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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Be Brave with Your Fear

Did you ever want to tell the story after the story, but you decided that you couldn't because beginning at that point requires an emotional investment in the characters from the audience for it to mean anything to them? Did you ever want to have an event in your story that seems arbitrary, but has a good reason behind it, it's just that you can't tell it too early or you will spoil it? Did you ever want to tell a story in chronological order, but you couldn't because no one would stick with it long enough for the right things to happen to make for a great pay off later on? Did you ever want to tell a very subtle story, but it was just too much effort to build in everything to grab and keep audience and not leave the subtlety lost in the clutter? There are a dozen more questions like this that can be asked. There are dozens of variations on each and every one of them.

Some of these scenarios have resolutions. They can be conquered. The first question is do you want to surmount the obstacle? Sometimes the question is are you brave enough to embark on such a challenge? Will you stick with it or give in when the pressure becomes too much? The worst pressure may come from within. Just like last week I'm asking you to consider what happens when we break from script and do something different rather the same old thing--whether the same old thing is bad in the first place, or especially if it does work already. It's one thing to jettison a failed idea, to not repeat bad execution, but what if the thing are you looking to replace always works, gets certain people going, and ultimately is what will definitely sell to some fraction of the desired audience? You might ask who am I to do these things. I may be the one to do them or not, but I am here advocating them to others.

Are you going to do such a thing now? Be brave; be bold. If you are telling your stories and getting them in front of people, no matter how many or few, then you are already one of the brave. Look at the positives. Turn negatives around into positives. Think big even if you're doing it by thinking small. Bring the excitement whenever you can, as hard as you can. Go now and be the object of fear--not the recipient--tell your stories. Remember to scare them silly and leave them panting for more. I'll leave you to it.

Mood: invigorated.
Music: You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) by Meat Loaf and Brave New World by Iron Maiden.

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Return of the Space Horrors

In space no can hear your spleen!

Watching Stargate Universe's opening two episodes I was struck by the thought once again how frightening space is. It's as dangerous as working underwater and because of the much greater distances involved help is that much further away if not entirely out of the question. This is just as a matter of the man versus nature plot, though it must be further extended to include machines as a part of nature, making it man versus his environment. The nature of your location is consistently deadly, but only failure of your safety devices, your ship included, can end your life in most situations. It can be debated back and forth whether the meteor punching a hole through your ship or the ship's then unsustainability is the cause of your death. There is also the matter of which is more likely to be dealt with, preventing the meteor strike or repairing the damage.

Back when Star Trek: Enterprise premiered the first season seemed to be very horror oriented with a lot of panicked what is that quickly followed by how many are dead now and look what it did to him/her. Space was a very scary place because of the aliens, so many of which were menacing, and well, alien--admittedly they could always go more alien and you would in your own setting. This is what it is all about after all. Back in the Anatomy of a Horror Setting when I covered science fiction horror pairings, options for your setting considerations, I covered how the horror of aliens works and relies on fear of the unknown. Nothing is more unknown that creatures that have never previously even come into contact with anything you know. Different biology, different outlook, different beliefs and the only similarity an expectation that the universe is dangerous.

Of course you don't have to go out into space to end up on the receiving end of its horror. Lots of times the aliens come to Earth and wreak havoc. This is one of the least well done kinds of horror for some reason. Too often they end up leaning too heavy toward the science fiction or worse they fall back on a deus ex machina to extricate the protagonists, and the entire planet, from the alien threat, which is entirely non-conducive to horror. These are not bad movies or novels, in some cases far from it, but they do not fit the horror mould. Consider how much more horror there is a hopeless situation, or better yet one with only a small glimmer of hope in the form of great determination and likely sacrifice, weighing your own morals versus the freedom or even survival of your species. That's not just great horror, that's exciting storytelling.

Mood: spacey.
Music: Isle Of Avalon by Iron Maiden and Headswitch by Bruce Dickinson.

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Conceptions, Intuition, and Truthiness

The other day the following interesting article came to my attention. It was titled "Would You Wear a Serial Killer's Sweater?" It also asked, and I asked again on Twitter, "Would you fear the volunteer who did put on the sweater?" All sorts of factors surrounding social interactions, concepts of what is real and what isn't, intuition about what's real, among others, come into play in this discussion. This is a different tack toward the same kind of idea being explored here lately. All of them come together to build connections between the characters in a story, the plot, and both the expectations and impact upon the audience of the work. Many narratives carry one singular reality, whether or not it is an exact replication of the real world or something very fantastical and different.

