Interview with Michael Williams, Author of the Twisted Tales Series

Today, we are honored to present the ongoing interview that Michael Williams, author of the (at present) four-book series of brilliant flash fiction series Twisted Tales: Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, Tales with a Twist III, and Tales with a Twist IV.

Parts of this interview originally appeared on the Campbell and Rogers Press website.

 

 

Q: What interests you in the super-short genre of flash fiction?

A: Alfred Hitchcock once said that a movie shouldn’t be longer than the capacity of the human bladder. I find I agree. Edgar Allan Poe considered the effect of short fiction to be more intense than that of longer works, such as novels or—my apologies to Hitch—full-length motion pictures. I also tend to concur with Poe: shorter fiction can pack more of an emotional wallop than longer forms. In our modern, fast-paced world, I think shorter fiction is also more convenient for many. A lot of people want complete stories without having to spend hours or days to read them.

 

Q: It seems that you prefer fantastic to realistic stories. Why is that?

A: Actually, I enjoy reading and writing all forms of fiction, but I think that tales of the fantastic, marvelous, and uncanny--handy distinctions that Tzvetan Todorov makes—add an element of magic to mundane experience, the icing, so to speak, on the cake. I also believe that, as Flannery O’Connor once said, a writer sometimes needs to use hyperbolic techniques to communicate with readers, and the shock of the surreal, the astonishment of the weird, the wonder of the otherworldly, the supernatural, the occult, and the mystical provide these rhetorical approaches.

 

 

Q: As the title of your book suggests, your tales are rather “twisted.” I'm going to ask the question most writers hate to hear: Where do you get your ideas?

A: I'm an eclectic reader. I enjoy learning about a variety of subjects. I guess you could say I'm a generalist. Sometimes, when the stars are in alignment, a remembered fact here will meet up with a recalled fact there, and, out of this connection of one thing and another, an idea will emerge. I might combine one of Thomas Edison’s inventions with the spiritualistic belief in the ability of the living to communicate with the dead, or I could update an ancient myth or a modern horror movie. As Arthur Golding wrote, in translating John Calvin, “All is grist for the mill.”

Q: I know you're something of a mariner. Does the sea ever feature in your stories?

A: Not as often as I might expect, but, yes, there is a sea tale or two. In one, the ocean solves a murder, which is rather a novel notion, I think.

 

Q: By definition, according to the title of your series, Twisted Tales, and by the titles of the books in the series, each of your flash fiction narratives contains a plot twist. How do you think up so many of them?

A: Usually, the story suggests one. However, I also employ a couple of tricks, or techniques—three, actually. First, when plotting a story such as those in Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, Tales with a Twist III, or Tales with a Twist IV, I keep in mind the idea that almost everything has a direct opposite: new, old; lost, found; hero, villain; reward, punishment; rich, poor; right, wrong. Then, I start with one polarity and end with its opposite. The second way is more concrete. I keep a list of the plot twists I see in novels, short stories, movies, and TV series. Then, I adapt them to fit the situation or circumstances of my own stories. My third technique is to remember that there is a fine line not only between good and evil and right and wrong, but between all such polar opposites. A person who is cautious may become distrustful or even paranoid; a man who's strict can become controlling; a woman who's concerned with her own health and that of others—a doctor or a nurse, perhaps—can become a hypochondriac; a trusting person may become gullible. Each of these possibilities is a source of plot twists.

Q: How many of your tales with a twist are autobiographical?

A: Many of them are fantasies in which I explore how something might be if a particular set of unusual circumstances were to apply. Many of my stories are thought experiments, of a sort. I place a certain type of character in a particular kind of environment and see whether he or she adapts and, if the character does adapt, how he or she manages to do so. Frequently, the environment is physical, but it need not be; some of my stories' environments are philosophical, or moral, or psychological, or political, or cultural, or otherwise. The autobiographical element, when there is one, may be small—a detail here or there, the description of a place I've been, desires I've experienced, wishes I may have wanted to fulfill, thoughts or feelings or impressions I've had, that sort of thing, embedded in the narration, the exposition, or the dialogue.

 

 

Q: Michael, you've done it again!

A: Shhh!

 

 Q: Your latest Twisted Tales volume—I'd say they get better and better but, the truth is, they're all great reads.

A. My modesty forbids me from bragging, but thanks.

 

Q: I don't know how you do it. This is Volume IV, and it and its predecessors each contain at least thirty tales each. You've written over 120 tales with a twist.

