EXERCISE: WITH TREMBLING AND SHIVERING

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original posting: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 22:29:00 -0400

(hhhowlohhhhhween?)

WITH TREMBLING AND SHIVERING

In honor of the season (and recognition of the amazing variety of Halloween horrors available in the stores), let's take a look at some exercises aimed at helping you write horror.  First, "Fearfully" provides a selection of things that scare people; second, "Is That A Monster in Your Pocket?" takes a look at some monsters; and third, "Overcoming the Fear" describes a simple plot that you might like to use.  Fourth, "Don't Open the Door" discusses some points about suspense and anticipation and fifth, in "Quick Start?" I'll provide a possible first line that you're welcome to use to "kick-start" your writing.

(did you feel a draft of cold air blow up your spine?)

Fearfully...

Let us consider some things that might make you fearful.  Scared?  Reduce you to a deep down, bone shaking, quivering puddle of pusillanimous timidity?  Just as examples:

Fear in a dentist's office ... the sound of whirring, punctuated with clashes of whining, framed in aching silence touched with liquid gushes.  The medicinal odors, tainted with the stink of burning bone and decay.  The faint twinge of abdominal muscles tightening in anticipation.  The screaming -- expected, awaited as a release from the tension, and yet never allowed, never heard, swallowed in sputtering silence.

Or perhaps your metier is a wall of blooms -- lovely golden explosions of petals, a joyful collar of lavender pink surrounding a black velvet button, long green stems and tattered leaflets -- and the small black spider lurking deep inside, red hourglass marking the last grains of the sands of time.  Or does the flitting bobbing drone of the happy bee conceal the sting of finality?

So, pick a number from one to six.

1. Insects (pick one, pick one...)
2. Snakes/Reptiles/fish (you get to select one that you shiver with)
3. Illness (yes, you decide whether it will be a simple burst appendix or the more exotic strain of something from afar ... Andromeda?)
4. Disability (smashed, cut, gouged, a small nick in a nerve...)
5. Rodents and other chitters in the night...
6. Plants (from the little greenhouse of horrors?  Or your own backyard?  You plant the seed, water it, and reap the thorny cold embrace...)

Play with it.  What about that would be frightening to you?  Now, can you take a character or two and put them in a situation where they are going to put their hand into the dark crevice where it lurks?

Is That A Monster in Your Pocket?

[Or are you just happy to meet me?]

Drawing on How To Write Horror Fiction by William F. Nolan, ISBN 0-89879-442-0

Do you need a monster for your loathsome tale of supernal menace?

Pick a number from one to six, then try:

1. Old Ghoul, New Approach!  Ghost, vampire, werewolf, demon, zombie - take a conventional monster, and think about fresh insights, fresh ways of presenting the old blood and guts.  Make us feel for them; make us think about the humanity and depth, the inner fears and uncertainties of the real monster.
2. Multiple Monsters.  Often, the "human" partner of the macabre is in some ways even more monstrous than the physically bizarre ones.  Mix and match, let us cheer for the witch who is protecting her hometown from the zombies or make us shiver when we realize that werefido is just a lapdog for the real monster.  Be careful to avoid losing the sense of reality, though!
3. Keep those powers in check!  If your monster has the strength of ten, it should also have severe hay fever.  Or maybe the undying heroine also has a broken heart, crushed by rejection, looking for the one lover who can see past the wrinkles...
4. Human monsters.  Take that criminal, and remove human compassion, human guilt, and other ordinary feelings.  Normal emotions and feelings either aren't there, or are twisted and perverted to the point where they are no longer human.
5. The mechanical, the robotic, the electrical.  Cars, computers, massive machinery - there is a subtle fear of these which you can use. Imagine that machines sometimes grow tired of their slavery to humanity, and stalk the night, looking for revenge...
6. The unseen and hidden.  What lurks in the shadows?  Outside the edges of sight, below the street in the sewers, chittering in the walls of your apartment building, waiting for you to close your eyes?
   

There are a few possibilities that might help you get started. Remember, think about your monster, think about what drives them, what thirst and hunger draws them, what evil calls them to act.

And don't forget the stakes!

