Plotting Board, Part 6

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.

With a Little Bit of Bloomin' Luck

Our belief (or relative belief) in the influences of certain phenomena, including our feelings and attitudes, often affect our thoughts and our overt behavior, even when we deny that such is the case. In The X-Files, Mulder is frequently guided by his belief in the existence of paranormal phenomena, while his partner, Scully, is often led by her skepticism.

Other phenomena, real and imagined, also affect the characters, one of which, as VanDerWerff points out, is the concept of luck. “We all sort ourselves . . . into the categories of 'lucky people' and 'unlucky people'” (323), he suggests. FBI agents Mulder and Scully are no exceptions, which allows the series's episode “The Goldberg Variation” to explore “the ideas of luck” as “a giant system you pay into, then make withdrawals from” (323). By exploring other commonly held beliefs, communal or individual, writers acquire many ways to develop plots for short stories and novels, just as TV and movie writers do.

Religious fanaticism, as represented by a snake-handling cult in The X-Files episode “Signs and Wonders” is another example. According to VanDerWerff, the exploration of power of fanaticism to shape and manipulate religious fanatics has a lot to do with “the lure of complete commitment, of surrendering oneself to someone who claims to know all the answers” (328). It's an idea for plotting as contemporary and terrifying as Allison Mack's alleged involvement in the NXIVM cult, which, again, allegedly, included her branding other women as her and her master's property. (Religious fanaticism also has quite an influence on Pilgrim a character in the Punisher series.)

Such ideas as blessings and curses, optimistic and pessimistic attitudes, biases and prejudices, fetishes and phobias, the supernatural and the otherworldly, to name but a few such influences, also permit such stories as H. G. Wells's “Pollock and the Porroh Man,” “The Red Room,” and “The Apple”; Ray Bradbury's “Skeleton”; the effects of idols in Stephen King's Desperation; Rod Serling's “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”; Shirley Jackson's “Just an ordinary Day”; and W. W. Jacobs's “The Monkey's Paw,” to name but a few.

(Seemingly) Alternate Solutions

As Handlen notes in his commentary on “The Amazing Maleeni” episode of The X-Files, one way to spin a plot while maintaining suspense is to present a mystery which has—or at least seems to have—multiple possible solutions. As the characters (or readers) discover the solution they've figured out isn't the solution at all, they continue to pursue leads or watch (or read), hoping their next deduction may prove correct, only (hopefully) to be frustrated yet again, until, finally, the true, one-and-only solution is presented, by either Mulder or Scully, naturally:

“Several times through the episode, our heroes believe they've solved the case only to come up empty-handed. The result is something that continually pulls us forward along with Mulder and Scully, promising new and greater mysteries with each new discovery” (326).

Ask the BIG QUESTIONS

Plots can be generated by simply asking the BIG QUESTIONS, as the “Sein und Zeit” (“Being and Time”) episode of The X-Files does. This installment, Handlen and VanDerWerff imply, asks what might happen to a character whose “very belief system” is “eradicated before his eyes” (330).

This is such a compelling question that its very asking is enough to make anyone want to stay tuned (or keep reading, as the case may be). It also parallels such events in the lives of historical figures and, indeed, the men and women of everyday life. What became of Jefferson Davis, the man, after the Civil War ended in the South's defeat? What did the ordinary Roman think and do after the Empire fell (or the average Brit, for that matter, after the fall of the British Empire)? What does one do the day after he or she has lost his or her entire family in a tragic accident? What happens to the citizens of a nation after the fall of their country? History records some of the answers, but never all.

The question that “Sein und Zeit” asks, implicitly, is what happens to Fox Mulder when his “very belief system [is] eradicated before his eyes”? The second part of this story is presented in the next episode of the series, “Closure.” BIG QUESTIONS, it's obvious, lead to longer plots. They also generate immediate and profound interest on the part of their audiences.

NEXT: A bit more.

Plotting Board

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff. 

The Truth Is in Here

Characters' motives and goals make a simple story meaningful and significant. Make conduct personal to make it momentous.

Sitdrams Work, Too

Some of the subtitles the authors give to the reviews of X-Files episodes they discuss identify each of the episodes' respective situations; rather than being a situation comedy, or sitcom, The X-Files, it seems, is often something of a situational drama, or sitdram, as it were: “Pilot,” “In which Mulder meets Scully”; “Deep Throat:” “In which a massive conspiracy takes shape”; “Fire”: “In which Mulder faces an old flame”; “Young at Heart”: “In which Mulder has to track down an old foe”; “The Calusari”: “In which there are even more evil twins”; “Piper Maru”: “In which we meet some very strange oil”; and plenty of others.

The Connect-the-Dot Plot

Some X-Files episodes offer a series of images connected by their plots: “Pilot” shows disappearances, Handlen observes, “strange happenings in the woods, . . . little bumps on people's skin [and] . . . a weird, inhuman corpse in a coffin” (4). This connect-the-dots approach to plotting maintains mystery and suspense while providing unity and coherence by delaying the revelation or explanation of the cause of the strange events.

Balancing the Marvelous and the Uncanny

As Tzvetan Todorov points out, the fantastic exists only as long as it is not resolved as either natural (scientifically or rationally explainable) or as supernatural (scientifically or rationally inexplicable). In the former case, the apparently fantastic is uncanny; in the latter, it's marvelous.

Like most other fantastic fiction, The X-Files balances the marvelous and the uncanny, allowing a series of events to be explicable or not, depending upon one's perspective: For Mulder, science or reason can explain little, if any, of the bizarre incidents he observes, while, for Scully, almost everything she witnesses (including most of what Mulder sees) can be explained by science or reason.

For example, as Todd VanDerWerff explains, there is, in episode two of season one, “a spirited argument about whether the phenomenon the two [Mulder and Scully] observed has a paranormal or a scientific explanation” (11). The same is true, pretty much, throughout the series.

Plot Generators

The X-Files uses two plot generators to keep the action coming, episode after episode, week in and week out: “mythology” and the Monster of the Week (MOTW): “The first two episodes of the first season introduced some of the ideas that would power the mythology,” such as “alien abductions, UFO sightings, government conspiracies, and secrets,” while the MOTW provided variety, preventing the series from rehashing these elements and becoming boring an “repetitive” as a result.

As Handlen explains, “The genius of The X-Files as a premise lies in its infinite potential. Centering the show around a department of the FBI devoted exclusively to investigating strange or inexplicable cases means The X-Files can encompass any number of urban legends [and] can cross between science fiction, fantasy, and horror with ease” (11-12). (Later, to this list, the authors add “weird science” and “dramatic stories” of “the personal lives of Mulder and Scully” (14), the latter of which approach sometimes gives the series a soap opera-like character.

MORE next post!

How "Buffy" Was Written

Copyright 2012 by Gary L. Pullman

In The Watcher’s Guide, Volume 2, the television series’ writer Jane Espenson explains the procedure that she and the other Buffy the Vampire Slayer writers used to develop the show’s scripts.

Before the writers plot the episode, they determine its “emotional arc.” On Buffy, the monsters typically symbolize the emotional states of the show’s characters. In “A New Man,” the episode in which Giles is transformed into a demon by Ethan Rayne, a sorcerer with whom Giles practiced black magic as a youth, the “emotional arc” is alienation: “We talked a lot about alienation,” Espenson says, and, as examples of times when a person may feel alienated, they discussed “what it’s like when your father has a breakdown, what it feels like to be old.”

They also identified Giles’ “concerns” and the source of those concerns, whether the source was “his career” or whether Buffy, who is older and more independent now that she has graduated from high school and attends college, living on campus, loves “him anymore.” In addition, they considered the idea that his girlfriend, Olivia, who had been visiting him from England but had returned there, might decide to break off their relationship and thus might not be “coming back.”

