Make the Introductions, Josh

There are a number of benefits afforded to extended and long-term narratives. The benefit is felt more strongly in the written word than in movies as far as series tend to go, frequently because of a singular author. Of course moving from the page to the screen can pass on those benefits. I have discovered a really nice benefit while writing the posts for the On Dark Rhoads™ blog that I did not anticipate, as much as it makes sense. I can introduce concepts, characters, and any idea I might like to add into the narrative at any point, without getting straight to the point of why it is there. I can hint at its importance, or I can say nothing and just let it stand. Silence on the point can add its own mystique as well. Then I can come back to it when the time is right and the savvy readers will know they've seen it before and have the kind of aha moment that just wouldn't occur or be possible any other way.

This kind of foreshadowing is really appealing from this side of the process. It may not be quite so exciting for the reader, especially previous to the reveal. I just recently introduced a pretty important element to Josh's story in just such an offhand way. I'd like to think that it is mysterious too. People will read it and tell themselves that this simple, almost innocuously boring update has meaning that is not readily important, otherwise why is it there. The question then becomes can I, or any author in a similar situation, have superfluous posts? The answer must be yes. For starters, the idea of a red herring is reliant on giving information that is not actually important, at least to the true advancement of the story's main conflict, and to the characters beyond the time that it has proven false. By the way, the revelation was that Josh does vote for the hidden-evil political party.

Mood: dramatic.
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They're Not as Scared, Josh

I talked a bit more about the On Dark Rhoads blog over at Inchoate with "Gearing Up for the Rhoad" and got into some technical and non-writing aspects like commenting and general blog shoptalk.

Last time here we talked about pace and tension. What does it really mean in regard to the scare factor of the tale though? For that matter what does the format do to the scare? Certainly as much as horror is known for it scares, for leaving the audience creeped out if only for a little while, it is about the horrific too, obviously, but as a kind of milieu it is about the situations, beings, and the like that are horrific or monstrous. As such it doesn't always have to scare or horrify at least on the small scale--nor constantly either.

A story about a haunting is a horror story even if you are not scared by it. Stories with monsters are likewise horror as well by virtue of the monsters, though this might require it not additionally being say a medieval fantasy story. It is a matter of degrees and a question of intensity. It is the outlook that matters. Monster heroes in a city will be urban fantasy for instance rather than horror if it lacks horror. It's all shades of grey as far as the presentation goes. Often what distinguishes horror from the other similar genres in this no man's land is how the unnatural elements affect the characters. This is especially true of horror role-playing games. The game need not scare or horrify the players per se, but the setting, the conflict, and the scenarios had certainly better present the characters with fear and horror or a sense of dread.

I see the same delineation in horror fiction even as others insist the product, whatever it is, book, movie, or game, must frighten them or affect them personally to be successful and therefore count. As an example consider the movie Paranormal Activity. I don't mean to compare my haunting tale to it for either its admirers or detractors, but it is a good example from an illustrative viewpoint. Some who live with an actual haunting were dismissive of the bulk of the phenomena as not being scary enough to carry the horror. Others cannot fathom staying anywhere haunted and are floored by these kinds of movies. To bring it back to the original questions I would like the scare factor to be there. I would like nothing more that to have people, well, haunted, by the events, and suspicious of their own surroundings. Was that book where they left it? Wasn't that water glass on the right a moment ago where now it's on the left? At the same time it's okay if they don't do that, as long as the experience through reading the entries was enjoyable.

Come back next week for a special post (instead of my usual day off) regarding a forthcoming role-playing game called Amaranthine from David A. Hill Jr. of Machine Age Productions makers of Maschine Zeit. David is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the print run of Amaranthine right now.

Mood: relaxed.
Music: Hotel California by the Eagles and Someone Else? by Queensryche.

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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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It's Not What They Think, Josh

If you didn’t know already I’ve been gearing up to unleash a fiction blog. Not just any fiction blog, but one tied to a work in progress role-playing game. There are several issues involved in creating this blog on many levels. The issue I am interested in discussing now has to do with going against expectation. I can't help but spoiler some things. Sorry. Let me start with the basic premise behind the role-playing game. The game is called "This Mental Eventide" and revolves around the emergence of a large number of psychics. A man named Joshua Gavin Rhoads is the author of the blog. He initially hints that he has a secret that he wants to tell everyone but has to build up to it. The secret is the haunting. From there he begins to detail the various happenings. Here's the catch--and the worst spoiler of all. Josh is not haunted. Rather he is being plagued by his own burgeoning psychic abilities.

