Scary But Funny

I wanted to talk a little bit about horror today, as I tend to do around this time of year. More I thought about it, though, I was having trouble thinking of an aspect or angle of horror I haven’t done before. Sometimes more than once. I’ve talked about sub-genres of horror. Talked about monsters. Talked about the victims.

So then I thought I’d talk about the mechanics of horror. But even that’s tough because of the wide and varied sub-genres. I’ve mentioned this before. The horror of Frankenstein is not the horror of, say. Experimental Film by Gemma Files which is not the same as Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and none of those are The Devil's Rejects. Depending on what kind of horror I’m aiming for, I could be trying to do some very different things. Which means different rules and guidelines and expectations.

And this made me think, of course, about comedy.

Structure-wise, comedy’s a lot like horror. It’s got many levels and subgenres. It can be subtle and nuanced or in-your-face blatant and over the top. It’s really common for people to like one form of it but not another. I  also think they’re both something that’s kind of ever-present in our lives, on some level or another. There’s a lurking dread or a potential for laughs in almost any situation.

I made what I thought was a semi-clever observation about comedy a while back, and I think the same parallel holds for horror as well—scary is to horror the same way notes are to music. One is made up of the other, but just having a bunch of those components doesn’t automatically make the bigger thing. Just taking a big pile of “scary things” and dumping them on the page doesn’t mean I wrote a horror story, in the same way that, well, having a big pile of meat and bones doesn’t automatically give me a person.

See? That was kind of creepy, right? So is this post a horror story now? No, of course not. No, not even if I add a jump scare. Or is it? Maybe as we keep going you’ll realize how I’ve lulled you into this false sense of security and then maybe you realize... you’ve been in this horror story all along.

Also, it kind of matters what’s in that pile. I can’t just have a big pile of bones, especially the same kind of bones. A big pile of skulls definitely isn’t the same thing as a person. I also can’t mix in random horse bones or gorilla muscles or insect DNA. I can’t just shove anything in there and expect to end up with a working person (or horse, or insect). And even when I get all those components right, they can only go together a certain way. These bones go here, those muscles connect there, that part... okay, look, that’s kind of optional. You can put it in or leave it out at your discretion, just remember what you did with it.

This might seem kind of boring, just putting together a person. Makes it sound like every person we make is going to be like every other person. And on some level... yeah, they are. There are a lot of basic similarities between people, but there are a lot of differences, too. Yeah, even on this basic constructional level. And even more so once we get to know them.

Also, quick pause before we move on. Please don’t get confused by my use of a body as a metaphor for a story. If I’m writing horror, yeah, obviously mixing horse parts with human parts can be an element in a great story. Mixing in some insect DNA has been the basis of several great horror stories. But that’s talking about things in the story, not the structure of the story itself. To fall back on said metaphor, that’s me focusing on an individual bone and saying there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it while ignoring the fact said bone is in a pile of meat that used to be a person.

Or that I’m trying to tell you is still a person...

So, anyway, how do I do this? How do I figure out which parts I’m going to sew together into this new person a.k.a. story? Which ones do I want in there, which ones need to be in there, and which ones... okay, look, the antlers are cool, yes, but people don’t have antlers. No antlers!

Okay. maybe very small antlers.

A lot of this is going to depend on two things. Knowing what I want to end up with and general empathy. The first one’s easy. Once I know what kind of horror story I want to tell, it’s easier to choose the parts I need to tell that story. Yeah, there’s some general stuff I’ll need, but after I’ve got the rough framework there I can start fleshing in (so to speak) all the little details and elements that are going to make this story unique. And this can be a multi-step process. I don’t need to get it all right on the first try, I can go back through and shape the story to better be what I want it to be.

The second part, general empathy, is a little tougher. As I’ve said here once or thrice, I can’t tell you how to have empathy. But it’s sooooo important in horror, because I need to know what my audience is expecting and I need to understand how they’re going to receive these elements in my story. Is that person being sprayed with blood and gore and slime supposed to be horrific? Awful-but-funny? Mildly erotic? Am I sure my readers are going to take it the way I intended it? Because having a beat land wrong can really kill the flow of my story.

And that would be... well, horrible.

So there’s some quick thoughts on horror. Should be easy for you to swallow, now that they’ve been deboned and cut into little bite sized chunks. Yeah, some of them are still moving, don’t worry about that...

Narrator: And as they choked down the morsels, they realized... it had been a horror story all along.

Next time, we could probably talk real quick about NaNoWriMo.

Until then... I’m not letting you out of the room until you swallow every last piece of this.

I mean, hahahahaaa, go write. That was it. Go write.

Behind the Mask!

Oddly enough, not a Halloween-themed post. Although... maybe it is. It’s all perspective, I guess.

Since I first started taking this whole writing thing seriously, there’s been a general mindset I’ve seen bubble to the surface once a year or so. Maybe more in some places. It’s the idea that I can’t write about X if I haven’t personally experienced X. Can’t write it well, that’s for sure. If X hasn’t been an integral part of my life at some point or another, I’m just wasting everyone’s time by trying to write about it. Definitely by putting that writing out there. It’s a version of the old “write what you know” superball that gets bounced around. If you’ve never known X, you certainly can’t write about X.

Starting out in the horror community, I’d see this again and again. The folks who’d insist it just wasn’t possible to write horror without a horrific, awful background. You want to write horror? Real horror, not this weak “vampires and demons and zombies” crap? Well you better have fought in a war and had several people killed in front of you. Or had a horribly abusive family. All your pets better be dead, and most of your friends too, and if you’re not dealing with it through life-crippling addiction to something, you’re just a goddamn tourist who has no business in this genre.

Because of this, I’d see some folks get scared off from their chosen genre. Have I experienced real, soul-wrenching love? I mean, really experienced it? Maybe I shouldn’t be writing romance. My parents loved me a lot, I get along well with my brother, and I’ve got a bunch of really cool friends. Maybe I don’t have any business writing horror. And, heck, I’ve never even killed a human being before. I guess murder mysteries really aren’t for me.

At least, that’s what notorious serial killer Sue Grafton always said.

And a friend of mine recently pointed out this is such a pervasive idea that even some readers believe it. There’s no way I could write about a character that awful unless I myself am truly that awful, right? I mean, somebody couldn’t just make that stuff up, right? If one of my characters has sex more than twice, I’m clearly a sex addict (and let’s not even talk about what their chosen sex position says about me). Heck, I think I’ve talked before the weirdness that can happen when you name a character after a family member or friend without thinking about it.