The outcome of their discussion concerning the causes of Giles’ alienation was to decide that “the redemption for Giles comes when Buffy sees him [in his demon form] and recognizes him [as Giles]. And that sort of brings him back. It doesn’t solve all his problems. He’s still not as central to Buffy’s life as he used to be.” Nevertheless, “he knows that she knows him; she saw him; she values him. She was ready to kill the demon, not just in her normal demon-killing way, but with specific revenge in her heart. ‘You killed Giles.’ So we had to have all that before we could even start thinking about what happens in each scene.”

Once the writers have decided upon the episode’s “emotional arc” (alienation”), its cause (Giles’ life seems to be falling apart, especially since Buffy has become more independent), and the resolution of this crisis (he realizes that Buffy does value him), they determine “what happens in each scene.” In doing so, they follow a definite procedure, Espenson points out.

Each episode, she says, is divided into a teaser and four acts. The writing of the script begins by nailing down the “emotional high point” with which each act is to end. The “emotional high point” becomes more climactic at the end of each act. The first “act break” (the end of the act and the beginning of the advertisers’ promotional messages) may be end on a relatively weak “emotional high point,” one that appeals to viewers’ curiosity more than to their emotions per se. The “emotional high point” with which the second act ends, or breaks, is the episode’s climax, or turning point, where things begin to improve or to sour for the protagonist. The third act break identifies the protagonist’s decision with regard to how she plans to resolve the conflict that the earlier acts have set in motion and sets the protagonist or another character in the direction of “ultimate danger.” The fourth act resolves the conflict. Here is the example, complete with explanations, that Espenson offers:

The act breaks is where you start. At the end of each act, which is going to be its emotional high point. You want to make sure the audience comes back after the commercial. . . . At some point [in the discussion of ideas among the writers] Joss [Whedon] will say, “Oh, I’m beginning to see a story here. If this [episode] is about Giles feeling alienated, and we’re going to have Giles turn into a demon, then he should turn into the demon at the end of [act] Two.”

We knew Episode Twelve would have Buffy’s birthday, because it always does, so we knew that was a good way to get Giles feeling alienated early.

At some point Joss just said, “Okay, end of One. Ethan steps out.” He pitched the moment exactly as it appears in the script. He had that whole thing completely in his mind. That was our first-act break.

Second-act break, okay, he’s a demon. Third -act break, Buffy says, “He killed Giles. I’m going to kill him.” So that we have Giles heading for the ultimate danger moment as we head into Act Four.

So it’s the moment in which Joss lays those three moments down, the ends of Acts One, Two, and Three--at that point you’re very close to writing things up on the dry erase board. But not until then. We never start writing anything up there until Joss has decreed the act breaks.

This is The Watcher’s Guide’s summary of the episode; now that Espenson has explained how its “act breaks” are determined in advance, based upon each of the episode’s “emotional arcs,” one can see how the writers gets from point A to point B, and so on, filling in the action between the incident that ends each act. (The book’s authors summarize the action differently than according to its divisions into teaser and acts; here, its sequence has been modified to fit the structure that Espenson indicates is typical of the episode’s construction.)

Teaser

It’s Episode Twelve, and time for Buffy’s birthday party. This time, it’s a surprise party, and Giles is there as the only guest over twenty-five years of age.

Act I

He’s startled to discover that Buffy has a new boyfriend, and stunned when Willow and Xander casually mention that Riley’s in the Initiative, both of them assuming that he already knew. . . since they, Anya, and Spike know. [His being out of the loop concerning what is going on in Buffy’s personal life suggests that Giles is and feels alienated from her.] Add that to Maggie Walsh’s dismissive attitude toward him, and her opinion that Buffy has lacked a strong male role model, and it’s time for a midlife depression for Giles [in which he feels both expendable and emasculated]. Ethan Rayne, a sorcerer who practices Black Majik and worships chaos, is back in town.

Not seen in Sunnydale since [the episode] “Band Candy,” he commiserates with Giles in the Lucky Pint, a Sunnydale watering hole, about feeling old and useless [this part of the scene reinforces Giles’ feeling of alienation]. He also tells Giles that rumors are flying fast and furious about something called “314,” which has demons quaking in their boots [this is an allusion to a situation that will be revealed in a future episode of the show]. [“Okay, end of One: Ethan steps out.”]

Act II

The two become quite drunk together, and in the morning Giles suffers from more than a hangover. Ethan [has] slipped him something that has turned him into a Fyari demon. He’s hideous, with huge, curved horns, and his speech consists of Fyari grunts and growls. When he goes to Xander’s house and tries to tell him what happened, Xander reacts violently and defends himself with pots and pans. Giles escapes, running through Xander’s neighborhood, prompting a 911 call. [“Second-act break, okay, he’s a demon.’]

Act III

While on the run, Giles runs into Spike. It turns out that Spike speaks Fyari, and can, therefore, communicate with him. Spike agrees to help him. . . if Giles will pay. Meanwhile, Buffy, Riley, and the rest of the gang assume that the demon has either kidnapped Giles or killed him--in which case Buffy promises vengeance. She takes from Giles’ desk what she believes to be a silver letter opener; silver is what can kill the Fyari demon. With great glee Giles chases Maggie Walsh down the street--payback to the “fishwife” for her insults. Buffy and Riley go to the magic shop to look for clues. Buffy finds a receipt signed by Ethan Rayne, and with Riley’s help traces Ethan to his crummy motel. Riley tries to tell Buffy that the Initiative will take it from here, but Buffy insists that this is her battle. [“Third -act break, Buffy says, “He killed Giles. I’m going to kill him.”]

Act IV

Together, they go to the motel and discover that Giles (still a demon) is already there, in full demon rage, about to kill the duplicitous sorcerer. Buffy attacks Giles. [”We have Giles heading for the ultimate danger moment as we head into Act Four.”]

Only after she has dealt him a. . . blow [with the silver letter opener, which should kill him] does she recognize him. . . by his eyes. It turns out that the letter opener is made of pewter, not silver. Giles’ life is spared.

After changing Giles back into his human form, Ethan is taken into custody by the military police. When Giles and Buffy talk about what’s happened, he realizes that she loves him like a father and always will. Riley tells Buffy that he likes her strength and her take-charge attitude. Much mutual admiration takes place.

For practice in seeing how the Buffy writers use this approach to write other episodes, one can find both summaries and scripts of each of the show’s episodes at the Internet web site Buffyworld.

Noxon's Buffy the Vampire Stinkers

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

There’s a lot right with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but there’s a lot wrong with it, too, and critical thinkers, as opposed to mere fans, have identified much of what is the matter with the series. Although many of the diehard fans of the series continue to regard it as flawless, many others have either long recognized or recently recognized that the show had its share of glitches, non sequiturs, and mistakes. When did the show jump the shark? Opinions vary. Some contend that the show’s quality never declined noticeably, but many believe that, while the first five seasons are superb, the latter two are pretty much garbage. My own contention is that the series jumped the shark when its creator, Joss Whedon, handed off the show to Marti Noxon--in other words, at the beginning of season six; under her guidance, the series went steadily downhill and never recovered its original verve.

A better-than-average, but uneven, writer, Noxon fails as executive producer. Early on, as a writer, she gave the series a couple fairly good episodes, some so-so episodes, and a few horrible episodes: in the “Fairly Good” column: “What’s My Line,” Part 1 and Part 2, and “I Only Have Eyes For You.” In the “Horrible” column, I'd include “Bad Eggs,” “Buffy vs. Dracula,” “Wrecked,” “Villains,” “Bring On the Night,” and “End of Days.” Her others belong in the “So-So” column.

Noxon couldn’t maintain the quality of the show. Had the series concluded with its fifth season, it would have been one of television’s finest moments; as it is, it is a mostly good, but very uneven, show that leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth and a sense that, after seven years, the show rips off its fans rather than respects them. What is difficult to discern is why its creator preferred to leave Buffy in Noxon’s hands in order to head up the vastly inferior spin-off Angel.

Lawrence Miles, Lars Pearson, and Christa Dickson, authors of Dusted: The Unauthorized Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, more often than not hit the nail on the head in identifying the series’ “glitches.” According to them, these are the faults with regard to what I like to call Noxon’s Buffy the Vampire Stinkers:

“Bad Eggs”: “The problem with ‘Bad Eggs’ . . .[is] that it’s deeply mediocre, about as ordinary and as straightforward as the series ever gets” (63).