A. Bourbon is my muse. Actually, I drink scotch. Or rum. Or tequila. Whatever's handy. Seriously, though, there are so many folks and so much chicanery and sheer madness in the world, my own included, that it's hard not to write if you're an author who enjoys parody and satire. If Tales with a Twist (psst! TV producers, I'm making a pitch here) were a television series, it would be going into its eighth season.

 

Q: Your maritime adventures notwithstanding, is there going to be a Tales with a Twist V, Michael?

A: As soon as possible. I mean, maintaining a boat ain't cheap.

 

 

Interview with Michael Williams

Campbell and Rogers Press has just published my fellow author Michael Williams's Tales with a Twist III, the third installment in his Twisted Tales series. As someone who has followed Michael since his first book, I am delighted to recommend his series. I love the short, short form and the variety of his flash fiction, and I believe you will as well. Check out his interview, below. He is a man with an imagination and a vision that is on fire!

Interview with Michael Williams

Q: What interests you in the super-short genre of flash fiction?

A: Alfred Hitchcock once said that a movie shouldn’t be longer than the capacity of the human bladder. I find I agree. Edgar Allan Poe considered the effect of short fiction to be more intense than that of longer works, such as novels or—my apologies to Hitch—full-length motion pictures. I also tend to concur with Poe: shorter fiction can pack more of an emotional wallop than longer forms. In our modern, fast-paced world, I think shorter fiction is also more convenient for many. A lot of people want complete stories without having to spend hours or days to read them.

Q: It seems that you prefer fantastic to realistic stories. Why is that?

A: Actually, I enjoy reading and writing all forms of fiction, but I think that tales of the fantastic, marvelous, and uncanny—handy distinctions that Tzvetan Todorov makes—add an element of magic to mundane experience, the icing, so to speak, on the cake. I also believe that, as Flannery O’Connor once said, a writer sometimes needs to use hyperbolic techniques to communicate with readers, and the shock of the surreal; the astonishment of the weird; and the wonder of the otherworldly, the supernatural, the occult, and the mystical provide these rhetorical approaches.

Q: As the titles of your books suggest, your tales are rather “twisted.” I'm going to ask the question most writers hate to hear: Where do you get your ideas?

A: I'm an eclectic reader. I enjoy learning about a variety of subjects. I guess you could say I'm a generalist. Sometimes, when the stars are in alignment, a remembered fact here will meet up with a recalled fact there, and, out of this connection of one thing and another, an idea will emerge. I might combine one of Thomas Edison’s inventions with the spiritualistic belief in the ability of the living to communicate with the dead, or I could update an ancient myth or a modern horror movie. As Arthur Golding wrote, in translating John Calvin, “All is grist for the mill.”

Q: I know you're something of a mariner. Does the sea ever feature in your stories?

A: Not as often as I might expect, but, yes, there is a sea tale or two. In one, the ocean solves a murder, which is rather a novel notion, I think.

Q: By definition, according to the title of your series, Twisted Tales, and by the titles of the books in the series, each of your flash fiction narratives contains a plot twist. How do you think up so many of them?

A: Usually, the story suggests one. However, I also employ a couple of tricks, or techniques—three, actually. First, when plotting a story such as those in Tales with a Twist, Tales with a Twist II, or Tales with a Twist III, I keep in mind the idea that almost everything has a direct opposite: new, old; lost, found; hero, villain; reward, punishment; rich, poor; right, wrong. Then, I start with one polarity and end with its opposite. The second way is more concrete. I keep a list of the plot twists I see in novels, short stories, movies, and TV series. Then, I adapt them to fit the situation or circumstances of my own stories. My third technique is to remember that there is a fine line not only between good and evil and right and wrong, but between all such polar opposites. A person who is cautious may become distrustful or even paranoid; a man who's strict can become controlling; a woman who's concerned with her own health and that of others—a doctor or a nurse, perhaps—can become a hypochondriac; a trusting person may become gullible. Each of these possibilities is a source of plot twists.

Q: How many of your tales with a twist are autobiographical?

