Interview with Author Renee Scattergood!

 

Today, Renee Scattergood, author of the dark fantasy series Shadow Stalker, has graciously agreed to be interviewed by Chillers and Thrillers.

As the author of the urban fantasy A Whole World Full of Hurt, I am glad to welcome Renee and to hear her views on the fantasy genre in general and the dark fantasy subgenre in particular.

Renee's books, which have received outstanding reviews, are available on Amazon.

C & T: Welcome, Renee! Chillers and Thrillers is glad to have you as our guest speaker.

R S: Thank you for inviting me! I’m really excited.

C & T: How would you define “dark fantasy”?

R S: I would define it as any fantasy that has dark (as in psychologically dark and twisted) or horror themes.

C & T: I know that George Lucas inspired you to become a fantasy author. In writing the screenplays for his original trilogy, Lucas said that he followed the pattern of storytelling laid out by Joseph Campbell in Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Has Campbell's understanding of the structure of such stories influenced your own work?

R S: Somewhat. I often follow certain aspects of the heroes’ journey, but only in such a way that it drives the plot of my own story, and each story is different.

C & T: In writing The Flame of the Sea, my action-adventure Viking novel, I modeled the plot structure on the paradigm of Vladimir Prop's Morphology of the Folktale. Most of my other fiction is modeled on Gustav Freytag's pyramid, which is adapted from his Die Technik des Dramas (The Technique of Drama), which he based on his analyses of ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama. Have you found these—or other—approaches to structuring stories helpful to you in the writing of your novels?

R S: Honestly, no. I tend to go by feel more than anything. Not sure if that makes sense. I guess you can say I’m more of an instinctive writer and, rather than follow a structure or formula, I tend to go by feel. In the end, there is a structure to it, but I don’t plan it that way.

C & T: What authors, of fantasy or other types of fiction, have inspired or influenced you as a writer?

R S: I’m a big fan of Terry Goodkind. His work has really inspired me and whenever I’m in a lull, I can read one of his books and it always puts me in a writing mood. Lindsay Buroker is another author that has inspired me, and while I love her work, she has inspired me in a different way. She’s self-published, like me, and has made a good living with her work. She shares all her failures and successes, and it helps me with my own work.

C & T: It's always refreshing to me to see a fantasy series presented from the point of view of a female protagonist, as is your own series. How do you think a female protagonist shapes your narrative? Does such a protagonist provide attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, desires, emotional responses, ideas, judgments, or values that differ from those of the genre's male protagonists? How would your teenage protagonist, Auren, differ in these ways from, say, young Lucas Skywalker? What does a female protagonist “bring” to fantasy that a male protagonist may not?

R S: To be honest, when I originally wrote Shadow Stalker, my protagonist was a male. It was also a much different story. I guess in many aspects it was a lot like Star Wars. A friend of mine, who is a published author, gave me some feedback and suggested I rewrite it with a female protagonist.

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me. I suppose, growing up, all the heroes of the stories I read were guys, so in my mind that’s the way it was supposed to be.

I was amazed at how much the story changed when I made the protagonist a female. For one thing, her life goals are different. My male protagonist was looking for adventure, whereas my female protagonist wanted to go to college with her friends and have a normal life. She enjoys adventure but doesn’t want her whole life focused on that adventure.

Everyone expects the male to be the hero, but it’s a surprise when it’s a female. The men around her want to protect her, but she doesn’t want to be protected. She wants to show them she can be just as strong.

Mostly, a female protagonist inspires the young women who read about them. They may not be superhuman or heroes in the same way, but it inspires them to be more than what society expects them to be.

T & C: Many of the reviews of your series cite your characters as one of the elements readers enjoy. What makes your characters intriguing to readers? What tips do you have for writers concerning how to create interesting characters?

R S: I start every story I write with the characters. The story develops around my characters, and I really get into their heads to show the readers what the character is thinking, feeling and experiencing.

I’ve likened it to how a method actor researches and gets into the heads of their characters. If you want your readers to really connect with your characters, then you have to get into their heads and bring them to life.

C&T: Reviews also suggest that your plots are gripping. Do you have any particular techniques for creating, maintaining, and heightening suspense?

R S: I think that comes from how I develop the characters as well. As I’m writing, I’m picturing the scene in my head, from the character’s point of view, as though it’s playing out like a movie. I write what I see and feel as though it’s happening to me.

C & T: One reviewer identifies “punishment, torture, and execution” as being features that make your fiction “dark fantasy.” Do you agree with this assessment? Are other elements of dark fantasy present in your work?

R S: Oh absolutely. It’s the main reason I labelled it dark fantasy because I know it’s a trigger for a lot of people, and other just don’t like that. But someone who is looking for “dark” stories expect that sort of thing.

Another reason is because of the twisted mentality of Drevin (the main bad guy at the start) and the Galvadi Empire (which was created by Drevin).

C & T: You have a lot of reviews for your Shadow Stalker series, Renee! What's your secret?

