The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting September 27, 2013

I'm sure some of you are familiar with the wonders of TV Tropes, one of the better ways to lose track of time on the Internet. But with the Halloween story contest coming up, did you know that there's lots of horrible things there? Here, take a look at

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HorrorTropes

Starting right off with lots of abandoned places, ghosts, haunted and progressing through evil elevators, invitations to dinner with the cannibals, museums... The list just keeps on going. Even the categories -- bloody tropes, cosmic horror, Gothic horror, haunted, madness, nightmare, psychological, religious, slasher, subverted innocence, survival, undead, werebeasts and werewolves... Wow!

Phobias, fears, horrors. What sends shivers down your back?

Just right for Halloween!

Original Posting 1 Oct 2012

All right, here's something that might spark some thoughts about Halloween. Just remember that Halloween traditionally is about monsters and things that go bump in the night. Then take a look at this list of seven genres, borrowed from Save the Cat! By Blake Snyder.

1. Monster in the house. Take your characters, put them in a crucible, a limited situation of some kind, and then let something loose...
2. The Golden fleece. A quest, my kingdom for a quest...
3. Out of the bottle. Love potion number nine? Anyway you look at it, wish fulfillment often turns out to be a little more complicated than we would like...
4. A dude with a problem. Take one ordinary guy (or girl) and drop them into extraordinary circumstances. What happens then?
5. Rites of passage. In every life, there are changes. And when those changes happen, how do we handle them?
6. The fool triumphant! From rags to riches, beating the odds and winning! Little orphan Annie does it again!
7. The superhero. Take one extraordinary guy (girl, vampire, whatever?) And drop them into ordinary circumstances! How do they handle that?

Okay? Something traditional like a monster in the house? A search for the...? What about a little magic? When things get weird, what are you going to do? Or one of the other three? Mix with a little Halloween horror, witches, headless horseman and pumpkins, voodoo, or what ever you do, toss in characters, setting, and all that good stuff of writing, and let's see what kind of a tale of Halloween you can spin!

Original Posting 25 Sept 2009

Take your favorite search engine (like, say, Google?).

Type in "10 top phobias"

Run the search.

Fear of spiders, fear of being misjudged, fear of flying, fear of inescapable situations, fear of small spaces, fear of heights, fear of vomit, fear of cancer, fear of  thunderstorms, and fear of the dead?

Or...

Fear of heights, enclosed spaces, dark, snakes, spiders, needles, thunderstorms, having a disease, germs, the number 13?

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?

Anyway, take a look at the world of phobias.
And write!

original posting: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 10:33:28 -0400

TECH: Go Gothic for Halloween?

Since I am sure that some of us, myself included, are still working on Halloweenie stories (you did know we are having a contest, right?  No? Okay, take a trip across the magical mystical web and read all about it!  Your entry can be sent from October 1 -- that's TOMORROW! -- until October 17 -- which is later, unless you are travelling backwards by tardis or other fantasmagorical means.  But read the rules, write the tales of shiver, and send them to the queen of the frozen northwest, Robyn Herrington herself.  Say, did you ever notice that Robyn's email address starts with RMH!  Isn't that the initials for Royal Majesty Herrington or something like that?)

Where were we before I interrupted myself?

Oh, yes.  Since I am sure that some of us, myself included, are still working on hollow beanie baby  stories, here's a quote about Gothic that seems apropos.

 From the introduction to The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales edited by Chris Baldick, Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-214194-5, page xix:

"Drawing together some of the characteristics of Gothic fiction already suggested in this brief account of its evolution, I can now summarize what I have understood, in selecting the contents of this collection, a Gothic tale to be.  For the Gothic effect to be attained, a tale should combine a fearful sense of inheritance in time with a claustrophobic sense of enclosure in space, these two dimensions reinforcing one another to produce an impression of sickening descent into disintegration.  This is, of course, too abstract a formula to capture the real accumulation of physical and historical associations by which we actually recognize the conventions of Gothic; so it may be translated into more concrete terms by noting that typically a Gothic tale will invoke the tyranny of the past (a family curse, the survival of archaic forms of despotism and of superstition) with such weight as to stifle the hopes of the present (the liberty of the heroine or hero) within the dead-end of physical incarceration (the dungeon, the locked room, or simply the confinements of a family house closing in upon itself). Even more concisely, although at the risk of losing an important series of connected meanings, we could just say that Gothic fiction is characteristically obsessed with old buildings as sites of human decay.  The Gothic castle or house is not just an old and sinister building; it is a house of degeneration, even of decomposition, its living-space darkening and contracting into the dying-space of the mortuary and the tomb.  Although Gothic fiction can work with other kinds of enclosed space, if these are sufficiently isolated and introverted -- contents, prisons, schools, madhouses, even small villages -- it is still the dark mansion that occupies its central ground.  Doubling as both fictional setting and as dominant symbol, the house reverberates for us with associations which are simultaneously psychological and historical.  As a kind of folk-psychology set in stone, the Gothic house is readily legible to our post-Freudian culture, so we can recognize in its structure the crypts and cellars of repressed desire, the attics and belfries of neurosis, just as we accept Poe's invitation to read the haunted palace of the poem in his tale as the allegory of a madman's head...."