Now, before I go any further... as I mentioned above, this has all been proven wrong again and again. Seriously. Yeah, there’s definitely some horror writers out there who’ve seen some awful stuff and I’ve known one or two folks over the years who’ve written intense erotica as an outlet when, y'know, no other outlet was available. There are some action writers out there who have very intense backgrounds in the military or private security, and a few sci-fi writers with pretty solid scientific credentials.

But I also know a ton of horror writers who had really nice childhoods and now live very happy lives, without a single dismemberment or traumatic beating or other ghastly event in their past or present. I know action writers who haven’t been in a single barfight or high speed chase or gun battle. I know people with no military experience  who write very successful military books. There are more than a few sci-fi writers who haven’t traveled in time or even left earth orbit once. And I know people who write sex scenes in their books who have, if I may be so bold, fairly vanilla sex lives. At least, going off all the pictures one of them showed me. Like, insisted on showing me.

That was a really weird brunch.

Anyway...

I think all of this ties back to a few things I’ve talked about here a few times. So I thought  maybe it’d be worth mentioning a few totally valid ways we can write about things we haven’t actually experienced. For example...

Voice—A big step for all of us is the day we realize midwestern grocery store clerks don’t talk the same way as third-generation bio-apocalypse survivors. Dwarven warrior queens have a different vocabulary than techbro CEOs. And fresh-out-of-grad-school schoolteachers don’t sound the same as battle-hardened Army sergeants. And getting that voice right, knowing how she’d say this vs. how he’d say it vs. how I'd say it is a big step in our growth as writers.

Research—seriously, we live in a freakin’ golden age of resources for writers. I’ve been doing this just long enough that I remember ads in the back of magazines for small press books about what it’s really like to be a doctor or a homicide detective . Or I’d spend hours in the library trying to find pictures of Paris that didn’t involve the Eiffel Tower or a museum. These days, if I need to know something I have access to so many sources. I can find research papers or anecdotal accounts or heck, even actual people who will answer my questions or help me find the answers, and usually tell me some other useful things if I’m paying attention.

Extrapolation-- I’ve never been shot in the knee, but I’ve had the meniscus behind my kneecap rupture (and collapse again and again and again). I’ve never done super heavy drugs but I’ve been very drunk a few times. I’ve never been able to fly, but when I was a kid there was a bridge in my hometown we all used to jump off into the river. Yeah, these experiences aren’t the same, but I can use them as building points. If this registers as a six, what would a nine be like? If it felt like this for ten seconds, what would it feel like after twenty? Or thirty? I stayed conscious here but would that much short out my brain for a few seconds (from pain or pleasure or excessive introduced chemicals)? It’s a basic creativity exercise. 

Empathy—I’ve talked about empathy here a few times, and I have to say once again it’s the most important trait a writer can have. Seriously. It’s what everything here really boils down to. Being able to put myself in someone else’s shoes. I’ve never had a parent die, but I’ve had friends who did. I’ve never served in the military, but I have family who did. I’ve never been married or had kids or burned dinner when someone’s coming over I really want to impress. But I look at my friends and family, I listen to them, I take note of what they’re saying and what they’re not saying, and I try to relate it to things I’ve gone through. I try to imagine how I’d feel in a similar situation, based off my own experiences. And I use some of that in stories.

In fact, let’s take this one step further and address one of the points that started this off. If I’m going to tell someone they can’t write great horror unless they’ve been through awful stuff (like I have)... well, isn’t that kind of implying I don’t have great empathy? I mean, think about it. I’m saying I can only write this because I experienced it, and I’m also admitting I can’t imagine being a person who can write it without experiencing it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that’s something I should be bragging about.

Y’see, Timmy, much like “write what you know,” this mindset assumes people can’t learn or grow or imagine anything. And if I want to be a good writer, I have to be able to do that. I can’t tell myself not to write about bank robbery until I’ve actually tried to rob a bank. Hell, where does that people who write murder mysteries? Or giant robot sci-fi? Or dark period fantasy. I mean, if you haven’t had sex with at least three people from the twelfth century, how do you expect to write medieval romance? I need to understand most writers research things, extrapolate feelings and reactions, get inside their character’s heads, and just try to have an honest sense of what someone else would feel in this situation.

Look, the truth is, if I’m doing my job right, you should feel like all my characters are real people in real situations. The janitor. The nymphomaniac barista. The half-human, reluctant cultist. The little kid with PTSD. The burned-out secret agent trying to forget most of his life. The world-ending cosmic event that they’re all tied up together in. And when we read a description of a real person, when we hear about the believable, relatable aspects of their life, it’s natural for us to assume they’re... well, real.

And the obvious real person is me, the author, telling you this story. So it’s not surprising some people think I must’ve experienced these things firsthand.

But I shouldn’t need to.

Anyway...

Next time, I want to throw a bunch of characters at the wall and see which ones stick.

Until then, go write.

All Hallow's Idiot

Halloween is so weird this year. One, because we’re all just exhausted from a year of isolation and stress and way too much death. I really hope none of that death has touched you and yours, but we’re kinda at the point where odds are it probably has. And if that’s the case, I’m so very sorry.

The other reason it’s weird is because we all understand it’s pretty much not happening. Trick or treating’s risky. Partying’s right out unless you’re an idiot.

Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about.

There’s a certain type of character who shows up a lot in horror, and for lack of a better term, we’ll call them the Idiot. They’re the one who simply refuses to believe zombies are real, even when three people have been killed. They’re convinced the aliens are benevolent and this is just a communications problem that can be worked out. Or maybe they’re convinced *cough*cough* the deadly virus is nothing to worry about. Probably one of the most famous Idiots is Mayor Vaughn from Jaws. On the off chance you haven’t seen the movie—and seriously, what the hell is wrong with you if that’s the case—when a great white shark appears off the coast of his small New England resort town, Vaughn ignores all the warnings he gets from the local police chief and a visiting scientist, refusing to close the beaches.

As you may have heard, this does not work out all that great for him. Or some of his constituents.

It’s worth pointing out most of the time the Idiot isn’t actually ignorant. They’re making a deliberate decision to ignore all this evidence they’ve been given. Maybe it’s because it goes against too many things they believe. Maybe their motivation’s more financial. Maybe it’s about power. But it’s almost always a decision made for personal reasons, not because of lack of actual information.

There’s a reason for that, and it’s one of the reasons these characters sometimes fumble. If someone comes running up to me and says there’s a zombie horde around the corner, I’m going to assume they’re either under the influence or maybe a bit unbalanced. Because zombies don’t exist. Me thinking they don’t exist is completely rational. If a storyteller tries to paint someone like me, in a real-world setting, as the Idiot... it’s not going to work that great.

But...

