Secret Motivations

 Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Often, in horror stories and films, a secret, past or present, drives and directs protagonists' or antagonists' actions:

Schizophrenia (Norman Bates [Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film adaptation of Robert Bloch's 1959 novel Psycho], Brian De Palma's 1980 film Dressed to Kill, and David Calloway [John Polson's 2005 film Hide and Seek]);

crimes of various kinds (Marion Crane's adultery and theft and Norman Bates's murder in Psycho; Grace Newman's murders in Alejandr Amenábar's 2001 film The Others; Freddy Kreuger's murders in Wes Craven's 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street; the teenage friends' murder in Jim Gillespie's 1997 film adaptation of Lois Duncan's 1973 novel I Know What You Did Last Summer; Horrocks's wife's adultery with Raut in H. G. Wells's 1895 short story “The Cone”;

deceit or betrayal (Marion Crane's adultery and her theft of her employer's money in Psycho; the adultery of Horrocks's wife and lover Raut in “The Cone”; the teenage characters' attempt to cover up what they believed to be their killing of a man in I Know What You Did Last Summer);

sexual deviance (voyeurism in Michael Powell's 1960 film Peeping Tom, Victor Zarcoff's 2016 film 13 Cameras, and Psycho; lesbianism in Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca and Shirley Jackson's 1959 Gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House; transvestism in Hitchcock's Psycho, Brian De Palma's 1980 film Dressed to Kill, Jonathan Deeme's 1991 film adaption of Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs; and transgenderism in Robert Hiltzik's 1983 film Sleepaway Camp; and sadism (Robert Harmon's 1986 film The Hitcher);

past psychological trauma (the denial of Angela Baker true sex and gender in Sleepaway Camp and Carrie White's victimization by high school bullies in Stephen King's 1979 novel Carrie and Brian De Palma's 1974 film adaptation of the book);

vengeance (many horror stories and movies, including Edgar Allan Poe's 1846 short story “The Cask of the Amontillado,” “The Cone,” A Nightmare on Elm Street, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and a host of others); and

suggestibility (the narrator-protagonits's runaway imagination in H. G. Wells's 1894 short story “The Red Room” and, possibly, the protagonist of Bram Stoker's 1891 short story “The Judge's House” and his 1914 short story “Dracula's Guest”).

As we can see, the same story or film may contain multiple instances of secret motivators: Hitchcock's Psycho contains two characters, Marion Crane and Norman Bates, who, between them, are driven by no fewer than four types of secrets: schizophrenia, crime (murder), sexual deviance (voyeurism) (Bates) and deceit or betrayal (adultery), and crime (theft) (Crane).

On the surface, such characters appear to be normal and to be motivated by ordinary drives, such as the need to nurture, the pursuit of profit, affiliation, pleasure, leisure, generosity, and kindness. The normal, apparent motivations of these characters seem to “explain” them; in reality, however, they merely disguise their true desires, aims, and purposes; they are red herrings, not clues, to the nature of the characters, fictitious personas that allow the characters to act without arousing suspicion. Marion Crane is a thief, but she poses as a traveler. The protagonist of Peeping Tom and the landlord in 13 Cameras are both voyeurs and murderers, but the former poses as a photographer, the latter as nothing more than a landlord. Horrocks, in “The Cone,” is a vengeful victim of adultery, but he poses as a tour guide of sorts. The schizophrenic in Hide and Seek poses as a nothing more than a psychiatrist who has his daughter Emily's psychological welfare at heart.

The disguise of normality is also disarming. It suggests that dangerous characters are either harmless of beneficial: a motel owner, teenage friends, scientists, a camper, a mother, a doctor. The disguise of normality makes it easier for such characters to stalk and slay their prey. Indeed, such characters can even appear to be the victim, rather than the victimizer, to him- or herself, if not to the public (although they often appear to be the victim to the public as well, at least for a time): David Calloway and Grace Newman are examples.

Stories and films in which a secret is at the heart of one or more characters, whether protagonist or antagonist or both, suggest a threefold division of plot: Part I: Appearance is maintained through the adopted persona; Part II: the character's secret is discovered or revealed; and Part III: reality is exhibited as the character's true identity is perceived.

Horror Movie Predators' Hunting Techniques: Chasing, Stalking, Ambushing, and Using Teamwork

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman, Author

“Predator Facts” lays out four of the techniques many predators use to attack prey. Not surprisingly, human predators use these same methods, in both horror movies and in actual situations.