R S: I don’t have a secret, really! I’ve just followed what other successful authors have done. I connect with my readers on a personal level on social media and through my newsletter. I ask them for reviews when they read my work in my newsletter and at the end of the book. It’s really important to have a medium where you can interact with your readers, and don’t be afraid to ask them for help. If they love your work, they’ll want to help you.

C & T: Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?

R S: Just that I’ve really enjoyed this interview, and I hope your readers enjoy the free copy of Shadow Stalker. I hope they’ll give it a read and let me know what they think!

C & T: If you'd like to write an article to share on Chillers and Thrillers, we'd be glad to follow up your interview with your article, on the topic of your choice.

Thank you for taking time to speak with us today, Renee. We enjoyed your insights and look forward to reading many more of your novels. To learn more about Renee and her work, subscribe to her newsletter (and get one of her books, free) and check out these great resources (click the title to access the site):

Renee's Shadow Stalkers

Renee Writes

Renee Writes Newsletter

Speculative Fiction Spot

Giveaways and Goodies

Amazon

Sketching Characters

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Falling Down: The adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world

Think of a few literary characters or movie characters who made an indelible mark on you. Ask yourself, why do I remember these particular characters when I've forgotten so many others? What makes these characters, but not others, memorable?

Probably, you will identify certain characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and even views of the world. The characters you admire will probably have acted honorably, valorously, heroically. Those you recall, perhaps with a shudder, feeling fear, disgust, or horror, as evil or dangerous probably strike you as contemptible or loathsome because of, paradoxically, their characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views. While the admirable characters support others, the contemptible are usually interested in serving only themselves. More specifically, though, how are characters sketched by writers?

Most are collections of personality traits. These traits are then implied through the characters' actions, or behavior, including the words they speak, that is, through dialogue. In movies and, more than ever before, in novels, behavior is the means by which personality traits, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views are shown.

In the thriller Falling Down (1993), William Foster, an unemployed engineer, sees society as “falling down” right before his eyes. While the movie leaves no doubt that society is, in fact, in a state of partial collapse, it is also true that Foster himself is “falling down.” He's lost his job. His marriage has ended in divorce. His ex-wife, Beth, has been awarded sole custody of their daughter Adele, and has secured a restraining order against Foster, who has a penchant to act aggressively, even violently, toward others, including, apparently, Beth herself. Foster has lied to his mother, with whom he stays, telling her that he is still employed. In fact, he carries an empty briefcase around town, wearing out shoe leather as he wanders more or less aimlessly until he conceives of the idea of visiting Adele on her birthday, despite the restraining order that has been issued against him and Beth's clear demands that he avoid contact with her and Adele.

Throughout the film, as Foster encounters escalating example after example of the increasingly extreme societal decline he is convinced has overtaken life in Los Angeles and, perhaps the United States as well, he himself collapses further and further psychologically and he reacts to the instances of social decline with more and more extreme behavior, ratcheting up his aggression and violence, revealing himself to be a truly unstable and dangerous man.

In the film, social decline is reflected by other types of decline as well—declines in technology, in government, in civility, in business relations, in attitudes regarding racial and gender equality, and in class privilege.

Heavy traffic

On a terribly hot day, the air conditioner in Foster's car won't work. He abandons the vehicle, leaving it in a traffic jam, and sets off on foot across the city.

My rights as a consumer

Wanting change to call his ex-wife, he asks for, but is refused, change for a dollar. He is told that he must buy something first. He reacts by breaking up the proprietor's merchandise and ranting about his greed. Foster also takes issue with the owner's pronunciation of “five” as “”fie,” insulting him by telling him that, as an immigrant, he should have “the grace to learn the language,” especially after all the money the United States has given the store owner's country.

Territorial dispute

Next, he encounters two Latin street thugs who try to rob him. Foster uses a baseball bat to beat them into retreat and picks up a gun one of them drops. Later, these thugs, accompanied by other gang members, spray bullets at Foster during a drive by, missing their target but wounding several innocent bystanders. When they wreck, Foster takes their cache of guns, shooting the diver in the leg.

Ganging up on D-Fens

At a park, Foster is accosted by an aggressive panhandler after he sees rude people shoving others as they storm a bus that has stopped to pick up passengers, a billboard decrying child abuse, and alcoholics openly drinking in public. He flings his briefcase at the panhandler, telling him he can have it. Inside, the angry panhandler finds nothing but a sandwich and an apple—the lunch Foster's mother had packed for him.

 Late for breakfast

Foster's attempt to order breakfast a few minutes after a fast-food restaurant has changed to its lunch menu elicits sarcastic, condescending remarks from the server and the restaurant's manager. Foster responds by shooting an automatic rifle into the ceiling and terrifying both the staff and the diners, before leaving. Although, once he resorts to gunfire, the manager fills Foster's breakfast order, he leaves the food behind, saying the fries are limp and cold and the hamburger looks nothing like the one shown in the oversize photograph that advertises it.

Not economically viableVisiting a swat meet to buy a birthday present for Adele, Foster observes a young black man in a business suit lamenting a bank's refusal to grant him a loan, crying to passersby, as he is being arrested, “I'm not economically viable.” He catches Foster's eye. “Remember me,” he says, and Foster nods.

