Character in Action: It's Elemental

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

All elements of fiction besides those of character and action—conflict setting, point of view, tone and mood, and theme—are interrelated. Two ways, used independently or together, relate these elements: character and action.

Character and action are themselves interrelated as well: a character is what he or she does (action determines and reflects character), and a character does what he or she is (character determines and reflects action): we are what we do, and we do what we are.
 

In fiction, personality (i. e., character) is represented as being composed of traits. In other words, a character is the sum total of his or her personality traits. These traits, in turn, are expressed in the character's action, or behavior.

There is a final element of personality, or character, as it is represented in fiction: will, or choice. It is will that sets human characters apart from the animals that are included in stories. It is the ability to choose, especially to choose to act or not, that makes literary characters human.

 

During the course of a story, the protagonist, whose “personality” is made up of a group of traits, positive and negative, some innate, others learned, is presented with challenges, obstacles, and problems that he or she must meet, overcome, or solve, but he or she is motivated to do so by his or her will, the exercise of which is manifest in the choices that the protagonist makes.

 

Therefore, in creating a character, first determine what he or she wills to happen: What he or she want?

Then, decide upon the character's traits, both positive and negative.
 

Add meaningful personal stakes associated with the character's pursuit of his or her goals.

Huckleberry Finn wants to escape the “sivilizing” effects of a corrupt society.

Huckleberry Finn is a realistic boy who relies mostly on his own experience to fathom the truth, is a loyal and devoted friend, and prefers to live a simple life, but he is ignorant, relies too much on what others believe and expect, and is literal-minded.

Huckleberry Finn risks the loss of his personal freedom and, he believes, eternal damnation.

Next, make sure these additional questions are answered:

• What does the character do to obtain his or her heart's desire?
• When and where does the character live or travel?
• How does the character accomplish is goal or securing that which he or she desires, and how does he or she meet, overcome, or solve challenges, obstacles, or problems that threaten his or her success in accomplishing his or her goal (securing his or her heart's desire)?
• Why does the character want what he or she wants? What motivaes the character to undertake the quest, risking whatever is at stake personally?

* * *

• Huckleberry Finn runs away from home in the company of runaway slave, Jim.
• Huckleberry Finn lives in the American South during the early nineteenth-century and travels down the Mississippi River on a raft.
• To escape the “sivilizing” effects of a corrupt society, Huckleberry Finn runs away from home.
• Huckleberry Finn values personal freedom.
  
  
  

Let's apply this approach to horror fiction using, as our example, the motion picture adaptation of William Peter Blatty's 1971 novel The Exorcist.

What does my protagonist want?

Father Karras wants to hold on to his faith in God.

What traits, positive and negative, make up my protagonist's character, or “personality”?

Aware of evil, Father Karras has begun to doubt his faith in God, but he remains a courageous and compassionate man who is committed to living an authentic life.

What meaningful personal stakes are associated with the protagonist's pursuit of his or her goals?

Father Karras risks losing his faith and his sense of transcendent meaning of existence which makes life worth living.

What does the character do to obtain his or her heart's desire?

Father Karras participates in an exorcism to deliver a young girl from her domination by the devil.

When and where does the character live or travel?

Father Karras restricts his action to a Georgetown townhouse.

How does the character accomplish is goal or securing that which he or she desires, and how does he or she meet, overcome, or solve challenges, obstacles, or problems that threaten his or her success in accomplishing his or her goal (securing his or her heart's desire)?

Through the exorcism rite and his willingness to sacrifice himself for the girl, Father Karras exorcises the devil.

Why does the character want what he or she wants?

Father Karras is a loving and compassionate man who values both human life and free will.

What motivaes the character to undertake the quest, risking whatever is at stake personally?

Father Karras's love for his mentor, Father Merrin, and his compassion for the possessed girl Regan McNeil, allows him to participate in the exorcism, despite his weakened faith.

10 People Mistaken for Imaginary Creatures

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

10 Andrew Swofford

Apparently, some spirits of the dead are transvestites. Perhaps too embarrassed to buy clothes of their own (or too poor—most ghosts, it seems, have little or no need, as a rule, for cash, checks, credit cards, or bank accounts), one apparition decided to raid the closet Maddie, of a University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Maddie and her roommates live off-campus, in the Edge Apartments on Oakland Avenue, but it was Maddie whose shirts and pants went missing. The ghost proved more tangible than most, leaving its handprints on the apartment's bathroom wall.

