Don't Wear Us Out, Josh

Last week I talked about the new Umbral Intentions fiction blog starring and written by Josh Rhoads. There was a couple of spoilers, one worse than the other. Just check back, I won't mention the worst one again if you want to know about it. There was a different discussion about the project over at Inchoate Ascendant titled "Don't Jump the Gun, Pants Kicker" about the actual name of the blog. Since I may want to reference it here today you get to be the first to learn that the blog will be titled "On Dark Rhoads" and not Umbral Intentions--to confuse things worse, as also mentioned last week, the blog is for the This Mental Eventide RPG. Now with that out of the way...

The topic of merit today--and this is the lesser spoiler from last time repeated--is pacing the haunting, or how to parcel out the ghostly events. Being a blog places constraints on the story I will be telling that have less to do with the story that they do with how blogging works. This is of course only on some levels. On others it doesn't impact the story itself. Here again I'm giving things away prematurely. The first order of business is setting up Josh. Who is he on the blog? This is something different than who he is in actuality. He could just jump right in with details on the haunting. That doesn't exactly establish him as someone the blog reading public should believe. So, he begins with an introduction followed by a couple normal slice of life style posts. From there he begins to tell his past encounters and then get into posting about them shortly after the fact.

This second stage of story telling is where the issues begin to crop up. First, the blog is scheduled for Saturdays. Obviously all of the haunting incidents will not happen on just Friday or Saturday. This brings about issues of immediacy, and plays into tension. This is a matter intrinsic to blogging versus real-time interactions like Twitter and Facebook streams. It's just like news reporting where you chose an in-depth look versus greater timeliness. The length of each blog post is a further limit--they tend toward the shorter, especially shorter than full scenes in a short story or novel. There is a certain concision and economy. Another issue is that not every post should be about the haunting. This is important to avoid overload or desensitisation to the creepy goings-on. It also plays into the other important factor.

There is also the matter of pacing the haunting itself. It will progress, it will get worse, and more harrowing as time passes. The haunting must escalate. It will have its highs and its lows as far as the amount of activity. It may be cyclical, or it may be dependant on outside factors such as witnesses. Both will be true actually. Then at the same time the lows will be less frequent and less of a reprieve. Likewise the high activity occasions will be more frequent and more extreme.

The idea that witnesses impact the haunting is typical of real cases, especially when said witnesses are intrusive paranormal investigators who come along and disrupt the haunting either with their equipment, their presence, and most often because the entities responsible for the haunting are shy and do not wish to perform for strangers. There are however different new witnesses who can be brought into the situation who have no detrimental effect on the haunting and in fact encourage it as much or more as the original target. That's all I'll say for now.

Mood: teasing.
Music: Catcher In The Rye by Guns N' Roses and Ghost of Perdition by Opeth.

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Bad Blurring of the Lines

On Twitter there is a sprawling community that is rancid, rank, and utterly decadent. This community prides itself on these virtues in mock-physical sense. They are zombie fans. Some of them purposefully obliterate the line between fiction and reality in their communications. They are in essence role-playing on Twitter as zombies. Their antics are as funny sometimes as they must inevitably be disturbing to non-fans of zombie movies and fiction. It is easy to image the horror and indignation of the horror uninitiated in response to the outlandish and gruesome posts. A fan of horror and of zombies can really get into most of what they do. They are awfully witty and comedic for the walking, ravenous dead. They have the most interesting and not for safe work outlook as well.

There is one trend that has developed recently that bears consideration. It also seems to be ill conceived and for once in bad taste regardless of the popularity of it, and the popularity of zombies and horror. Not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and there is no apparent backlash against it. The trend is to equate the H1N1 virus, otherwise known as human communicable swine flu, with a new and real zombie outbreak and ultimately a start to a zombie apocalypse. Now, it's not the disease factor that is the problem, nor the idea of a zombie apocalypse. There is a great Facebook group called The Hardest Part of a Zombie Apocalypse Will be Pretending I'm Not Excited which expresses the normal sentiment of zombie fans.