"...summing up, the monsters you create for your stories and novels must be credible; whether human or supernatural or robotic. ... They must pose a significant threat to your main characters.  They must be removed from the norm.  And they must _not_ be all-powerful."

Overcoming the Fear

Let me give away a plot.

1. The protagonist is introduced, with a little bit of foreshadowing that this is a person who has some problems.  Perhaps they duck away from the sound of a car backfiring?  Or maybe they have some trouble pulling the drapes in their room to hide the hideous green outside?
2. There is ... a kitten?  A puppy?  A child?  Someone weak and in need of help ... that forces our protagonist up against the thing they fear.
3. Amid flashbacks, carefully sketching in the breaking of the protagonist, the horror of that time that can never be forgotten -- and never remembered in full! -- the protagonist struggles and twists, trying to help, but...
4. Take your time.  Make us feel the agony of the protagonist, looking at the little girl about to drown and fearing to tread where memory tells them evil lurks ... tighten the tension, drive home the drip of sweat trickling cold down the back, make us hang our head in shame as the hot tears and fear paralyze us...
5. And the triumphant end!  The cathartic release of doing it, of snapping the bonds of the past and saving the day!

Don't Open The Door!

[Based on Chapter 5 in How To Write Horror Fiction by William F. Nolan]

(Behind that locked door, so rumor goes, lie the remains of...)

Suspense!

"_Anticipation_ is the key to suspense.  You are leading your reader towards what he or she _knows_ is going to result in a dangerous confrontation with evil.  You do it in careful stages, encouraging the reader to anticipate the horror, but holding it back, layering in other sequences that move your story forward but delay the actual climax the reader _knows_ is coming."

(No, no, it was years ago, and the key was lost.  It was almost a work of art, that key, and ... yes, that's it!  Where did you get ... you can't be the long lost son of the family, sent away in hopes that the curse ... oh, nothing, nothing...)

"If you have done the proper job of characterization, of making your reader _care_ about the protagonist, then they will emotionally identify with the upcoming danger."

"The descriptive words and phrases you use to build suspense are extremely important.  They set the proper mood for the upcoming encounter."

"The reader never knows when or under what circumstances this horrible transformation will occur -- a guarantee of reader anticipation."

(I remember the night when it first happened ... the dark clouds rolled over the waning moon, and the ocean seemed to moan against the rocks, grinding, battering, roaring defiance of the fates...)

1.  Set up your threat early.  Right in the beginning, have someone else die, let a rumor ramble past, refer to the mystery...

2.  Build and deepen suspense by bringing the menace closer.   A near encounter, destruction of the means of escape/rescue, loss of protection...

(We thought the priest could save us ... and then we discovered him crouched outside the church, frothing at the mouth, with his own hands holding the stake in his chest...)

3.  Separation/isolation are excellent aids in building the suspense. Start with a busload of happy travelers, and then whittle them down, down, down to the final desperate survivors, standing off the hordes of genetically exercised cockroaches with a bowie knife and a can of beans...

"Your readers will stick with you as long as the outcome is uncertain. They will be trying to guess what's going to happen, so your job is to give the narrative a sudden twist that misleads.  This creates surprise and continues the process of building suspense."

"The threat cannot be false.  It must pay off, and this means you must show your monster _in action_.  Chewing up minor characters, for instance..."

1. The Principle -- Don't Open That Door!  And the hero(ine) walks down the long, dark hallway, takes a deep breath, and slowly, slowly turns the handle...
2. Isolation, vulnerability -- put your characters at the mercy of the incoming menace with nowhere to run, no one to help ... and feel the suspense rise!
3. Darkness.  The primal fear of the night, of what may be lurking in the shadows, of that sound from behind the black shield...
4. Is the Monster Real?  Often, characters start out not believing, then slowly give ground, until they finally believe completely in the monster, just as they finally reach the limits of their attempts to deal with it ... often while the people at the 911 desk are still chuckling about the nut with their crazy story...

Okay?  So, pick a number from one to six...

1. Napkin
2. Telephone
3. Empty vase
4. Broken light
5. Wastebasket
6. Painting

And again?

1. A door
2. A cave
3. A car trunk (or the bonnet, for those of you who speak the queen's own)
4. A locked suitcase
5. A closet
6. A long-unused boathouse

And one more time?