Many predators chase prey in an effort to capture or exhaust them. This technique has been used to good effect in many horror movies, one of which, I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), contains a scene in which antagonist Ben Willis pursues Helen Shivers.

After Willis kills the police officer who's arrested Shivers, she seeks refuge in her sister's department store, evading the pursuing predator and leaping from a third-story widow, into a Dumpster, only to be killed, not far from the safety of a nearby crowd.

Since the audience identifies with the damsel in distress, rather than with the killer, moviegoers root for her; vicariously, her fear becomes that of the audience, who shares it. Her gruesome death shocks and saddens her well-wishers. Through her, the audience experiences the flight and fright of the prey that the ruthless killer's pursuit creates for Shivers—and for them.

Pursuing prey takes both “time and effort” and can require a good deal of energy. For predatory animals, the nutritional value of the prey must warrant the time, effort, and energy the predator must expend in pursuing its would-be meal. “This is one reason why the hawk tends to eat more rodents and birds than grasshoppers. Grasshoppers just don't provide enough food value to justify the effort it takes to catch them.”

Unless the pursuer is a cannibal (some are, but Willis is not among them), the “nutritional value” of the prey is apt to be emotional, rather than physical. The act of chasing and killing the victim must deliver emotional satisfaction superior to the time, effort, and energy, the killer uses to accomplish these tasks. (Wills must really have wanted Helen dead.) Otherwise, the antagonist is apt to use another means of attack, one requiring less time, effort, and energy.

Some predators stalk, rather than pursue, prey. By following prey at a distance or by remaining motionless and observing prey, a predator can lunge, at the right moment, and capture or kill its quarry. A stalker can also make do with smaller prey than a pursuer needs. Stalking has the advantage of conserving energy, but it requires time to effect.

Stalkers populate thrillers more often than horror films per se, as their appearances in such movies as Fatal Attraction (1987), The Crush (1993), The Fan (1996), and The Boy Next Door (2015), among others, show. However, stalkers also appear in full-fledged horror movies. Halloween (1978), Scream (1981), and Cyberstalker (2012) come to mind.

In Halloween, on October 31, 1963, twenty-one-year-old Michael Myers escapes from Smith's Grove Sanitarium in Warren County, Illinois, where he's been confined since killing his older sister Judith when he was six years old. Now, he returns to his hometown, Haddonfield, to stalk a high school student, Laurie Strode.

Scream combines a murder mystery of sorts with horror, as a stalker murders one victim after another and police seek to discover the murderer's identity. Is it Billy Loomis? Neil Prescott? Stu Macher? Randy Meeks? Cotton Weary? All of the above? None of the above?

As the audience is kept in the dark as to the question of the stalker's identity, which makes the situation all the more tense, the number of the gruesome murders continues to rise, along with the movie's suspense.

Cyberstalker capitalizes on a relatively new twist to stalking: the use of the Internet to hunt victims. Animals, of course, lack the capability of using technology to develop and extend their natural hunting abilities and must rely upon the physical senses and weapons, such as claws and teeth, with which God or nature has equipped them. (As William Blake's “Tyger” suggests, such weapons are formidable, indeed.) However, were lions and tigers and bears able to enhance their powers to hunt through technology, they'd be using the Internet to stalk their victims, too.

Human beings' ability to do this is another reason that we are the deadliest species by far. It is the increased ability to watch and follow his quarry, courtesy of the the Internet, that makes the stalker in this movie potentially deadly as well as highly disturbing.

Other predators rely upon their ability to ambush their prey. In the animal world, the alligator is one example of such predators. Ambush is the technique of choice in such movies as Wrong Turn (2003) and Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007).

In the first movie (in which stalking also occurs), college students Rick Stoker and Halley Smith are ambushed as they reach the top of a rock they're climbing.

In the sequel, a series of ambushes occur, as the family of cannibals who live in the West Virginia forest attack contestants during the live filming of a survivalist reality television show.

According to “Predator Facts,”

This method of hunting requires little effort, but chances of getting food are low. The cold-blooded alligator has minimal energy requirements. It can get by with infrequent meals.

Presumably, this technique works well for the cannibal family because, when they're not hunting, they seem to lie about their cabin much of the time, thereby conserving their energy. It appears that, like the alligator, they can get by on “infrequent meals.”

The fourth technique that predators use to hunt their prey, that of teamwork, is frequently used by human marauders in horror films as well. In the Wrong Turn movies, The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, cannibal families work together to locate, attack, and subdue or kill the victims they devour as their food. Hillbilly families also slay together in Mother's Day (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Backwoods (2008), House of 1,000 Corpses (2003), and others.