How does the sweater play into this? First it does not matter that it is not actually a serial killer's sweater. The insinuation or claim that it is such is enough on its own. Likewise it does not matter that the item is laundered. It still carries the connotations as if it were still stained with the blood of the killer's victims. The idea makes people nervous and uncomfortable. Its proximity causes anger in some even before the outrageous request for someone to don it. It is a tainted item. Worse, that taint may rub off. Conceptually it is an artefact of evil. Fascination with it, shown by taking the offer to wear it, points to the evil nature of that volunteer. It is something that should be reviled and likely feared. Those not espousing such emotions are questionable. Or so the theory goes.

It is a gut instinct, an emotional response that the sweater is bad. This is the same intuitive sense people have upon learning of a person's criminal record. It is of course worse if the intuiting person is familiar with the exact crime, and hard to look past if it was violent. This all begs the question, which is more important, actual fact, or just perception of the truth of something? That word truthiness, trite as its origins are, and frightening as the concept is, seems to sum up the answer to that question as today's society would answer it. Perception is everything in a large segment of the population. This is something that can and should be capitalised on in fiction. It comes up on this blog more than once for a reason. It is depth well used for characterisation, direct plot, and secondary conflict.

Mood: airy.

Music: The Unforgiven III by Metallica and Inconclusion by Dee Snider.

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The Greatest Fear

This series of blogs has been a blast and I've said some interesting things I think and asked some good questions. Like all good things it must come to an end. However I think I've left the best for last. There is always one thing that will forever cause more fear than anything else. It may be trite, but it definitely nails things right on the head. There is nothing to fear but fear itself.

Another one is, "Fear is the Mind Killer". Perhaps a great example of that is the anecdotally backed belief that if you were to dream that you died, by whatever means, that you would indeed die. In story terms this is a wonderful idea. The idea goes that the brain cannot tell the difference between reality and a dream, and that when it thinks the body should be dead it sends out the signal, stop everything, we're dead. Then real death comes when the brain no longer gets enough oxygen.

In a similar vein there is the idea that indeed fear can kill you. If you fell from a cliff and panicked all the way down the "story" goes that you could give yourself a coronary and die. Mind you, for people with definite heart conditions it's not hard to imagine that emotion can lead to a full failure. The idea that someone in good health with a strong heart can die in such a manner needs a little something more added to make scared to death work, something like a supernatural effect.

Lastly we come to maybe the best part in fiction about death caused by fear. We have the wonderful tales of actual physical manifestations or incarnations of fear as a being. As strange as this may sound my favourite example of such a thing has to be a pseudo incarnation, and it comes from a fairly unlikely source. My favourite comes from Star Trek: Voyager where Captain Janeway faced off against a computer program/entity that believed itself to be Fear incarnate. It all came down to, "What does Fear fear?" The answer? Fear fears being conquered, it fears when the fear is passed. Fear fears no one to push around. Fear fears the end.

Mood: down.
Music: Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together) by Queen and Big Man With a Gun by Nine Inch Nails.

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Fire Bad. Fire BAD!

As far as something that could befall anyone, maybe even at any time, fire tops the chart of things to be afraid of, and with good reason. As a useful thing fire is a powerful tool. In fact we have to consider not just the fire but also the heat, so rather than imagine speaking of just crackling to shooting flames imagine the whole kit and caboodle. It's when fire gets out of hand or is misused that this great and useful tool becomes an object of abject terror.

Fire is a great destroyer. Not only can it wipe away the physical but it can do harm on a more "spiritual" level. Consider the huge demoralizing affect it can have from just a house fire. All that time fixing or maintaining the house is gone, all the memories that the contents of the house had are blotted out, and all the memories of the place itself are supplanted (these last too temporarily, but still). Beyond the scars to the psyche this is not to mention the scars that may result to the body if the fire alarm doesn't rouse you soon enough, or the children have to be rescued from the flames before the firemen arrive, for example.

Now, imagine the same loss on a larger scale, like the fire that tore through old Chicago. On the other hand the scale need not be increased to heighten the horror. For that, all that is required is a simple thing called motive. The fear of something happening accidentally or as part of an unforeseeable result of something only goes so far. It has to go only so far; otherwise we would be crushed by such fear. When the cause is purposeful, and motivated by hate or greed or, put simply, the wills of men then there is a whole new added dimension of fear.

Speaking of the wills of men. What of that step beyond the norm to those in fiction who can will fire into existence and wield it at their whim? Is that not some kind of ultimate crystallization of the power of fire as a force of fear in the form of a person? Does that not speak of great horror in the making? It sometimes may not seem so when such power is frequently bandied about and given a comic-bookish quality. That seeming may be very contrary to the idea itself though. Someone should do something about that.