1. The family curse
2. The monster from...
3. The marching dead
4. A zombie snake
5. A doctor who doesn't know when to say "no more cutting and stitching!"
6. Your own pet fear, magnified and manifested out there, waiting for us...

Take the object, put it in the place, and think about how finding a napkin in a locked suitcase could be the clue that makes (in time, once we've fought our way past the disbelief, past the fear that clutches our stomach, past all that ... until, at last) your protagonist rock and roll with the marching dead, streaming past on their way to...

Quick Start?

Any day that starts with dead men kicking in your front door isn't going to be a good one.

Or the simple:

"I don't want to go in there," she said.

But you and I know that she will, almost certainly, because she has to face her terrors ... and those terrors will grow, will encircle her, and will make her shake in agony...

(And if you're still wondering what's behind the door ... open it, go ahead, turn the latch, pull on the handle and ... now tell us what you found there!)

Write!

EXERCISE: EXERCISES FOR THE JOURNAL

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original posting: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 22:27:00 -0400

(here we go...something for the weekend?)

EXERCISES FOR THE JOURNAL

This month I've included three exercises suitable for keeping a journal.  The first actually is just a suggestion for what to write in your journal -- an observation, your reaction, and what you learned from it.  While there are programs and books that deal at length with writing your journal, keeping track of incidents using this simple three-part framework will get you started if you aren't used to keeping a journal.

After that, there is a suggestion about harvesting exercises while reading, and keeping them in your journal for later use.

Finally, there is a bit of an experimental self-analysis, building a diagram for yourself of your self, based on some quotations from A Passion for Narrative.  Don't take it too seriously, but it can be a useful look at your vision of yourself as a writer.  You might want to keep it inside the cover of your journal.

1.  What do I write in my journal?

In my daily work, I'm associated with project management and similar efforts.  Recently, I had the opportunity to review requirements for a certificate program.

Along with the expected courses, readings, projects and so forth, the organizer of the program had included keeping a regular notebook -- or journal.  This requirement had raised questions both from the students and other faculty, so the description included the very brief explanation that students were expected to write entries at least once a week, and preferably more often (at least once a day is recommended).

It also included a description of what to put in an entry which I thought I would share with you.  I think it is a very clear suggestion as to how to structure journal entries.

"Each entry should have three parts:
   - an observed incident
   - how it made you think and feel
   - what you learned from the combination of the above two things"

Simple -- what happened; how did you react; and what did you learn.  Or as someone said -- experience, reaction, and reflection.

And if you're honest with yourself, I suspect you can learn a great deal from this daily discipline...

2.  Roll-Your-Own?  (The Meta-Exercise?)

This is really a writer's exercise - for when they're being a reader.

Suppose you are reading along in your favorite book, and suddenly realize the author just made an exceptional swerve, took you right outside the normal everyday interactions, or otherwise did something you like.  Aside from just looking at the mechanics of how they did that (you do look at mechanics like that, right?  Maybe even take notes, try it out yourself, and add it to your toolkit?), try this:

Imagine that the author came up with the idea for doing whatever it was in response to ... an exercise!  Or at least a question...

Now, what was that exercise?  What was the question that pushed that author into doing something that really excited you?

Write it down.  Remember that most exercises and good questions have more than one answer, so generalize -- if the writer focused on how the expression of a single emotion could be so misunderstood by multiple people, your exercise might involve picking one from a list of emotions, making a list of ways to express that emotion, writing up one, and then considering how various characters could misinterpret that expression.

File it away.  You may want to keep a part of your journal or an extra file folder just for these "personal exercises."

Then some day when you're stuck for an idea, trying to figure out where to start, what to fill the bare page with - pick up one of those exercises and do it.  Don't bother trying to figure out what you were reading when you came up with it - treat it as if it was one of those quirky ones handed out without explanation in writers' groups, and go!

3.  A Passion For Narrative

[Singing in the rain...]