 

When she heard “rattling” in her closet on February 4, 2019, Maddie went to investigate, thinking maybe a raccoon had been trapped inside. That's when she caught the ghost red-handed (so to speak). He was wearing her socks and shoes and had heisted a bag of her clothes. He tried on one of Maddie's hats, before inspecting himself in her bathroom mirror and, after complimenting her appearance, asked for a hug, but never touched her.

The ghost turned out to be 30-year-old Andrew Swofford. He was arrested on fourteen felony counts, including larceny and identity theft, and held on a $26,000 bond. Maddie and her roomies have since moved out of the apartment, having found their flesh-and-blood intruder more unnerving than the ghost they'd believed was haunting their abode.

9 Krushna Chandra Nayak

In August, 2018, forty-five-year-old Nakula Nayak and his brother Shyam Nayak, both of whom lived out of town, in Chhelianala, India, came to the village of Angikala to notify a relative, Sahadev Nayak, that their mother had died. Due to the lateness of the hour, the brothers stayed overnight with Sahadev.

Around midnight, Nakula went outside, to a field close by, to relieve himself. Coincidentally, Sahadev's cousin, Krushna Nayak, was working outdoors. The night was quite dark, and when Krushna saw  Nakula, Krushna mistook the visitor for a ghost.

 

Terrified, Krushna began beating Nakula with a lathi, a heavy, iron-bound bamboo stick. During the struggle, Nakula managed to wrest the weapon from Krushna and began to strike his assailant, believing his attacker to be a ghost, just as Krushna had mistaken Nakula for a spirit. Nakula's assault on Krushna proved fatal, and Nakula was arrested by the Turumunga police after Krushna's family lodged a complaint against him.

8 Unidentified Helena, Montana, Man

Was the shooter's reason for shooting at a 27-year-old Helena man nothing more than a lame excuse, or did the gunman really believe that his quarry, who was setting up targets on public land, a Bigfoot?

The victim told police bullets came flying at him, left and right, as he positioned the targets. When additional rounds were fired at him, he sought cover among trees. Later, he emerged to “confront” the shooter, who drove a black Ford F-150 full-size pickup truck.

The Helena man said the man who targeted him in December, 2018, had mistaken him for Bigfoot. “I don’t target practice,” he explained, “but if I see something that looks like Bigfoot, I just shoot at it.” To prevent others from making a similar mistake, the shooter suggested that his victim wear an orange vest.

Initially, police were skeptical of the man's report, because he was unable to describe the alleged shooter, did not want to file charges, and was reluctant to speak to deputies. Authorities were unable to locate a truck in the area that fit the description of the Ford F-150 pickup.

Then, a woman reported a similar incident involving a man who drove a vehicle of the same color, make, and model and had shot at her. She was able to provide a solid description of her assailant.

“We’re working to find this person,” Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said. “It is of great concern that this individual might think it’s okay to shoot at anything he thinks is Bigfoot.” If apprehended, the shooter could be charged with attempted negligent homicide.

7 Wendy Thinnamay Masuka

In April, 2018, thirty-seven-year-old Zimbabwe pastor Masimba Chirayi killed Wendy Thinnamay Masuka while baptizing her. The adult congregant had reacted violently to the baptism, he said.

 

Her violence indicated to him that she was a “vampire possessed by demons,” and he believed that she might “kill people.” To prevent this possibility, Chirayi deliberately “kept her submerged in water until [he] overpowered her.”

Following his appearance in a magistrate's court in Zimbabwe, the pastor was granted bail.

6 Helaria Montepon Gumilid

Mistaking Helaria Montepon Gumilid, a 79-year-old widow, for an aswang (a carnivorous shape-shifter that may appear to be an ordinary person, despite “reclusive habits or magical abilities,” Helaria's daughter-in-law, Myrna Damason Gumilid, age 49, and Myrna's two sons, Rene Boy Gumilid, age 28, and Joseph Damason Gumilid, age 23, hacked her to death.

 In April, 2014, the victim had been visiting her mentally-ill grandson in Zamboanga City, Philippines, when she was attacked and killed.  Myrna, Rene Boy, and Joseph bound Helaria, “slit her armpits,” hacked her to death, and removed one of her organs to prevent her from “regenerating.”

Authorities arrested the suspects, whom they planned to charge in the horrific crime.

5 African Man

In October, 2010, firefighters responding to a report that people had jumped from the third-story balcony of a housing unit in the village of La Verriere, France, discovered seriously injured relatives among the eleven family members who'd made the leap. They also found a two-year-old survivor, a baby, and a nude African man with a knife wound to his hand. The baby later died at a hospital in Paris. (La Verriere is located on the edge of the city.)

