Article time again.
The next horror article for Alienskin is due.
It was finished, really it was, but the Slimy Swamp Thing ate my homework and now it'll be a little late.
I still have 24 hours...
September 28, 2008
June 06, 2008
Another one bites the neck.
Another issue of AlienSkin is ready for your perusal. Also, the competition for a short story on the horror of the toys is still open until the end of July. Please don't inundate me with entries at the last minute. I prefer them spaced out so I have time to read them properly. If your entry arrives five minutes before closing time, that's how long I'll have to read it. Keep that in mind!
This issue's horror article is about manmade monsters. Sgt. Shelsky has some advice on how to sell yourself, not just your work. No, not like that. Don't be disgusting. This is a family castle, at least it was until the unfortunate incident of which I shall say no more at present.
The drool-inducing but heavily armed Lady Blade talks about the ecology of fantasy worlds. I wonder what she'd make of the ecology of Dume Swamp? I know several bearded and sandaled types have tried to examine our interesting flora and fauna although none appear to have survived the experience. Well, centuries of laboratory waste have produced some interesting, if unfriendly, specimens.
Note the front page news. AlienSkin will be all about Flash and Micro fiction after November so don't go sending longer stories there. The longer fiction section is already closed. Concentrate on the quickies.
You know what makes me smile? Aside from a visitor who enters without needing anaesthesia, that is. A seriously fright-inducing story written in exactly 666 words. Next time I run a competition I think that's what I'll do. I think Red Stan would like such stories although they would have to be printed on asbestos for him. Come to think of it, I haven't seen him in a while. I suppose he's busy going to and fro in the world, and moving up and down in it. He must be thoroughly sick of that by now.
Anyway, no writing tonight. Reading time!
May 15, 2008
It's that time again.
The deadline for the next article approaches so I'm hunting around for something new. Stumpy is no use at all, he's embroiled in politics and has apparently found people to argue with. Keeps him out of my way, at least.
I don't like politicians. Too fatty. Although if you put them on a spit, they spin themselves. That's handy.
Anyway, here are the ideas I'm toying with.
Fortean Times has a story on spates of suicides, and mentions a song called 'Gloomy Sunday' which allegedly causes everyone who hears it to kill themselves. And it's not even sung by Des O'Connor! Perhaps it's just as well. That reminded me of 'The Funniest Joke in the World', a Monty Python sketch in which a joke writer laughs himself to death after writing the best joke ever. The joke is taken up by the military and used as a weapon.
New Scientist has an article on the power of persuasive technique, and details some of them. I could put that together with suicide spates, deadly songs and jokes and come up with the more subtle side of horror. The whispered voice, that insistent but subliminal nagging that drives someone insane. There are several plausible ways to make it contagious.
Years ago, a story of mine, 'Telephone Pest', published by From The Asylum (you have to navigate through 'monthly fiction', scroll down to 'fiction of 2003', and it's in the October list). used something similar. I look back on the writing now and cringe but hey, it was my first year! I didn't think it was my best story of the year but those who read it told me it scared them half to death. Nobody was even bruised in that story.
Psychological horror can be more unsettling than full-on gore. The 'someone's watching you' thoughts, along with a little persuasive method, can be incredibly effective. I think I wrote about this a long time ago, so maybe it's time to visit again.
Or I could talk about the new film 'Doomsday', since it's personal. It's set in Scotland, which has been sealed off to contain a virus. Now that the English are catching it, they want to use the Scots as the source of a cure. The cheek! As if I, for one, would tell anyone about a cure for something.
Then there's an idea I've been batting around about using local superstitions. That isn't new in itself. Stephen King's 'It', and the 'Blair Witch Project' are just two examples of such use. There might be a few new twists left in there, something that's not so local, something of more universal terror.
Maybe if I listened in on Stumpy's conversations I could find tales of terror in the world of politics. The only problem is that most people will say 'Politicians doing terrible things? That's not new.'
Hmm. More thought required. I'll fit another brain and see if that helps. It's no trouble, I've fitted myself with USB ports to save on surgery. Like the 'Plughead' films, but not so cheesey.
Well I have to choose, and choose soon. Otherwise it's going to be zombies again.