A: Many of them are fantasies in which I explore how something might be if a particular set of unusual circumstances were to apply. Many of my stories are thought experiments, of a sort. I place a certain type of character in a particular kind of environment and see whether he or she adapts and, if the character does adapt, how he or she manages to do so. Frequently, the environment is physical, but it need not be; some of my stories' environments are philosophical, or moral, or psychological, or political, or cultural, or otherwise. The autobiographical element, when there is one, may be small—a detail here or there, the description of a place I've been, desires I've experienced, wishes I may have wanted to fulfill, thoughts or feelings or impressions I've had, that sort of thing, embedded in the narration, the exposition, or the dialogue.

Q: Will there be further Tales with a Twist?

A: I'm working on the next one now.

Talking Pictures: Plotting through Image Analysis and Imaginative Elaboration

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Characters, incidents, settings, processes, and motives are among the persons, places, and things that inspire horror. Pretty much anything can, as long as it is eerie or lends itself to an eerie interpretation.

 

For moviemakers, images often suggest horror. (They also horror to many writers of other genre fiction as well, of course; C. S. Lewis, the author Christian and children's fantasy and science fiction, for example, said his stories often began with images.)

When examining a picture—never merely look at a picture, whether it's a drawing, a photograph, a painting, or some other visual representation; study it in detail; then, wait a while and study it again—ask yourself, Which question do I first ask myself about the picture: who? what? when? where? how? or why?

The right picture will speak to you. How can you be sure the picture you're studying is the “right picture?” Easy. If it is, it will let you know; it will speak to you.

Not literally, of course. Not out loud. But it will suggest questions, imply ideas, elicit emotions, show relationships between one of its elements—color, perhaps—and others—texture, maybe, or shape. One thought, one intuition, one feeling will lead to another and another.

Before you converse with pictures, it's helpful to know what sort of things to study. Remember, too, that, in the Western world, people are taught to read from left to right and from top to bottom. The most important part of the image will be positioned close to the center of the image.

Here are some basic elements to consider: contrasts, colors, distance, intensity, overlapping of objects, placement, position, shapes, sizes, structural pattern (e. g., horizontal, diagonal, vertical, sectional), text (if any), and textures.

On the figurative level, consider whether the image alludes to anything beyond itself, such as a work of art or an historical period; look for visual metaphors; consider symbolism; and determine whether personification is used. Often, if the picture has symbolic or metaphorical significance and text, the text will act as the key to unlocking the literal meaning suggested by the visual figure of speech.

If figures are included in the image, consider their sex, gender, age, financial status, social class, costume, facial expression, posture, pose, body language, and relationships to other figures, if any, and to the objects, or “props,” if any, and the landscape or interior space shown in the image.

Now, let's try a simple exercise, using this image:

What question first addresses itself to me is, Why is the doll crying? In other words, I am most interested in the question of motive. If I am uncertain, I may hazard a guess, indicating it as such by following the guess with a question mark in parentheses; if, as yet, I have no answer, I will indicate this by using just a question mark.

Now that I've determined my chief interest in the image, I should answer the other, related questions:

Who? = doll

What? = crying

When? and Where = In the darkness

How? = magic (?)

Why? = ?

Next, I will “read” the image from right to left and from top to bottom, making notes concerning questions, ideas, emotions, and relationships between one of its elements of the image:

• Right eye is half-closed; left eye, open
• Right eye is dark; right eye, blue
• A teardrop on the doll's left eye suggests the toy is crying
• In comparison to the nose and mouth, the doll's eyes are exceptionally large—why?
• There is no background, just a close-up of the doll's seemingly large, round face
• The face is cracked and worn

These are my initial observations. I should ask what each is intended to suggest or mean. (In studying an image, especially if it was produced by a professional artist, we should assume that every detail is carefully thought out and is present for a purpose.)

• The right eye suggests thought, reflection; it seems to look inward. The left eye is open; the doll sees, but it also cries: whatever the doll sees seems to make it sad.
• There is only a single, large teardrop, which seems to imply that either the doll is no longer crying or has only just begun to cry; either it has cried itself out or it is only now being moved to tears.
• The relatively large eyes focus the viewer's attention on them, rather than on its nose or mouth. Its vision, thought, and emotion and what it sees are the important things.
• The setting is unknown, other than by darkness; the time and place are irrelevant. However, the darkness could symbolize fear, ignorance, or death, since black is often associated with one or all of these emotions or states of existence. The large size of the face also focuses the viewer's attention on the doll's face. Its face, the symbol of identity, like the doll's behavior—crying—are the focal points of the image, suggesting that these are the most important features of the picture.
• The crack in the doll's right cheek and the wear on its face could symbolize its suffering; it seems careworn, tired, and slightly injured.