Thirteen people were watching television in the apartment when the naked man, hearing the baby cry, rose to prepare a bottle for the child. His wife screamed, “It's the devil! It's the devil!” His sister-in-law stabbed him in the hand, and he was thrown out of the apartment.

 

When he tried to return, the others panicked, leaping from through the window, one man with the two-year-old girl in his arms. The man crawled away, hiding in bushes tow blocks away. “I had to defend myself,” he screamed. Seven of the jumpers required medical treatment for multiple injuries.

No hallucinogenics and no indication of the practice of any occult rituals were found. The assistant prosecutor from Versailles, Odile Faivre, admitted, “A number of points remain to be cleared up.”

4 James Velasco

Hacked, bitten, and beaten, James Velasco was killed by his grandfather, Orak Mantawil, during a December, 2015, power outage at their family-owned residence in Bliss, Barangay Nituran, Parang, Maguindanao.

Mantawil was carrying his four-year-old grandson in his arms when he mistook James for a tiyana, a vampire who assumes the form of a child or a newborn infant. He apologized to his family and the boy's parents, saying that he was drunk and cannot recall what happened after he saw James as a tiyana. He told investigators that he does not “use drugs.”

 James's parents brought charges of parricide against Mantawil. “He could no longer bring back my child’s life even though he asked forgiveness,” said Fatima Velasco, James's mother and Mantawil's daughter. She also said, “My child sustained human bites. It appeared like his blood was sucked.”

Mantawil has been arrested and will be subjected to a psychological examination and a drug test.

3 Stella

After Stella was caught tiptoeing on graves at Luveve Cemetery in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in 2018, a crowd meted out vigilante justice, beating the woman, who they regarded as a witch searching for corpses she could cannibalize.

A Luveve resident said, “I was on my way to work when I saw a woman with torn, dirty clothes talking to herself while tiptoeing on the graves. I quickly called out to other people passing by.” When asked her name, the woman repeatedly replied “Stella.”

 The crowd set upon her, whipping her until she wailed in pain. Police rescued her when they arrived on the scene, and Stella was taken to the police station, where, Bulawayo police spokesperson Inspector Abednico Ncube said, she was found to be “mentally unstable” and to be guilty of nothing more than of having been “at the wrong place at the wrong time.” A family who'd reported the woman missing identified her as a relative.

2 Zana

Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford, said a West African DNA strain might belong to a human subspecies.

The DNA sample was taken from a hirsute, auburn-haired, 6'6”-tall, mid-19-century African slave named Zana who lived in mid-19th-century Russia proves she was 100-percent African, despite the fact that she didn't look like any modern African group of people.

In fact, according to a Russian zoologist, “her expression . . . was pure animal.”

 

 Sykes suggests that she and her ancestors left Africa 100,000 years ago to dwell in the region of the Caucasus Mountains. His most astonishing claim, however, is that Zana might have been a yeti, or so-called abominable snowman.

Several critics are more than a bit skeptical of Sykes's claims. For example, Jason Colavito points out that, by Sykes's own admission, the geneticist “has found no genetic evidence that yet points conclusively to a pre-modern origin for Zana” and suggests that the characterization of her as being more “animal” than human might have a racist origin: “As best I can tell, there are no nineteenth century primary sources related to Zana, and all of the accounts of her large, apelike appearance derive from local lore recorded more than a hundred years after the fact, and during a time when Black Africans were routinely described as apelike, particularly by isolated rural populations with little or no contact with other races.”

It seems possible that Sykes has mistaken Zana for a yeti, when, in fact, she was actually a 19th-century African slave.

1 Horseman (Centaur)

Ancient people also sometimes mistook people for imaginary creatures.

Imagine the shock that ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples experienced when they first witnessed mounted Eurasian soldiers invading their lands. The cavalry was unknown to them. The horsemen must have seemed a perfect union of man and horse, a hybrid fusion of the human and the equine. Such warriors would have been terrifying, and warriors wielding shields and striking with swords must have seemed invincible.

As Bjarke Rink observes in his book, The Rise of the Centaurs, “The impact of cavalry action upon farming societies was shattering”—and this sight was the origin of the mythical creature known as the centaur, a presumed hybrid of man and beast that the ancient Greeks mistook for true monsters: “The weird creature that captured the world's imagination for thousands of years was not a myth at all, but the first sighting of fighting horsemen by the peasant farmers of Greece.”

Truly Monstrous: The Leopard

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

According to The Complete Book of Southern African Mammals (178-180), in hunting, the leopard relies mostly upon two of its senses: hearing and sight, both of which are keen.