“Buffy vs. Dracula”: “It’s a strange episode all around. . . . Since Buffy got past the point of sending up horror movie ‘standards’ in Season One, the decision to go through the same old Abbot and Costello schtick [sic] four years later just isn’t very wise” (179).

“Wrecked”: “A real instance of the series falling on its face. . . . The show now throws any sense of subtlety or characterization out the window--replacing it with a crude ‘drugs’ metaphor. This entails using every drug-culture cliché on television, yet ironically ‘Wrecked’ has precious little to actually say about the subject.” Moreover, and even “worse, it rewrites the rules of Buffy in the most absurd way possible. As the past five years have shown, magic isn’t heroin--it’s chiefly been used as a metaphor about individual responsibility. . . . But now the entire moral context shifts into the realm of ‘drugs’ with an embarrassingly clumsy stroke” (238).

“Villains”: “A hollow story, putting its focus on the final sequence--Willow’s torture and murder of Warren--and thereby making everything that comes before it more or less irrelevant” (256).

“Bring On the Night”: “A mess, really. . . . ‘Bring On the Night’ has no focus of its own. Instead, it comes across as a ragbag of contrived plot-points (Annabelle bolting for no good reason to insure the Ubervamp kills someone), dull conversations (Drusilla’s never been less interesting) and recycled ideas (the series somehow thinks a stake-proof vampire will shock and amaze us, even though it’s now the second we’ve seen. . . . Buffy’s final declaration of war is obviously meant as a major turning point, but it’s barely distinguishable from the ‘We’re taking the fight to them,’ speech she pretty much gives every year” (281).

“End of Days”: “All the flaws of late Season Seven are still in evidence. There’s very little plot, over-extended conversation scenes and--of course--the massive deus ex machina of the scythe (the guardian isn’t very convincing, either)” (304).

Personally, I agree with virtually all of the author’s criticisms, although I don’t think that “Wrecked” is quite as bad as they so, and I think that “End of Days” is much worse. The authors’ choice of the best Buffy episodes for each season are:

Season 1: Joss Whedon’s “Prophecy Girl”
Season 2: Joss Whedon‘s “Becoming”
Season 3: Joss Whedon‘s “Doppelgangland”
Season 4: Joss Whedon’s “Hush”
Season 5: Douglas Petrie’s “Fool For Love”
Season 6: Joss Whedon’s “Once More, With Feeling”
Season 7: Jane Espenson’s and Drew Goddard‘s “Conversations with Dead People”

My own picks:

Season 1: Joss Whedon’s “Prophecy Girl”
Season 2: Carl Ellsworth’s “Halloween”
Season 3: Joss Whedon’s “Amends”
Season 4: Joss Whedon’s “Restless”
Season 5: Joss Whedon’s “Family”
Season 6: Joss Whedon’s “Once More, With Feeling”
Season 7: Jane Espenson’s and Drew Goddard‘s “Conversations with Dead People”

Other episodes that I would put on the “A” list:

Season 1

Ashley Gable‘s and Thomas A. Swyden’s “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”

Season 2

Howard Gordon’s and Marti Noxon’s “What’s My Line?”
David Greenwalt’s and Joss Whedon’s “Ted”
Ty King‘s “Passion”
Marti Noxon’s “I Only Have Eyes For You”
Joss Whedon’s “Becoming”

Season 3

David Greenwalts “Faith, Hope, and Trick”

Season 4

David Fury’s “Fear Itself”
Tracey Forbes’ “Beer Bad”
Tracey Forbes’ “Where the Wild Things Are”

Season 5

Douglas Petrie’s “Fool For Love”
Joss Whedon’s “The Body”

Season 6

David Fury’s and Jane Espenson’s “Life Serial”

Bits & Pieces: Story One-Liners

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pulman

No, I’m not endorsing USA Today. In fact, its political bent slants opposite of my own. However, I’m certainly not denigrating it, either. It’s a decent daily in many ways. Besides, I don’t depend upon it for my news (although, I must admit, I do enjoy reading its “Across the USA: news from every state” column. It offers something I don’t see anywhere else: news from every state.

But I also check out the “TV Tonight” listings on occasion. In doing so, I find, the one-sentence summaries of TV episode and movie plots frequently encapsulate, in nut-shell fashion, identifications of the protagonist, the antagonist, conflict (if only implicitly), and the conflict’s resolution. Not bad for a sentence. Here’s an example: “A man [protagonist] drinking himself to death [conflict] finds solace [conflict resolution] with a hooker [antagonist]” (6D). While this summary, which is of Leaving Las Vegas, is not of a horror movie, the same approach can be used to sum up a horror film. Here’s an example: Ben Mears (protagonist) leads a fight against vampires (conflict), liberating his boyhood hometown (conflict resolution) from the bloodsucking fiends (antagonists). The summary is, of course, of Stephen King’s novel ‘Salem’s Lot.

The one-sentence statement of a story’s basic plot keeps a writer focused on the narrative’s main character, antagonist, conflict, conflict resolution, and through-line, which is no mean feat when one writes novels of the length of ‘Salem’s Lot. The synopsis can fit on an index card that one can tape on his or her computer monitor, pocket to take with him or her to the library (for research beyond the Internet’s delivery capability), and keep close to hand during rewrites and revisions. Again, not bad for a sentence!

Adolescent and Adult Themes

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In any television series, a few (sometimes, many) episodes will be dedicated to establishing and developing the season’s arc, or the plot’s tangent. The other episodes in the season are often one- or two-part stories. As such, they suggest the types of themes, or topics, that a series of a particular type, directed toward a specific audience, may address. For example, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, directed at middle-class American teenagers and young adults, deals with themes of interest to such an audience. The series deals with unbridled ambition (“The Witch”), inappropriate adult-teen romance (“Teacher’s Pet”), the demands of duty and their conflict with personal desire (“Never Kill a Boy on the First Date”), the perils of negative peer pressure (“The Pack”), the dangers of young romance (“Angel”), the dangers of Internet dating (“I Robot, You Jane”), child abuse (“Nightmares”), the callous disregard for one who doesn’t measure up to the superficial standards of the clique (“Out of Sight, Out of Mind”)--and these all in the show’s first, shorter-than-normal season!

Although the episodes of horror or fantasy series that are written with an adult audience in mind may take the “monster of the week” approach, featuring a specific type of antagonist weekly or periodically, the episodes of such shows typically don’t deal with a specific concern that their viewers share They are not, in this sense, as didactic as shows oriented toward younger viewers. Instead, the more “adult” shows may seek to unsettle their audiences by suggesting that the world may be quite different than it seems and is generally understood to be and that, beyond the ordinary and the everyday, there may exist extraordinary and mysterious persons, places, and things.

The “Squeeze” episode of The X-Files is a good example, as is the series’ use of the skeptical, empirical Dana Scully as a foil to her more open-minded, experiential partner, Fox Mulder. Although both are Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), each has his or her own investigatory methods.

Scully develops a profile of a suspect in a murder and the cannibalism that followed it (the killer ate the victim‘s liver), and, when, during a stakeout, she captures a suspect, Eugene Victor Tooms, he is subjected to a lie-detector test. Her investigatory methods are typical and routine.

Mulder, however, finds a fingerprint at the scene of a murder, and, using a computer program, matches the print to those that were found at several other murder scenes, and, during Tooms’ polygraph test, he asks several questions that makes his fellow agents doubt the validity of the test, and the suspect is released. The fingerprint that Mulder found is stretched out, which makes Mulder believe that Tooms may be a mutant who is able to elongate his body and who has a longer-than-human lifespan, sustained by his diet of human livers between his thirty-year periods of hibernation. Tooms, Mulder believes, committed not only the current murders but those in 1903, 1933, and 1963 as well.

