Posts Tagged ‘ideas’

My First Short Story of 2014

Posted: January 13, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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A model of the limo I used in the story, except it had cow horns mounted on the front and flames painted on the side.

I just finished my first short story of the new year. And for plenty of reasons, it reminds me of a Stephen King story. I’m hoping that an editor will think the same thing if they read it.

The short story is called The Loneliest Roads and it’s about a hitchhiking young woman who gets picked up by a stretch limo (hence the photo). Once she gets inside, she finds herself in for a whole new world of terror. And it’s a different short story than anything I’ve ever written before. Firstly, it’s after I finished the first draft of Video Rage, which I’ve mentioned in previous posts as being a time where I really grew as a writer. I also utilized new techniques I picked up during the past semester. One was to try to ramp up the terror gradually rather than have my protagonist be immediately confronted with pure evil. I started by trying to make things seem only a little unreal at the beginning, and then making that feeling of unreality grow slightly as the story went on, until it was time to make the terror more than just subtle.

I also tried to delve into the psychological factor of my protagonist, whose name is Miracle Jones (yes, I seriously named my character Miracle Jones). I wanted to make her more than just a flat character, and I did that by delving into her past, focusing on her psychology. I thought the way I revealed her character was actually kind of creepy. Then again, I tend to think everything I write is creepy. Whether it is or not depends on your opinion.

Anyway, I’ve a pretty good idea of what I’m going to do with this short story. I’d like to get around to editing it in a few weeks or so, and maybe sending it off to a friend for a critique. I have a second ending for the story that takes a less positive turn than the one I wrote out tonight, so if I or my friend feels that the ending could be different, I’ll go with my second ending. And after all the editing has been done, I hope to submit The Loneliest Roads to a few magazines, see if any pick it up. I would be very happy if they did. And if they don’t…who knows? It could go into a future collection of short stories or on Wattpad, or both. Future’s open.

For now though, I think I’ll try to catch some sleep. Tomorrow if I can I’ll start on an article for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, and after that I’ll start on another short story. It’s going to be very exciting this semester for me. Goodnight, Followers of Fear.

Hypnosis vs. Meditation

Posted: January 12, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections
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Some of you know I go to a weekly meditation class on Sundays. Today at the class we had an interesting discussion about the differences between meditation and hypnosis. The discussion started while going over some of the aspects of a particular chakra. One suggestion for clearing this chakra of impurities or of other problems is to abstain from activities such as hypnosis. Because I use hypnosis a lot in my life as well as meditation and because I know how to perform hypnosis, I had to ask why one should avoid it, especially since hypnosis and meditation are very similar and have similar aims when performed (unless you’re a stage hypnotist, in which case your goal may just be to do some interesting trick).

Ultimately, the problem comes down to relying on yourself vs. relying on others. The form of meditation I do, called Sahaja Yoga, has a great emphasis on practitioners being able to do Sahaja Yoga on their own and become their own guru in order to find the answers they are looking for or to resolve the problems they are experiencing. Hypnosis, on the other hand, relies heavily on the hypnotist to help a subject, and because hypnosis is largely dependent on the hypnotist’s suggestions, there is an opportunity for abuse on the part of the hypnotist to hurt the subject or cause them to do harm onto others. For this reason, some Sahaja Yogis are very against hypnosis.

As someone who has positive associations for both practices, I saw it as almost like the science vs. religion debate: while they may seem at odds, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t work together. For example, many people are able to believe in both the Genesis story and the theory of evolution, and that’s just one example of how people have learned to reconcile religion to scientific beliefs or theories that seem to contradict each other. Also, both disciplines can be abused by those who are trained in them: a preacher could abuse his followers’ trust in him to scam them or hurt them, while some scientists used to use pseudo-science to justify racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic beliefs (a few still do, sadly).

Hypnosis and meditation can also be like this. While some may see the two as distinctly different and that they can’t work together, others see them as very similar and that they can work together. Many researchers have found that the hypnotic state is very similar to the state of consciousness achieved during meditation, and that they can both have positive effects on the physical, mental, and emotional self. For a personal example, last semester there were a couple of weeks where I was under intense stress and was constantly worried about finishing projects and homework, my finances, and other problems. It took a very powerful combination of meditation and hypnosis to be able to get back to my normal self and handle my schoolwork without having a breakdown of any sort.