If there’ve been reports of zombie attacks for weeks, and I saw a zombie take down a guy in the Target parking lot two days ago, and now someone runs up and says there’s a zombie horde around the corner... Okay, now I’m in a bit of denial if I mock them. Because I’ve seen evidence of this already. Lots of evidence.

When an Idiot character doesn’t work, I think a lot of times it’s because of where they’re appearing in the story. There’s only a small window where this character really shines. Too soon in the chain of events, and—as I mentioned above—it makes sense I’m not going to believe in zombies. So being the Idiot early on doesn’t work. 

On the flipside,  if we’re two years into the zombie post-apocalypse, it’s kind of tough for readers to believe someone could still be in denial. Heck, how could they have survived this long? There’s a point where we’ve moved past “denial” and we need to be asking about head trauma and medications.

Y’see, Timmy, the Idiot only really works in that one sweet spot of the greater, overall story. After things could be rationally excused or ignored, but before things are, y’know, in flames. If I try to have this character outside that range, it’s going to be really tough to make it work.

Also worth noting the Idiot tends to be an authority figure. Not always, but I’d guess it’s more often than not. Police chief, military general, senior scientist, politician—these are all common Idiots (no pun intended). From a narrative point of view, this gives their decisions (or lack of decisions) more weight. A waiter deciding he’s going to ignore the CDC zombie guidelines when he makes decisions doesn’t have as much impact as, say, a governor or a senator who thinks they can be ignored.

Now, granted, there are times I’ll have a character in my story who’s just... an idiot (garden-variety, small “i”). There’s always going to be that person who firmly believes zombie vision is based on movement, who crouches down to pat the alien space cobra, or who thinks wearing a protective mask is more likely to get them sick than not wearing one. That’s just kind of the way people are in any society that’s taken off some Darwinian pressure. Some folks are just stupid and they do stupid things.

And while having this kind of annoying character can serve a purpose in the story, we shouldn’t get them confused with that deliberate, capital-letter type. An Idiot can stick around in my story for a while, but an actual idiot... well, readers generally don’t have the patience for them. Not to point fingers, but think how fast most Vince Vaughn characters get annoying. We don’t have patience for idiot (small i) characters because the nature of the story asks us to identify with characters. And really, why would anyone want to identify with an idiot?

But the Idiot... we may not like or agree with their motivations, but we can understand them. Mayor Vaughn in Jaws knows there’s a shark out there. He also knows shutting down the beaches could ruin his small town and it’ll definitely ruin him come the next election. So... he makes a stupid decision. A similar thing happens in my own book, Dead Moon, with Luna City’s mayor, Lana.

Do you have an Idiot in your story? Do they exist in that sweet spot? Or are they at a point where their stubborn denial is just coming across as unbelievable?

Next time... look, you’re telling me too much. Please stop. I don't want to hear this. TMI.

Until then, go write.

A Compass That Doesn’t Point North

A few weeks back I talked about things getting their genres mid-identified, and afterwards somebody asked an interesting follow up. Namely, how do we identify genres? What are the benchmarks? How do we decide if something’s sci-fi or a techo-thriller or a romance that just happens to be set in a sci-fi world?

I know this sounds like a simple question, but it isn’t. For a couple reasons. Which I shall go over now.

First and foremost thing to remember—I shouldn’t worry about genre while I’m writing. Genre’s really a marketing tool more than anything else, so it doesn’t have a lot of use on the creative/ artistic side of things. In fact, if I’m worrying a lot about the guidelines of a given genre while I’m writing, I may want to take a step back and make sure I’m not just trying to jump on a trend. In my experience... that doesn’t work out most of the time.

With that in mind... what even is genre? A great way to think of it is a compass (many thanks to Pierce Brown for this analogy). Genre points you in the general direction of things you’re looking for. You want to head south-west? Just keep going that way. You want to find horror novels? They’re all over there.

And that leads us to another good way to think of it, maybe an even more relatable one. Where would my book get stocked in the bookstore? Don’t think about getting misshelved or getting featured on that best-sellers endcap. No excuses, no avoiding the question. Picture your favorite store and decide where would it be shelved in that store. 

If I can’t answer this... I have a problem. Because this is how an agent’s going to try to sell my book. “It’s something new to go here.” Even if I’m just planning on self-publishing an ebook, Amazon’s going to want to know how to categorize it.

Let me tell you one last little story. My first published book was Ex-Heroes, which ended up becoming a series of books set in that world and all involving the same basic theme—superheroes fighting zombies in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. When the series originally came out, it was through a small press that specialized in apocalyptic fiction, specifically zombie fiction. That was their niche, and they filled it perfectly. So they heavily emphasized the zombie/ post-apocalyptic aspects of the book in their publicity for it. That’s the direction their compass pointed.

But... by book three the series had moved to Broadway Paperbacks at Random House, and they wanted something that would promote well at comic conventions. So... the superheroes became the new focus. And so the compass needle for the books swung from the horror section (in the few stores the small press had gotten them into) to the sci-fi section.

My point being... life finds a way.

No, sorry, my point is that in both cases, the genre gave people a good idea what they’d find when they opened the book. Post-apocalyptic zombies. Superheroes.

So, that said... let’s talk very rough guidelines for a few basic genres. I won’t be able to touch on every genre (and may not even do a fantastic job with these), but I figure if you’re here looking for advice from me, there’s a semi-decent chance you’re writing the same kind of stuff you read. Which is me arrogantly assuming you ended up here because you read a couple of my books and liked them.

Science-Fiction—this is when my fictional elements have a rational, scientific explanation behind them. They don’t need to be explained (although hard science fans love it when you can), but they need to fall within a range of believability.

Science-Fantasy—This is when my story elements are hypothetically grounded in science, but (to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke) they’re so far advanced they’re beyond all possible understanding and essentially magic.

Fantasy—This is when some aspect of the rules of reality are tossed out the window. It might mean magic. It might mean new races or species (dragons, elves, orcs, owlbears, what have you). Fantasy tends to have less technologically-developed settings.

Urban Fantasy—A subgenre I thought was worth mentioning. Here we’re still tossing some of the reality-rules out the window, but we’re specifically doing it in a modern (or near-modern), real-world setting, often with more modern technology alongside it.

Horror—Might sound obvious, but many aspects of these stories involve fear for both the characters and the reader. Depending on my exact subgenre, that fear can have many different causes and intensities.

Romance—again, might sound obvious, but in romance most of the elements revolve around two characters developing a relationship despite various challenges. There may or may not be a sexual element (of varying explicitness) again depending on my subgenre.