Mulder’s investigatory methods are both routine (at times) and unusual, to say the least. He helps Scully to research Tooms. They can find neither a birth certificate nor a marriage certificate for the suspect, and the agents meet with a former detective, Frank Briggs, who tells them where Tooms resided in 1903. When Scully and Mulder visit the suspect’s apartment, they find it abandoned. However, Tooms manages to snare Scully’s necklace to add it to his collection of his murder victims’ possessions, which he keeps as souvenirs. Adopting another routine investigatory method, Mulder asks Scully to join him in another stakeout, this time of Tooms’ address, but they are instructed to abandon the surveillance.

Tooms enters Scully’s apartment through the ventilation system, but Mulder arrives in the proverbial nick of time, preventing Tooms from killing his partner, and the agents handcuff the killer. Tooms is subjected to medical tests that show that the killer has abnormal skeletal and muscular systems and an unusual metabolism. The jailed killer smiles when his guard delivers a meal, sliding the tray through the narrow slot in the prisoner’s barred door. Tooms has seen his escape route.

Scully represents the no-nonsense, realistic, down-to-earth, sensible, empirical, and skeptical adult, Mulder the open-minded, curious, even enthusiastic investigator of paranormal and supernatural phenomena who, by his own admission, wants “to believe.” The plots of the episodes play out between the extremes represented by Scully’s relative skeptical empiricism and Mulder’s relative faith and experiential approach to investigating the bizarre cases that seem to fall into his and his partner’s laps. Most adults would tend to side with Scully, seeing the world as largely understood and ordinary. The oddities, aliens, and monsters that appear, week after week, in one guise or another, on the show, however, suggest that Scully’s view may not be altogether effective in explaining some of the more mysterious experiences that he and Scully have or the stranger beings they meet. As Shakespeare’s open-minded Hamlet tells the skeptical Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth. . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5, Lines 159-167).

That the world may not be what it seems frightens many adults, the same way that the monsters and villains of Buffy frighten younger audiences. Both series exemplify the uneasiness with which younger and older alike live their lives in stifled fear and trembling, looking, always over their shoulders and toward the ends of shadows, to see who--or what--is casting them.

Plotting By Trial and Error

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

• A demon dimension opens under the library of a southern California high school.
• An alien, sent to earth just before his own planet was destroyed, develops superhuman powers.
• A spacecraft explores newly discovered worlds.
• Government agents collect potentially dangerous supernatural artifacts, storing them in a secret warehouse.
• A town is populated by geniuses who work for the federal government, developing top-secret, cutting-edge technology.
• A tabloid reporter encounters paranormal and supernatural threats as he pursues news stories.
  

Each of these sentences identifies the premise of a weekly television series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Star Trek, Warehouse 13, Eureka, Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

What these premises have in common is that each one provides the basis for a theoretically endless number of episodes. Buffy: What will emerge this week from Sunnydale High School’s Hellmouth? Smallville: What powers will the alien develop, and to what use will he put them, and why? Star Trek: What new worlds are discovered, and what does the crew encounter when they explore them? Warehouse 13:What artifacts have been collected, and which remain? How and why are these objects dangerous? Where did they come from, or who invented them, and why? Eureka: Why research is being done? What effects has it had, if any, on the scientists and the townspeople? Do any of the experiments go awry? If so, what happens as a result? Kolchak: Where do the threats come from that the reporter encounters? What motivates their hostility? What happens when the reporter reports them? Is he believed? (He does, after all, work for a tabloid newspaper.)

Not everyone who is interested in writing horror (or any other type of fiction) is likely to want to write a weekly television series, so why should a writer be interested in a premise that promotes such a project?

Here’s at least one reason. By envisioning even a single, stand-alone story for which no prequel or sequel is envisioned or intended as a series of episodes, a writer can develop several plots relating to the same setting, characters, and situations, choosing from the results the best of the best. If one intends to write only one story, he or she may as well make it the best of which he or she is capable of writing. This approach will provide an author with the means of doing so, providing, as it does, the opportunity for him or her to develop virtually any number of plots using the same themes, characters, settings, and situations. The results? Sequels, prequels, trilogies. . . .

Moreover, if a single, stand-alone story should take off as a series, the writer who uses this approach is apt to have a lot of story ideas available, right from the start.

In addition, this approach allows a writer to envision how and why his or her characters may change as the story progresses. Should A, B, and C occur, what effects would their occurrences have upon the protago0nist six months or six years hence? This approach allows the author to ask and answer this and other questions. Whether the writer shares these perceptions with his or her reader or keeps them to himself, the fact that they have occurred to the writer should help him or her to anticipate future developments, attitudes, behaviors, and incidents, preparing the reader for their eventual occurrence, in the same or a later book, and to make such changes believable and seemingly natural.

Horror vs. Humor: A Case in Point

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullma

“The Haunted House” episode of The Andy Griffith Show could easily have been a horror story rather than an installment of the famous television sitcom. It has all the elements of a classic horror story: a decrepit, abandoned house that is allegedly haunted, a visit to this house by law enforcement personnel, frightening and bizarre incidents of an apparently supernatural character, and a rational explanation for these incidents. However, the story is comical, not horrific. Why?

The answer to this question takes us a long way toward understanding not only the affinities between humor and horror but the nature of horror fiction itself.

Let’s start with a summary of the story’s plot, courtesy of Dale Robinson and David Fernandes’ The Definitive Andy Griffith Show Reference: Episode-by-Episode, with Cast and Production Biographies and a Guide to Collectibles (McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, NC, and London, 1996):

Opie hits a baseball thrown by a friend and breaks a window at the abandoned Rimshaw house. Both boys are nervous about retrieving the ball because the house is rumored to be haunted. As they approach the door, they hear a spooky noise that scares them away. They go to the courthouse and tell their story to Andy and Barney. The men tell them it was probably just the whistling wind. Andy wants them to stay out of the house because it is likely that the floorboards are loose. Then, sensing that Barney was putting up a false front when he said there was nothing to be afraid of, Andy asks his deputy to go get the ball for the boys. While it is clear that Barney doesn’t want to do it, he can’t back out now. When Gomer suddenly comes by, Barney quickly enlists him to come along.

The nervous deputy enters the house first--”Age before beauty,” says Gomer. Unfortunately, they don’t get much farther than the boys did. Ghostly moans send them scrambling for the door.

Back at the courthouse, Andy chides Barney for failing to get the ball and for believing the house is haunted. Barney says that he recalls that when old man Rimshaw died, his last wish was for his home to remain undisturbed. Otis Campbell chimes in with rumors he has heard: the walls move, the eyes on the portrait of Mr. Rimshaw seem to follow a person around the room, and axes float through the air.

Andy dismisses all this as nonsense, and he goes to the Rimshaw house with Barney and Gomer in tow. They quickly locate the baseball, and despite objections from his
cohorts, Andy insists they look around the place. While he wanders off into another room, Barney and Gomer slowly move around the room, looking scared to death. Suddenly, Gomer disappears! Barney panics, and Andy returns. Gomer suddenly reappears. He had inadvertently stepped into a closet or something. The eerie thing is, Gomer says that someone or something pushed him out. Next, Andy notices that the wallpaper above the fireplace is peeling and the wall is warm. Barney suggests that maybe an old tramp has been using the fireplace.

Andy ventures upstairs and asks Barney and Gomer to check out the cellar. Gomer correctly surmises that the cellar is downstairs. When Barney opens the cellar door, he sees an ax. Too scared to go down the stairs, he softly inquires, “Any old tramps down there?” then quickly shuts the door. Gomer tells Barney that legend has it that Rimshaw put chains on his hired hand and then killed him with an ax.

Barney notices the eyes on the Rimshaw portrait following him. When he tells Andy, Andy responds that it’s probably a trick of the light.

Barney knocks on the wall--and his knock is answered. Andy gets the same result when he knocks. Suddenly, Andy appears frightened. He orders loudly, “Let’s get out of here!” Barney and Gomer quickly bolt out of the house, but Andy remains. He has a plan in mind.Suddenly, we see Otis and the notorious moonshiner Big Jack Anderson in the house. They are laughing, and Big Jack is quite proud of the fact that his scare tactics have worked. He has found the perfect spot for his still, and claims he could probably stay there for twenty years.