(and he has PAGES like this!  Perhaps an affliction of the wordy order?)

"... Prominent among its special features is a preoccupation with the inherited powers and corruptions of feudal aristocracy, and with similar lineages and agencies of archaic authority, which can include the pseudo-aristocracies of the American South and the monastic hierarchies of the Roman Catholic Church.  So while it would be possible to concoct a passable horror story about the misdeeds of, say, a dangerously sadistic bank manager or dentist, one would not be writing a Gothic tale unless one linked the subject-matter in some way to the antiquated tyrannies and dynastic corruptions of an aristocratic power or at least of a proud old provincial family.  Moulding our common existential dread into the more particular shapes of Gothic fiction, then, is a set of 'historical fears' focusing upon the memory of an age-old regime of oppression and persecution which threatens still to fix its dead hand upon us...."

and lest we forget, on page 85, Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher,:

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher...."

2,500 words... and here come the shivers, the shadows, the chills and thrills...

It's halloween at WRITERS!

Write!

original posting: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 09:58:11 EDT

EXERCISE: Plot #13: Maturation: 20 Master Plots

[with mere hours to go before the midnight parade of the zombies...]

Based on the book "20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them)" by Ronald B. Tobias.  ISBN 0-89879-595-8.

Master Plot #13: Maturation

[the loss of illusions...]

(p. 160) "The maturation plot--the plot about growing up--is one of those strongly optimistic plots.  There are lessons to learn, and those lessons may be difficult, but in the end the character becomes (or will become) a better person for it."

(p. 161) "The protagonist of the maturation plot is usually a sympathetic young person whose goals are either confused or not yet quite formed.  He floats on the sea of life without a rudder.  He often vacillates, unsure of the proper path to take, the proper decision to make.  These inabilities are usually the result of a lack of experience in life--naivete..."

"This coming-of-age story is often called the _Bildungsroman_, which is German for 'education novel.'  The focus of these stories is the protagonist's moral and psychological growth.  Start your story where the protagonist has reached the point in her life at which she can be tested as an adult.  She may be ready for the test, or she may be forced into it by circumstances."

Phase the First:  Before

(p. 162)  "...begin with the protagonist as he is before events start to change his life.  We need to see who this character is, how he thinks and acts, so we can make a decision about his moral and psychological state before he undergoes change.  Your character may exhibit a lot of negative (childlike) traits.  Perhaps he is irresponsible (but fun-loving), duplicitous, selfish, naive--all the character traits that are typical of people who haven't accepted the responsibilities of adulthood or who haven't accepted the moral and social code that the rest of us abide by (more or less)..."

When suddenly...

(p. 163)  "Which brings us to the test.  The catalytic event. ... suddenly something comes along and smacks her square in the face...."

death of a parent, divorce, loss of home....

"...The event must be powerful enough to get the attention of the protagonist and literally shake up her belief systems...."

"You will prove your skills as a writer by making us feel the apocalyptic force of the event on the child's psyche..."

Phase Two:  I Don't Wanna

The first reaction usually is denial, either literal or figurative. Don't shortcut this.  There's anger, resistance, etc.--work your character through them.

(p. 165)  "It may be, in fact, that your protagonist is actually trying to do the right thing, but doesn't know what the right thing is.  That means trial and error.  Finding out what works and what doesn't work. That is the process of growing up, the journey from innocence to experience."

Phase Three: Finally

(p. 165) "Finally your protagonist develops a new system of beliefs and gets to the point where it can be tested.  In the third dramatic phase, your protagonist will finally accept (or reject) the change.  Since we've already noticed that most works of this type end on a positive note, your protagonist will accept the role of adult in a meaningful rather than a token way."

Be careful with this plot.  Don't lecture or moralize, let the reader find the meaning buried in the prosaic...and see the world fresh again.