Not only that, but both hypnosis and meditation can potentially be abused by those who practice it. A hypnotist may use a client’s suggestibility to cause harm to the client or to themselves, but someone who knows some meditation can easily create their own brand of meditation and charge through the roof for lessons or even start a cult based around them and their meditation brand (when I pointed this out to my class, my first thought was, “Hey, that could make a great short story”. Believe me, I will make it into one).

Whatever you feel about hypnosis and/or meditation, it’s important to keep in mind that both aim to help people, that they are very similar in several ways, and that there are people who will swear by one, the other, or both that they are helpful disciplines. I feel that my life is enhanced by both, and I’m glad to be able to know how to do both.

If you are interested in trying either in order to better understand the issue, I’ve embedded two videos below. The first features Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, the founder of Sahaja Yoga, giving an introductory session in Sahaja Yoga to an audience in Sydney, Australia. The second video is a basic hypnotic relaxation video that gives you an idea of what a hypnotic state is like and what one can accomplish in it. All you have to do for either video is follow the instructions given (preferably while wearing headphones for best quality), and you’ll get a sense of what each is like.


What do you think of hypnosis and/or meditation? Do you think they’re incompatible or compatible? Or do you just think the whole discussion is silly?

100 Ideas!!!

Posted: January 6, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, short story, Writing
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I’ve mentioned this before on my blog, but I keep a list of ideas for novels/comic books/films/TV shows/etc. on my flash drive. And over the past semester, that list grew pretty damn lengthy. In fact, I had more ideas than I did in any other semester. And tonight, I got my one-hundredth idea for the list! And having just typed that, I wonder how I will ever find the time to write all of those stories. I probably won’t, but it’ll be fun to try.

Anyway, the idea for number one-hundred came to me quite by accident (apparently that’s how all the best ideas come). I’ve previously announced that before I get back to working on Laura Horn, I wanted to do some short stories. And before I decided to do those short stories, I decided to take one last look at one short story, maybe see if I could spruce it up a little and possibly publish it on WattPad (I’ve published one or two things on there since I got an account on that website. More on that to follow in a future post). The story in question, Resurrection, is about a man who is brought back to life through advances in science, but something goes terribly wrong and his resurrection isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. That story has gone through several different drafts and incarnations, and I thought I’d give the latest incarnation a look over to see if I could make it better. When I looked over it though, something occurred to me midway through the short story. There’s this one scene when my main character encounters a religious leader who is more than a little upset about this resurrection. I was going to have my protagonist call him an old fart, but with the years he’s been dead, the protagonist is over ninety years old. He should be calling the preacher a stupid kid.

And that’s when it hit me. A short story was too short to tell this story. It had to be expanded, to go into a novella or even a full novel! Resurrection had to be resurrected in a new form.

God, that was a bad play on words.

But that’s beside the point. Here is the point: the last time I trotted out Resurrection and sent it to a friend, he told me that it was an interesting concept and that it could be expanded into a novel or into a film. Oh, that sounded nice. The thing is, I couldn’t figure out how to expand it into a novel, and I didn’t have the time to write a screenplay. And even if I did have the time, I wouldn’t know how to go about getting a screenplay sold (though I might try in the future, when I have the time). But at that single thought on how the main character should think about the preacher, I had an idea on how to expand the story into a novel. I stopped looking through the short story, went to my Ideas list, and recorded Idea #100.

My idea is alive! ALIVE!

I don’t know when I’ll be able to write the novel version of Resurrection, mostly because I have a few other projects that take priorities that take place before it. However, I’m sure it won’t be too long before I get around to it. I like the idea, and I don’t want to be working on this story on and off for several years. I don’t want to do that at all. I really want to write this story eventually and do it sooner rather than later. For now though working on it just won’t be possible, so instead I’ll just leave a few hints as to what we can expect from this future novel:

–some of the themes will include aging, adjusting to a changed and changing world, and death and dying.

–the technology aspect will make Reborn City jealous (then again, the point of RC was never the technology, but whatever).

–the resurrection, though scientific in nature, won’t be plagued by problems of the scientific realm.

–and finally, I may release each finished chapter of this novel, once the book has been heavily edited, on WattPad or on my blog. One of them.