As they come out of their hiding place, believing the house is empty, they get the shock of their lives. They witness an ax hanging in the air, a baseball rolling down the stairs, and the eyes moving on the portrait. They make tracks leaving the house. Meanwhile, Barney has bravely determined he must go rescue Andy, so he comes in the rear entrance. He sees the suspended ax and hears moaning. He nearly passes out from fright before Andy can explain things.

The lawmen later use the infamous ax to smash Big Jack’s still. Andy captures Anderson and surrenders him to Federal Agent Bowden of the Alcohol Control Division. Mr. Bowden has been after the tough and tricky outlaw for years. As usual, Andy generously shares the capture credit, in this case with both Barney and Gomer.

Since much of the plot, just as it stands, could be used for a horror story, the key difference that differentiates it from that of a horror story is not the action--the series of incidents, including characters’ behavior--but the characters’ comical reactions to these incidents. In a horror story, the elements of humor--exaggerated facial expressions and physical gestures, poses and postures, attitudes and responses, slapstick, clowning, and farce, irony and satire--would be minimal, if they were included at all, and the story would focus upon the evocation, through the characters’ responses to the situation, of revulsion and fear. It’s possible--probable, even--that the rational explanation of the incidents--a tramp has been residing in the house--would be shown to be false and that the incidents would, in fact, have a paranormal or a supernatural cause.

Largely, then, horror stories stress elements of the uncanny and the inexplicable and concentrate upon feelings of revulsion and fear, rather than offering rational or natural explanations for suspected supernatural phenomena and poking fun at characters’ foibles. To better see how a master of the horror story might handle a similar storyline to that of The Andy Griffith Show’s “The Haunted House,” read H. G. Wells’ short story, “The Red Room.” Both stories are concerned with an allegedly haunted domicile, and both focus on their characters’ reactions to uncanny incidents which may or may not have a natural or a rational as well as a paranormal or supernatural explanation.


Note: For a discussion of this same television episode from a humorous perspective, visit my other blog, “Writing Hilarious Humor

Terror Television

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In Terror Television: American Series, 1970-1999, John Kenneth Muir describes the premises upon which many TV series that feature horror as a staple of their episodes’ plots rely. In doing so, he provides horror writers with a means of creating a basis by which to establish and broaden the structure of a continuing series of sequels or an anthology of related or, indeed, interrelated stories.

Let’s take a peek at some of the premises that Muir identifies:



Night Gallery: in an art gallery of bizarre portraits, every picture tells a story. For example, the show’s host, Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame, introduces one portrait, from which proceeds a tale in which “a selfish young man yearns for the death of his rich old uncle so he can inherit the family’s incredible wealth,” as a result of which, “a painting in the old man’s estate becomes an instrument of the occult when it starts to reflect terrifying changes in the family graveyard.”

The Sixth Sense: an investigator with ESP experiences “visions and insights” as he investigates cases involving psychic experiences stored in a computerized catalogue. In one episode, a missing-in-action (MIA) soldier communicates by means of automatic writing--in Chinese, yet!--with his psychic sister, to let her know that he is still alive, but someone seeks, through arson and murder, to keep the MIA’s whereabouts secret.

Ghost Story/Circle of Fear: the owner of a haunted house recounts guests’ stories. In the series’ pilot, or initial episode, the owners, having just purchased and moved into the house, hear strange noises; the house, as it turns out, was built upon the gallows upon which an “unrepentant thief” was “hanged,” and, as a consequence--the actual nature of the cause-and-effect link is, as is often the case in horror fiction, tenuous and vague--the house is, as the local librarian confirms--indeed haunted.


Kolchak: The Night Stalker: “Reporter Carl Kolchak” pursues “great news stories” involving “monsters and supernatural phenomena.” In one case, he suspects that the gruesome murders of a serial killer is, in fact, the handiwork of none other than the 130-year-old, original Jack the Ripper.


Twin Peaks: “In the tall, silent woods beyond the northwestern logging town Twin Peaks, an ancient evil dwells” in what the region’s native Americans called The Black Lodge, which may, in fact, be “another dimension,” the source of “pure evil.” The doorway to this dimension can be opened as a result of “planetary alignment” or potential victims’ fear. The Black Lodge’s counterpart, which is believed to be the home of gods, is The White Lodge. Strange characters inhabit Twin Peaks. According to Muir, the show’s writers developed the town, even creating a map of it, before creating its characters.

The X-Files: A psychologist and criminal profiler, FBI agent Fox Mulder believes in the paranormal and the supernatural, investigating the agency’s “backlog” of the X-Files (“inexplicable” cold cases), hoping to learn why his sister was abducted by aliens; his partner is the skeptical physician and fellow agent Dana Scully. Muir points out that the series is based upon ten horror themes: (1) “Trust No One” (government conspiracies and cover-ups), (2) “Freaks of Nature” (animals, mutants, and other monsters), (3) “Foreign Fears” (“ancient ethnic legends” prove to have “a basis in fact”), (4) From the Dawn of Time” (“ancient and prehistoric creatures” enter the present because of “climatic changes,” humans’ “encroachment on their territory,” or their discovery at “remote locations,” (5) “Aliens” (extraterrestrials are “encountered but never validated empirically”), (6) “God’s Masterplan” (elements of Christian belief are “explored as ‘real’ concepts”), (7) serial killers, (8) psychic phenomena, (9) “The Mytharc” (elements of various thematic subsets fuse into a narrative nucleus with a “coherent” story line, and (10) “The Standards” (stereotypical villains from the horror genre, such as vampires and werewolves).

Poltergeist: The Legacy: “Since the dawn of man, a secret organization, The Legacy, has existed to combat the forces of evil, and it’s ‘houses’ are all over the world,” each one of which is populated by heroes “with special skills” who are armed with high-tech weaponry. Poltergeist: The Legacy chronicles “the San Francisco house, a magnificent castle” on “Angel Island.”


Dark Skies: “American history as we know it is a lie to cover up” humans’ war, fought by Majestic-12, a covert agency established by President Truman, which is currently headed by Captain Frank Bach, against a horrific “alien collective consciousness known as The Hive.” The series examines Bach’s decisions and their consequences.

The Burning Zone: “an elite ‘bio-crisis’ team” is dedicated to eradicating ‘disease that threaten to strike quickly and endanger many innocent Americans” in a sequence of attacks known as The Plague Wars. This team also seeks to counter The New Dawn, “a villainous organization dedicated to the annihilation” or humanity and “the supremacy of the Earth’s original life form, a hive-mind,” representing a “sentient virus that has been ‘asleep’ for 15,000 years.” As the series progresses, two of the experts leave the team to “spearhead” important operations in Zimbabwe, “to be replaced by the ‘rebel’ doctor Brain Taft.”

Millennium: this “horror/crime series” featuring “paranormal and supernatural overtones” was based upon a blend of two movies, Seven and The Eyes of Laura Mars.

Man on the Run: a cross between The Fugitive and A Rebel Without a Cause, this series follows the exploits of a “motorcycle slacker who discovers he’s a failed government experiment with a built-in expiration date” in the form of a “computer chip in his brain” that will kill him in a year, when he turns 21, unless he can locate his creator, Dr. Heisenberg, and undergo special “medical treatment.” However, there’s a complication: he’s been framed for killing the man who shared “the truth” with him and, now, he’s pursued by a government agent who is bent upon bringing him to “justice.”

Now that we’ve had a peek at some of the premises that Muir details in his fascinating tour of Terror Television, let’s see whether we can discern a few principles that horror writers can derive from such an admittedly rather abbreviated review.