Out of order

When he attempts to make a telephone call to Beth, a man rants at him from outside the telephone booth, demanding that he hurry. Foster reacts by shooting up the booth with an automatic rifle. “I think it's out of order,” he tells the terrified man.

Nick's back room: "I'm with you"

In an army surplus store, which Foster visits to buy a pair of boots to replace his worn shoes, he encounters the store's sexist, racist neo-Nazi proprietor, who insults a female detective and a gay couple before turning on Foster, when Foster denies being “just like” him, and attempts to hold Foster at gunpoint until the police he plans to summon arrive. Foster manages to kill the neo-Nazi befolatere continuing his trip across town.

Something to fix

Suspecting road work is not needed but is underway simply to waste taxpayers' money by providing work for the city's department of transportation workers, Foster uses a rocket-propelled grenade launcher he has taken from the street thugs to destroy a tunnel in order to give them some actual work to do.

Passing through

At a gold course, he shoots a golf cart after a golfer challenges his presence on the course, claiming that the links belong solely to him and the other members of the country club upon whose property Foster trespasses. The irate golfer's nitroglycerin pills are aboard the cart, which coasts downhill, into a lake, leaving the golfer, who has a heart attack when Foster shoots at the cart, to die “wearing [his] funny little hat.”

Obsolete; like it was before

After climbing a wall that surrounds an exclusive estate, Foster briefly kidnaps the caretaker, his wife, and their young daughter, as he hides from a helicopter flying over the area. When he learns that the estate is owned by a plastic surgeon, Foster says “the system” has betrayed him, rewarding the plastic surgeon, whose work, he implies, is merely aesthetic, rather than rewarding him, an engineer whose work in the defense industry protects America. When he realizes he has frightened the girl, he leaves the family, resuming his trek, now that the helicopter has left the area.

Officer down and the pier: all points converge

Finally, toward the end of the movie, after shooting Detective Sandra Torres, Foster holds his wife at gunpoint, intending, Sergeant Prendergast says, to shoot them.

End Credits

In addition to showing Foster's personality—his traits, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world view—as he reacts to various incidents which confirm his belief that society is “falling down,” even as his own psyche collapses, the film shows how inappropriate, unnecessary, and dangerous his reactions are by contrasting them with another character who encounters similar problems as those which face Foster. Using a foil, a character whose behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world view strongly contrasts with those of another, opposing character, is a tried and true means of characterization which Falling Down uses to good effect.

Prendergast is Foster's foil. Foster has “lost” a daughter; Prendergast has lost one through the girl's death. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce. Prendergast's wife, Amanda, suffers from anxiety, which makes her feel the need to control her environment and to order both her own and Prendergast's lives. Foster has been fired from his job. Despite less-than-ideal working conditions, Prendergast wants to remain on the Los Angeles Police Department's force, but Amanda wants him to retire to Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Both Foster and Prendergast see a collapse of social traditions, organizations, institutions, and mores, but—and here is the chief difference between these men who, to a large degree, live rather parallel lives—Foster feels cheated by “the system” and wants what he considers to be his due, whereas Prendergast is content to prop up society and to help to protect and defend it against its threats, including Foster himself. The use of Prendergast as Foster's foil more sharply defines the characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views of both the unemployed defense engineer and the detective.

Such techniques of characterization are widely used as time-tested ways of sketching characters because they are effective. By showing characters react to a variety of situations and incidents and by contrasting these reactions with those of another character who is the opposite in his or her characteristics, behaviors, attitudes, values, beliefs, and world views, writers create indelible characters who stand out as memorable individuals. Such an approach can be, and is, used in all genres of fiction, both on the page and on the soundstage.

Note: The subheadings are from the "Scene Index" for the film, as provided on its DVD release.

Clayton (“Blaze”) Blaisdell, Jr.: A Study in Characterization

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the flyleaf to Richard Bachman’s* novel Blaze (2007), the protagonist is “one of the most sympathetic criminals in all . . . literature.” This estimation may be equal parts hyperbole and objective assessment, but few would argue, it seems, that Blaze is, in fact, a compelling character. What makes him so? The novel is a study in characterization. Much of the effect is achieved by Bachman’s demonstration of Blaze’s perceptions of other characters and of situations. Mildly retarded and altogether psychotic (he hears voices that no one else hears), Blaze frequently accepts everyone and everything at face value, seldom analyzing, evaluating, or passing judgment on anyone or anything. His matter-of-factness, which is surely as much an effect of his retardation as it is of his pureness of heart, nevertheless creates an image of him as being, despite his criminality, one who is--or seems to be--unaffected, if not always altogether guileless. Nevertheless, he is a criminal. As such, Blaze is, on one hand, a sympathetic soul, while, on the other hand, despite his pathetic thoughts, hopes, fears, and dreams, he is also revolting. To have created such a character is an accomplishment suggestive more of a Stephen King than of a Richard Bachman.