December 08, 2007
Knee deep in mucus.
I have been ill, and so has Stumpy. The Professor's last visit left us with a little legacy: a face-dissolving virus. He's ill too. Serves him right.
Stumpy looks as though his brain has melted and run out of his nose. Who'd have thought he could have blown his brains out with only a handkerchief? Lucky for him I have a few spares. They're soaked in formalin, but a quick rinse uder the tap and they'll be fine. Good enough for him anyway. He won't need a working one, just something to stop the wind whistling through his ears.
On a less vile note, the new issue of AlienSkin is online, with new stories and new features.
No more pussyfooting around on the guidelines. You don't read them, you don't get considered. Unless you happen to hit on the right format purely by chance. If you want to take the risk, well, fine, but don't say I didn't warn you. Check out the new features first: one of them is the Hall of Shame, where guideline-ignorers are chained to the wall for two months while demented mutant badgers throw live crabs at them. Not just any old crabs either. These have been specially irritated for this very purpose. We held them down and let whelks taunt them for hours. They're really, really mad. Mad as the badgers.
Do it twice and I'll send Stumpy to sneeze at you. Believe me, you don't want that to happen. He has a very large nose with an impressive capacity for mucus, and he can propel it at considerable speed. I have to give him ten out of ten for splatterability. The castle is getting to be greener than the swamp, and damper too.
So, if you prefer to use your own guidelines rather than those dictated (not 'suggested') by your magazine of choice, don't be surprised if you get bounced. Do it at Alienskin at your peril. We like tormenting people.
But surely, nobody out there would even think about ignoring guidelines when submitting?
While you're in, take a look at the new micro-fiction section, with tales of 150 words exactly. Not as easy as it sounds.
Try. I dare you.
September 29, 2007
The fears of a clown.
I've just finished the latest article for AlienSkin (it's changeover time - new mag comes up in a few days so if you haven't read everything that's up now, time is running out). So I was already in the article vault when I had a request from David de Beer, a fellow devotee of the macabre, to see again one of the old articles. Specifically, the one from the June/July 2007 issue.
I intend to compile these articles one day. Something I've been promising myself I'd do for a long time, but never yet managed to staple my backside to the chair for long enough to do. Perhaps I should skip the staples. They aren't very comfortable. Anyway, I thought of calling it 'Frank Herbert' by Dume. No reason, the title just seems to fit somehow. I'd better check there isn't already a book called that. I've heard it somewhere before, I'm sure.
Without further ado, then, here's the article:
Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry; make ‘em chuckle, make ‘em die.
AlienSkin magazine, June/July issue 2007"I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you cheer up.” Something there from those old stalwarts of comedy, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. But wait, does this mean I have forsworn the Pen of Fear for the Chuckle Pencil? Has Dume gone over the edge, fallen from the abyss of horror into the pothole of merriment?
Not a bit of it. Horror and comedy can mix. It’s not easy, but when it works, it works extremely well. It works the other way, too. Comedians have long recognised that death and pain can be funny. Watch Monty Python if you don’t believe that – the programmes, and especially films like ‘The Meaning of Life’ and ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’. In the former, you’ll laugh at the exploding Mr. Creosote, complete with still-beating heart in burst ribcage. In the latter, you’ll split your sides at the Black Knight, who keeps fighting despite losing limbs, one by one. There’s blood and gore aplenty, and you’ll enjoy every minute of it.
The Pythons use confusion and shocking visual effects to amuse. In horror, we scare people with exactly the same techniques. How can the same scenes produce totally opposite results?
When you start watching ‘Night of the Living Dead’, you expect to see a gruesome, gore-filled horror movie with jump-out-at-you effects. You expect partially decomposed corpses biting people’s brains out. You are not disappointed.
When you start watching ‘Shaun of the Dead’, you are expecting a comedy, and again, you are not disappointed. However, this film uses exactly the same effects, the same wandering dead, the same blood and gore. So what makes one scary, the other funny?
A large part of it is expectation: how the film is presented. Most of it has to do with the main characters, their dialogue, how they react, what actions they take.