1. The premise should establish an opportunity for the occurrence of bizarre and mysterious incidents (for example, extraordinary natural events or paranormal or supernatural proceedings) and the arrival and departure of extraordinary beings or forces.
2. The premise should allow a recurrence of a cadre of characters and the ongoing development of one or more themes.
3. The premise should unify fairly disparate elements of plot, setting, and theme.
4. The premise should allow the exploration of diverse types and sources of narrative conflict and character development.
5. The premise should link past and present (and, possibly, future) action.
6. The premise should allow something that is lacking (for example, justice) to be supplied.
7. The premise should suggest, if not explicitly identify, one or more causes for the mysterious and bizarre occurrences that take place within and between the stories or episodes.
8. The premise may involve cover-ups by government agencies, overt or covert, or by private, but powerful and well-financed, organizations.
9. The premise should allow for both natural and occult explanations for and causes of the mysterious and bizarre incidents, forces, and beings.
10. The premise may address topical events or social, political, or moral issues and concerns.
11. The premise may be inspired by a film’s concepts or by combined themes from several motion pictures.
12. The premise should allow for new directions of plot. (For example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes a new direction when Buffy Summers graduates from high school and enrolls in college, and The Burning Zone takes a new direction when two of its experts leave the group to head specialized operations related to the main line of investigation.)

Source

Terror Television: American Series, 1970-1999 by John Kenneth Muir, McFarland and Company, Inc., Jefferson, NC, 2001.

Verizon’s Version of Horror: The Dead Zone Advertisements

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Advertisers are a creative bunch. They use all sorts of persons, places, and things to sell us everything from aardvarks to zoo trips. Well, maybe not aardvarks. Not yet, anyway. More-or-less captured audiences hate most “commercial breaks,” although they are somewhat fond of a select few “messages from our sponsors.” One commercial that is apt to be tolerable, if not actually fun, for horror fans is Verizon’s latest series of advertisements that feature areas of poor or non-existent cellular telephone transmission and reception, known, in the commercials, as “dead zones.”

In one such ad, as a man heads from his apartment to the laundry room in his building, basket in hand, walking along a dimly lit hallway, a pair of young boys, dressed in nineteenth-century-style suits, speak in an eerie monotone: “Hey, mister, are you going to the laundry room?"

Looking hesitant, he replies, "I was."

The boys then say, "It’s a dead zone. Reception is terrible."

The man replies, “I have the Verizon network,” whereupon a host of the company’s employees appears behind the man, one assuring their customer, “You’re good.”

The boys exchange an uneasy look before turning, they walk away, down the corridor.

The text, “Don’t Be Afraid of DEAD ZONES” appears over the backs of the retreating boys.

The scene is reminiscent of The Shining, and its use of the phrase “dead zone” recalls another of Stephen King’s novels, The Dead Zone.

The host of Verizon company’s employees plays on the idea of there being safety in numbers. Their service neutralizes the threat of “dead zones.” Who wouldn’t want such heroes around in such a threatening environment?

A number of similar ads, using horror themes or allusions to horror movies, appear as installments in the series. A family moves into a creepy neighborhood, only to be warned by their neighbor (a woman who looks as if she’s just stepped out of her coffin) that they’ve moved into a “dead zone.” The last occupants of their new house, she warns them, “went crazy trying to find a signal there.” The Verizon team appears, and she looks frightened. All she can warn them against, now, is the crabgrass growing in their yard.

The ads are designed, it seems, to resemble theatrical trailers, which certainly gets television viewers’ interest, especially if such audience members also happen to enjoy horror movies.

Sex, it has long been established, sells. So, apparently, does horror.

Kudos to a company for creating ads that are both eerie and enjoyable.

The Cliffhanger

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Charles Dickens

As we mentioned in a previous post, Charles Dickens invented the cliffhanger as a way to get his readers to buy the next issue of the magazine in which his current story was running. It worked, and it’s been used ever since, both in novels and in films. Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, divided each episode into a teaser and three acts. The teaser is a cliffhanger in and of itself, but acts one through three also each end with a cliffhanger. The last may also end on a cliffhanger, especially if the episode is to be continued in the next installment. Otherwise, it typically ends on a poignant note or, sometimes, by expressing the episode’s theme. The show’s creator, Joss Whedon, said that he and the writers would work out the basic story, complete with cliffhangers, and then fill in the action between these points.

Joss Whedon

Using the episode “Angel,“ from the series’ first season, here’s the way it works:

Teaser: Buffy Summers is attacked by three vampires.

Act I: Buffy discovers that Angel is a vampire.

Act II: Buffy finds Angel kneeling beside her unconscious mother.

Act III: Buffy aims a crossbow at Angel.

Act IV: Buffy and Angel kiss, and her cross leaves its shape burned into his chest.

Between these endings, the episode’s plot is segmented:

Teaser: Buffy is attacked by three vampires.

Frustrated at Buffy Summers’ killing of his minions, The Master, a vampire-king, sends “The Three,” especially proficient vampire assassins, to slay the slayer. At the local teenage nightclub, the Bronze, the annual pre-fumigation party is underway. Willow Rosenberg consoles Buffy about not having a boyfriend, while Xander Harris narrowly avoids being beaten up after he tries to impress a girl with a big boyfriend. Buffy leaves the club and is attacked by The Three.

Act I: Buffy discovers that Angel is a vampire.

Angel appears and helps Buffy fight The Three. When they get the chance to do so, they run, taking refuge in Buffy’s house. They will be safe inside, Angel says, because a vampire cannot come inside unless invited. Her mother, Joyce, catches him there. Buffy says he’s a college student who’s been helping her with her history class. Joyce suggests that it’s time for Angel to leave and for Buffy to go to bed. Joyce goes upstairs, to bed, and Buffy pretends to say goodnight, but he follows her upstairs, to her bedroom. The next day, at school, Buffy tells her watcher (mentor), Rupert Giles, and Willow and Xander about her fight and how Angel spent the night, making Xander jealous. Giles identifies the vampires as special warriors and says that, having failed, they will now offer their lives to The Master in penance. The assassins do so, and The Master, pretending he will spare them, allows the vampire Darla, one of his favorite followers, to kill them on his behalf. Joyce cautions Buffy not to rush into a relationship with Angel. He’s still in her room, and she sneaks food upstairs to him. They kiss, and he transforms into a vampire.

Act II: Buffy finds Angel kneeling beside her unconscious mother.

Buffy tells Giles, Willow, and Xander that Angel’s a vampire. Darla visits Angel in his above-ground apartment and tells him and tries to interest him in her, but he’s not interested. At the Sunnydale High School library, Giles fills the teens in as to Angel’s history: “he’s a vicious, violent animal.” Darla visit’s the library, where Buffy and Willow, taking a break from studying, talk about Angel. Buffy admits she is fond of him, and Willow tells Buffy she likes Xander. As Buffy tells Willow how she felt when Angel kissed her, Darla eavesdrops on their conversation. As Joyce works on her taxes, someone knocks at the door. She opens it, and sees Darla, who claims to be Buffy’s classmate, come to study with Buffy. Joyce invites her into the house. Angel, stopping by Buffy’s house, is about to leave without knocking when he hears Joyce scream. Darla has bitten her, and she tosses her body to Angel, inviting him to feed. Angel transforms into a vampire. Darla slips out of the house, and Buffy, arriving home from the library, sees her mother’s throat punctured and Angel, as a vampire, seeming about to feed upon her mother.

Act III: Buffy aims a crossbow at Angel.

Angel flees, and Buffy calls an ambulance. At the hospital, Giles, Willow, and Xander join Buffy in visiting Joyce, who tells them that a “friend” of Buffy’s stopped by and that Joyce was going to make a sandwich for her when she must have slipped and fallen, cutting herself. After they leave Joyce’s room, Buffy tells the others she plans to kill Angel, who, she suspects, lives near the Bronze. Giles tells her she may need more than a stake to accomplish the task, and she retrieves the crossbow from the library. Darla tries to persuade Angel to rejoin her and The Master. Joyce talks to Giles, and he learns the identity of the friend who visited her--Darla. He leaves, telling Willow and Xander that they have a problem with which to deal. At the Bronze, Buffy finds Angel, aiming the crossbow at him.

Act IV: Buffy and Angel kiss, and her cross leaves its shape burned into his chest.