The first chapter opens with “George was somewhere in the dark. Blaze couldn’t see him, but the voice came in loud and clear, rough and a little hoarse. George always sounded as if he had a cold. He’d had an accident when he was a kid. He never said what, but there was a dilly of a scar on his adam’s apple.”  Although George is unseen, we are led to believe that he exists as more than a voice: “George was somewhere in the dark,” we are told. Moreover, the use of such adjectives as “loud” and “clear,” “rough” and “hoarse,” to modify the sound of George’s voice helps to establish the thought that the character is as real as the young man, Blaze, who hears him speaking. Finally, the reference to George’s past accident provides a speck of back story that helps to present George as a real person, like Blaze.

George also reacts to Blaze’s actions. When Blaze seeks the wrong automobile--to steal, as it turns out--George corrects him: “Not that one, dummy, its got bumper stickers all over it. Get a Chevy or a Ford. Dark blue or green. Two years old, No ore, no less. Nobody remembers them. And no stickers.” Again, the details also help to sustain the notion that George is more than merely a memory and that his voice is more than simply a hallucination. The voice advises George about specific details concerning the automobile: it should not have bumper stickers on it, it should be either “a Chevy or a Ford,” it should be no older than two years, .and it should be “dark blue or green.” George even calls Blaze a name, “dummy,” which is, although insulting, characteristic of Blaze’s condition and not one that he is likely to have applied to himself, for retarded people seldom know of their own accord, without being told so by others, that they are retarded. These techniques make George seem as real a character as Blaze. As George continues to direct, counsel, and insult Blaze, the illusion that he is real continues: “That’s your left. . . . Your right, dummy. The hand you pick your nose with.” George keeps Blaze on track when Glaze’s thought begin to stray and even tells Blaze how to hotwire the car.

It comes as something of a shock, then, when the cat is let out of the bag, and we learn that “George is dead.”

Blaze remembers, for a time, that his former partner in crime is deceased, but, “the next morning,” George is back--in Blaze’s head, at least--reminding Blaze to tuck in both of his shirttails and telling him to wipe out the tire tracks in the snow outside the shed in which Blaze has hidden the stolen car. One minute, Blaze remembers that George is dead (“George had been dead since that crap game in the warehouse”), but the next minute he seems to forget, thinking that George is alive (“George was inside drinking coffee by the stove”). By his alternating between these conflicting ideas, Blaze indicates his own confusion, indicating to us his madness, and this strange disoriented state of mind is compelling: we are intrigued at what it is like to perceive as Blaze perceives, to think as Blaze thinks, and to experience the world as Blaze experiences it, partly real and partly illusory at the same time or in quick, alternating sequences. Although Blaze has committed a crime, stealing the automobile--and, we suspect, will almost certainly commit far worse ones, if he has not already done so, before we met him, as it were--we are both repelled by his behavior and sympathetic toward his plight. In short, Blaze is a fascinating character.

Bachman presents his world as it seems to be to Blaze, and, in doing so, allows us, from the safety of our homes, sane and sound of mind ourselves, to see--or, at least imagine--what it would be like to be out of our minds. Who could resist such a character as Blaze? Bachman is counting on our not being able to do so. (The movie Ed Gein [2000], starring Steve Railsback, offers a good motion picture example of the same technique.)


*Yes, I know that Stephen King is Richard Bachman (unless Bachman is King). The question is whether King (or Bachman) knows this. Maybe King’s own schizophrenia, in supposing himself to be two people (even if he knew and knows he really is only one) helped him to create the psychotic and somewhat schizophrenic Clayton (“Blaze”) Blaisdell, Jr. Ever think of that?

Learning from the Masters: Louis L'amour

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Aspiring horror writers can learn from both popular and mainstream writers, whether they write horror fiction, stories of other genres, or literature of unusually high quality. In other words, both Louis L’Amour and Mark Twain have much to teach any horror fiction author, which brings us to the topic of today’s post.

Louis L'Amour

L’Amour wrote 89 novels and 250 short stories, most about cowboys, lawmen, gunfighters, and other heroic figures of the American Wild West. His first, Hondo, was published in 1953; his last, The Haunted Mesa, in 1987 (although other of his works have appeared posthumously). Anyone with such a long career and such a prolific quantity of bestsellers is someone who has learned how to tell a tale that appeals to a large and loyal audience and is worth studying.

Many of his novels include hand-drawn maps that bring the territories that his stories cover to life for his readers, showing them the towns, drawn in three dimensions, or the hills and mountains or deserts, complete with sagebrush and cacti, through which his intrepid lawmen, outlaws, Indians, posses, and others ride or through which trains, covered wagons, buckboards, or stagecoaches wend their wary ways. By showing only certain towns or terrains in three dimensions, with care given to individual and unique elements and features, and leaving the rest of the maps in two dimensions that include relatively few details, L’Amour heightens readers’ interest in the towns and terrains he does show more realistically on the charts, mythologizing them, as it were, cartographically as well as through his storytelling. (A couple of horror writers who have used maps well to enhance the mystique of their own terrains of terror are Frank Peretti, author of Monster [2005] and Stephen King, author of Under the Dome [2009]. Others horror writers have also included maps of their novel’s terrain--H. P. Lovecraft springs to mind. My Chillers and Thrillers article “Mapping the Monstrous” suggests some of the ways that Peretti’s novel benefits from his decision to may its horrors.)