One of the elements to this setting is that there are no ghosts or earthbound spirits. There are hauntings sure enough, but they are residual hauntings--those are the echoes or events repeating on a loop--or the work of psychics. All in all this makes for a protracted scenario in which nothing is what it seems. There is the possibility that an abrupt turn of face would be off-putting to some. The haunting has to fall within the extent of Josh's psychic abilities. Since he is the cause of all of the phenomena it has to have some meaning to him or otherwise be in character for him. The incidents must be something he subconsciously wants or they happen in reaction to what he feels toward different people and events. Some will be very obvious, but others may seem particularly inexplicable, or at least unfathomable at first blush.

At this stage only one power is evident. Josh must have telekinesis. It covers a myriad of ghostly phenomena that are poltergeist-like in nature. I have an inkling of one of his other powers, but I won't mention it. The development of the game is incomplete so I do not know how many psychic abilities he should manifest, when they will do so, and what if any progression there is between them. Likewise Josh is a bit of a blank canvas. I have certain traits squarely in mind and the rest is open. I do not even know what his profession is yet. One of the keys to a setting like this, and especially these kinds of scenarios involving adults, is that these people have real lives first before the emergence of the fantastical or the horrific. These unanswered questions play into the next topic I want to write about with regard to this project.

Mood: secretive.
Music: Can't Stop Rockin' by ZZ Top and Black Dragon by Luca Turilli.

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Scheduling for the 2010 Remainder

Hi, it's been just a few days since I completed this year's thirteen special nights of Hallowe'en. Normally I take a bit of a break, something of a hiatus. Not so much this year. At the same time I am not planning to be up to much here. That said I thought it would be a good idea to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the movie nights, and especially everyone who helped spread the word. Thank you.

If you even need to know when the next entry is scheduled for this blog you can always check out the Dead Days Calendar(TM) on Battered Spleen Productions' main page. For November I've penciled in the 10th and the 24th. December is undecided, but is also a sparsely populated month blog-wise. One of those entries will be a small gift guide--likely the first week so people have time to shop. Otherwise I do not know what will happen until closer to then. Cheers.

Mood:
Music: Punched In The Teeth By Love by Motley Crue and Wanted Dead Or Alive by Bon Jovi.

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13 Nights of Halloween Preview 2009

It's that time of the year again. We're a day away from October already. I'm getting a jump on things early, so here is your preview of the 2009 edition of the 13 Nights of Halloween. Not only that, but you are seeing into the future! This is the October 6th entry for WraithStop™. As usual this list is presented if you need to buy a copy of one or more of the movies that will be presented this year. Only a couple of the entries have Blu-Ray editions available as of yet, and they have been included for your convenience. It's a little messy, but what the hay, information is better than looks, right?

So, I will leave you to it. Happy Hump Day and let's make this another Halloween extravaganza to remember. Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? Well aren't you in for a treat. From October 19th to 31st there is one blog a night for a movie you can watch along with the rest of us. The blog talks about background information about the movie, its creators, its cast, and whatever else comes to mind. Yes, 13 nights, 13 movies, 13 blog entries.

There will be a regularly scheduled entry to this blog on October 7th and then nothing until the 19th's big kick off. Mark your calendar now--I know I will.

Music: Dead Souls by Nine Inch Nails and Rebirth from Poltergeist: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.

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Divergent Meanings

I would like to start with a little bit about what has happened during the hiatus I planned. I had every intention of starting the blogs back up in the middle of the month, after finding that the Battered Spleen Productions Knowledge Base coding work was taking longer than expected. Then when it came time to write the first article I was sick the entire week. So here we are now. Please accept my apologies.

Sometimes words are a losing battle. One word that gets a lot of bad press is stereotype. There are times that an idea is a stereotype not because it's an easy, and often incorrect assumption upon which to fall back, but because it is actually such a common occurrence. Other times it does suffer from bias and misinformation. Such biases and the flurry of reasoning and illogic, both at once in some cases, had been covered before the hiatus. Getting back to the losing battle, sometimes one of these stereotypes, when tied to a single word should maybe be considered a lost cause. When this happens there are essentially two options to consider. One is to use a different word altogether. The other is to accept, in the sense of ignore, the negative connotation.