In ‘Night of the Living Dead’, the main characters scream and run at the sight of the zombies. In ‘Shaun of the Dead’, Shaun wanders, hungover, along the street and says ‘Good morning’ to the shambling bodies around him. If the characters in Shaun’s film screamed and ran at the first sight of the zombies, it would have been a horror. If the characters in ‘Night’ had tried to escape by pretending to be zombies, it would have been funny.
The effects and techniques used in ‘Young Frankenstein’ were pretty much the same as those used in the original Frankenstein films. Yet ‘Young Frankenstein’ was funny, not scary. Those masters of horror acting, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre came together in a film called ‘The Raven’, which uses their horror talents to the full to make the whole thing hilarious. In the UK, we have ‘The League of Gentlemen’, in which nobody who enters the local shop leaves alive, the veterinarian kills every animal he treats in dreadful ways, the joke shop only sells jokes that maim, and the butcher sells ‘special’ meat under the counter. All of this is comedy. All of it will work equally well as horror.
Horror and comedy can use the same scenes, the same gore and blood, to produce perfectly opposed reactions. This is where you have to be very, very careful.
It’s possible to produce what you think is the greatest, most terrifying story of all time, only to have your audience split their sides laughing at it. Try ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’ for an example.
If this happens, the first thing to check is your dialogue. Horror stories can have jokes in them, but don’t overdo it. In ‘Van Helsing’, the character of Igor has a couple of great comic lines but he doesn’t play it as comedy. Despite raising a few chuckles, he remains a sinister and threatening character. That would have been lost if every line he had was a smart-alec comment, a double entendre or a straight-out joke. When Dracula asks Igor why he torments the captive werewolf, Igor responds with a shrug, “It’s what I do”. It makes you smile for a moment, but you soon realise that tormenting living things is, indeed, what Igor does.
Next, check your action. For horror, your hero has to face apparently impossible situations, yet find a plausible way to escape. Or not. Your villain has to have a reason to do what he does to the hero. Even if you don’t tell the reader what that reason is, you should know. The reader should be able to work it out. In comedy, plausibility is optional.
If your hero escapes by battering the monster with a frying pan he found in the dungeon, or your villain’s reason for killing everybody is that he failed to learn the piano, then you have a comic scene, not a horror scene.
Funny moments in horror provide a little relief from what could otherwise be an intense and disturbing story, but there is a line. It’s a hard line to see, but step over it and you’ve fallen into that abyss that lies between terror and mirth.
Nothing wrong in that, as long as you realise you’ve done it. Horror-comedies are always popular, but silly horror stories aren’t. Unless you can get it into the ranks of the ‘classically bad’. To do that, you first have to sell it, and selling something that falls into neither horror nor comedy will be very difficult indeed.
Read through your work, get someone else to read it, and listen to their reactions. If they laugh, don’t just abandon the work. The darker side of comedy is a wonderful place, almost as wonderful as the true horror world. Just don’t fall into the gap that lies between them.
February 18, 2007
Deep thinking
I took a walk today, since the weather was good. The rain was warm for the time of year, and only mildly acidic, and the wind had only reached gale force four.
On the track that leads to the village, the weekly bus rattled past me. I stopped and stood well back since this bus has been known to shed a rusty panel or two on the rare occasions where it accelerates above walking pace.
Form one of the windows, a girl waved and smiled. I waved and smiled back: a magnanimous gesture on my part since I have no idea who she was. The incident preyed on my mind for the rest of my walk. It was only later, when I tried to describe the girl to Stumpy, that I realised something important.
Women and men observe in radically different ways.
My description of this girl amounted to 'Well, she was blonde, and...um...she had a face.' That was the extent of it, even though I can still form a clear picture of her in my head. A blonde girl with a face. A woman's description of the same incident would have included 'honey/platinum/strawberry' or some other additional information in front of the 'blonde'. These are meaningless adjectives to men. Blonde is blonde. We don't differentiate.
Consider a crime committed by a man wearing a football shirt. On giving a description to police, a man might say 'It was a Manchester United shirt, but the 2005 version, not the 2007 version' (don't worry, it means nothing to me either). A woman would say 'He had a red top'.