I also hope someday to get to many of the ideas I’ve written on that list. A lot of them I feel are really great ideas, and I would love to write and share them with the world. So the hope is that I can get a good number of them written over the coming years, and that as each novel (or in the future, if God is willing, each film or manga or TV series) is released, there will be someone willing to check it out and read it, maybe even a lot of someones. I think that’s why I keep writing, even if I haven’t exactly been super-successful yet. It’s because I know that each story could potentially make someone happy, and I’m still writing fot hose people. Hopefully we’ll find each other someday and they’ll enjoy what I’ve written for them.

That’s all for now. I’m going to take a break and then get started on an original short story. I’ve got close to seventy ideas for short stories as well, so I need to get some of them out of the way. Good night, Followers of Fear.

Video Rage: The First Draft Is Finished

Posted: January 5, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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I’m proud to say that the first draft of Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City, is finally finished! And it took exactly six months to write. I’m not kidding, I started it on July 5th, 2013 and finished it today on January 5th, 2014. Crazy coincidence, huh?

Writing the last three chapters of VR were at times difficult but all the time extremely fun. I just felt the story flowing out, even when I made changes to how the scene played out in my head to how it played out on paper at the very second I was writing the story. And a whole lot happened in those last three chapters: the final conflict of the novel was resolved and I was able to set up for the third and final book of the trilogy (more to come on that later in the post). I’m actually very satisfied with how this novel turned out. I started it with the goal of making a kick-ass story where the characters didn’t lose their depth and weren’t reduced to one-dimensional cut-outs like Katniss Everdeen in Catching Fire. Although I may be biased against my own novel, I believe I did a very good job. Most of the characters grew in their own ways, and some had pretty exciting and at times tragic twists happen to them. I think anyone who reads this novel will be satisfied with it (God-willing).

And now for the page and word counts (and by page, I mean 8.5″ by 11″ MS Word paper pages). In my last post about my progress with Video Rage, the page count was 197 pages and the word count was 54,703 words as of Chapter 24. With the addition of Chapters 25-37 (the last chapter being called “Epilogue” actually, but whatever), the page count is 299 pages and the word count is 83,935 words! That’s a pretty decent-sized novel, around the size of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone actually. Of course the editing phase may either trim it down or expand it a little, depending on how I go about editing each and every chapter and what I do in those chapters.

So now that I’ve finished this monumental task, what are my plans? For now I’ll make sure to back up VR and other important documents so that I don’t lose them. Then I’ll only write for homework and for scholarship for a little while. After that period though I’ll work on several short stories and after I’ve done enough of those, I’ll get back to work on Laura Horn and finish that up as well. And as the final draft of Snake comes together, I’ll work on that too and get it ready for whenever it’ll be published. And when it’s time, I’ll start going over VR and editing it as well. Perhaps within a year or two it’ll be available as well.

And as for the third and final book of the series, I won’t write that any time soon. I need some time to work on other books and other projects so that I can return to the world of the West Reborn Hydras with fresh eyes and ready to finish their story. I also need time to figure out how the story will end. I know what my final scenes are probably going to look like, and I know who the main antagonist will be and how he’s going to be a pain in the ass for the Hydras, but I haven’t settled on anything yet. When the time comes though, I’ll let you know. And hopefully by then the Hydras will have a bigger fan base than just my sister, my stepmother, and a few good friends of mine. That would definitely be nice.

For now though, I’ve got files to back up and a dinner to cook before the new semester starts tomorrow. Wish me luck, my Followers of Fear.

Spring Semester 2014: Pre-Semester Countdown

Posted: January 4, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Writing
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I’ve done the last of my pre-semester shopping, so it’s time to write a post about what’s going to be happening to me this semester at Ohio State University. My college life and my writing have often been intertwined since I got to school here. When my grades are good and life’s going my way, my writing has done well. When life’s tough and I’m not doing so well grade-wise, my writing has suffered (or worse, my writing hasn’t even happened because I just don’t have the time or energy to write! That happened last semester). Which is probably why I write these posts at the beginning, middle, and end of each semester, because both are so essential to each other as I try to become the writer I’ve always dreamed of being.