The leopard has a number of natural “enemies and competitors,” including the tiger, the lion, the cheetah, the spotted hyena, the striped hyena, the brown hyena, the African wild dog, the dhole, the Nile crocodile, the Burmese python, and several species of bear. However, it remains an apex predator in its habitats in Sri Lanka, Central Asian and Middle Eastern “preserves,” and African rainforests.

The leopard has, on occasion, eaten people. In hunting, it employs hiding, stalking, and ambushing, which is aided by its camouflaged fur pattern, and, according to big game hunter Jim Corbett, has been known to terrify a herd of elephants into stampeding, despite the pachyderms' indifference to the presence of the larger tiger (The Temple Tiger and More Man-Eaters of Kumaon). It is possible, also, that the leopard is a predator to the gorilla: “Gorilla remains have been found in leopard scat, but this may be the result of scavenging.”

The male tiger is a lone wolf, so to speak, rather than a pack or herd animal, associating only with the opposite sex during mating season. Its solitary nature benefits it by reducing the leopard's need to feed an entire group, but weakens its survivability by preventing both the safety that comes with numbers and the multiple  defenses that a group provides. The female tiger, on the other hand, maintains a relationship with her cubs even after they have been weaned. Adept at climbing trees, the leopard can run at a rate of fifty-eight miles per hour and will distance itself from a threat by up to forty-five miles.

Like the other predators we've considered in earlier posts, the tiger's abilities make it an apex predator in various habitats:

• Acute hearing and vision
• Great speed and agility
• Climbing skill
• Ambush and stalking skills
• Camouflage
• Independence
• Avoidance of threats

 Its own predators have superior physical size and strength or numerical superiority.

Truly Monstrous: The Electric “Eel”

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

The electric eel isn't an eel.

It's a fish—a knifefish, to be exact. Such fish have long bodies, which they undulate as they swim, and they are equipped with “elongated anal fins.”

The electric eel can grow to a length of over six-and-a-half feet, lacks scales, and has a specialized two-chamber swim bladder that allows the fish to keep its balance while greatly magnifying its ability to hear.

The electric eel must surface every ten minutes to breathe, as it takes almost eighty percent of its oxygen from the air.

“High frequency–sensitive tuberous receptors distributed in patches over its body” helps the fish to hunt others of its species.

Three organs produce the fish's electric charge: a main organ, the Hunter's organ, and the Sach's organ, which comprise eighty percent of its body, allowing the electric eel to discharge both low and high voltage charges.

Low-voltage discharges enable the electric eel to “sense” its surroundings, while high-voltage discharges enable it to stun, paralyze, or kill its prey. Shocks can be produced for as long as an hour when the fish is “agitated.”

At the top of their food chain, electric eels have no natural predators. Even larger animals tend to leave them alone. For those that do attack them, electric eels use a special tactic to repel or kill them. As the Smithsonian's national Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute's website explains:

Water efficiently conducts electricity, providing a wide surface area for the electric eel’s shock to be applied. This means that an electric pulse delivered through the water may not be as painful for a large predator as one delivered outside of the water. As such, an electric eel can instead jump out of the water, sliding its body up against a partially submerged predator to directly target its shock. The eel then delivers its electric pulses in increasing voltages.

Electric eels also use their ability to generate electricity to communicate. The frequencies of the electrical pulses generated by male and female eels differs, allowing the sexes to distinguish themselves from one another and to signal their “sexual receptivity” during “breeding season.”

The astonishing knifefish lives in a variety of habitats: “fresh waters of the Amazon and Orinoco River basins in South America, . . . floodplains, swamps, creeks, small rivers, and coastal plains. . . . often . . . on muddy bottoms in calm or stagnant waters.”

Electric eel powers Christmas tree ornaments!

These amazing creatures eat a variety of prey, including other “fish, crustaceans, insects and small vertebrates, such as amphibians, reptiles and mammals.” Newly hatched electric eels are also cannibalistic, eating unhatched eggs.

The electric eel is well-suited to its environment. Its specialized electricity-generating organs makes it more than a match even for larger predators that make the mistake—sometimes the fatal mistake—of attacking them, and other specialized organs assist them in hearing and otherwise sensing their environment and detecting prey.

The offensive and defensive abilities, heightened senses of hearing and balance, communication abilities, and omnivorous feeding habits of the so-called electric eel places it at the top of its food chain, making it an apex predator.

Such abilities can dramatically increase the threat of a horror story's monster, especially if the monster uses its abilities in other ways and against human prey and, perhaps, possesses additional powers that this extraordinary knifefish itself lacks.