Angel reverts to his human form, and Buffy can’t kill him. He confesses to the terrible deeds he’s committed in the past and tells her of the Gypsy curse that restored his soul, making him feel remorse for his misdeeds and want to repent. He denies having bitten Joyce and cannot bring himself to bite Buffy when she offers him her neck. Darla arrives, carrying revolvers, which she uses against Buffy and her crossbow. Giles, Willow, and Xander also arrive, and, to distract Darla as she’s about to kill Buffy, Willow blurts out that it was Darla, not Angel, who bit Joyce. Darla is standing on top of a pool table. Buffy jerks her feet out from under her, and she falls on her back atop the table, still firing her weapons at Buffy. To distract Darla again, Giles turns on the club’s strobe lights. As Darla, recovering, stalks Buffy, Angel sneaks up behind her and stabs her with an arrow. She bursts into dust, and Angel leaves. The
Master reacts with rage upon learning that Angel has killed Darla, but his disciple, the Anointed One, comforts him. Buffy brings Joyce a plate of vegetables, telling her she must eat them to build up the iron in her blood. At the Bronze’s post-fumigation party, Buffy, Willow, and Xander joke, but Buffy looks for someone she’s expecting. She sees Angel and goes to meet him. Angel has come to tell Buffy that their love can never be, and she agrees. They kiss, and Buffy returns to Willow and Xander. The smoking imprint of Buffy’s cross is imprinted in Angel’s chest.

Note: This summary is based upon the original shooting script for this episode, by Joss Whedon.

The cliffhanger is so successful that most novelists routinely use it to end many, if not all, chapters, and virtually all television shows and motion pictures employ the device as a matter of course, even, as Whedon does, using the cliffhangers themselves as a means of moving the story’s action forward, from key moment to key moment, making each key moment especially dramatic, and filling in the spaces between these points. The method is a refinement of the strategy outlined by Gustave Freytag, in which an inciting moment gives rise to the action, a turning point sets the plot off in the opposite direction it has previously taken, and a moment of final suspense leaves audiences wondering how the story will end. Obviously, a cliffhanger can be much more than simply a way to tease the reader into coming back (or staying tuned) for more.

As a side note, some writers, of horror and otherwise, also employ the teaser. Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond thrillers, started many chapters of his spy novels with a teaser, consisting of a line, often of dialogue, from the chapter that the teaser introduced. The dialogue was always intriguing and compelling, creating suspense or curiosity.

Leftover Plots, Part III

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

 

As a result of considering “leftover plots” or plot-seeds or springboards or whatever we choose to call narrative motifs that occur in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we identified several additional storylines that could have been used in the series or (better yet, for us) that we ourselves, with some revision regarding characters, setting, and other narrative elements, could employ to write horror stories (or even novels) ourselves:

• An imprisoned character can escape, causing more mischief or even a little death and destruction before being killed or imprisoned again.
• Things that give rise to new organisms or liberate forces or entities, such as eggs, seeds, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, melting icebergs, shifting tectonic plates, earthbound meteors, and the like, can introduce new characters, including such worthy adversaries as hideous, horrible monsters.
• Problematic characters, such as a naïve, incompetent, or foolish follower or sidekick can create havoc and endanger lives.
• Physical objects, or artifacts, can function as inciting moments that spark a chain of narrative incidents, setting the rest of the story in motion.

We also learned some important factual matters pertaining to this technique:

• Ideas cannot be copyrighted, so they are fair game as inspirations for plots.
• The specific and unique ways in which ideas are developed can be, and often are, copyrighted. Using the characters, settings, and other elements of such treatments could constitute plagiarism and/or copyright infringement.
• Ideas must be given an original treatment in which characters, settings, and other elements are new, not derivative.

We learned, further, in the second post in this series, that several Buffy plots deal with xenophobia, or the fear of strangers and that, to enhance the mystique of the stranger, the series’ writers used such techniques--okay, they can be called “tricks,” if one prefers to think of them in this way--as these:

• A possible threat. (Is the mysterious Angel stalking Buffy?)
• Romantic intrigue AND star-crossed love. (Buffy no sooner meets Angel than they’ve become a couple, but, since he is, as she soon learns, a vampire, and she’s the slayer, theirs will be star-crossed, to say the least.)
• Juxtapositions. The past (as represented by print-bound books) and the present (as represented by computers and cyberspace) meet, and they don’t get along all that well. Good (Buffy) and evil (Angel and the other vampires) represent two moral extremes. The natural, everyday world of Sunnydale and its citizens’ mundane lives are set against the supernatural world of their vampire foes. Life, as it is lived by Buffy and her friends, is contrasted with the life-in-death state in which the vampires exist, a hedonistic world of the senses and of passions that are cut off from such roots as love and compassion.
• Similarity of themes. Buffy often explores a theme from several perspectives. For example, Willow, whose love for Xander remains unrequited because of his love for Buffy, which is also unrequited because Buffy loves Angel, leaves Willow lonely, as does Marcie’s neglect by her peers. In each instance, the characters’ loneliness leads them to foolish actions. In Willow’s case, she is saved by her friends, to whose circle she returns. Marcie, having no friends, becomes a ward of the state, so to speak, after Buffy rescues Cordelia and defeats Marcie. Although it may not cure one’s loneliness altogether, friendship, such thematic treatments suggest, is the tie that not only binds but also saves one from a perfunctory, institutional existence as a ward of, and a servant to, the state.
• Animation of inanimate objects. This is a motif that is popular in fantasy fiction, including the horror and the science fiction genres. The animation of inanimate objects, whether through magical or technological means, is a subtype of the artifact plot device, in which an object, whether a ring (Lord of the Rings), a crystal (The Dark Crystal), or even a spaceship (Rendezvous with Rama) or some other object is the artifact.
• Trauma’s consequences. As child abuse, spousal abuse, torture, combat and other mistreatment or crisis situations have shown, trauma has long-, if not life-long, consequences and can cause recurring nightmares, acts of violence, and other disturbed behavior.
• Duty’s duty. Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has reasons which reason does not know.” So has duty. Even when there is no logically defensible reason to do so, the claim of duty often holds, especially when altruism, or even self-sacrifice, are directed at protecting others, more helpless than oneself, about whom one cares. Buffy dies that others may live, and, in doing so, she underscores the supreme values of brotherly love, courage, and that pesky pest, duty.

In this post, we’re going to consider how strong supporting characters can suggest plots that could be developed further in additional stories, or, in the case of Angel, even an entire additional series of stories.

One of the many strengths of the Buffy series is its writers’ development of strong characters who are not only individualized and sympathetic, but who also seem like actual people instead of merely a collection of so many personality traits that behave in a predictable fashion. These characters are springboards to action and, since many recur (and others could recur) in later episodes, they represent springboards (or possible springboards) to additional plots.

Angel, who is also known (particularly when he’s in his evil-vampire, as opposed to his vampire-with-a-soul mode) as Angelus, is a strong character because he suffers and because he switches back and forth between his evil-vampire and his vampire-with-a-soul modes, thereby complexifying both the series’ action and his relationships with other characters, especially Buffy. A lazy and irresponsible youth, Angel wants to see the world, and when a beautiful young noblewoman offers him the opportunity to do so, he accepts, whereupon, transforming into a vampire, she bites him, sucking his blood before, cutting herself across the breast, she shares her own vital fluid with him. He becomes a vampire, losing his soul. With no conscience to inhibit his actions, he kills his parents and his younger sister before psychologically tormenting a young woman named Drusilla by killing her family and, on the night she’s to take vows to become a nun, transforming her into one of the undead, causing her, at last, to lose her sanity as well as her soul. As Angel tells Buffy, for over two hundred years, he has committed one terrible deed after another, “with a song in my heart.” To punish him for killing one of their daughters, a gypsy tribe’s sorceress curses Angel by restoring his soul, and he feels tremendous remorse for the many unconscionable deeds he’s committed. He also falls in love with Buffy. Because of this love, and because he hopes to redeem himself, Angel assists her in defeating demons, vampires, and the other creatures of darkness who come crawling out of the Hellmouth each week. However, the curse is later lifted (before being restored), so that he goes back and forth between good and evil, now a friend, now an enemy, who is both a blessing and a curse to Buffy and her friends, reaching a low point in his murder of Buffy’s mentor’s girlfriend, Jenny Calendar. Angel was such a rich and complex character that he became the protagonist on his own series, Angel, in a spin off from Buffy.