Mystery—This is when the main thrust is trying to find answers to a problem—very often (but not always) involving a crime of some sorts. Another good rule of thumb for mysteries—they tend to center around something that already happened. The mystery is past tense.

Thriller—Somewhat similar to mysteries, this is when the plot elements involve a current, ongoing problem. Because of this, thrillers also tend to have a strong action component and fast pacing. The rule of thumb—thrillers are happening right now.

That’s not all possible genres (not even close), and there are sooo many sub-genres, but it’s enough to get you started.

One last thing to tag onto this. You’ve probably heard of terms like young adult or middle grade. It’s worth noting these aren’t actually genres in and of themselves, but additional guidelines that get applied to a given story. It’s not about my story as much as it is about how I’m choosing to tell that story.

All of this leads me to my final bit of advice, which kind of ties back to that earlier post. If I had to give a one or two sentence elevator pitch about my story, what would be in that pitch? What would I be focusing on? Would I be talking about space elevators and moon colonies, or would I be emphasizing the zombie hordes rising from their graves? Remember—I’ve only got two sentences, and they can’t be run-ons. Elevator pitch. Very fast, very clear.

Consider Twilight. It has vampires and werewolves and more than a few deaths... but it’s not a horror story. It barely counts as urban fantasy. The thing we’d emphasize in our elevator pitch is the high schooler who falls in love with a vampire. It’s a romance novel. Supernatural romance if we want to start focusing down.

And remember—there may be elements to my story that’d normally be immediate signs of one genre, but they don’t come up in that elevator pitch. That’s okay. I shouldn’t try to cram them in. Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth has lots of raunchy jokes and a few spaceships, but I’d bet 99% of the people who’ve read it don’t think of it as a comedy or a sci-fi novel--their minds jump right to the necromancy and the murder mystery.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about genre. Unless anyone has any specific questions?

Next time...

Well, in some beautiful, alternate world we all sheltered in place all through March and April, wore our masks for May, and now it’s perfectly safe for all of us to attend San Diego Comic Con next week! YAY!

But in this world, alas, SDCC was cancelled because of folks who refused to do those things. There are still going to be some virtual events, though. I’m doing a panel on sci-fi writing next Friday at 4:00. I’m hoping to have a new Coffeehouse video up by then. And I’m also going to be doing a special Saturday Geekery, live-tweeting a few B-movie classics with some friends. You should come join us.

And all this means that next time, I may revisit and revise my list of top B-movie mistakes.

So until then, go write.

And, c’mon... wear your mask.

The Maltese MacGuffin

So, last week I talked a little bit about a couple genre problems I see pop up all the time. I think they’re most common in fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, but the truth is they show up all over the place. It was a fun little rant, You should check it out if you missed it.

There was also one other genre problem I wanted to talk about, but I didn’t want that post to get ridiculously long. And in an odd way, this is sort of a reverse-genre problem. Less a problem with writing genre, more one with identifying it.

I’d like to talk to you about a little indie film from a few years back called Pulp Fiction. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Excellent.

What’s that? How does this relate to genre rant, you ask? I mean, Pulp Fiction clearly isn’t a genre movie. Not in that sci-fi/fantasy sense, anyway.

Except... well, do you remember the mysterious briefcase that floats through the story? The one with something bright and glowing inside of it, something we never see. There are a lot of theories out there about what’s in the briefcase, but one of the more interesting ones is that it’s Marsellus Wallace’s soul. He made a deal with the devil as a young man and now he’s made a new deal to get it back. Jules and Vincent, you see, are the go-betweens who are getting the soul from Satan’s reps (Brett and his two partners). This is why the briefcase’s combination is 666 and why everyone is stunned by the beauty of the thing in the case—it’s a pure, innocent soul. It also explain why the bad guys can’t hit Vince and Jules—it really is divine protection.

And if the movie’s got this spiritual/magic element to it now—souls and the devil and actual divine protection—well... isn’t this a gritty urban fantasy movie? I mean, that’s pretty close to the definition of urban fantasy. Maybe supernatural crime or supernatural noir, if we want to give a more flavorful description.

Of course the real question is this. If it is Wallace’s soul in the briefcase... what changes in the movie? What would be different?

Before you answer, let me point out the thing in the briefcase is what we’d call a MacGuffin. It’s an object that drives the plot without really having anything to do with it. The Maltese Falcon’s another famous one. It’s the motivation behind everything that happens in the movie—every death and betrayal and double cross—but the titular statue only shows up in the last ten minutes.

So the answer to the above question about “what would be different” is, of course, nothing. Again, the thing in the briefcase is just a MacGuffin. It could contain a human soul, a gold brick, a Tron ID disc, absolutely anything... and it wouldn’t change the plot in the slightest. Because it isn’t actually interacting with anything in a meaningful way. We can make an argument the briefcase is, but whatever’s inside it is... irrelevant.

So it’d be kinda dumb to call Pulp Fiction an urban fantasy movie. The sole element that would put it in that genre is almost completely disconnected from the plot and/or story. It may contain that element--that plot device, if you will—but that doesn’t necessarily push the movie into a different genre.

Which is the problem I wanted to talk about. Some folks have a bad habit of using a single element of a book or movie to justify bumping it into a new genre. I’ve talked about this a couple times with superpowers stories that try to call themselves superhero stories, and the problems that can cause. Just because someone’s using a sword doesn’t make my story high fantasy or historical fiction. Setting it ten years in the future doesn’t automatically mean it’s sci-fi. And just because there might be a soul in that briefcase doesn’t make Pulp Fiction urban fantasy.

I’ve seen this sooooo many times. You probably have as well. A book or show that’s really X but got marketed as Y by the author or publisher. Something that has one simple conceit to it that could be a genre element, but really the story fits into another genre altogether.

As I’ve mentioned before with superhero stories vs. superpowers stories, the big problem here becomes audience expectations. If everybody had gone into Pulp Fiction being told it was a supernatural crime story, it would’ve affected how they viewed everything they were shown. And let’s be honest... they would’ve been annoyed. Probably pissed. Because the story went against everything they thought they were going get.

What’s my point? I need to be honest with genre labels. I need to be aware of what my story really is, even if it’s got a MacGuffin or setting that might make it look like something else. Again, having a sword doesn’t suddenly make this historical fiction.

And yeah, it’s really tempting when comedies are selling to say “Why, yes, my manuscript Terminus contains several laughs and completely reads as a comedy.” But this almost always works against me. Sure, sometimes a reader will say “this isn’t what I expected at all but I ended up loving it anyway...” but those times are few and far between.

So be honest with yourself about what you’ve written. Even if it has ghosts or clones. Or a disembodied soul in a briefcase.