Checklist:

1.  Is your protagonist on the cusp of adulthood, with goals that are confused or not yet clear?

2.  Does your story clearly show the readers who the character is and how s/he feels and thinks before the event occurs that begins the process of change?

3.  Does your story contrast the protagonist's naive life (childhood) to the reality of an unprotected life (adulthood)?

4.  Does your story focus on showing the protagonist's moral and psychological growth?

5.  Does the "precipitating event" clearly challenge the beliefs and understanding of the world that you have shown?

6.  "Does your character reject or accept change?  Perhaps both?  Does she resist the lesson?  How does she act?"

7.  Does your story show your protagonist undergoing the process of change?  Is the change realistically gradual and difficult?

8.  Is your young protagonist convincing?  Does she display adult values and perceptions before she has developed them?

9.  Does your story try to convert someone to "instant adulthood"?  Or does it use small lessons and major upheavals to reflect the long process of growing up?

10.  Does your story accurately show the psychological price that this lesson demands, and how your protagonist copes with that cost?

That's our technical background lesson from Tobias...

Since we're still in the time of the halloweenies, let's consider whether growing up (maturation) could be the basis of a horror...aha!

Suppose, just for example, that we have our normal, fun-loving bunch of teenagers (young people, pick your age group)...hotrodding, dancing on the beach, headed for the prom...or just hanging out at the mall?

And then comes...the bubbling goo from outer space?  the phone call from the doctor (and just what was the diagnosis?)  or the maniac from central New Jersey?...design your precipitating incident, anyway.

Spend a while mixing, brewing, stirring the soxes off the emotional twists and turns of the kids...

And rock our little worlds with the maturity that the kids step up to. Did Jose really skip the homecoming dance just to sit with Fernando, watching the sun rise one last time before...or does Emily decide that she doesn't care if the baby does have cloven hoofs and those buds on its skull, it's her baby and it's going to get a college education if it wants one...what about the wonderful way that Alfred admits to the police that while he did lure the graduating class into the swamp, he was simply not aware that the great vampire bat migration was going on....

In short, it seems to me that facing down a little natural (or unnatural, take your pick) horror often is the catalyst for maturation. Take that kid with the cotton candy, add a boll weevil gleefully eating its way towards his heart, and if he's plucky, bold, and true...you may end up with an adult who knows that dental hygiene helps avoid cavities.

(and if you think you've seen this plot before a few times--you're right!  but there are still a few tales for you to wring out of this one...so start twisting!)

How about...a number from one to six?

1.  "Mature man needs to be needed, and maturity needs guidance as well as encouragement from what has been produced and must be taken care of." Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (1950), 7.

2.  "We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice--that is, until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say 'I lost it.'"  Sydney J. Harris, On the Contrary (1962), 7.

3.  "The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former."  Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1711).

4.  "To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity." Edward Weeks, "A Quarter Century: Its Retreats," Look, July 18, 1961.

5.  "The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength in you that survives all hurt." Max Lerner, "Faubus and Little Rock," The Unfinished Country (1959), 4.

6.  "One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them." Virginia Woolf, "Hours in a Library," Times Literary Supplement, "Nov. 30, 1916.

[Quotes taken from The International Thesaurus of Quotations, by Rhoda Thomas Tripp, ISBN 0-06-091382-7]

How about making a list of five different qualities which you admire (honesty?  okay...)  Then consider how someone who has not yet achieved that level of maturity may act.  Focus down to the one that your character is going to be tested on (or challenged)...

Then pick the catalytic event.  If you like, here's a list (pick your number!):

1.  Death (of a friend, a relative, etc.)
2.  Illness
3.  Pregnancy
4.  Reaction by others to revealed "secret" (you did what?)
5.  Being "invited" to join in a crime
6.  Having a parent (or other influential adult) leave

Refine that general event.  Lay out the reactions to it.  (and if you want, mix in the horror...up the ante on that catalyst!  I think almost every item on the list has been used as the basis for horror--just push them a bit beyond the everyday, and you find fear and loathing grinning through the muck...)

Then lay out the story.  Introduce us to the young person(s).  Have their life interrupted by...change.  Show us the actions and reactions, the attempts to escape, to hide, to avoid...and then show us the growth into maturity, into someone who acts with knowledge of the price of their actions...

(wow!  what a tale you've got to tell! write!)

tink
where were we when the lights went on?

original posting: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 09:43:11 EDT

EXERCISE: Plot #12: Transformation: 20 Master Plots

Based on the book "20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them)" by Ronald B. Tobias.  ISBN 0-89879-595-8.