Beautiful Cordelia Chase is the snobby rich girl and a natural foil to Buffy. Concerned, always, with image and the latest fashion, Cordelia appears shallow and facile, but, like the other characters in the series, she turns out to be full of surprises. Initially, she detests Xander Harris, a member of Buffy’s circle of friends, as a gauche, unsophisticated zero. Despite his good looks, hilarious sense of humor, and fearlessness, Cordelia avoids him like the plague, not wanting to be seen in his presence. When, stalked by an assassin with supernatural powers, they are trapped in Buffy’s basement, facing a common threat, and their apparent mutual hatred is revealed to mask a reciprocal attraction, as yet another argument between them ends in a passionate kiss that ignites a sizzling relationship--at least until Xander cozies up to Willow Rosenberg. Cordelia is not an entirely sympathetic character, but, because of her audacious arrogance, her spunk, her sarcastic sense of humor, her extreme sense of entitlement, and her in-your-face narcissism, she’s a character whom viewers loved to hate. Later, after her father is imprisoned for income tax evasion, leaving his family much less well off financially, and Cordelia is reduced to working for her spending money, her character softens, and she becomes more likeable. Although she isn’t a sympathetic enough character, even then, to carry her own series, she does leave Sunnydale, moving to Los Angeles, to seek an acting career in order to be a supporting character in the new Angel series.

Willow, Buffy’s confidante, is a witch whose powers develop over the span of the Buffy series until, in the fifth season, she has become a force with which to be reckoned. A shy, retiring, somewhat naive wallflower early in the series, she has a crush on Xander (who has a yen for Buffy, who likes Angel). Later, she discovers that she prefers her own sex and has a relationship with Tara Maclay that ends when Tara is killed by Buffy’s enemies. Thereafter, Willow has a relationship with a “potential slayer,” Kennedy. Between lesbian lovers, Willow has a relationship with Oz, a guitarist in a local band, Dingoes Ate My Baby, who becomes a werewolf when his infant werewolf cousin, Jordy, bites him. Unable to control his transformation, and fearing for Willow’s safety, Oz leaves Sunnydale to seek a cure for his condition. In his absence, Willow, now enrolled in college, meets Tara, discovering her lesbian proclivities. Willow, a sweet personality, is also a rich, complex character and, because of her witchcraft, could have been successful as a protagonist of her own series, were Charmed, a series about young adult witches not already on the air.

Even Buffy’s mentor, the Watcher Rupert Giles, is (or was, at one time) to receive a series of his own, possibly to be called Ripper. (The status of the show is unclear at the moment.) Dressed in button-down shirts, subdued neckties, and three-piece tweed suits, complete with handkerchief, wearing glasses, and taking tea in his office, the Sunnydale High School librarian (formerly of the British Museum), Giles is the stereotypical stoic, stiff-upper-lip, repressed Englishman--or so, at first, he appears. However, like most of the characters in Buffy, he has a complex back story that adds shades and nuances to his inner self. As a defiant and rebellious youth, Giles resisted his calling to become a member of the Watchers’ Council, which identifies, trains, counsels, and otherwise mentors slayers. As a university student, Giles became a warlock, joining a group of sorcerers (much as Willow, in college, joined a coven). They performed a ritual to summons a demon, which appeared, and has been stalking them, individually, ever since, killing them one by one. Giles blames himself for the deaths. It was partly as a result of the guilt he feels that he accepted his responsibilities as a Watcher, becoming Buffy’s mentor. After the Buffy series ended, its creator, Joss Whedon, spoke with the actor, Anthony Stewart Head, who played Giles, about reprising his role, but as a Watcher, but one who is now semi-retired, living again in England, and investigates paranormal and supernatural incidents. The series’ theme, Whedon said, would be loneliness, exploring how a man alone copes with life on his own. At present, the projected story is said to be still a possibility, although as a motion picture, rather than as a television series, to be aired on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

One more example suggests, again, how characters who are given a rich back story, solid development, and sophisticated treatment can be used to initiate, sustain, and further develop plots in an ongoing series of stories. In “Lie To Me,” an insecure, rather pitiful, young blonde who survives by becoming a hanger-on of others who appear, at least, to be abler than she is of meeting life’s responsibilities and challenges, joins a cult of wannabe vampires, calling herself, in this, her latest incarnation, Chanterelle. Buffy arrives to save the cult from becoming the feeding ground of real vampires, led by Spike, and Chanterelle shows up again in “Anne,” having moved to Los Angeles, where she is going by the name of Lily and is dating a young man named Ricky. Buffy has moved to Los Angeles after running away from home in Sunnydale, unable to cope with having to send Angel to hell. Despite having renounced her role as the slayer, Buffy assists Lily in trying to find Ricky, and, when Buffy’s life is endangered, Lily foregoes her milquetoast manner to shove a demon off a platform and save the day (and Buffy), thereby gaining autonomy and a modicum of confidence. Before returning to Sunnydale, Buffy allows Lily to take on another name--Buffy’s middle name, Anne--and lets her stay in the motel room that Buffy had rented for another few weeks. Chanterelle-Lily-Anne never appears in another Buffy episode, but she could have, had she returned to Sunnydale or Buffy visited Los Angeles again. Therefore, like many of the other characters in the series, Anne represents what could have been a catalyst for another Buffy plot.

A problem that many viewers and critics have concerning the series is that, despite the richness and complexity of many--even most--of its characters, the writers, particularly under the supervision of Marti Noxon, tended to become too melodramatic and to forego interesting and believable (within the terms of the show’s own mythos) dramatic situations and character development in favor of cheap, maudlin characterization and dramatic spectacle--in other words, to take the easy way out rather than to go for the throat. There’s no question that the series suffered after its third season, going steadily downhill thereafter, until its seventh and final year, when even many of its diehard fans had given up on the show. If there’s a lesson to be learned from this, it’s to always strive for the gold, never settling for just something--anything--to fill the airwaves. Unfortunately, under the inept direction of Noxon, who seems to be more a craftsman than an artist, well versed in all things metaphorical, symbolic, and tawdry without having a clearly defined idea of drama or even the simplest notions of what really makes people tick, the show suffered a long, slow, and painful demise when it could have ended on the same note of astonishment and success on which it started and which it maintained, more or less consistently, until Whedon made the fatal error of turning the show’s reins over to an unaccomplished horsewoman. Part of a storyteller’s art is knowing how much is enough and when to quit. (In fairness to Noxon, she is the author of some of the better episodes in the series. She is a better writer than she is a producer and, as such, another indication of the truth of the Peter Principle.)

Note: One of the intriguing things about Buffy is that many of its characters were recurring, if not regular, members of the cast. Some started out with small parts which developed into larger roles. Others, such as Amy Madison, and Giles’ fellow warlock from his college days, Ethan Rayne, remained fairly static, but reappeared when the plot required someone to get the narrative ball rolling. Indeed, several of the show’s female characters were played by actresses who’d auditioned for the part of the show’s protagonist but were not selected: Amy Madison (Elizabeth Anne Allen), Darla (Julie Benz), and Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), and Danny Strong, who tried out for the role of Xander received the recurring role of Jonathan. Whedon made the most of all the actors’ talents, assigning lesser, but significant, parts to those who didn’t make the cut for the series’ main character or major supporting characters, thereby capitalizing upon the strong acting abilities of the runners-up, which isn’t often the case in television. As a result, lesser characters were played by skillful actors whose abilities were already known as a result of their having auditioned for other roles. Having considered only a few of the lessons to be learned from a consideration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes, we’ll revisit the topic of “Leftover Plots” in future installments.