Although more food is needed to sustain those who routinely hunt in groups, this technique provides such benefits to the team as allowing them to “pursue larger and sometimes faster prey” while protecting their offspring “from other large predators.” Being hunted by a pack—or by a family—of merciless or crazed hunters with a need to feed or a simple taste for blood or human flesh makes a horror movie all the more horrific—and terrifying.

The Horror of Star Power

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In MassAdvertising as Social Forecast, Jib Fowles, a professor of communications at the University of Houston, identifies three “stylistic features” of ads that influence “the way a basic appeal is presented”: humor, celebrities, and images of the past and present. This post concerns how horror novels and movies use celebrities as a way to enhance horror.

Of course, almost every movie features celebrities—the actors who star in the film. However, the use of the celebrities “stylistic feature” Fowles identifies could be interpreted as referring to actors who play celebrities in horror movies. In other words, one or more of the characters in the film is a famous person. Such is the case, for example, with fictional actress Ann Darrow, played by actual actress Fay Wray, who appears in King Kong. It is in thus sense that Fowles's celebrities 'stylistic feature” is understood in this post.

By being identified as a celebrity, a character receives an elevated status, because, in the United States and elsewhere, celebrities are revered; for many, they are the equivalent, in the world of popular entertainment, to royalty, and this is true not only of actors, but of other performers, including singers, athletes, comedians, bestselling authors, politicians, and other entertainers and public figures.

Not only do such characters have fame (and often fortune), but they're also typically regarded as glamorous and charismatic, living the types of lives many believe they themselves would enjoy living. They are treated with adulation by fans, but, at the same time, they may be envied, and their fall, if their careers should fail for some reason, is often as intriguing as their rise.

Horror movies that include fictional celebrities among their casts of characters include, in addition to King Kong, Misery, and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In King Kong, Darrow's celebrity as an actress allows her to represent Beauty in a way and on a scale denied to ordinary women, despite the beauty many of them undoubtedly possess. As a celebrity, she is herself a representative of the beautiful woman, of Beauty personified. She is both a flesh-and-blood woman and a type, or idea, of woman, the ideal woman, the Beautiful Woman. It is because of her that Carl Denham, the man who hopes to produce a documentary film, has a star who can deliver the box office appeal he needs to market his production.

Darrow also contrasts with Kong: she is a beautiful woman, while he is a gigantic ape. The colossal gorilla's wild nature and prodigious strength makes Darrow's helplessness all the more apparent, as she frequently struggles in his grasp. He takes her where he will, pursues her like a bestial stalker, and finally, according to Denham, at least, dies because of the pint-size femme fatale: “It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

As a human being, Darrow is also obviously a representative of humanity. As such, it is with her plight that moviegoers will identify. Through their identification with her, they will feel her helplessness and her terror. In Kong's hand, they will be grasped as the gigantic ape navigates the jungle on Skull Island. From her vantage point atop cliffs and in caves, where Kong deposits her temporarily for safekeeping, as he battles dinosaurs, she will witness Kong's titanic struggles. The audience will see Kong's pursuit by Darrow's defenders as the gigantic beast views the chase. They will ascend the Empire State Building, in Kong's hand, as he climbs the skyscraper, clutching the actress in his immense, furry fist. From her perspective atop the edifice, they will witness the airplanes' attacks.

When Kong succumbs to technology, falling, mortally wounded, from the building upon which he took his last stand in defense of Darrow as much as himself, audiences will see the difference between Beauty and the Beast and be reminded that, despite certain similarities between the human human and the lower animals, despite their kinship, there is also a huge chasm between the two, an abyss that cannot be overcome. Darrow, despite her “courtship” by Kong, remains a human being, and the two, human and animal, must ever remain distinct.

Paul Sheldon, the bestselling romance writer in Stephen King's Misery, is also a celebrity character. His romance series has made him famous, if not immensely wealthy; his success as a popular writer has set him apart from others. However, his success is predicated upon the interests of his readers. If they sour on his work, he can quickly become a has-been or, as Misery makes clear, a victim of his formerly “number one fan.”

Of course, King's notion that a fan would capture, assault, and attempt to kill a writer simply for killing off a favorite fictional character is over the top. Most fantastic literature, whether of the horror or another genre, is, by definition, exaggerated, which is why Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote of the need for a reader to “suspend” his or her 'disbelief” as a condition for enjoying such literature.