Next time, speaking of genre (some more) I’ve got a little mystery for you to ponder...

Until then, go write.

Steampunk Mechdragon Issues

Like a lot of you, I’m still feeling a little overwhelmed by everything going on right now. Awe-inspiring stuff. Long overdue stuff. But still overwhelming.

I thought about updating my list of top ten B-movie mistakes, but I really haven’t been up for bad movie geekery for a few weeks. So I shelved that idea for a while. Then it occurred to me there’s a related topic I haven’t discussed in... well, years. Not directly, anyway.

It probably goes without saying that I really like genre fiction. I grew up with Doctor Who and Star Wars and comics about Spaceknights who came to Earth to protect us from alien shapeshifting sorcerers. Sci-fi, horror, fantasy—I like reading ‘em, I like writing ‘em.

But you probably knew all of that already.

Point is, I’ve consumed so much of this stuff. In so many formats. A lot of it’s been fantastic. Some of it’s been... not so fantastic.

As I started taking storytelling and writing more seriously, as I started really breaking things down and studying them, I noticed a few similarities. Common problems that showed up again and again, especially in genre stories. Three of them.

To be clear, they’re not confined specifically to these stories—you might see these issues crop up in mysteries or romances or even literary fiction. They’re also not the only problems these stories can ever have (not by a longshot). But it’s kind of amazing how often a problematic sci-fi or fantasy and even horror will have one or more of these three issues.

The first issue is when we bury our stories in too much of our chosen genre. If I have an idea, it gets included in the story. No matter what it is—neat visual, cool character beat, clever way a door opens—I’ll fit it in there. If it was scary in that story, it’ll be scary in my story. Most of us have probably read a genre novel that went to great lengths to explain how the weapons, shoes, uniforms, food, transportation, education, and economics are all very different on that other world or in that not-too-distant future. If it's a magical world, everything is ancient and magical and built by the fae. If it's a sci-fi world, everything has nanites and AI and came from interdimensional aliens. People don’t wear glasses in these stories, they have optykwear, and a good set of optykwear can cost you seven or eight neshseks.

The problem with writing like this is my audience has nothing to connect with as they’re overwhelmed with all these unfamiliar elements. The people are different. The setting’s different. Motivations are different. Yeah, it’s a really cool alternate world where the Dark Ages never happened, all coinage is brass,  and wars are now fought with steampunk robot dragons run by difference engines, but the important thing is that my readers need to be able to understand this world and relate to it, while it’s on the page in front of them.

All the worldbuilding is good, but my story needs to have something my audience can immediately identify with in some way, and it’s best if it’s the main character. Someone who hates their job, who wants something they can’t have, or maybe who just feels like an outsider. A person with a universal need or desire.

When a reader believes in my characters, they’ll believe in what’s happening to my characters. It has to do with willing suspension of disbelief—I can’t believe in the big elements of a story if I don’t believe in the basics of it. Once I’m invested in Wakko’s life, then I’ll be more willing to go with it when he goes to work shoveling coal in the belly of a a giant steampunk dragon (but one day he’s going to be the commodore of the whole mechdragon fleet—you just wait and see)

There’s one very closely related issue to this, so close I’m not even going to branch off and make it a separate thing. Sometimes, all the laying-on of more genre gets a little monotone. Dramatic stories that are non-stop drama. The horror movie that’s nothing but horror. The magical fantasy series where everything is magical and fantastic. No matter how much I love this thing, it gets boring pretty quick when it’s all I’m getting.

We want our fiction to mirror our lives as much as possible, and the truth is very few of us lead monotone lives. They get broken up with moments of laughter (not always at appropriate times), random pettiness, unexpected excitement, casual flirting, and more. Our stories should be the same way.

The second issue happens when I try to explain everything. It’s confusing enough that I dropped readers right into a steampunk mechdragon battle, but now I’m going to pause that battle for ten pages while I explain how mechdragons came to be and where the best coal for their boilers is mined and how the creation of functioning wings (and the required steam- piston musculature) changed the nature of battle and hey I should probably talk about dragon tactics for a bit, right?

I think most people reading this have seen a story or two that suddenly deviated into that sort of excessive, often unnecessary exposition. I’ve read many stories that suddenly go to great lengths to explain how and why the serial killer turned out the way she did. Or how she ended up with superpowers and exactly how they work. Or both. At length.

What this leads to is stories that feel very detailed, but very little ever actually, y’know, happens. Page after page of explanation can add up really fast, and suddenly a third of my book is just... details.  And while I’m going over those details, my characters are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for something to happen again. It can also annoy my readers as all this information gets doled out, especially if it’s something that feels unnecessary and unmotivated.

I think there’s two ways to deal with this issue. One is something I’ve talked about here in the past—the ignorant stranger.  If I’m going to explain things, I should have an actual, in-story reason for them to be explained. Wakko may know the day-to-day workings of a mechdragon, but Phoebe’s a stowaway and he needs to help her pass as a crew member or she’ll be “dropped off”... and they’re three thousand feet up. So he has a solid, understandable reason to explain everything and she can ask a lot of the questions my readers probably have.

The other way to deal with this issue is the quick and easy one. Cut it. I can delete anything that isn’t actually necessary to the story. This can be tough, because, I mean... steampunk mechdragon wars! There’s so much cool stuff in those three words. But how much of it do I really need? Is it relevant or is it just me piling more “genre” onto the plot and story? Yeah, ceramic teeth are cool, especially on that scale, and I’ve come up with a crazy way how they’re made, but does my story fall apart if the reader just knows the mechdragon has... teeth? Does it change anything if in their mind they picture the teeth are brass or steel or diamond? Pages are precious—do I really want to spend part of one on this?

The third issue is actually the reverse of the last one. It’s when I don’t explain anything. There’s so much new stuff that there’s no context. I can’t tell if neshseks are coins or bills or maybe they’re not even money. Maybe this world works on the barter system and they’re some kind of gourd. Could be a massage or a sex act or maybe it’s some kind of pet? Maybe it’s a pet that gives great massages?

But it’s not just terminology. The genres also tend to collect mysterious characters who drop vague hints or implied threats for... reasons. Creepy messages appear on walls, sidewalks, computer screens and we never learn how they got there. Disturbing objects are discovered in the attic and never, ever discussed again.

I think there are two general reasons this issue happens. First is that, as the writer, I’ve sunk deep into my fictional world for the past five months and I forgot the reader... hasn’t. They have no idea what a neshsek looks like. Or what it’s used for. Or how many you can seriously expect to get from a relative stranger for two tinted sets of optykwear

The other reason is that people are trying to duplicate the sense of mystery and anticipation they got from another story, but they don’t really understand how and why it worked there. A lot of these weird mysteries are just a general lack. There is no explanation or reason or motivation behind what’s happening in the story. It’s just happening right now because... I wanted to tell a weird creepy story.