Add any additional observations:

• The image makes use of personification and symbolism.
• None of my observations answers my original question: Why is the doll crying? In other words, what is its motive?

At this point, we are beyond the image. We are asking ourselves a question that the image itself does not, and cannot, answer. Therefore, we must use our imaginations, our knowledge of human nature, and our own experiences as human beings to guess why a doll, if it were capable of crying, might weep. In doing so, we should also be true to the questions, ideas, emotions, and the relationships between the focus feature of the image (in this case, the doll) and the image's other, related elements.

We can start by listing facts known about dolls:

• A doll usually belongs to a girl.
• A doll may be given to a girl as a gift, perhaps by her parents.
• A girl often invests her doll with a “personality” (personifies the doll).
• When a girl is not playing with her doll, the doll is often left by itself, perhaps in a dark place, such as a closet or a toy box.
• A girl may project her own emotions onto her doll.
• A girl may assign the role she plays in her present life to her doll.

Based on these thoughts, we might construct a scenario to explain our original question, Why is the doll crying?

Melinda Jackson abandons her doll, Bessie—not to a closet or to a toy box this time, but to the alley behind her house, beside the trash cans to be collected, along with the other trash, by the city's sanitation crew. Melinda is sad to say goodbye to Bessie, who's been her dearest companion, her confidante, her best friend for most of her life. They've been through a lot, good times and bad. But Melinda is older now—too old for Bessie—and, so, Melinda abandoned her doll. She imagines Bessie alone in the dark alley, frightened and in despair, crying, as Melinda herself is crying. But it is only a tear. She brushes it away. Besides, Bessie is just a doll. Bessie can't really cry.

The idea for the story suggests three parts:

1. Melinda becomes aware that she is “too old” for a doll. (Maybe she has a sleepover and her friends make fun of her for still having a doll.)
2. Melinda is sad to say goodbye to her doll, but, convinced the time has come to part with Bessie, Melinda places Bessie in the dark alley behind her house to be hauled away by the city's sanitation crew.
3. Twist ending

We need to surprise the reader with an unexpected outcome to the story. With Melinda's new awareness that she is “too old” for a doll (Part I) and Melinda's abandonment of her doll so that Bessie can be hauled away by the city's sanitation crew (Part II), we have set up the expectation, in the reader's mind, that Bessie will be discarded. There are several ways the story could end with a twist:

1. One of the sanitation crew could take Bessie home for his own daughter to “adopt.”
2. A dog could carry Bessie home, where another girl could “adopt” Bessie.
3. Bessie really could be magical, and she could return to Melinda, who decides to keep her, after all.

Adopt one of these twists or (or another possibility) and use it to write part three of the story's summary:

III. Recovering from her fright, Bessie walks          back to Melinda's house, returns to the girl's       bedroom, with muddy feet, and takes her          customary place of honor on Melinda's bed.       Shocked, Melinda decides Bessie is magic          and decides to keep her, regardless of her          the taunts of her "friends."

The fifteen basic needs identified by advertising executive Jib Fowles should also be considered in relation to the image: the need to achieve, the need for aesthetic sensations, the need for affiliation, the need to aggress, the need for attention, the need for autonomy, the need to satisfy curiosity, the need to dominate, the need to escape, the need to feel safe, the need to nurture, the need for sex, the need for prominence, and physiological needs (food, drink, sleep, etc.). For example, in the sample story, Madeline feels the need for affiliation (she has a sleepover), and Madeline feels the need for autonomy (she feels that it is time for her to say goodbye to her doll). By appealing to one or more of these basic needs, a story is likely to allow readers to develop empathy for the narrative's characters—in the case of the sample story, for both Madeline and Bessie.

If you'd care to try this approach for a story of your own, you might use the following (or some other) image:

The Three Lessons of the Watchbirds and the Hawks

Copyright 202 by Gary L. Pullman

The fabulous short story “Watchbird” in The Robert Sheckley Megapack: 15 Classic Science Fiction Stories (a true bargain at only 99 cents for the Amazon Kindle version) is a masterful satire concerning logic, linguistics, and morality.