Annie Wilkes, the psychotic serial killer-cum-nurse who rescues Sheldon after crashing while driving during a snowstorm, attempts to force the writer to resurrect Misery Chastain, the character whom Sheldon killed off in the last novel of his romance series, which he has abandoned in the hope of becoming a serious writer. The presence in the novel of a celebrity character affords King the opportunity of commenting upon relationship between a famous writer and his or her fans—a relationship which, in Misery, becomes more predatory than symbiotic.

According to Grady Hendrix, King's own fans reacted negatively to the novel, seeing it as an expression of King's “contempt” for his readers, and some see the novel as, indeed, a “love/hate letter to his fans.” King apparently tried to mend fences with his “outraged fans” during a “publicity tour” for the book, but it's hard to imagine he succeeded given the fact that he describes the psychotic Wilkes, his self-described “number one fan” as a soulless monster who literally reeks.

The portrait of King's fans is nothing if not ambiguous and begs the question, What sort of writer writes for such admirers? The answer appears to be Sheldon, but how much of the fictional bestselling romance author is a true likeness of King himself? There are similarities: both writers, the real and the imagined, suffered shattered legs; both became prescription pain killer addicts; and both apparently have ambiguous, “love/hate” relationships with their fans. As Hendrix observes,

King has said numerous times, the fans put food on his table. He hates them, but he owes them his life. And there are moments when Paul is waiting for Annie to react to something in the manuscript he’s writing that he knows will thrill her, or upset her, when it feels like her reaction is vital for his continued existence. He imagines her reaction and then revels in it when it comes, and one can imagine this is how King felt too. He has written for his readers (Constant reader as he calls them in his introductions) for so long that to some extent his books are collaborative: if a book is released to the public and no one reads it, does it even exist at all?

Although there are exceptions, celebrities don't typically start life as celebrities. Like everything else, fame must usually be earned. The biographies of most famous people show they paid their dues. Michael Landon, a star of the television series Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, and Highway to Heaven, not to mention the movie I Was a Teenage Werewolf, began his career as an extra. Clint Eastwood started out as a laboratory technician in Revenge of the Creature. Although they may have appeared in earlier films, many actresses, including Fay Wray (King Kong), Janet Leigh (Psycho), Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween), Jennifer Love Hewitt (I Know What You Did Last Summer), and Kate Beckinsale (Underworld: Evolution), established their Hollywood careers “scream queens.”

In I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a “D”-list celebrity, local beauty queen Helen Shivers, who hopes to leave her small town and establish herself in New York City as a major player in the entertainment industry. She finds fame elusive, and returns to her hometown, Southport, North Carolina, where she must settle for work as a “fragrance girl” in her father's department store, her show business aspirations confined to the local beauty pageant and a master of ceremonies spot for the Croaker Queen Pageant. She meets her death at the hands of the serial killer who stalks her and her friends. As far as her part in the film is concerned, the movie seems to suggest that small-town girls typically remain small-town girls, despite their hopes and dreams for something bigger and better than the lives they live as, well, small-town girls.

As with most other aspects of life in horror fiction, celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be. For one thing, it makes a character stand out from the crowd, and that can be dangerous, indeed. Coming to the attention of—becoming, in fact, the center of attention for—a giant gorilla, a psychotic “fan,” or a serial killer bent on gruesome revenge isn't likely to promote one's career, whether as an actress, a bestselling author, or a beauty queen who wants to break out, both in the theater and from her small-town life. In fact, celebrity, in horror fiction, is likely to be brief, ending in a painful, violent, and bloody death. It's better, perhaps, to be a “nobody” than a Somebody, or, as military personnel learn, in their struggles to survive, to “keep a low profile.”

Alternate Endings: When One Conclusion Is As Good As Another

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Aristotle condemned the irrelevant, tacked-on endings with which the playwrights of his day sometimes concluded their dramas (Poetics), and, Edgar Allan Poe contended that the end of a story should be implicit in and follow from the narrative’s beginning (“The Philosophy of Composition”), although not in an obvious way. Apparently, some filmmakers disagree, for, recently, alternate endings seem to have become all the rage.

According to the fine folk of Wikipedia (whoever they may be), “alternate ending is a term used (usually in movies) to describe the ending of a story that was planned or debated but ultimately unused in favor of the actual ending. Generally, alternate endings are considered to have no bearing on the canonical narrative” (“Alternate Ending”). (By “canonical,” the anonymous authors presumably mean the film as it was actually released.)