A friend of mine gave me a great rule of thumb once, and I think it’s the best way to deal with this issue. I kinda mentioned it up above—my main characters should mirror my audience. If my goal’s to make my audience puzzled and eager to learn more, then really Phoebe should be puzzled and want to learn more. If the reader’s angry about something, Wakko should probably be angry about it, too. Likewise, if Phoebe and Wakko are both really annoyed because they still don’t know what’s going on... well, I can probably guess how my audience feels right now, one way or the other...

Are these the only three problems that might crop up in my genre writing? No, not at all. I have faith in you that you will find awesome, all-new problems. But these are the ones I see appear again and again. So maybe they’re worth looking for in my manuscript. Just in case.

Next time... I’ve got kind of a follow up idea to this. It didn’t really fit here, but it’s a genre problem. Sort of.

Stay safe out there. Wash your hands. Wear your mask.

Until next time, go write.

Zombie Love

Hey, look! It’s even more bonus content! What the hell? This is turning into one of those blogs where there are semi-regular posts.

Hahahaa no it’s not. I’m just going to be really busy in November (for a couple of reasons) so I wanted to give you some extra stuff now while I had time. Plus, hey, it’s Halloween and I can always blather on about this sort of stuff a bit more. So everybody wins.

As a lot of you know, I worked on film crews for a lot of years, and then I wrote about filmmaking for another five or six years after that (there was a bit of overlap). This meant I got to interview a lot of screenwriters and writer-directors about their different projects, and some of them leaned into the spirit of this particular holiday season. And I still had some more of those sitting around so I figured, hey, why not share another one.

Some of you may be familiar with Fido, a wonderfully heartwarming (no, seriously) zombie story about a boy and his... well, pet zombie.  It was also a nearly fifteen year labor of love for Andrew Currie, Robert Chomiak , and Dennis Heaton, taking them from film school to Lionsgate Pictures, where the movie finally came to be with a very impressive cast. I got to speak with Andrew back then, and we talked a lot about his creative process and how the story evolved going from an elaborate novella to a screenplay to a finished movie.

A few of my standard points before we dive in.  I’m in bold, asking the questions.  Please keep in mind a lot of these aren’t the exact, word-for-word questions I asked (which tended to be a bit more organic and conversational), so if the answer seems a bit off, don’t stress out over it.  Any links are entirely mine and aren’t meant to imply Andrew’s specifically endorsing any of the ideas I’ve brought up here on the ranty blog—it’s just me linking from something he said to something similar that I’ve said.

By the nature of this discussion, there are going to be a few small spoilers in here, though not many.  Check out the movie if you haven’t seen it yet. It really is wonderful. I mean, it’s a feel-good zombie movie about families. What more could you want?

Material from this interview was originally used for an article that appeared in the CS Weekly online newsletter.

What got you into filmmaking and screenwriting?

I guess just, from a really young age, being a fan of movies.  I remember I was six years old and my dad took me to 2001: A Space Odyssey in the theatre.  And I still remember just being completely blown away by the movie—obviously not understanding it, but the visceral impact of the images.  And really being a life long film buff, a film geek I guess you’d say, staying up late watching horror films once everyone else went to bed.  The standard path (laughs).

You’ve written a lot of the stuff you’ve directed.  Do you think of yourself as a writer or director more? 

I think of myself as a writer-director.  I generally write on most of the things I direct.  I certainly have directed stuff I didn’t write.  I just find that, to me, there’s that idea that there are three films; there’s the film that you write, there’s the film that you shoot, and there’s the film you complete in post-production.  Those three phases to me are so fluid that they tend to all become one.  The writing process for me is directing on the page quite a bit.  I guess I find that being involved in the writing is fairly critical.

D’you think you’d ever write a screenplay without wanting to direct it?

Oh, I’d love to. (laughs)  But God knows who would want to direct it.  

Yeah, I’m not the fastest writer, and that’s another wonderful thing about collaborating.  What’s exciting for me about film is that it’s collaborative, it’s bouncing ideas off other creative people.  When we wrote Fido--Robert, Dennis, and I--we spent a lot of time in the story room together just bouncing around ideas.  I think often that’s the most fulfilling way of working, because you become so much more inspired by working with collaborators.

You’ve worked with Robert a few times, yes?

Yeah, Robert and I have co-written a couple things.  He’s wonderful, and he’s got that combination of having a wonderfully bizarre take on the world but also being a very pragmatic writer as well.  He’s great.

Now, Fido was originally a short story by Dennis, yes?

Well, Dennis had written this... it was somewhere between a short story and a script.  It was seventy or eighty pages, it was pretty long.  It was about a little boy in a small town who had a pet zombie.  The boy just fed him raw meat so he wouldn’t eat people.  We all went to Simon Fraser University together for film school.  Dennis and Robert did two years of the program, and I went for the whole four years, and when I graduated we all decided we wanted to write something together.  It was one of those things where everyone brings five ideas to the table, and Dennis brought Fido.  We just all immediately got excited by it and the potential for it.  We actually wrote the first draft really quickly.  A lot of the basics came really quick, but it really was nothing more than a world with zombies and Leave It To Beaver, cardboard cut-out characters.  There was a lot of fun, but we also didn’t have much to say about the world.  

That was back in 1994.  We went off and did other projects, and I took the script out to the Canadian Film Center in 1996 and worked on it out there, and then came back.  We started working on it again in 2001, and by then we had all developed more as writers.  We approached it much more from theme and character, and it made such a difference.  The world became much more complex.  And then September 11th happened and that started to affect the story in a political way as well.  It just started getting layers that were really exciting for me as the director.  You’re telling this absurdist comedy and you’ve got these other layers that you’re putting in, and whether people get them or not became an interesting debate for us.  You can lay something in, but if it’s too subtle it just flashes past people.

You mentioned 9/11.  There’s a lot of underlying paranoia and a very us-vs-them mood, even past the usual zombie movie standards.  How much of that was very deliberate?

Oh, it was very specifically an allegory, but it’s quite subtle.  You know, for example, in the beginning of the film Mr. Bottoms comes into the classroom and he tells the kids that he’s building the fences higher and there’s going to be security vans on every corner and he’s going to take everyone’s picture “just in case they get lost.”  And that was very much referencing Homeland Security.  What was really exciting was when we started thinking about the film in that way, it really started to affect the characters, namely Bill, the father.  The idea of ZomCom-- which is sort of the government and a corporation as an amalgamation-- pushing fear within a community as a means of control, which happens (pause) in many, many places in the world.  And Bill ended up becoming the embodiment of fear.  He’s terrified of zombies and his goal in life, really, is to die and not have to come back, and he’s got this slightly absurd childhood trauma of having to shoot his father when his father turned.  And the central irony of the whole movie, for me anyway, is that Fido is this dead creature who comes into the family and is more emotionally engaged in the world than the father.