From "A Passion For Narrative: A Guide for Writing Fiction" by Jack Hodgins, ISBN 0-312-11042-1

(p. 9, before the introduction)

    "There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter.  A major writer combines these three -- storyteller, teacher, enchanter -- but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer."
    "To the storyteller we turn for entertainment, for mental excitement of the simplest kind, for emotional participation, for the pleasure of travelling in some remote region in space or time.  A slightly different though not necessarily higher mind looks for the teacher in the writer.  Propagandist, moralist, prophet -- this is the rising sequence.  We may go to the teacher not only for moral education but also for direct knowledge, for simple facts ... Finally, and above all, a great writer is always a great enchanter, and it is here that we come to the really exciting part, when we try to grasp the individual magic of his genius and to study the style, the imagery, the pattern of his novels or poems."
    (Vladimir Nabokov, "Lectures on Literature")

Some quotes from the introduction:
    (p. 15) "With every new story the writer is once again a beginner, faced with the task of having to learn all over again how to write."

[A premise] (p. 18) "...learning to write fiction is not a matter of accumulating knowledge or skills in some sequentially developmental way but of _preparing yourself to build a new writer out of yourself and out of your relationship to new material every time you prepare for a new story or novel_."

(p. 19) "The fiction writer, I believe, experiences a constant tension between 'the natural storyteller' and 'the maker of artifice'..."

"...there is the love for narration--an interest in characters, a delight in surprises, a taste for crises, a joy in discovering and revealing what happens next. ... This reservoir is the combined result of imagination, experience, memory, and love of 'story.'"

"On the other hand, the writer is aware of fiction as art, and of the writer's necessity to become a maker of artifice. ... These skills can be discovered from the careful study of writers one admires, from an effort to understand the new needs peculiar to each new story, and from constant practice and experimentation."

Thus endeth the quotations from Hodgins...

Storyteller, teacher, enchanter.  Always beginning afresh, building a new writer out of yourself.  A reservoir of love and a maker of artifice.

Let's take a spin on our selves as today's exercise.  Take a sheet of paper and right in the middle put something that stands for you -- to you.  This can be the simple word "I" or it could be something more complex.  A snatch of phrase, a turn of rhyme, whatever...

(Who do you call yourself when you are in private?  We all know the names and nicknames that others use to call us, but what do you call yourself when you are all alone?  Put that in the middle.)

Now draw three spokes out of that central place.  Write the words "storyteller, teacher, enchanter" one to a spoke.  (Which direction should the spokes go?  Well, why don't you decide ... you could have them going out in all directions, you could point them up, you could root them down, and you can easily change the order or location of those "storied tales, learnings, and magics.")

At the bottom of the sheet, put the word "reservoir."  (If you want to, add some of these words: characters, surprises, crises, joys, imagination, experiences, memories, stories.) 

At the top of the sheet, put the word "art."  (Again, if you want to, add some of these words: writers, theories, practices, experiments ... or whatever defines the artifices of writing for you.)

[Just singing, and dancing, in the rain...]

So you have a mandala, sparsely filled in, with yourself in the middle, three spokes of storytelling, teaching, and enchanting leading out, and the grounding depth of your reservoir below with the rainbow sky of your skills above.  Start filling in the holes.  If you have a particular memory that you want to remember in your reservoir, put something -- a word, a phrase, even a little drawing -- down in the reservoir for it.  If you think of a way that you feel especially strong as a storyteller, perhaps a style of storytelling or some other resonance with that side of the writer, put that into your mandala.

Don't worry if one side seems to have more detail than another, or if the skills on the top of the sheet seem too thin for your dreams.  Just fill it out honestly for you, now.

And if you want to sketch a word picture of the result -- or what you discovered looking at the mandala? -- for your journal, or for whatever, well, that's fine, too.

Put that mandala of you as a writer in the front of your personal journal, and look at it sometimes when you are writing or thinking.  Take it out and add to it whenever you like.  Put it away and make a fresh one sometimes.  Then look at the two and see what has changed in your picture of yourself...

This is very much a private exercise, which you don't have to share with anyone.  But I think if you really try to imagine how you as a writer relate to the storyteller, the teacher, and the enchanter -- and what lies in your reservoir, and what clouds, storms, and lightning hangs in your art -- you may find someone rather different than you might expect to find hanging around there.

I suspect it will be someone rather interesting, too.

(Bonus exercise: have a dialogue between the you of the mandala and the you sitting back looking at it.  Engage yourselves...and see where that exchange of viewpoints takes you.)

[What a wonderful feeling...get happy again!]

Write!