In a futuristic setting, the brainwaves and glandular processes of potential murderers tip off high-tech, flying guardians, alerting these “watchbirds” of impending murder. The watchbirds then swoop down to shock would-be killers into submission. If multiple shocks are necessary, so be it: the watchbirds' first rule is to protect potential victims, regardless of the cost. By using them as their enforcers, the government hopes to stem a rising tide of violence and save lives.

At first, things go even better than officials had hoped, and the murder rate plummets drastically. However, one of the manufacturers of these drone-like guardians is concerned that human beings shouldn't shove off their duties and responsibilities onto machines. His protests are all but ignored. Meanwhile, by regularly sharing “new information, methods, and definitions” with each other, the watchbirds become more and more effective at policing the public.

The definition of terms is a key concern of the story. Initially, murder is defined as “an act of violence, consisting of breaking, mangling, maltreating, or otherwise stopping the functions of a living organism by another organism,” as opposed to a more traditional understanding of the concept, such as “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” The definition programmed into the watchbirds may seem clear, detailed, and exhaustive, but it contains some odd wording. It is not often, if ever, that a killer “breaks” or “mangles” another person. The engineer's definition (and, therefore, the watchbirds', into which the definition is programmed) is also too broad, specifying “living organisms,” rather than the traditional definition's “human being.” In formulating the definition, Sheckley lays the groundwork for much of the conflict and suspense that the remainder of the story generates, maintains, and heightens.

Based on their experience (the watchbirds are conscious and rational, but unemotional), the mechanical guardians, which are able both to learn and to think, modify and amend the original definition of both “murder” and “living organism.” Their actions follow from their revisions of these concepts. First, a slaughterhouse employee is knocked out with a high-voltage blast because, as the wingbirds understand the it (and the act), murder occurs whenever any “living organism,” human or animal, is killed. For the same reason, fishermen and a hunter are dealt with, as is a man who attempts to kill a fly. A surgeon is shocked when he starts to operate on his patient, with the result that the patient dies.

A driver is shocked when he tries to turn off his car (an organism's attempt to stop “the functions of a living organism” constitutes murder, and the watchbirds now consider automobiles to be “living organisms”). Thanks to the watchbirds themselves, the murder rate begins to skyrocket. People get the message and begin to modify their behavior so as not to become watchbird targets.

However, life itself is also at risk, as farmers are prevented from plowing the earth, since the watchbirds have come to regard the planet itself as a “living organism.” Farmers cannot cut hay to feed their cattle, which starve to death. Industries are crippled. Even a radio is a living organism and, like cars, may not be turned off, since doing so is the same as murdering the device. Rabbits are slain because they eat vegetables. A butterfly is dispatched for “outraging a rose.” The watchbirds are unable to appreciate, as the narrator states, that there is a close relationship between the living and the dead; nor do the machines comprehend that, for the watchbirds' creators, at least, there is a hierarchy of value where “living organisms” are concerned, with human beings at the top and other life forms on progressively lower levels of significance.

Clearly, something must be done!

The answer is to build a better machine, one that's faster, stronger, and deadlier, one that will be able to hunt and kill the watchbirds. The new mechanical slayer is called the hawk, and, before long, there's a multitude of the ferocious predators in the sky, making short work of their prey. Unfortunately, the engineers didn't learn their lesson from the watchbirds fiasco. Not only do they assign human duties and responsibilities to the new, and improved machines, but their makers deliberately refrain from installing “restricting circuits” that would limit the Hawks' targets. There just wasn't time to include these regulators. Instead, the engineers and manufacturers simply release the hawks.

After killing most of the pesky watchbirds, the hawks decide that humans constitute another type of prey, and the problems that homo sapiens had with the watchbirds pale in comparison to those involving these new predators.

The story's themes seem threefold.

First, death is necessary for life's continuance, but “no one has told the watchbirds that all life depends on carefully balanced murders,” even that of the alpha predator among machines, the hawk, which may need humans to maintain and repair it, as the watchbird had. The watchbirds have thoroughly destroyed the equilibrium between the living and the dead, the consumers and the providers, totally disrupting their fragile relationship.

Second, humans cannot pass on their responsibility to machines, or, as the narrator puts it, “pass a human problem into the hands of a machine” that has been assigned, by humans, to enforce human laws. Robots do not have emotions, nor have they accumulated centuries of human experience (nor are they able to do so). Machines lack human respective and understanding. They cannot perceive, analyze, evaluate, or understand life from any perspective but that which is based upon algorithms and memory and microchips and processing units and programming. Despite their artificial intelligence, which can be brilliant, computers are severely limited. To forget these two simple truths is to be in danger of creating “guardians” like the watchbirds and hawks to police the mechanical police.