So the allegory was certainly intentional.  What we really wanted to do was, on the surface, just have fun and play with the idea of Lassie and the “boy and his dog” story, but then on the deeper level have that political resonance and then in terms of the characters, tying to that.  Really, the theme we were writing from was “love, not fear, makes you alive.”  Bill is the embodiment of fear and Fido is the embodiment of love.  He brings this relationship into the family and becomes a catalyst for change within the family.

You did a short about a zombie, Night of the Living, a few years back, yes?  Are you a fan of zombie movies?

Yeah.  I saw a zombie movie, I don’t even know what it was, when I was really little.  I remember being really traumatized by it.  In a good way (laughs).  Y’know, there are so many damned zombie movies out there, it’s a bit of a drag.  When we started Fido in ’94 there weren’t that many around.  Now I have to read some critic going “they’re just taking the end of Shaun of the Dead and turning it into a movie.”  Which is really painful when we wrote it fourteen years ago.

For me, they make such great metaphors.  I think what’s interesting about zombies is that they are so close to us.  They are human in a way, and they tap into some primal fears in a really visceral way.  The idea of death and dying and mortality and disease, they embody all of those things.  A lot of monsters and creatures in horror are of the supernatural variety or completely inhuman, so they’re not as close to us in that respect.  So zombies have a greater sense of dread about them.

There’s a lot of baggage that comes with the word zombie.  Did it make it tough to sell people on this story?

It did.  What was great about it was getting Lionsgate and having such big fans.  They read the script and said they loved it, and let’s shoot it as it is.  They were completely behind it.  There were other distributors and there were concerns about the script.  Those concerns were mainly “what is it?” Is it a family film, a horror film, a zombie movie?    The majority of the people, and very happily all of the actors, got what the world was and the depth of it and the fact that it had this satirical throughline.  But certainly for a percentage of people there was this sense of, how is that mishmash of genres going to work.

There’s a few things that it seems somebody would’ve started pointing at (the killings, Mr. Theopolis, schoolkids with guns, etc).  Did you get a lot of notes from the producers or the studio about the script?

No, that was the great thing.  I don’t think I got a single note.  Everyone who was in on the film, Lionsgate, they were really big supporters.  It was almost odd that people were just so supportive.  I mean, I’d just made one feature before this called Mile Zero, which is a very character-driven drama, completely unlike Fido. 

Did the R rating come as a shock to you?

Absolutely.  I was quite disappointed with the MPAA and I had many conversations with them.  I went into the editing room  and we tried different things.  In the end, what they needed to make it PG-13 just undermined the film in a way that just wasn’t something we wanted or Lionsgate wanted.  So we decided we had to stay with an R.  The thing about the MPAA is that they really got the humor and they said they were real fans of the movie.  I think because children and the elderly get consumed in the movie, I started wondering if there was a moral compass at play.  There’s so little violence, I was really surprised with them being so hard on it, especially in light of so many other films that are PG-13.

Was doing the script as a group, the three of you, was it very different, process-wise, than if you’d just sat down and done it on your own?

The process for Fido was so unique in the sense that it went on for so many years.  When I was out at the Film Center I was working on it for about a year on my own, and then I’d come back and we’d all work on it.  It became a really dragged out process, and we got to a certain point, which was about a year and a half before shooting, where the three of us just did everything we could do and it was time for me to take it and start moving it towards production.  So Dennis and Robert stepped off at that point.  Screenplays can certainly exist just as screenplays, but there’s a point when they have to move towards the reality of being made and things change.  Dennis and Robert were wonderful about it-- I don’t want to sound like I’m insulting them.  They stepped away and then I worked on it, finessing certain things, and moving it towards production in terms of the reality of creating the world and making it happen.

Do you have any solid habits or methods when you write?

I really believe in the outline.  I always work from a beat sheet.  In terms of the scene by scene, I just find it’s such a wonderful focusing tool for me.  The way I write is probably quite a bit with the directing hat on, maybe more so than I should.  I tend to imagine the scene, and then re-imagine it and flip it over and over in my head until it clicks and then put it down on paper.  Even when I direct I work from a beat sheet, in the sense of what the real intent of the scene is and the character beats and the key moments.  I think it’s important to keep those clear and present.

How is it for you when actors start asking for changes?  Either actual rewrites of scenes or just adlibs on set?

I like and encourage improvisation at times, but the truth is sometimes if you allow improv just to start happening in an escalating way, what you can end up with is something that’s not nearly as coherent a story as it should be.  I really believe in getting a script to the place where it really works and then having faith in that structure.  Story structure works.  Character arcs work.  When they’re well written they really do fulfill the promise of the script.  A lot of times actors will bring wonderful moments and wonderful bits into the process, and I completely support that, and love that, as long as the arc and the integrity of the structure is being honored.

Scary Stories to Tell...

Pop culture reference. Haven’t done one of those in ages...

I've blathered on about different genres a bunch of times. It seemed like this might be a good time in the year to revisit one in particular that I haven’t talked about in a while. On the off chance you haven’t noticed the sudden rise of bats, pumpkins, and scarecrows in your neighborhood, we’re going to be talking about horror.

Maybe it’s just the particular bubble I’m in, but it feels like horror’s finally, truly inching its way out into the mainstream. Even just ten or fifteen years ago, a lot of folks still viewed horror as this big, general bin filled with Satanists, slashers, and screaming people. And, let's be honest, anyone who wrote horror clearly was just working through tons of childhood issues, right? Probably didn’t help that for years there were some folks who loudly insisted you could only write horror if you’d gone through something traumatic...

Simple truth is, just like sci-fi or comedy or romance, horror stories get broken down into many different sub-genres.  Us is horror, sure, but that doesn’t mean we immediately lump it in with the new Halloween reboot. Cherie Priest’s The Toll is horror, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing the same things as Wesley Chu’s Walking Dead tie-in book, Typhoon. And none of these are like my story Dead Moon.

I’ve mentioned once or thrice before that sometimes things get the wrong genre label hung on them, and it creates a clash of expectations. We went in told we were getting a story that would do this and this, but got one that did that by using that. And, personally, I think this is true with sub-genres, too. If I tell readers they’re getting a slasher story and it turns out to be much more of a monster story, there’s a good chance a lot of the story is just going to feel off balance to them. It won’t hit a lot of the “correct” benchmarks my audience is expecting.