In terms of classes, all but one of them are devoted to the study abroad trip I’m going on this summer. The study abroad trip visits England, France, and Germany, and we’ll be intensively studying World War II. With that in mind, many of my classes are focused exclusively preparing for the trip. I already took a general World War II class and a History of the Holocaust class in past semesters, so the number of classes I have to take have been pared down. Still, there are a few I still need to take: one is a special History research seminar, in which we’ll be covering various WWII-related topics and then do research projects around that (I’m assuming). Another History class is devoted to the rise of America as a world superpower from 1921 to 1963 and hinging around the US’s involvement in WWII (I guess a semester of prep for studying World War II abroad just wouldn’t be complete without one course that’s America-centric in nature). The other two classes are French classes: one is a course on French-American relations throughout the years. I’m pretty sure this’ll involve everything from the various wars the US and France have both been involved in since the French and Indian War as well as such silly topics as “freedom fries” (the latter is actually in the title of the class, if I remember right). The second course is a course in learning everyday French and learning how to say “Thank you for your help”, “Where is the bathroom?”, and “I would like a Belgian waffle. Oh your wife is Belgian? Cool! Tell her I love the waffles and chocolates!”

 

The beach of Normandy. We’ll be studying D-Day this semester and visiting the beach during the trip. Can’t wait!

 

In addition to the French class, I ordered some software off Amazon last night that’ll teach me to speak German. Not only will this be relevant to the trip, but it might be relevant for a future story and it doesn’t hurt to be able to speak Hebrew, French and German when I apply for jobs in the future. I’m actually looking forward to learning the language, and the software I got received some very good reviews on Amazon, so I hope I’ll really be able to utilize it. I also plan to apply for several scholarships and get the funds I need to travel abroad. I hope I can get a ton of scholarship money! Otherwise it might be difficult to go on the trip!

The only class I’m taking this semester that isn’t related to my study abroad trip is an English course for my English major. Specifically, it’s an English 4597 course, which is one of those courses all English majors are required to take at some point late in their college careers. Fortunately they offer several different varieties of this class, so I ways able to choose one that worked with my other classes and sounded interesting: Deaf Literature and Deaf Culture (when I tell people I’m taking this course, they ask me if I mean “deaf” or “death”. Considering that it’s me they’re asking, it’s a relevant question). It looks pretty interesting, and we have some very interesting books, including a children’s book that intertwines illustrations with prose into two different narratives. Not your average children’s story, to say the least.

I’m also working about ten to twelve hours a week at the Financial Aid office this semester, just like I did last semester. With busy season over, the office should quiet down a little. Still, there’s a literal mountain of work to get done, and I’ll be working through some of that mountain every time I step into the office. I don’t mind though: the work usually isn’t too bad, the people are great, and I’ve come up with some great ideas for short stories and novels while restocking the copy paper or sifting through some recently-scanned documents (so if you think a job will sap you of your creativity as you try to create the ultimate story/painting/poem/etc., here’s an example to the contrary).

And finally, I just want to fill everyone in on my social plans and my writing goals for this semester. I hope to be able to hang out with my friends a bit this semester, just like I did last semester, but I also want to socialize more and do new things. Last semester I joined the science fiction club on campus, but I was so busy I was only able to come to two meetings. I hope to attend more often this semester. I also would like to go to events in and around campus and meet new people. And who knows? I may even try to start a relationship of the romantic nature this semester. Don’t know if that’s possible or if I’ll have time for that, but I can try.

So looking forward to finally getting Snake done and published. I hope plenty of people read it.

And as for my writing, I plan to finish Video Rage‘s first draft either this weekend or in the coming week. I’m almost done with one of the chapters and after that there’s only two more to go. I already have the ending planned out, I just need to get there. And after I finish VR, I’ll take a short break from writing before getting to work on several short stories. Over the past semester I’ve come up with over sixty ideas for short stories, but I’ve been so busy with school, work and VR I haven’t had the time to write any of them, so I want to get some of them out of the way this semester. And after I’ve written enough short stories that I’m satisfied and submitted a few of them to magazines and other publications, I’ll take another break before I get back to work on my other WIP Laura Horn, which I hope to finish up before the fall when I start a new novel for my senior thesis.

I also have plans to edit VR when the time comes, start the basis of a new collection of short stories, write several articles to Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, and of course to finish the final draft of Snake and get it ready for publication. My friend Angela Misri is almost done giving me feedback on the book, and after she’s done I’ll interview her about her work, including the publication of her novel Jewel of the Thames, which is coming out sometime this spring. It’s going to be a great semester!