Master Plot #12: Transformation

(p. 153) "The plot of transformation deals with the process of change in the protagonist as she journeys through one of the many stages of life. The plot isolates a portion of the protagonist's life that represents the period of change, moving from one significant character state to another."

Some "standard" points of change: becoming adult; war and combat; search for identity; divorce and other family shifts; facing violence; deaths; and learning something new (remember Pygmalion?).

But the large-scale change is only one kind.  Consider small events that may build and shake lives...

Structure:
    Phase one - an incident that starts a change in the protagonist's life.  Be sure the reader knows who the protagonist is before the change!
    Now let the ripples of the incident begin to stretch out..."There are lessons to be learned, judgments to be made, insights to be seen."
    Phase two - show us the full effects of the transforming incident. What hidden parts of the main character are stirred up in the wake of the storm?
    Phase three - show us (often via another incident) the results of the transformation.  What does the protagonist (and the reader) learn?

"It's common for a protagonist to learn lessons other than what he expected to learn.  The real lessons are often the hidden or unexpected ones.  Expectations are baffled; illusions are destroyed.  Reality overtakes fantasy."

Checklist:

1. Does your plot of transformation deal with the process of change as the protagonist journeys through one of the many stages of life?
2. Does the plot isolate a portion of the protagonist's life that represents the period of change, moving from one significant character state to another?
3. Does the story concentrate on the nature of change and how it affects the protagonist from start to end of the experience?
4. Does the first dramatic phase relate the transforming incident that propels the protagonist into a crisis, starting the process of change?
5. Does the second dramatic phase depict the effects of the transformation?  Does it concentrate on the self-examination and character of the protagonist?
6. Does the third dramatic phase contain a clarifying incident representing the final stage of the transformation?  Does the character understand the true nature of the experience and how it has affected him?  Does true growth and understanding occur?
7. What is the price of the wisdom gained?  a certain sadness?

Thus spake Tobias (along with some paraphrasing).

Transformation, change...what could be more appropriate for our little Halloweenies contest?  (Don't know what I'm talking about?  Take a look at http://web.mit.edu/mbarker/www/hall97/hall.html !)

Let's pick a number!  From one to six, or thereabouts?

1.  amphisbaena -- serpent having a head at each end (Greece)
2.  dybbuk -- dead person's evil spirit that invades a living person (Jewish folklore)
3.  ghoul -- evil being that feeds on corpses
4.  lamia -- monster with the head and breast of a woman and body of a serpent that lured children to suck their blood
5.  phoenix -- immortal bird that cremates itself every 500 years, then emerges reborn from the ashes (Greece)
6.  windigo -- evil spirit, cannibal demon (Native American folklore)

[taken from the section on Mythological and Folkloric Beings in Random House Word Menu, ISBN 0-679-40030-3]

Now, back up and consider your character(s).  How old are they?  What change or shift in their life are they facing?  For example, someone who is just starting high school has a little different viewpoint from someone who is about to graduate from college and face the world of work, or from the young couple about to have their first baby, or the slightly older parent thinking about their child leaving home, or... And don't forget, if you don't want to go with the big shifts, a little dabble do you!  So think about the change they were facing...

Then mix in that delightful creature you picked up in the first part. Offhand, I'd recommend making a couple of lists.  First, a list of points about the change--what's good, what's bad, what are we going to learn from it?  Second, a list of points about the monster in our midst--what's good, what's bad, what are we going to do about it?  Now, look at the linkages between the lists.  Can defeating the monster be turned into a sort of metaphor for the change we are dealing with?  What if we don't defeat the monster, but learn from it something about ourselves?  Could defeating the monster be an "anti-metaphor," contrasted to the change which we cannot defeat?

What if we are transformed into the monster?  Or what if there is no monster, just poor sad humanity, hiding behind the cloak of the monster?

Let's see.  How about something borrowed, and perhaps blue?  Pick a number, one to six, and let's see what you got:

1.  a yellow highlighter
2.  a red papiermache pepper
3.  a 5 pound bag of sugar
4.  a spoonful of hot fudge
5.  a two year old comic book from a dentist's waiting room
6.  a clipboard

There you go.  Now you have a prop, a little bit of physical setting which you are going to cleverly weave into the story.  And don't forget, if you mention hot fudge in the first scene, someone should have a sundae before we get done...

Put it all together, it spells...

Well, that's up to you!

Write!
tink

[Other exercises and all of the Master plots can be found at http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/]

original posting: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 19:19:13 EDT

EXERCISE: 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 travellers, 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 boat house

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...

Short starter?

"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...

shiver!
tink

(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!)