The online encyclopedia article offers a list of twenty eight alternate endings, including those of 1408, Army of Darkness, and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In 1408, “Mike Enslin dies in the fire he causes. At his burial, his wife is approached by the hotel manager, offering his personal belongings. She refuses [to accept them], and he lets her know that her husband did not die in vain. Back in his vehicle[,] he listens to the tape recorder, and screams in fear as he sees Enslin’s burned[,] deformed body in his back seat for only a moment. The film closes with an apparition of Mike Enslin still in 1408, muttering to himself, and finally exiting the room, hearing his daughters [sic] voice” (“1408 [film]”).

In Army of Darkness, “after Ash drinks the potion that would make him sleep long enough to wake up in his own time, he accidentally drinks too much and wakes up in the future. In the new time[,] it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland of a world and he screams ‘I slept too long!’” (“Army of Darkness”).

In I Know What You Did Last Summer, “Julie receives an invite [sic] to a pool party and read[s] an email that reads ‘I still know” ("I Know What You Did Last Summer [film]").

Those who have seen these films are likely to agree that their actual endings are more satisfying and integral to their stories than these alternate possibilities.

1408 ends with Enslin recovering “in a New York hospital, Lily at his bedside. He swears that he saw Katie, but Lily refuses to believe him. After his recovery[,] Enslin moves back in with Lily, beginning work on a new novel about his stay in 1408. While sorting through a box of items from his night in 1408[,] that [sic] Lily wants to discard, Enslin comes across his Mini Cassette recorder. After some difficulty[,] he manages to get the tape to play; it begins with Enslin's dictation of 1408’s appearance, but cuts in with audio from his interaction with the apparition of his daughter. [In shock,] Lily, who is standing by him[,] listening to the audio, drops a box she was holding. . . . The scene ends with Enslin staring at Lily's face” (Wikipedia, “1408 [film]”).

Army of Darkness concludes “with Ash back at the S-Mart store, telling a co-worker all about his adventure back in time, and how he could have been king. After this, a deadite starts wreaking havoc on the store (it is implied that he again raised the dead by saying the wrong words needed to travel through time), and Ash slays the creature. The film ends with Ash. . . saying, ‘Sure I could have been King, but in my own way, I am a king.’ He then says out loud, while kissing a female customer, ‘Hail to the King, baby!’” (Wikipedia, “Army of Darkness”).

In I Know What You Did Last Summer, Julie “receives a letter resembling the one she had got[ten] from Ben, but it. . . contains [only] a pool party invitation. Julie returns to the bathroom, which has filled with steam. On the shower door, ‘I STILL KNOW’ is written. Ben jumps through the shower door, attacking her” (Wikipedia, “I Know What You Did Last Summer [film]”).

The Wikipedia articles concerning the alternate endings of two of these movies explain why they were dropped and the movies’ existing endings were substituted. The reactions of test audiences at screenings of the movies before their public release did not favor the original (that is, the “alternate”) endings or studio executives ordered that a different ending be filmed:

“Director Mikael Håfström has stated that the ending for 1408 was reshot [sic] because test audiences felt that the original ending was too much of a ‘downer’”, [sic] and “when test audiences didn’t approve of [Sam] Raimi's original ending [to Army of Darkness], he cut the film down to the international cut that now exists on DVD. When it was again rejected by Universal, Raimi was forced to edit it again to the U.S. [sic] theatrical version.” (No explanation as to why the original ending to I Know What You Did Last Summer is provided by the authors of its Wikipedia article.)

In short stories and novels, which are usually produced by a lone author or, occasionally, a pair of collaborators, no advance audience reacts to the narratives’ endings before the stories or novels are published. The emphasis is upon the artwork, not the public’s reaction to it. In other words, the artists determine how and why their work should end the way that it does, and Aristotle and Poe, among others, provide the guidance that most such writers follow in ending their stories: the conclusion must both be logical and organic, as it were, flowing from the narrative’s structure, from the very beginning, and not tacked on for convenience’s sake or, these critics probably would have contended, their audience’s, readers’, or producers’ approval. Whose take is wiser, those of Aristotle and Poe or the Hollywood film industry’s? The filmmakers or their audiences? Or is the very question itself a false dilemma? Could the filmmakers be right in some cases and the test audiences’ reactions be correct in others? It’s impossible to say for certain, but devising several possible alternate endings may be useful as a tool for sustaining situational irony until the very end of a story, although, in the end, a writer should be more concerned with his or her art than with pleasing the reader (or the audience).