Now though, I have to go on a short shopping trip and then make dinner for myself. Afterwards I plan to do some last-minute preparations for the new semester before retiring for the evening. So with this, I wish you a good night and I’ll see you tomorrow, my Followers of Fear. Wish me luck in the new semester as I take on the world, prepare for my trip, and try to fulfill all my dreams. It’s going to be hard work, but I’m so ready to take up the challenge.

See you in eight weeks when I let you know how I’m doing.

Is This Me Or Someone I’d Like To Be Someday?

Posted: December 31, 2013 in Living and Life, Novel, Reflections, Writing
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My roommate got me into watching Chuck on his Netflix, so I didn’t get as much writing done in the past few days as I would’ve liked. So I’m going to take this opportunity to discuss something I’ve noticed lately before the clock strikes twelve and a new year begins.

Sometimes I look at the rough draft of Video Rage I have in front of me. I look over what I’ve written, I nod at the points that I think are good, I edit something when I see that I’ve made an error or a mistake. And then I ask myself, “Did I really write this? It seems so much better than my work has been in the past.” And that’s not me praising my own work (though I’m happy to do that most days of the week). It’s me wondering who’s actually writing this story.

Let me try to explain this without sounding like I’m trying to toot my own horn. The other day I was writing a scene for Video Rage where a very important world leader points out several flaws in the story the antagonists over at the Parthenon Company have been telling about the West Reborn Hydras. I’m looking over the chapter and I think to myself, “Are you sure you wrote this, Rami? It’s a lot better than  scenes you’ve written before, it reads like a sci-fi version of a scene from Scandal, and it’s almost good enough to be of that quality.” And looking over the entire novel so far, I’m noting a quality in the writing that puts it a level above its predecessor Reborn City. I especially notice these differences in portions where I expand upon the world of RC, in scenes dealing with the interpersonal relationships between the characters, and in those moments when I add items or elements on the spur of the moment that vastly change how I see the scene playing out.

And it’s not just in VR. Two nights ago I had an idea for a short story. I’m writing the idea down so I don’t forget it, and I’m noting how I’d like to write it, how I’m going to be drawing on elements or techniques I noticed in some of the short stories I read this past semester, how the man focus of the short story is going to focus on the inadequacy of the male lead. And as I finish writing the idea down, it hits me that the idea is a lot simpler but also a lot better a short story than anything I’ve ever written before.

I’ve always written short stories like novels, except I’ve got to figure out how to tell the story in less than 10,000 words, so it better be a brief story. Not the best method for writing short stories, is it? In fact, I’ve realized that for ages, but I didn’t know any other way to write them, so I’ve been writing them that way for years. The way this short story goes is very different though. If I had to describe it, it’d be taking an idea, telling a simple story based on it, and centering the focus on the reactions of one character to events around him, drawing on the numerous short stories I read this past semester and the techniques that those authors used to tell those stories.

Trying to explain it here, I know I’m not doing the best job of it. But that’s the closest I can come to. And I know that if I can figure out how to write this short story and others like it, I might be able to step my game up a little and become a much better writer.

And as I write this, I wonder if I’m getting closer to the writer I want to be. One who is able to tell a deep, meaningful story, one which draws the reader in, holds them in terror and in awe, makes them feel for the characters a deep attachment, and causes them to think about the story long after they’ve finished reading it. I’m still a long way from that author I’d like to be, but I’d like to believe that I’m making some headway to that goal based on the maturation  I’ve observed in my writing.

Well, I guess editors and reviewers to come will tell me so if I’ve made any headway to that goal. In the meantime, I’ve got three chapters of Video Rage left, and I’m going to try to finish them before school starts up on Monday. Wish me luck.

Oh, and before I forget, I want to wish all you Followers of Fear a Happy New Year. Your continued support makes it possible for me to keep writing, blogging, and publishing, and it’s your continued support that makes it a bit easier for me as I work to achieve my dreams and become a successful horror author. I wish you all a great year in 2014 and I hope everything goes your way with all your goals and projects.

See you next year!