Third, neither the watchbirds nor the hawks can understand that the lives of some creatures have a higher value than the lives of other, “lesser” animals. A whale, an impala, a cow, a dog, a cat, a garden slug, even a flea or a cockroach, is all well and good, in its way, but human beings are the species that can remember, through books and databases, the events and circumstances of centuries; can manipulate time and space; can transform the world, building cities and hospitals and prisons and airplanes and automobiles and trains and ships; can put men and women into space and, perhaps some day soon, on other worlds; can plumb the depths of the ocean and climb to the top of mountains; can create art and culture, producing Michelangelo and Leonardo and Shakespeare and Dante; can commune with nature and with God. True, the depths to which humans can fall are just as incredible as the heights they can achieve, as such "accomplishments" as the atomic bomb, the Holocaust, and two World Wars, among many others, indicate, but the point is that, whether it is used for good or evil, human beings have these great abilities, abilities that far outstrip those of any other animal. In fact, these abilities are not only remarkable among the creatures of nature, but they are transcendent to nature itself as well. Human abilities reflect not mere animal existence, but also a spark of the divine. Although all men may be created equal, all animals are not. The failure to make such distinctions is, perhaps a form of insanity, for it is madness to equate a maggot with a man, a butterfly with a woman, or an earthworm with a child. Machines, even artificially intelligent ones, by such a measure, are mad—or would be . . . if they were human. Instead, they are merely machines. Their very character as such constitutes their true “restrictive circuits.”

What would be the likely end of a situation such as that which Sheckley lays out in “Watchbirds”? The author himself suggests the probable outcome: more and more capable machines would be created to eliminate the less-capable previous generation, and the situation, for humans, would get worse and worse until they were completely exterminated. Then, one by one, the machines would fail, for there would be no one to maintain or to repair them or, for that matter, to manufacture them—at least, not yet.

From Complacency to Narcissism

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

For a while, Hollywood milked extraterrestrial creatures as its “other” of the day. Their appearance alone suggested that these alien creatures were not like us. They were huge, gelatinous blobs. They were strange mermen from beyond the stars (or from the bottom of a black lagoon.) They were macrocephlic humanoids with green skin or gray-skinned humanoids with phallic heads. They were crawling eyes. They absorbed prey; devoured prey; and, if their quarry were women, mated with prey.

Something unexpected might bring these otherworldly monsters to their knees. The Blob couldn't stand cold temperatures. The green, big-headed saucer men couldn't bear the bright beams of automobile headlights. Bullets take out the creature from the black lagoon. If there's a theme here, it seems to be that, despite appearances, these otherworldly creatures aren't so tough after all; ordinary, everyday things—cold, headlights, bullets—are too much for them to handle. Sure, such threats may look dangerous, but appearances can be deceiving.

Horror horrifies, until it isn't so horrible, after all, and what makes it not so horrible after all is everydayness. The ordinary deflates, destroys, and dispatches the horrific. We weren't really in much danger, after all. The “otherness” of the other turns out to be not so much different from us, after all; indeed, if anything, we prove more adaptable, more innovative, more powerful—in a word, superior.

That, if anything, was the theme of the movies of the fifties.

What about the themes of the tens—the 2010s?

According to one interpretation, Pathos (2009), set in a dystopian future world in which thought is prohibited and people depend upon artificial intelligence and virtual reality for not only their pleasure, but also their own personal experiences and identities, is a satire concerning consumerism taken to extremes.

Although existentialism suggests that human nature does not exist, but is, instead, created by each individual according to his or her exercise of free will, Loophole (2109) takes something of a Cartesian point of view, suggesting that to be human is to be violent. Instead of Descartes's dictum, “I think; therefore, I am,” Loophole implies, “I am violent; therefore, I am.” According to a film review, these philosophical implications also have religious significance:

Suddenly, mass hysteria takes hold across the major cities of America as people are tested and marked with or without.  In a matter of days, the beginning of a New World Order takes the stage and, quite unexpectedly, we find ourselves in the middle of a Biblical battle that has long been dormant.

For some, the progress of the plot may seem to evangelistic; others are likely to enjoy the movie's religious dimensions.