But let’s return to the topic at hand: L’Amour’s adept use of the opening sentences (“hookers,” as King calls them) of several of his novels and short stories. In the process, we can learn a thing or two concerning how to keep our plights tight, our monsters few, our settings apparent, our suspense high, and our identifications of our genres simple and straightforward.

Rather like an impressionistic painter, L’Amour indicates the scenes of his novels in a few, deft brushstrokes--or pen strokes--or keystrokes: “rocks,” “the Mohaves,” “sky,” and “buzzards,” in the opening sentence of his novel Callahan, paint an image of the desert: “Behind the rocks the Mohaves lay waiting and in the sky, the buzzards.” He accomplishes the same feat, setting his scene (and indicating the genre of his story) in the few choice words of his first sentence of The Burning Hills: “On a ridge above Texas Flat upon a rock shaped like a flame, a hand moved upon the lava.” His descriptions, even when actually static, reporting past deeds, seem active, recalling the past as if it is happening as his narrator speaks: “We came up the trail from Texas in the spring of ‘74, and bedded our herd on the short grass beyond the railroad” (“End of the Drive,” End of the Drive). Likewise, by including active meteorological conditions, L’Amour can, again, make otherwise static scenes seem active, even intense: “Heavy clouds hung above the iron-colored peaks, and lancets of lightning flashed and probed” (“The Skull and the Arrow,” End of the Drive).

He is just as adept at setting scenes, creating suspense, characterizing characters, and hooking his readers when he describes towns and townspeople as when he pictures solitary heroes in isolated or desolate landscapes far from civilization: “He lay sprawled upon the concrete pavement of the alley in the darkening stain of his own blood, a man I had never seen before, a man with the face of an Apache warrior, struck down from behind and stabbed repeatedly in the back as he lay there” (The Broken Gun).

L’Amour knows when to add a simile, a metaphor, a personification, an allusion, a rhetorical question, or another figure of speech to spice up writing about mundane things when the writing itself might, otherwise, be mundane: “The night brought a soft wind” (Brionne). “Dawn came like a ghost to the silent street, a gray, dusty street lined with boardwalks and several short lengths of water trough (Borden Chantry). “When it came to Griselda Popley, I was down to bedrock and showing no color” (“The Courting of Griselda,” End of the Drive). “Who can say that the desert does not live?” (“The Lonesome Gods,” End of the Drive). “The land lay empty around them, lonely and still” (Conagher).

The men in L’Amour’s fiction tend to be lean, mean fighting machines, as quick and effective with their fists as they are with their hands. They have hard-edged, flinty names like Hondo, Callahan, Brionne, Bowdrie, Borden Chantry, Malcolm Fallon, Orrin Sackett, Jim Colburn, and Conagher. Sometimes, they straddle the law, living by the code of the West or a code of their own, more antiheroes than heroes, as is the case, it seems, with regard to Malcolm Fallon, whom L’Amour introduces as “a stranger to the town of Seven Pines” who is fortunate enough to be “a stranger with fast horse,” especially since a drunken band of townsmen have invited him to a necktie party (i. e., a lynching). Out-and-out villains, however, may be violent men of action, but they are also passive products of their circumstances and environments: “They were four desperate men, made hard by life, cruel by nature, and driven to desperation by imprisonment” (“Desperate Men,” End of the Drive). It seems that, in L’Amour’s fiction, desperate men are made, not born; in other words, it is not their fault that they are desperate men; their past experiences have made them so. By contrast, L’Amour’s heroic protagonists defy their environments, take charge of themselves, and become the masters of their own fates, embodying free will.

Although no academic would ever mistake L’Amour for a literary author, he is a literate writer of popular fiction who has learned, of himself, many techniques for accomplishing narrative objectives in ways as interesting as they are succinct, and any aspiring writer, whether of horror or another genre, can learn much from the way that he uses carefully chosen words, phrases, clauses, and sentences to set his scenes, suggest action (even when there is none presently taking place), introducing his protagonists, identifying the time of the day and the season of the year, creating suspense, generating a sense of mystery, stating mundane facts in intriguing ways, describing weather, and spotlighting particular characters among other literary personae. He also shows an adept use of similes, metaphors, allusions, personifications, the rhetorical question, and the tall tale (“My Brother [sic] Orrin Sackett, was big enough to fight bears with a switch,” the narrator of The Daybreakers claims). Adapting L’Amour’s techniques and strategies to his or her own genre and work, the aspiring horror writer can do the same.

What Sort of Man Reads "Playboy"

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

For half a century, Playboy magazine has defined its targeted audience in a page devoted to fashion and style, the contents of which answer the rhetorical question, “What sort of man reads Playboy?” According to this page, the Playboy reader is urbane, stylish, wealthy, single, and literate. He’s handsome, loves women, drives a convertible sports car, attends college (unless he’s already graduated), smokes cigars, drinks brandy, and has a thing for sweaters. Advertisers took note of this description, running full-page, full-color ads that pitched just such products to the bunny-loving sophisticate.