Turning Away From Franchises

Posted: December 30, 2013 in Living and Life, Novel, Reflections, Writing
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I was just informed that JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books (as if I need to elaborate on who she is, but whatever) is writing a screenplay for a spin-off movie of the Harry Potter series based on the fictional Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, with the possibility of many sequels. Not only that, but she’s okayed a play to premiere in London’s West End that will explore Harry’s early days with the Dursleys. This, plus the amount of involvement Rowling has in the development of the website Pottermore and various other projects and books related to the Potterverse, points to one thing: Rowling, who wanted to get away from Harry Potter, has come back to him to turn him into an even bigger franchise than he is now.

Now here’s my question: why? Is it because the lackluster response to The Casual Vacancy and the early reveal that Rowling was the real author behind The Cuckoo’s Calling called attention back to the boy wizard who’s name is synonymous with Rowling’s? Did she make a bad bet in stocks and she needs the money? Does she actually want to revisit this magical world (it’s a great world, don’t get me wrong, but I got the sense at some point that she wanted to move on with her career)? Or, God forbid, is she actually selling out for the money?

I guess I’m a little peeved about all this. I love Harry Potter. JK Rowling was the one who got me into writing stories in the first place, HP left an indelible mark on my writing style, I’m a proud member of Slytherin (according to the Pottermore sorting quiz for houses), and I geeked out as much as anyone when the last book and films came out. But perhaps what’s really getting me is that Rowling’s turning her beloved franchise into one of the mega-franchises we keep seeing cropping up all over the place today.

This is something along the lines of what some franchises are going for. I say TOO MUCH!

Everywhere you look, Hollywood producers are looking to make the next mega-franchise, the next Star Trek/Star Wars/Doctor Who/Avengers, something with a main body of work that’s accompanied by tons of additional work of varying canonical status but brings in a ton of money no matter what. Once Upon a Time has its own accompanying novel and a spin-off TV show, The Avengers has a TV show to go with it now, Terminator is doing a reboot/prequel/sequel film with a TV series to go with it, and now Harry Potter has jumped on the bandwagon! As if 8 films, several video games and board games, memorabilia and a theme park, almost all of which came into being because of the films and not the original books, weren’t enough! Now Rowling’s got to go and add in all this prequel and spin-off stuff.

Look, I’m not saying franchises are bad, and I’m definitely not saying we should do away with mega-franchises. I’m a total Sith Lord and Whovian, among other things. But some works are just fine without having a million different products that make up the Expanded Universe and a million more products in merchandising! The seven HP novels and the supplemental books that JK Rowling wrote for charity purposes were wonderful. Isn’t it enough just to have those and all the crap that came with and after the movies? Why do we need all this supplemental stuff that will give us an initial thrill but in the end won’t really add to the Pottermania experience?

If Reborn City or any of my other works were to get famous (and I try to have faith in that, especially with RC. After all, it’s a dystopian science fiction novel with heavy YA themes. I hear that’s popular these days), I would be choosy as to how I continue these stories, especially in other formats. Snake and Laura Horn both have sequels planned for them, while RC is the first in a trilogy. Several other ideas I have for stories have the potential to become franchises. Will I make them into that though? Probably not; sure, some of my stories like RC have the potential to have their worlds explored in other stories and formats. Doesn’t mean I’m going to do that, or let someone else do that. Sometimes it’s just best to leave a story as it is, and not constantly expand upon it, especially if it’s with the intent of making a huge profit.

Yeah, don't expect an expanded universe with 12 different trilogies, a Silmarillion, and a spin-off book series, TV show, or comic book series. Probably won't happen.

Yeah, don’t expect an expanded universe with 12 different trilogies, a Silmarillion, and a spin-off book series, TV show, or comic book series. Probably won’t happen.

At least, that’s my take on the subject.

Thanks for reading my rant. If I post anything else in the coming days, I promise it won’t be as full of ranting as this post was. Have a good night, Followers of Fear.

How To Quickly Take Out The Scary Element In Your Story

Posted: December 29, 2013 in Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
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(The following post may contain spoilers for several movies, TV shows, and books. However, these movies, TV shows, and books all came out several years ago. Some before I was even born. So if you read ahead and you haven’t seen any of these movies, TV shows, and books despite their availability…well, you’ve been warned)

As a horror writer, I use a number of techniques to keep the terror in a story at its most present and powerful in order to keep the reader enthralled in the story. At the same time, there are a number of ways I could very easily lose that terror element. This post is dedicated to one of them: revealing the villain and everything about them too soon.