Consider a speeding car. A woman might say 'It was a blue car and it was going too fast'. A man would give the make, model, year of manufacture, registration, an estimate of its speed, the exact code for the colour of the paint and the engine block number. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. Not all men can do all of that, in fact I only know of two.
This is why men think women are stupid. Conversely, women are equally convinced that men are stupid for very similar reasons.
Suppose a man and a woman enter a tea-room, have a cup of tea, then leave, and are then asked to describe the room.
The man will say ' Oh... tables, cup of tea, that sort of thing'. The woman will have memorised the shade of paint on the walls, what the tables were made of, how clean they were, how the waitress was dressed, whether she seemed in a good or a bad mood, and many other things I, as a man, can only guess at.
If these same two are passed in the street by a scantily-clad nymphet, the man's eyes will be riveted to her throughout her approach. He will probably find an excuse to turn around after she's passed. The woman will spare her only a glance.
The man's description: 'Long black hair, slim, big chest, long legs." Ask him what she was wearing. "Uh.. a short skirt." What colour was it? He has no idea, yet he has stared at her for several minutes. He's not seeing those clothes, in fact he's deliberately, if unconsciously, trying not to see them. He's trying to see through them.
Ask the woman for a description. In one short glance she has assessed the nymphet's clothes, their colours, whether they match, whether they are in fashion, the style and make of her shoes, whether she's too old/young to wear such an outfit. The woman can tell you the cost of each individual garment and where to buy them. She will critique the nymphet's makeup and hair, and usually end with some descriptive term such as tart, bimbo, floozy or slut. With, of course, the inevitable curl of the lip. This contemptuous sneer is a mystery to men since women who fit those descriptions are much sought after.
So there is a massive difference in what a woman will notice in any situation, and what a man will notice in the same situation. Dust, for example, is invisible to male sight but is evidently luminous when seen through a woman's eyes.
What's the point of all this? Well, it's important information for any writer, especially when writing from the alternative gender's point of view.
No man will notice what another man is wearing unless it's something bizarre, like a dress or a banana suit. The dress will definitely get noticed, the banana suit might. If you write from a male POV, then having the character notice a loose thread on someone's clothing is completely unrealistic (unless it's interfering with his view of a cleavage). He might not notice if his friend grows a beard, but he will notice immediately if that same friend adds a new spotlight to his car.
Women notice things invisible to men. It's perfectly reasonable, from a female POV, to give a detailed description of a room. If it's dusty, female characters notice. Male ones don't unless it's really bad.
Don't forget your readers when using combinations of descriptions through male or female POV's. A male reader, reading a female character who thinks 'the room is dusty' pictures a thin film of dust that really doesn't need to be cleaned up yet. If he reads a male character thinking the same thing, he imagines that the dust is probably at that stage where something should be done.
A female reader in the same situation will, on hearing the female POV on dust, think of a visible layer of dust. On reading the male character comment on the dust, she'll imagine it must be up to his knees. Men and women are aware of each other's limitations, though rarely of their own. Consider, when writing male and female POV's, how those will translate in the male or female reader's head.
I'll have to think on this further, but I sense the basis of an article forming here.
February 13, 2007
Proddings of the Muse.
If you've found your way here, you probably already know I write horror articles for AlienSkin magazine.
Now that my new assistant, Stumpy, is taking care of some of the day-to-day running of the place, I find I have more time to myself. I've been wondering about compiling some of those articles into a little book.
I know some of the earlier ones will need work. I know some of them can be combined because they repeat themes. Still, I think there might be enough--and every two months, there's another one to add to the pile.
The muse has stirred from his usual miserable torpor to give the idea the nod, but I wondered if anyone out there would be interested, if I were to compile such a book.
It wouldn't be your standard 'write this way' book, but would follow the style of current articles, with perhaps a few diary entries thrown in to break it up.
Opinions, anyone?
January 05, 2007
The secret life of Dume
Sometimes I write, normally under the guise of fiction. Mostly I use a pen name - K. Hillman - but once in a while I use my own name.
The articles for Alienskin magazine are currently the only ones that carry my real name. All others are under my pseudonym.
I think I'll keep it that way. I don't want to be perpetually bothered by psychoanalysts looking for business.