Until Penthouse debuted, focusing its appeal on the blue-collar worker, Esquire was one of Playboy’s biggest competitors. It focused mostly on fashion and literature, publishing fiction by such literary luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Terry Southern. It also included some cheesecake art, including pinup art by George Petty (the “Petty Girls”) and Alberto Vargas (the “Vargas Girls”). Like Playboy and Penthouse, Esquire was chauvinistic and sexist, but popular among teenage and young adult males.

Women liked these magazines, too, for a different reason. Those who succeeded in appearing in their nude “pictorials” or as centerfolds were often exposed to opportunities in modeling or even acting, and quite a few celebrities owe their careers to appearances in such magazines, Playboy in particular. Being the subject of a pictorial or a centerfold was equivalent to having society stamp its seal of approval upon a young woman’s beauty and sexuality, making her, even more than a Miss America winner, a glamour girl.

Knowing the significance of artifacts of popular culture allows writers to characterize their characters simply by alluding to these objects, using them as props in a manner similar to that of product placement, which is the deliberate inclusion, in a conspicuous location, of a product in a filmed movie or television scene, in exchange for remuneration from its maker. For example, a character on a television situation comedy, or sitcom, might open his or her refrigerator door, thereby providing viewers a glimpse of the interior, well stocked with Pepsi, Coca-Cola, or some other soft drink.

Here’s an example of how an allusion to Playboy could be used to characterize a woman of fading youth and beauty:

The magazine cover showed Susan Willis naked, in all her glory--well, not quite all her glory; the set decorator had placed a caladium in a strategic location--lying languorously upon her desk, surrounded by the accoutrements of her vocation: a typewriter, a Dictaphone, a Rolodex, manila folders, and a calendar with a circled date. The photograph’s caption read, “Don’t forget to show her your appreciation on Secretary’s Day!” The implication, of course, was that the boss was having an affair with his personal secretary. Corny, Susan had thought, even twenty years ago, when her image had adorned the cover of the world’s most popular men’s magazine, thereby authenticating her beauty and confirming her sexuality, or “glamour,” as the industry had called that attribute in those days. Susan had tried hard, over the intervening years, to maintain that figure and that face, and, thanks to dieting, exercise, and a bit of nip and tuck, had mostly succeeded. She was a handsome woman at thirty eight. She’d never again be the glamorous girl she’d been then, though, except in the blown-up, framed photograph of that long-ago cover.

Magazines and other products have spent thousands, even millions, of dollars in marketing research to identify and analyze their customers and consumers in general. By analyzing their advertisements, a writer has a good idea of “what sort of man reads Playboy,” what sort of woman reads Good Housekeeping or Ms.; drinks Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Southern Comfort, or Jack Daniels; drives a Volvo, Toyota, or Rolls Royce; enrolls his or her children in a private school; and so on. By alluding to these products in a story, of the horror genre or otherwise, writers have a shorthand means of characterizing their characters. Of course, there should be additional characterization, through the characters’ dialogue and actions, but a reference to Playboy, Rolls Royce, Saab, or Chef Boyardee is a quick way to establish the basic tastes, values, and even, at times, mindset of characters.

Dean Koontz does so in his novels, although his allusions are to products and cultural artifacts that his typical reader is unlikely to be acquainted with. Stephen King, who once described his own style as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries,” alludes to icons that are more in the domain of popular culture, letting his readers know that the author is one of their own (even if, as a multimillionaire he is not anymore). In the first three chapters of Desperation alone, King makes these references to popular culture:

• Acura
• Caprice
• Sam Browne
• Daisy canned ham
• Bonny Raitt
• Smokey Bear
• Conoco
• Rollerblades
• Marlboro Man
• Grateful Dead
• Smiley-face keychain

Many others occur throughout the remainder of the 690-page novel.

While it is true that an author can overuse such allusions (and King probably tends to do so, not only in Desperation, but also in most of his other books and, indeed, short stories), a judicious use of such references, whether to high culture, low culture, or something between the two, is a handy, dandy way of inviting a particular type of reader into one’s fictional world and, at the same time, characterizing the dramatic personae who live and breathe and have their being in this imaginary world.

Characterization: A Filmmaker’s Contribution

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Filmmakers are neither novelists nor short story authors, but, like both, directors are committed to bringing characters to life for their audiences. Because moviemakers cannot directly explore characters’ thoughts through a narrator’s exposition or the character’s own stream of consciousness or interior monologues, they must rely upon other techniques. These techniques, used by a novelist or a short story writer, can enhance and support traditional narrative techniques of characterization, offered to readers by means of description rather than camera work.