It is not even either of these ideas, but at the same time they do lend to the unease of this blurring of the line of reality. The first fear is that some people who are not aware of the fact that this is fictional masquerading as real will get the wrong idea and spread panic like wild-fire. The second is that such a pairing of a real disease, which has resulted in the real deaths of people, with a fictional milieu is insulting to those who have died. A virus that causes the dead to rise is nothing new. Neither is fiction revolving around death by contagion. Something about it just doesn't sit right though and the sooner the trend is over the better. This speaks to what is acceptable, where the line is between the shock and the horror desired, and just being distasteful.

Mood: smooth.

Music: Rock, Rock by Kevin Dubrow and Thrills In The Night by Kiss.

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Self-Promotion

Today, a day later than I should be blogging, I am going to take the time and do some shameless self-promotion. Yesterday I was on Facebook ( Robert Male @ Facebook ) going through groups and seeking out people I lost touch with over the years. A question came up, can I see your sites. I compiled a list, but when it came time to pass on this information I went ahead and did it in a private manner. I believe there is a time and a place to toot my own horn, promote, and otherwise advertise myself. Certainly this blog is an appropriate place. So here goes.

This is my main business site... R.M.T.P. Co.

Here is a place to keep up with what I'm writing... Robert G. Male, Author of Horror and Thrillers

I run a site called... Bob's Reviews

Here is my storefront for my horror fiction... R.M.T.P. Co. Bookstore: Scary Short Story Collections

It is partially defunct and not wholly written by me but here are writing examples of a more generic nature (while the site above is safe the horror itself requires some warnings)... Rifts: Coalition Wars

You are of course already here at... R.G. Male's Dark Corners

I designed a site for the local chapter of the Horror Writers Association... HWA Ontario

I have a MySpace profile... Bob Scares @ MySpace

I have a Windows Live Space... Atramentus Gloaming

I am a member of the Artzone community (this may require joining to see my other art)... The Male Bob @ Artzone

My Artzone blog is here (this may require joining to see my other art)... The Male Bob's Blog @ Artzone

Here is a small art project I undertook recently... The Adventures of Atramentus™ and Scintellatus™ - Part 1

I have a video I rendered over at YouTube (hopefully better stuff on the way)... My YouTube Profile

Mood: besieged.
Music: The Grouch by Green Day and Misery by Green Day.

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Dating Stories

It seems like now is a poor time to be writing. It's perhaps harder than ever to write a story set in the present without including something that will quickly leave the story feeling dated. Technology of different stripes can be ignored certainly but more of them are becoming ubiquitous and should be involved. A good example is the cell phone. Cell phones can vastly change the playing field of a story. It's something of a downer to see every story involve there being no cell phone coverage. It's a cheap cop out to trying to craft a story where being able to immediately reach someone, even help, can still leave the characters with their conundrums.

The first of the Poltergeist movies was such a story that defies being changed if the time setting of the story were to be updated. The Freeling family was surrounded by neighbours, able to call upon the best people to try and help, and still the horror would not relent and the mood could not be dampened. The writers didn't need secluded woods, downed phone lines, or any kind of physical isolation. Yet isolation engulfed the movie's family just as fully as the haunting frightened them.

Phone calls aside there are other ways that the ever changing and evolving technological landscape will affect modern, current, fiction. Does the character have a CD player or an MP3 player, or is it in his phone? Is the character watching a DVD or a HD DVD or a Blu-Ray disc when the terrible event happens? Is the secret knowledge hidden in a book, or on a website, or stashed on a USB drive? Encoded on a blog? Did the stalker find his victim on MySpace or Facebook? Did he stick a GPS tracker to her car? Keystroke logger? Does the cell phone bearing crowd witnessing an accident have camera stills of it or streaming video? The options are there, and changing too fast or not they should be put to best use.

Mood: down.
Music: Vicious Circle by Quiet Riot and Poison Apples by Motley Crue.

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