Two films don't nearly constitute a representative sample, of course, but these movies, alt least, suggest that at least some of the films of the 2010s turn inward for their subject matter, focusing on the eternal questions related to being human: what is human nature and how do human beings fit into the larger scheme of things?

Older sci fi-horror movies were concerned with departures from the status quo: could such deviations endanger the community or even the world? If we lost our place in the grand scheme of things, what would become of us, as individuals? The comforting answer lay in the very everydayness that the extraterrestrial threats threatened. The threats to the existing order were no match for customary, the habitual, the traditional, the routine of people's routine, day-to-day lives.

More recent sci fi-horror films, in part, at least, return to a questioning of the age-old problems of philosophy and religion: human identity, human nature, the human condition, the relationship of the self and other. The eternal quest is undertaken yet again, with the protagonist and the viewer at the center of things; human existence, if not existence-itself, is egocentric. Everything revolves around us; it's all about us. We have gone from complacency to narcissism in only seven decades.

Plotting Board, Part 7

Plotting Board, Part 7

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.

Problem-Solution Plotting

One of the X-Files's enduring plot devices is the introduction of a problem and its eventual solution. The problem-solution dynamic has built-in suspense: once a problem is posed, we want—maybe we even ache—for it to be solved. In The X-Files, the central problem, as set forth in the series's “mythology” about a possible alien invasion preceding possible alien colonization, becomes, more or less continually, more and more complicated, so the solution, which is put off again and again, has a much greater and more intense emotional payoff when it does come—or should have, at any rate.

According to VanDerWerff, episode 16 of season nine, “Release,” finally “wraps up one of the [show's] major [remaining] mysteries” (419). This mystery is “What happened to Doggett's son when he was murdered?” (410) Although this episode “answers that question,” VanDerWerff says, the answer is anything but clear. Perhaps bringing clarity and closure would make a problem-solution plot much stronger, as readers have invested much time and emotion in the ongoing, long-term, increasingly complex problem. After the tease, it's only fair to deliver.

Techno Thrills

Technology is constantly changing and developing. My father's life encompassed by the Model T and the landing of an astronaut on the moon. My own includes black-and-white television which featured, on tiny, thick screens, programming from ABC, CBS, NBC, and a local affiliate, WTTG, to drones, DARPA's robotic wonders, and self-driving cars (and there's still much more to come—or, at least, I hope there will be.)

That's the point that VanDerWerff makes about storytelling when he writes:

. . . Video software and image manipulation programs are getting so good that it will soon be incredibly difficult to ascertain when footage that seems too good (or too bad) to be true has been faked. We won't always know who's dead and who's alive, and all it will take for those in power to introduce suspicion around a certain set of facts is to stand up in front of all of us and shrug and say, “Nobody knows for sure” (469).

As always, the possibilities are only as limited as our imaginations.

Backfield in Motion

A way of developing plots while characterizing characters is to build a character's backstory. Of course, too much of a good thing is generally a bad thing, so writers have to be careful not to include too much backstory and, when they do build such a history, the character's past should be delivered piecemeal over a number of episodes or, if we're talking book series, a number of volumes.

A case in point is “Kitten,” the sixth episode of The X-Files's season eleven. This episode is unusual, VanDerWerff thinks, because it “takes what was already a serviceable character backstory (specifically that of Water Skinner) and attempts a direct dramatization of it” (474). The character's “Vietnam background” was presented in previous episodes (“One Breath,” [season two, episode eight] and “Avatar” [season three, episode twenty one]. In “Kitten,” viewers learn about Skinner's sacrifice of his own “career to support Mulder and Scully” based on Skinner's belief that their “mission to expose the truth of what the country was doing to some of its most vulnerable citizens was more important than his personal advancement” (475).

As long as a character's backstory doesn't start to take over the current story, as it does, for example, in Arrow and verges upon doing in Punisher, building a character's background to show how it has helped to shape him or her, how it has, in part, made him or her the person he or she is today, is a good way to add to a narrative's plot.

Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files has much to recommend it, not the least of which is its even-handed balance of praise and condemnation for the series it evaluates. Both Handlen and VanDerWerff point out what they believe is right and what they believe is wrong with the series's episodes. Mostly, in reviewing their book, while tossing in a few of my own observations, I've concentrated on what these critics state and imply about the plotting of the sci fi-horror series. However, depending on one's purpose, on how one reads the book, Monsters of the Week can provide a good many more—and different—insights.