Now, I in no way mean to malign anyone with this, or stir up trouble, or look down on anyone. Caveats and warnings like this usually are enough to cause confrontation, practically something of a tie in--in and of itself--to the themes being pursued in these Dark Corners. What I speak of is a word that has rather negative connotations to many and varied people, but at the same time strikes at, beyond the direct offensiveness of it, another group. The controversy over misappropriation of this word may even be to one degree or another misinformation itself. It may only be a piffling insult. It is hard to tell from the outside. Such is the nature of bias and ignorance. So, what is this contentious word that deserves such preamble? The word is witch.

To horror lovers everywhere witches are evil and vile people bent on vengeance, violence, depravity, and associating with all kinds of other evil. Witches though are also members of the Wiccan faith. Therein lies the problem. It might be inferred now that I would consider using the word witch in connection with the beliefs of Wicca's a lost cause. I am in no position to decide such a thing. The problem lies in using the wealth of horror mythology and material on evil or satanic witches. Some people take offence at putting the word evil in front of a group's name, like there is any group of any size that is 100% free of evil, no matter how much we wish to dismiss such people as not belonging to the group. However, doesn't that fly in the face all that has been discussed on twisting ideologies?

Mood:

Music: First Band on the Moon by Motley Crue and Back to Madness by Stratovarius.

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13 Nights of Halloween 2008 Preview

It's the most frightening time of the year,
There’s plenty of killings,
With lots of guts spilling,
And causing much fear...
It's the most frightening time of the year!

We temporarily interrupt your regularly scheduled Horror on Hump Day for this special message--don’t worry today’s Anatomy of a Horror Setting is coming later today as planned. It’s October 1st today and that means it’s time to name the 13 movies for the 13 blogs of Halloween. They are available at WraithStop(tm) right now. Go straight to the Recommendations.

We now return you to your regular blog.

A Horror on Hump Day Curveball

Today is a holiday for me. I had expected to write my usual blog early and have it ready to put up today, but alas no. To our horror, yours and mine, this is a fake blog. You may now scream. Go ahead. It's a scary thing. No one will think less of you if you cry either. Until next time, here is a bunch of stuff--very few will understand--to make this look the real blog that it isn't. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent posuere, metus vel malesuada fermentum, est turpis sagittis urna, in lacinia tortor nisi eu magna. Maecenas ac tellus auctor elit lacinia fermentum. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Integer iaculis. Fusce nec libero. Donec auctor convallis neque. Proin est eros, mattis at, consequat vitae, pharetra vitae, velit.

Pellentesque sed orci. Nunc tincidunt nunc eget lacus. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Quisque faucibus nunc venenatis enim. Suspendisse vitae dolor. Vestibulum nulla. Aenean felis diam, scelerisque a, rutrum eu, ullamcorper nec, justo. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Ut nisl nunc, molestie pellentesque, porta eget, lobortis et, elit. Sed nisi velit, luctus at, pellentesque non, pulvinar id, mi. Curabitur sapien orci, lobortis vitae, euismod mollis, iaculis at, nisi. Etiam ante mauris, volutpat non, commodo gravida, tincidunt quis, dolor. Etiam eget dui nonummy dolor accumsan tincidunt. Sed id eros ac sapien gravida consequat. Mauris augue. Nam elit odio, pulvinar nec, suscipit sit amet, lobortis sit amet, enim. Nullam vel tellus. Phasellus lectus.

Integer auctor lectus nec massa. Aenean convallis. Phasellus luctus vestibulum enim. Vestibulum imperdiet leo id erat. Etiam venenatis diam a mi. Fusce mattis mattis orci. Cras lacus. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Nullam in tortor. Praesent id pede eget nisi ullamcorper luctus. Phasellus consequat feugiat mi. Phasellus risus elit, sollicitudin in, imperdiet at, fringilla non, lectus. Donec nec erat eu dolor gravida porttitor. Donec tellus. Donec dapibus sollicitudin elit. Duis enim arcu, malesuada quis, aliquam eget, vulputate eget, augue. Curabitur ut erat. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Maecenas orci. Sed porta. Ut ante sem, luctus tincidunt, malesuada et, dapibus in, velit.

Mood: festive.
Music Tail Gunner by Iron Maiden and Bad Boys (Of Rock 'n' Roll) by Twisted Sister.

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No Blog

There will be no blog today. I will also not be blogging on July 1st.

Happy Canada Day to everyone. Stay safe and have fun.

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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