Horror Challenge Responses

Remember that horror challenge, I issued? The one where you use tone to take something mundane and make it eerie or terrifying?

Well, I had a taker.

Here's a response to that challenge, by reader Alana:

The hairbrush's bristles seems a welcoming sea of tentacles, all touched with a globule that proclaims that it cannot possibly cause any harm. Yes, someone has decided to engineer a handle that keeps your hand away from actually being near these things, but, of course, that is merely for convenience, right? The tentacle cluster is so kind, cleaning up the dead cells and hairs of your head so that your unshorn places can be silky and smooth to the touch. It doesn't even consume those negligible parts of you like some living creature might, it merely collects that dead matter on the outside of the tentacle's body as a trophy of its hard work done. And it most definitely deserves that bushy gray trophy. Do not take that dead gunk away from them, it's rightfully theirs. You won't make them give it up by drowning them in the faucet, that will make them all the more determined to keep it. You'd have to attack and steal from each tentacle individually and we all know that you're too impatient for that--we know everything about what goes on in that head of yours.

Anyway, you'd do well to continue your daily hair routine where you move these splendid tentacles across your scalp and into your blind spot where you cannot see what they are doing. And if you hear a crunch of something, that is the brush doing its job. You'd like it if the brush continued to do its job, wouldn't you?

This was great. I got chills at the end, so nice blend of tone to scare, as well as subtle, horrifying details. A hairbrush as a monster. Great!

I wouldn't extend a challenge and not take part. So, here's my offering:

Look in this box.  Theobroma, the food of the gods. The chocolates gleam like polished wood, nestled in the tissue paper red as a beating heart. Care to taste one? Let me show you how.

First you caress the chocolate, admire its gleaming skin. Then, waft it beneath your nose. Smell its alluring aroma, calling for you to sample. How can you not, when such seduction whispers to you, melting in your sweating hands, baring its tender neck for your kiss? Then snap that neck: the best chocolate cracks like a bone. That’s how you recognize its quality.

Then, and only then, you can taste. Feel the warmth as the chocolate liquefies on your tongue, rich and thick, like milk, but deep and sweetly bitter, like blood. Inhale and exhale, tasting with nose, tongue, and body, searching for those secret notes, the plum and wine and leather, hidden in the darkness.

Do you know how those secret notes enter the lush, dark music of the chocolate? Do you know how the cacao tree, drinking water greedily, also takes with that water the flavors of the earth? The soil, the stems, the rotting fruit and putrefying leaves. Then what must happen to the birds and animals blessed, or cursed, enough to die above the cacao’s roots?

Imagine the blood, nourishing the hungry tree, as feasts of blood once satisfied the Aztec gods. Imagine the life, and the death, the fear and the desire, carried with heart’s blood to where a tree bearing the food of the gods gives it new life. Imagine a man, cruel and greedy, a man whose abuse and hunger grew along with his enemies until they struck him down, beneath this very tree. Imagine his hatred draining with his blood, his greed seeping deep into the ground.

If you pay attention, you can taste it, among the plum and wine. Amazing, isn’t it, to think of what part of chocolate survives the rot, and the purging flames of the oven, to hide behind sweetness. The many flavors, souls of the dead, with every delectable bite you take. Snap them in half, rip them apart with your sharp teeth, taste their heartbeats as they melt down your throat. 

The box is empty now, but you are still hungry for that flavor. See around you, the waters of life, selfishly hoarded in the pods that surround you on the street. Smell the life and desire pulsing red, driven by hearts as warm as yours used to be. Inhale, exhale. Taste fear and death as you drink. Be satisfied.

This is the take-off from the comment I made to my student that even a box of chocolates can become horrible. Next thing I knew, I was thinking about vampires. This is still in its roughest forms; I may build a whole story on this.

Feel free to send me your own writing or challenges! I'd love to see them.

Villain Vs. Antagonist: What's the Difference?

One of the great things about being a writing teacher and a writer is that sometimes what I teach in class lines up well with what I'm thinking about during my writing, and this is one of those times.

This week, I talked to my students about writing fiction and we talked about antagonists and villains. At first, things went smoothly. I discussed what a protagonist is ("one who strives") and how your protagonist needs to want something for the story to progress. So far so good.

Then I started talking about antagonists, and how they strive against the protagonist, making it difficult for the protagonist to get what the want.

That's when the confusion began. My students asked if a villain was the same as an antagonist, and the lesson began.