Here’s an example of how Alfred Hitchcock conveys emotion on the screen; he is discussing a scene from his movie Sabotage:

It was a supper table. The man complained about the color of the greens. All I did was to show the close-up of the woman, about ordinary bust size, and the man the same. Sometimes the man from her eye-line, sometimes the woman from his eye-line. That was all we were concerned with. The most important aspect of the scene was her hand. It was essential to play up her using the carving knife. She carved meat with it, and then found herself helping him to vegetables with the carving knife. She realized what was wrong. Then I showed her hand dropping the knife, trying to get rid of it, and then having to pick it up because more meat needed carving--and dropping it with a clatter. Then immediately a close-up of the man hearing the clatter. Then the woman’s hand clasping and unclasping over the handle of the carving knife. All we saw was a foreground of a table; glasses, and cutlery, and her hand hovering. Then back to him. He got up, and the camera tilting [sic] up with him. He realizes his danger. I never bothered to show the room, and I allowed that man to go right past the camera towards the woman; and, then again he comes to her and he looks down, and the camera goes right from him, following his thought, down to the knife and her hand still hovering over it. And then he makes a grab and she gets it first. Then the two hands: her hands win. And then all you see is two figures, and the man gives a cry and falls (Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews, ed. Sidney Gottlieb [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995], 186-187).

In “The Philosophy of Composition,” Edgar Allan Poe explains why the end of a story is all-important in determining how the rest of the narrative is structured and told. Hitchcock subscribes to a similar notion. For him, every scene and every montage must be carefully and deliberately worked out, often with storyboards, before it is committed to film: “The director,” Irving Singer, declares, “must have a prior conception of the response he wishes to achieve and how it can be evoked,” for, otherwise, the Sabotage montage of which Hitchcock speaks would have come to naught. Indeed, Hitchcock himself argues, “To have shot all that in a long view would have been useless. It had to be made up of these little pieces. With a first-class director the final cutting is a simple job, if he has constructed the scene in his mind in advance and knows what he wants to achieve” (Three Philosophical Filmmakers [Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004], 10-11).

According to Hitchcock, Singer says, “there are two primary uses of cutting or montage in film: montage to create ideas and montage to create violence and emotion.” In his discussion of the Sabotage scene, Hitchcock explains how he used montage to perform the latter objective; Singer offers an example of the director’s use of this technique to create the former: in Rear Window, Singer contends, Hitchcock creates ideas (that is, depicts a character’s thoughts on film) by “cutting back and forth to what James Stewart sees (and shows in his facial expressions) as he watches what is happening outside his window” (13).

Besides his views as to how to create thought and emotion on film, Hitchcock also had specific thoughts as to how characters should be represented. According to Singer, the director rarely achieved suspense in his films as the result of relating it “to someone’s character”; rather, “it is because we immediately perceive the innocence and (most often) friendliness of some ordinary person in his movies that we are lured into feeling concerned about what might happen to him or her” (129).

For Hitchcock, characters, like actors, were necessary evils, as it were, to the filmmaker’s true purpose, which was to create and project suspense and other forms of emotion. “His innocent victims,” Singer contends, “ordinary people who sometimes end up doing heroic acts, rarely behave as they do because of abstract thought or sensory need or even passionate impulse.
They flee from imminent danger or engage in a secretive and solitary mission that pits them against something that is determined to destroy them. The drama concludes when they succeed, for then nothing perilous remains to prolong suspense” (230).

The appeal of such characters, Singer suggests, is in their very ordinariness, for they represent stand-ins for audience members who, as ordinary people themselves, lead ordinary lives: Do we really care about the happy married life that the threatened couples will now presumably enter into? Not at all. We were fascinated by them only because they were surrogates for ourselves as imperfect human beings, and of all other persons who have also so much to fear in mere existence, which seems forever poised to victimize every finite creature (231).

Hitchcock had definite ideas about female characters and villains, too. His ideas about female characters are clearest, perhaps, in the type of actress he preferred to direct. He sought “elegant women,” Singer says, “even ‘ladylike women’ . . . rather than sexy fleshpots,” preferring “Nordic types because their sexiness is deeply hidden in them and must be discovered instead of being flaunted,” and “he thought that stylish actresses. . . have the greatest range of cinematic expressiveness,” although, as raw materials, so to speak, “they too would have to be molded, even manipulated by him, in order to perform as he desired” (65-66).

Hitchcock wants his audience to see his villains as realistic, believable characters. To this end, Singer says, the filmmaker “give[s] his villains a pleasant, often suave and seductive appearance as opposed to his innocent protagonists,” which, Singer believes, “keep[s] his thrillers from degenerating into horror films” (231).

In a previous article, I listed various ways by which novelists and short story writers depict their character’s personalities. To these techniques may be added the montage that Hitchcock uses, represented on the page in images conveyed through description rather than as pictures filmed by a camera and projected onto screens by projectors.. Interspersed or alternated with traditional narrative methods of characterization, the cinematic montage, effected through description and, indeed, exposition, can add a dimension to novels and short stories which is present at this point more in cinema and theater than anywhere else.