And, remember: the truth is out there!

Sounding Board, Part 4

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.

 Role Playing

To generate plots, the writers of The X-Files sometimes have a character adopt the role of another literary figure. For example,
VanDerWerff notes that "The X-Files seems heavily influenced by the doubting apostle Thomas," (114) especially in regard to Scully, the series's skeptic who is, paradoxically, also a practicing Catholic.

In addition, in the "731" episode, Handlen explains, Mulder plays a Don-Quixote-like figure who must accept that the "answers" he finds on his "quest" differ from those he'd expected to learn. There are no aliens; his sister, therefore, was not abducted by extraterrestrial beings. Instead, "the government has been kidnapping and running tests on humans and hiding it under the cover of 'alien abductions'" (114-115).

By adopting roles played by earlier characters of other stories, which roles are thematically appropriate to the plight of their own characters, The X-Files writers not only enrich the series's storytelling through allusions, but they also acquire vehicles for advancing their narrative's own plot in a meaningful way.

"Assume" Makes an . . . .

Among the many other plot-generating devices employed by The X-Files writers is that of having a character (often Mulder) make wrong assumptions, which then produce "bad decisions," which, in turn, tend to result in potentially fatal situations (117). For example, Handlen reminds his readers, in the episode "War of the Coprophages," although Mulder and other characters believe "a bunch of bugs from outer space" have come "to earth to mess with our minds," skeptical Scully is right again; the insects "are only cockroaches," just as she'd supposed (116-118). Thanks to the false assumption of the citizens of Miller's Grove, where the roaches land (and to Mulder, of course), quite a bit of the episode's plot is generated, demonstrating the truth of the idea that false assumptions can be effective plot generators.

Either-or Premise

As VanDerWerff notes, The X-Files plays with two alternative explanations as to the causes of the series's strange events: (1) "The government did bad things, and now it's trying to keep them covered up" (Scully's point of view) and (2) "yes, aliens . . . have been visiting our world and, yes, they intend to colonize it" (Mulder's perspective) (124). This either-or premise maintains the series's fantastic character ("fantastic" in Tzvetan Todorov's sense of the word), its mystery, and its suspense, while offering a dual approach to plotting.

Memory Sucks

One way of advancing the plot while examining the human condition is to offer a definition of what it means to be a human being and then, after eliminating this identifying quality, character, or state, explore whether the character from whom the essence of humanity has been stripped is still a person, still a human being. If, VanDerWerff asks, "we are our memories," and those "memories are sucked out," do we still exist as human beings or, as X-Files writer Darin Morgan puts it, "If someone has the ability to manipulate your memory--all your memory--then, what are you, if, say, your happiest memory or your most depressing memory are [sic] all fiction?" (133-135). 

Of course, other writers might posit other characteristics or abilities as essential to human existence as such: intelligence, compassion, the ability to effect cause, religious belief, etc. However, the story would still follow the same avenue: by eliminating this characteristic or ability (or whatever else is considered essential to human existence), it would explore whether the character who lost it remains human at all, and if not, why not. By exploring what it means to be human, writers can generate plots. This approach is most suited, perhaps, to stories of fantasy, but it could inform almost any genre.

We Are What We Choose to Be

Another way to investigate the human condition is to ask not what makes people human, but whether a person is who he or she is because of the way that he or she chooses to live or because of how other people treat him or her.

The "Small Potatoes" episode of The X-Files tests this question, VanDerWerff suggests, by having a shape-shifter become other people--but he always reverts back to his own identity, resigned to being himself. He is who he is because he has adopted the persona (that of a "loser"), based on everyone else's view of him, rather than asserting his own identity through the choices he makes (193-195).

This way of developing plots has the benefit of allowing writers to investigate such heady matters as those which are more ordinarily examined within the sphere of philosophy or psychology,  thereby enriching the more mundane affairs of the typical X-Files story.

In an interesting footnote, as it were, to this question, Handlen suggests that, in fiction, autonomy is represented as an effect of doing; in doing, a character forces others to react to what he or she has done. Mulder, he says, is a doer; therefore, he is autonomous. Scully, on the other hand, more often follows a path set for her by Mulder or someone else; she is more likely to be reactive than active, and she is, therefore, only partially autonomous (224).

NEXT: More of the same! 

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!