An villain is a kind of antagonist, but an antagonist is not inherently a villain. An antagonist works against the protagonist, sure, but that doesn't make them a villain any more than it makes the protagonist a hero.

I looked up a bunch of definitions of "villain," and I found that although now and then I see something along the lines of "someone who works against the hero," which seems similar to the definition of an antagonist, most of them detail that a villain is someone who does things that are morally, ethically, and legally wrong in opposing the hero.

A villain is evil. A villain is bad. We, as readers, are not supposed to think that the villain is doing good things. They are actively working against the hero with malicious intent or they will do heinous things to further their ends.

One thing my students questioned was if a villain was a villain if we, as the readers, sympathize with them or if we understand where they're coming from.

No.

Even if we do understand, even if we do sympathize, the villain is still hurting people/breaking laws/actively seeking to harm the hero and as a result, they're still the villain.

Loki is a villain, at least in the first few movies he's in. Yes, we know why he's tormented. We sympathize. But he also killed 80 people in 2 days and he's actively working to harm the heroes and all they care about. Therefore, villain.

 

In Hamlet, Claudius feels remorse for his act of killing the king and prays about it. But he still killed the king, and he still plans to kill Hamlet, and he won't give up the things he got from his act of evil. Therefore, villain.

An antagonist, on the other hand, only needs to be working against the protagonist. This only means that they present some kind of obstacle. If Stacy wants the lead in the school play, and Mary wants it too, Mary is an antagonist because she is striving against Stacy. Mary might be an actual saint who likes Stacy quite a bit and would never harm her, but if she's presenting an obstacle to Stacy getting what she wants, she's an antagonist.

Take Elsa, in Frozen. Elsa does not want to hurt anyone, and is not an evil person. But since she's working against Anna's goal of bringing her sister home, by staying away, she's an antagonist in the film.

I also like the example of Javert from Les Miserables. He's not a bad guy; in fact, one may say he's a good guy given his role as a police inspector and keeper of the peace. He just wants justice, which is not bad. But since Valjean is the protagonist, and Javert is working against Valjean, he's the antagonist.

(Using the David Oyelowo Javert because this miniseries is great.)

So what does this mean for us as writers? Well, it means that not all antagonists need to be villains. Your hero doesn't need to strive against someone evil, someone who kicks puppies for fun and kills his lesser minions. Villains are great, sympathetic and otherwise, but you can draw plenty of drama from antagonists who aren't evil, but whose goals and desires conflict with the protagonist. It can be done---the movie Finding Nemo is an example of a kid's movie without a villain, but with plenty of antagonists.

Lastly, can someone please tell me whether this guy is a villain or a more simple antagonist?

Because I know what I think, but the debate has been going back and forth all week.

Writer's Challenge: Horror

This week I have a challenge for you writers.

Horror.

Sure, it comes a little late for Halloween, but it's still November. The winter is coming, and the nights are getting longer. Sounds like the perfect time for some scary stories.

I've been thinking about horror stories, and there are some characteristics that seem to unite horror stories. They often, but not always, link to the fear of death or physical harm. They often create fears out of the Other, Uncanny, and Self. But what I have really been thinking about is how atmosphere and treatment is what causes the feeling of fear, not the subject itself.

For example, a big nasty monster is horror material. Until you can kill it by shooting it in the face. Then it's adventure or even humor. A skeleton is horror material until it dances. Or maybe it gets scarier that way.

Horror, like comedy, is about treatment of the subject and atmosphere. That's one reason I think Doctor Who is so good at making harmless things seem scary; they nail that atmosphere and treatment.

A child asking for his mummy becomes UNCANNY and disturbing. A room full of cubes is threatening. They take the mundane and link it to death and disappearance, and they present threat with it, and suddenly we have horror.

I was teaching this to a student and said that, given the right treatment, you can turn a character opening a perfectly normal box of chocolates into something to fear and dread. I took the challenge myself, and I'm currently writing a short story about some pretty terrifying chocolates.

Hence, the challenge for you: take something ordinary and just not scary. But look at how you treat the subject, how you treat the atmosphere and how you add threat until the subject becomes scary.

This is a focus on language and style as well as an exploration of when something goes from ordinary to scary. In Christine by Stephen King, I'd argue that the car becomes scary when it gets malicious intent and the apparent inability to die.

So, challenge up! If you do it, I'd love to see what you write! Feel free to post in the comments. I'll post what I have as soon as I'm finished with it.