Quick Tip: 12 Methods of Characterization

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

There are at least a dozen ways by which a writer can characterize his or her characters:

1. Comment directly: “John was as brave as he was reckless.”
2. Describe the character’s appearance: “John was square-faced, with penetrating, but kind eyes, which always seemed secretly amused at a private joke, but his firm jaw and thin lips belied any sense of frivolity.”
3. Use allusion, comparing a character to another familiar literary character, to a celebrity, or even to a famous cartoon or comic strip character: “John’s lantern jaw, narrow eyes, and beaked nose made him a living embodiment of the cartoon detective Dick Tracy.”
4. Show the character performing an action: “John jammed the .38 in the thug’s ribs.”
5. Use dialogue: “‘If you move, you’re dead; it’s as simple as that. I’m taking you back to face a judge and jury, to face justice,’ John said.”
6. Reveal the character’s thoughts: “The American judicial system was far from perfect, John thought, but it was better than those in countries in which a defendant was guilty until proved innocent.”
7. Describe the character’s emotions: “John was satisfied that the killer would be forced to pay for his crime, but he was sorry for the young woman he‘d killed and for the victim‘s family.”
8. Describe the character’s facial expressions and body language: “Arms crossed over his chest, an eyebrow arched, John scowled at the speaker,”
9. Let another character summarize his or her thoughts about the character who is being characterized: “Sue knew that John was a man of determination and courage, a man of honor and true grit.”
10. Let another character summarize his or her feelings about the character who is being characterized: “Sue felt safe when she was with John; she felt something else, too, something that made her blush.”
11. Link the character’s past to his or her present situation or circumstances: “Having served in combat had given John the steel backbone and granite will that would serve him so well in his present one-man vigilante war on crime.”
12. Use “props”: “Regardless of the suit or the occasion, John wore an American flag pin on his lapel.”
    

By the way, Happy New Year!

Characterization via Emotion

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Characterization operates by means of depicting emotion. Literary characters are, in fact, embodiments of emotion. Some emotions may be negative, either in the sense that they are unpleasant or in the sense that they cause problems, personal, social, or otherwise. Emotions can also be positive because they are pleasant or because they alleviate or resolve problems, personal, social, or otherwise.

Characters’ responses to incidents--that is, their feelings concerning events--motivate their actions. In other words, characters are often reactive: they respond to internal or external stimuli. Internal stimuli are their own attitudes, beliefs, desires, fantasies, hopes, thoughts, and, of course, emotions, such as fear, love, and self-respect. External stimuli are persons, places, things, qualities, and ideas that elicit characters’ passions, and can include threats, money, beauty, and death.

The overall, consistent pattern which underlies and is discerned in an individual’s behavior over an extended period of time suggests his or her basic personality traits and causes him or her to be regarded as just, wise, kind, ruthless, arrogant, vain, or whatever. However, many lesser, secondary traits also comprise most fictional people at any time of his or her literary life.

Hamlet is driven by his sense of duty to avenge his murdered father, but he is also hesitant, wanting to make sure that he acts justly in killing his father’s true killer--if, indeed, his father was killed, as the spirit who alleges to be the ghost of his father contends the late king was. These traits are the primary ones that motivate Hamlet, both to act and to refrain from acting. Therefore, he can be said to be a dutiful and just, but hesitant, character. In short, we might regard him as being a man of valor.

His antagonist, who is also his uncle and his step-father, King Claudius, is shown to be cold, calculating, and unrepentant, and he is driven by lust, both for power and for sex, having married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, shortly after Hamlet’s father died. Therefore, Hamlet can be read as a dramatization of a conflict between these two sets of emotions: Hamlet’s dutifulness, justice, and hesitation collide with Claudius’ coldness, calculation, unwillingness to repent, and lust for power and sex.

Horror fiction is primarily about fear, but its characters are motivated by other emotions as well. Beowulf’s hero wants to prove his mettle as a warrior. Although The Exorcist’s Father Damian Karras has begin to doubt and, perhaps, to lose his faith, he remains a man of God who loves humanity, as it is represented in the possessed soul of young Regan MacNeil, enough to risk his own life in an attempt to exorcise the devil’s victim. Many of Stephen King’s characters are motivated by their need to bond and by their need to belong to a community, or by brotherly love, one might say.

Not only the protagonists of horror fiction are motivated by their emotions; their antagonists are as well. In Beowulf, the monstrous outcast, Grendel, attacks the Danes because he envies their camaraderie. In The Exorcist, the devil possesses Regan in an attempt to get Father Karras to renounce his faith and thus be damned. Many of King’s villains (‘Salem’s Lot’s Barlow, Andre Linoge in Storm of the Century, and the protean monster of It, for example) prey upon the weaknesses of small communities and their residents, motivated by their narcissistic desire to perpetuate themselves. The emotional conflicts in Beowulf, The Exorcist, and ‘Salem’s Lot can be represented this way:

Valor vs. Envy
Love vs. Condemnation
Brotherly Love vs. Narcissistic self-perpetuation

By motivating your characters to act according to their passions, you will make your fiction seem more realistic, and you will show what’s at stake, on a personal level, as it were, in the struggle between the story’s protagonist and antagonist. The nature of the struggle, in turn, may suggest your stories’ themes. For example, The Exorcist suggests that love casts out condemnation, just as Beowulf implies that valor vanquishes envy and King's novels indicate that brotherly love is more important than narcissistic self-perpetuation.