Let’s take the movie Friday the 13th for example (the original, not the crappy remake from 2009). In that movie, we don’t find out the identity of the killer until near the very end of the movie, when it is revealed to be Mrs. Voorhees, Jason’s infamous mother. And even after she is revealed to the audience, we don’t know much about her or her motivation until she tries to kill protagonist Alice. Then we know why she’s killing everyone, but by then we’re too terrified to really process that fact. We’re just like, “The old crone’s got a knife! Run!”

Another example is the original Amityville Horror, which did not reveal the nature of the house and its hauntings until later films. So when you see the first film, you are thrust into this maze of nightmarish strangeness that keeps you terrified wondering two things: 1) what the hell is going on? And 2) what the hell is going to happen next?

An even better example than these two is The Blair Witch Project, in which the antagonist is never really revealed. All you get is spooky noises and some weird happenings around the three main characters. This lends the film a very intense element of fear of the unknown, which would be replicated in Paranormal Activity, Slender, Entity, and several other films that utilize found footage as a storytelling technique.

Some films however reveal their villain way too early, and thus cannot utilize fear of the unknown in their stories. Sometimes this can ruin a movie to the point where it’s no longer scary or fun to watch and you end up thinking to yourself “Why am I still watching this?” One example is 28 Days Later. Now I know there are a lot of fans of the movie out there, but one of my biggest problems with it is that the villains were revealed very quickly and that I felt I knew everything about them before the movie was even ten minutes in. From that point on, slow pacing made it hard for me to stay interested and I ended up stopping the movie after an hour.

Another film that suffered from lack of suspense and fear of the unknown is most of the sequels to Nightmare on Elm Street. In the first film, we’re really terrified. We don’t know why these kids are dying, who’s killing them, how they’re being killed. All we know is there’s an evil man killing these kids in their sleep, and that somehow translates over to the real world in a very bloody fashion. The sequels though feature the same villain and he’s killing in the same fashion. Loses a lot of its scare when you know exactly what’s going to happen, you’re just there to see how it happens, if they can scare you when they do it, and what joke Freddy will make right before he kills his victims.

Of course, revealing your villain or too much about them isn’t always a recipe for failure. In Stephen King’s Misery, we meet antagonist Annie Wilkes very early on in the story, yet she’s able to terrify and disgust and chill us very easily. Of course, that might be Stephen King’s magnificent, if somewhat strange, storytelling at play, but it is possible to reveal your villain early on, even let us know all there is to know about them, and still tell a scary story. You just have to be prepared to find some element to replace that mystery and fear of the unknown (and for God’s sake, I hope it isn’t excessive sex or over-the-top gore).

What do you think of using fear of the unknown in horror stories? What are some other examples or exceptions you can think of where keeping the villain hidden until the right time or revealing them too early made or ruined a scary story?

Is Amazon Going On A Witch Hunt?

Posted: December 24, 2013 in Journalism, Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
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Normally I don’t wade into censorship debates, but this story caught my eye and I thought it would make for interesting discussion. Now, a lot of authors, especially self-published authors, have noticed that in the past couple of years there’s been an explosion in demand for erotica titles, and many self-published authors are making a lot of money by writing these works, which sometimes involve violent encounters between the characters. And lately there’s been a rising trend in what is known as cryptozoological erotica, which is sexual encounters between humans and legendary beasts such as Bigfoot and others (I know, right?). The example used in the story I’ve linked to is Virginia Wade’s Bigfoot series, which has been downloaded and read by enough people to make me wonder whether I should at least dabble in the erotica genre.

However, authors of these and other erotic works have been finding their works taken off the digital bookshelves by Amazon and other sites as of late:

In October, the online news site The Kernel published an incendiary story called “An Epidemic of Filth,” claiming that online bookstores like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith, and others were selling self-published ebooks that featured “rape fantasies, incest porn and graphic descriptions of bestiality and child abuse.” The story ignited a media firestorm in the U.K, with major news outlets like the Daily Mail, The Guardian, and the BBC reporting on the “sales of sick ebooks.” Some U.K.-based ebook retailers responded with public apologies, and WHSmith went so far as to shut down its website altogether, releasing a statement saying that it would reopen “once all self-published eBooks have been removed and we are totally sure that there are no offending titles available.” The response in the U.S. was somewhat more muted, but most of the retailers mentioned in the piece, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, began quietly pulling hundreds of titles from their online shelves — an event Kobo coo Michael Tamblyn referred to last month as “erotica-gate.” 

