can “perish” figuratively: he or she can go to prison, lose his or her family or friends, go bankrupt, become disabled, lose dignity or respect, and so forth.

In evolutionary fiction, stories become “laboratories” of sorts in which beliefs, emotions, reason, will, and values are “tested” by changes in the external environment, the internal environment, or both environments. Thus, evolutionary narratives suggest the relative survivability strength of various subjective processes and personality traits, whether the stimuli (challenges) are imposed from within or from without the character him- or herself, thereby underscoring the fact that people are both subjects and objects simultaneously. Ironically, then, evolutionary fiction seems to support the idea that human beings occupy a dualistic world that is both matter and “spirit,” that we are ghosts in machines.

In future posts, we will apply the formula for evolutionary fiction to several horror narratives that appear as short stories, novels, or motion pictures.