The Fatal Flaw, Part the Second

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In the previous post, we saw how one character trait, the fatal flaw, brings about the tragic protagonist’s downfall, using, as an example, the irresponsibility of the teenage characters in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In this post, continuing to use irresponsibility as our example, we’re going to see how to exploit this trait in developing character.

To do so, you’ll need a thesaurus. Fortunately, almost every word processor has one, and, if you are without a computer, they’re readily available at your local bookstore or public library. Although they’re classified as reference works, many libraries allow previous editions to be checked out.

Using the thesaurus feature in the Microsoft Works word processing program obtained this list of synonyms for irresponsible (always use the adjectival, rather than the nominal, form of the word--the adjective, in other words, not the noun):

Irresponsible
Reckless
Careless
Negligent
Foolish
Rash
Immature

That’s not a bad list, but it’s only the beginning.

Next, for each of the synonyms that resulted from the initial use of the thesaurus, we use the thesaurus again, ignoring redundancies, until it seems that we‘ve exhausted all useful additions to our list of synonyms:

Reckless
Wild
Thoughtless
Uncontrolled
Inattentive
Hasty

Careless
Slapdash
Happy-go-lucky
Casual
Slipshod
Sloppy
Lackadaisical

Negligent
Neglectful
Remiss
Lax
Slack
Forgetful

Foolish
Stupid
Silly
Idiotic
Unwise
Impudent
Irrational

Rash
Impulsive
Imprudent
Injudicious

Immature
Young
Undeveloped
Juvenile
Adolescent
Unripe
Childish

We’ve accumulated quite a list of traits (adjectives name traits, as we saw in our previous post). We could add still more by repeating this process for the synonyms that we just added to the roster, but, for our purposes, we have enough. Our total list, now, is (alphabetized):

Adolescent
Careless
Casual
Childish
Foolish
Forgetful
Happy-go-lucky
Hasty
Idiotic
Immature
Imprudent
Impudent
Impulsive
Inattentive
Injudicious
Irrational
Irresponsible
Juvenile
Lackadaisical
Lax
Neglectful
Negligent
Rash
Reckless
Remiss
Silly
Slack
Slapdash
Sloppy
Stupid
Thoughtless
Uncontrolled
Undeveloped
Unripe
Unwise
Wild
Young

Okay. So what. We have a list of adjectives, or character traits.

Such a list can provide a lot of fodder for characterization--to the discerning eye.

Notice that these synonyms suggest some traits that we often think of as neutral or even positive, despite the fact that they were all derived from the same root, as it were, irresponsibility: casual, happy-go-lucky, impulsive. It is only when such traits as these are extreme that they could cause problems (which, transformed into conflict, are just what the writer of fiction lives for). Indeed, the idea that a harmless trait, when it is extreme, can cause problems could itself be the theme of a story. This list allows us to flesh out the flat, static character, making him or her round (or at least more nearly round) and possibly even dynamic. It also lets us to mix a few positive, or at least neutral, traits in with one or more negative ones associated with the root characteristic, irresponsibility.

But, wait! There’s more! as the sales folks are wont to say in infomercials.

Our list also shows how a neutral or even a positive trait can edge into something negative and potentially dangerous, even deadly.

Often, we praise impetuosity as a positive trait. We seek someone who is impulsive, rather than sedate, spontaneous instead of predictable, spur-of-the-moment rather than cautious, because, we imagine, such an individual is apt to be more fun. (He or she may turn out to be only more exciting, and not in a pleasurable way.) For example, the impulsive person may be only a few steps away from being an irresponsible person; the spontaneous individual perhaps but a stone’s throw from being reckless; and the spur-of-the-moment man or woman could verge upon being negligent. There’s a story in such proximities, in such deterioration, and a believable one at that. We’re closer to the abyss of negative behavior than we might think, even when such conduct stems from neutral or positive character traits rather than those that are largely or universally regarded as negative. There’s a fine line between miserliness and thriftiness. Were Ebenezer Scrooge to have been merely frugal, rather than stingy, there would have been no ghosts of Christmas past. Similarly, in horror fiction, were characters simply spontaneous, rather than irresponsible, there’d be no I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, and the host of other horror stories, in print and on film, in which the protagonist is one or more of the following: adolescent, careless, casual, childish, foolish, forgetful, happy-go-lucky, hasty, idiotic, immature, imprudent, impudent, impulsive, inattentive, injudicious, irrational, irresponsible, juvenile, lackadaisical, lax, neglectful, negligent, rash, reckless, remiss, silly, slack, slapdash, sloppy, stupid, thoughtless, uncontrolled, undeveloped, unripe, unwise, wild, young.