That said, I wanted to toss out a couple different sub-genres of horror to think about. Some of them are well established and have been discussed (and debated) to death.  Others are just things I've noticed and named on my own that I feel are worth mentioning. I’ve brought up a lot of them before.

Supernatural stories

This one’s easy. It's pretty much the classic spooky story. The pale woman out hitchhiking alone in the middle of night.  The awful-smelling thing down in the lower berth. That creepy guy in the elevator letting you know there's room for one more...

There are a few key things about these stories.  One of the biggies is that our protagonist usually doesn’t suffer any physical harm. Their underwear needs to go through the wash three or four times and they may not sleep well for years, but overall they tend to come out okay. If anyone suffers in a supernatural story it's usually the bad guy or a supporting character. Also, these stories tend not to have explanations-- they just are. There aren't any cursed objects or ancient histories at play.  This is just the kind of stuff that happens in a supernatural world.

Thrillers

Thrillers stand a bit away from the pack ‘cause they tend to be more grounded than most horror stories. Very few vampires, no demons, not a lot of machete-killers. Even if they have a supernatural element, the horror rarely comes from that element. They’re very real-world horror stories, for the most part.

The key thing is that a thriller’s all about right now.  It's about the ticking clock, the killer hiding behind the drapes, or the foot that’s just inches from the lethal booby trap. There's a lot of suspense focused on one or two characters and it stays focused on them for the run of my story.  A thriller keeps the characters (and the reader) on edge for almost the whole story.

Giant Evil stories

These are the tales when the universe itself is against my characters.  Every person they meet, every object they find, everything they do--it all serves some greater, awful evil. It’s just so big and overwhelming. You may have heard the terms “Lovecraftian horror” or “cosmic horror” too.

I think a lot, if not most, post-apocalyptic stories fall here. The ones that lean towards horror over sci-fi, anyway. The entire world now belongs to the zombie hordes, the cannibal gangs, the killer virus, whatever. I’d probably toss a lot of haunted house stories in here, too, because the haunted house (or ship, or insane asylum, or spaceship, or whatever) is essentially the universe of the story.  There’s nothing else for us or for the characters to interact with. 1408, The Shining, and Event Horizon could all be seen as supernatural stories, but their settings really elevate them to giant evil stories.

Slasher stories

When you get right down to it, these stories are just about body count. How many men, women, and teenagers can the killer reduce to cold meat? Point to note--almost never children.

One of the big things with slasher stories is there's usually a degree of creativity and violence to the deaths, although it's important to note it's rarely deliberate or malicious. It's just the killer using the most convenient tools at hand for the job. They’re pretty much a parkour of death. The original Friday the 13th franchise pretty much became the standard for slasher stories, and it's what most people tend to think of first when  the term comes up.

A lot slasher stories used to have a mystery sub-element to them, trying to figure out who the killer was. Then it kind of morphed into being a (usually) weak twist. Slasher stories also developed a bad habit of falling back on using insanity as their only motivation and got stereotyped as "psycho-killer" movies. Which is a shame 'cause some of them are very clever and creepy.

Torture porn

I’m not sure if Stephen King actually coined the term “torture porn” in his old Entertainment Weekly column (does he still do that?), but that’s the first place I remember seeing it.  At its simplest, torture porn is about making the reader squirm.  If I can make them physically ill, that’s a big win. 

The characters in torture porn are almost always underdeveloped, going with the idea that we’ll just relate to them and what they’re going through on a basic human level. More than any other form of horror, torture porn isn’t about characters—it’s about the visceral things being done to the characters.  They’re getting skinned, scalped, boiled, slowly impaled, vivisected... and we’re getting every gory detail of it.  Somebody I used to work with once told me “porn is when you show everything,” and this sub-genre really leaves nothing to the imagination.

A key element to torture porn is the victim is almost always helpless. They’re bound, drugged, completely alone, or vastly outnumbered. Unlike a slasher film-- where there's always that sense that Phoebe might escape if she just ran a little faster or make a bit less noise-- there is no question in these stories that the victim is not going to get away.  That hope isn't here, because that's not what these stories are about.

Worth noting there’s a few distinctions between a slasher story and a torture porn story, and one of the big ones is the sheer number of people killed. Slashers are about the body count, but (as the name implies) torture porn is about how long single deaths can be drawn out.

Monster stories

The tales in this little sub-genre tend to be about unstoppable, inescapable things that mean the protagonist harm. Monsters are rarely secretive or mysterious, but they do have an alarming tendency to be nigh-invulnerable. The emphasis here is that there's nothing my heroes (or anyone else) do can that'll stop this thing's rampage, and any worthwhile rampage tends to involve people dying.

I just talked about monsters a few months back, so I won’t rehash a lot of that here. You can just go read my birthday post.

Adventure Horror stories

To paraphrase from the original Hellboy movie (which fits nicely in this category), adventure horror is where the good guys bump back.  While they may use a lot of tropes from some of the other subgenres, the key element to these stories is that the heroes are fighting back. Not in a desperate, flailing way, but in a trained, well-equipped, locked-and-loaded way.

I’m not saying it won’t go exceptionally bad for them (and it often does), but there stories are about protagonists who get to inflict a bit of damage and live to tell the tale.  For a while, anyway.  To quote an even wiser man... even monsters have nightmares.

So there’s a couple of subgenres we could break horror down into.  And like I said before, there’s many more.  It’s not a complete list, and you can probably think of some others we could talk about. Feel free to add ‘em down in the comments.

Also, why are we talking about this?

When most of us start off as writers, we flail a bit. We attempt to copy stories even though we don’t quite understand all the mechanics of them.  We’re not sure where our own stories fit under that big horror umbrella (or sci-fi, or fantasy, or...).  We'll begin a tale in one sub-genre, then move into a plot more fitting a different one, wrap up with an ending that belongs on a third, and have the overall tone of yet another. 

Y’see, Timmy, it's important to know what I’m writing for two different reasons.  One is so I’ll be true to it and don't end up with a sprawling story that covers everything and goes nowhere.  Two is that I also want to be able to market my story, which means I need to know what it is. If I tell the editor it's not torture porn when it plainly is, at the best I’m going to get rejected. My readers may toss it aside.

At the worst, they'll all remember me as "that idiot" the next time they see something of mine.

Next time... well, next time it’s actually Halloween. But it’s also the day before November begins. And for a lot of writers November means NaNoWriMo. So I wanted to toss out a few quick thoughts about that.

Until then, go write.