Mood: frantic.
Music: Die With Your Boots On by Iron Maiden and The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails.

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Creepy Crawlies

Was there a point in our history that giant insects and spiders besieged us? It might be easy to imagine so given the level of fear these little beasties of the animal kingdom bring to us. Then again, some of the biting and stinging ones would give good enough reason to be leery them. Anyone who has ever been stung by a bunch of hornets over and over would certainly deserve their fear. Such things aside, is there anything beyond weirdness of form that leaves people afraid of the creepy crawlies?

Certainly as far as appearances go, insects and spiders represent something very different than other animals that we see. Their designs are foreign to us; multiple limbs, hard shells, strange or multiple eyes, and the aforementioned stingers and fangs, and let's not forget antennae. For the longest time these creatures had to represent the unknown as much as anything, and we know fear of the unknown is the worst.

Knowledge of the workings of the anatomy and even the thought processes of insects and spiders has not lessened the fear any. One area of knowledge about them has actually made the fear worse. The fact that we know they can be carriers of terrible diseases, and be the cause of other forms of sickness hasn't waylaid anyone's bad impressions of them.

This is added to the fact that in some ways insects have been competitors in the food arena, in that at least they love to eat the things that we do. Anyone who has ever opened a box of cereal from the cupboard and found a hundred or more ants running among the flakes knows this all too well. This all leads back to the original hypothesis, or a parallel of it. There is one type of actual besieging, the locust swarm devouring the crop fields. Seeing that firsthand must be quite the horror, a living cloud, hard bodies blotting out the sun, scouring the land, leaving it barren...

Mood: springy
Music: Be the Ball by Slash's Snakepit and One Tin Soldier by Me First & the Gimme Gimmes.

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Dying to Tell You

Death is a huge universal fear. The fear of it covers the spectrum from suffering instead of dying, to the act of dying, to what happens after the person is dead (in several senses). This is added to the fact that eventually death happens to everyone. In fact the difference of when it is going to happen might even be the biggest cause of fear over the event. Certainly most people would prefer that it be later than sooner.

It can be argued that where it applies it is the fear of death that holds the greatest horror where the story is concerned. A monster may be all ugly and scary looking, and it may have unnatural powers, but just how much can a person get worked up over unnatural powers or goings on compared to the results of such things. In fact for the most parts results are what matters the most.

As a result, death would have to be the final result, at least as far as the world of the living is concerned. Beyond the fear of what it is like to die is the set of ideas with respect to what happens afterward. From a physical stand point there is ceasing to be able to interact with others, and the degradation of the body. Then, if a person subscribes to the idea that there is nothing after death it could be a fairly low level fear because once it comes there is nothing more to worry about.

For the people that believe there is a judgment to be placed upon them after death then death can be even more frightening yet. If the judgment was to be against them then things could only get worse. That's a pretty heavy weight if the person thinks that result is likely, especially given it usually leads to eternal torment. That has to be the worst. If that's what awaits them, then as it's been said, "Do not go gentle into that good night."

Mood: even.
Music: Hero of the Day by Metallica and Do You Sleep? by Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories.

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The Writer’s Horror

I don’t believe I have talked about this yet. There is something that is so terrible, so horrible, and so mind-numbingly evil that it is the fear of each and every writer. It gives the writer such a sense of uselessness, impotence, and gut-wrenching dismay that it can destroy them. It can wreak havoc on their confidence, their dreams and aspirations, and make them miserable. What is this abhorrence? Most people call it writer’s block.

I cannot say that I have ever fully suffered from it. I can say that I have sat down and tried to write on one specific project and been blocked. However I cannot say that I have ever been in a position where I could not turn around and write about something else for some other project. Maybe that is the key to slaying that foul beast. This isn’t to say that it helps if you’re on a deadline for a project and the block hits you.

If I suffer from anything in my writing career, as just beginning as it is, it’s too many ideas. I have too many projects jockeying for room in my head. That is without the distraction of other, non-writing, work to be done. Back to the accursed writer’s block, I can only imagine that what I have said in describing it is both overblown and yet at the same time not touching the real pain and fear that it causes.

The worst of it would have to be when you have only one option really for what to write. If you had to write a novel because that’s the only thing that is going to make you money, and you can’t do it, it must be beyond frustrating. It’s not like that writer can just start writing a short story instead, except perhaps as something to get the brain jumpstarted. Once the brain is working I have found it to be much easier to just shift gears than it is to start from cold. So, here’s to hoping the block never gets a full grip on me.

Mood: indecisive.
Music: 1000 Points of Light by Bruce Dickinson and Captain Howdy by Twisted Sister.

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