The crackdown was meant to target the obvious offenders — ebooks like “Daddy’s Birthday Gang Bang” and others that fetishized incest and rape — but in their fervor to course-correct, the online bookstores started deleting, according to The Digital Reader blog, “not just the questionable erotica but [also]…. any e-books that might even hint at violating cultural norms.” That included crypto-porn. Wade’s sexy Sasquatch, not unlike the elusive hominid beast of legend, vanished without a trace.

Now, there’s been a lot of talk about censorship such as this over the past couple of months. Authors of a lot of works that have been taken down have accused Amazon of not taking a good look at their works and using very vague criteria such as the titles of the books to judge whether or not they are offensive. Amazon’s wording of its policy as to what constitutes “offensive” doesn’t seem to help its case: “What we deem offensive is probably what you would expect.” Giving that people generally have different expectations on what is considered offensive, there’s been a lot of cries that Amazon is only answering to the expectations of a certain segment of its customers. And by having to modify titles or edit their work to be acceptable to these vague standards, they are losing customers and revenue. As one author complained:

Author Emerald Ice (a pen name) — who lives in southern Illinois with her husband, a Catholic high school teacher — is less concerned about offending Amazon browsers than being overlooked by potential paying customers. The first three books in her Alien Sex Slave Series — “Alien Love Slave,” “The Sex Arena,” and “Alien Sex Cove”— were runaway hits, she says. At least until Amazon pulled them from distribution and requested changes, once again citing content guidelines. That’s how “Alien Sex Slave” became “Sidney’s Alien Escapades.” “I hate it,” she admits of the new title. “I came up with it because I was in a panic about the books disappearing.” Her sales have since plummeted, and she isn’t surprised. “If I was a reader searching for hot alien sex books, I wouldn’t look twice at something called ‘Sidney’s Alien Escapades.'”

On the other hand, Amazon and other bookstores like it are private businesses. They can decide what items to have on their shelves and what items they want nothing to do with, especially if a large enough percent of their customers threaten to boycott the site if they hold items deemed “offensive” by whatever criteria these people use. So if Amazon deems a work or works unacceptable and uses no other reason than it threatens their own revenues, then that’s their choice, and there’s not much an author can do to fight back (unless you start a humungous letter writing campaign with a lot of your close author friends and a ton of fans, but that might be difficult to pull off).

Now, my own views on censorship is if a creative work isn’t blatantly encouraging hatred, violence, or other despicable deeds or beliefs, then it should at least be considered as a work allowed to be sold, distributed and enjoyed like any other work. And as much as I don’t like to speak badly about Amazon (mostly because it’s where most of my sales and reviews come from),  I have to admit that they should take a deeper look at their work in order to decide what is offensive and maybe revise their content policy to something that’s not so vague. At the same time, I should advise authors to be careful that the work they write might not be accidentally encouraging rape, incest, or other objectionable acts or could be misconstrued as encouraging those acts. I’m not trying to stifle your creative work, but it might avoid some grief later on if you make sure that someone can’t point to a particular passage of your work and show that it is terribly objectionable.

If you have anything to add to the discussion, please let me know. What do you think constitutes as an “objectionable work”? And do you think what Amazon and other booksellers is doing is justified, or are they overstepping their bounds or being unfair in their attempts to filter out unacceptable works?

Also, that comment I made about dabbling in erotica, in case any of you were wondering: I don’t know how I’d feel about writing an erotica story. If I did though, I’d be honest about it if I decided to publish it, even if I published it under a pen name. Anne Rice did that, and if she can do it, why can’t I? Besides the fact that she’s a huge force in the world of writing and I’m still trying to claw my way up, I mean.

An Idea From A Gift

Posted: December 21, 2013 in ideas, Living and Life, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , , ,
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This weekend I spent part of it with my dad and my sister at my dad’s place. I needed to pick up my suit for a friend’s wedding and I wanted to attend my friend’s aufruf* at his synagogue (plus who doesn’t love spending time with their family? Don’t answer that question). While I was there, I received a Hannukah gift from a friend of the family who has known me since I was a baby. I wasn’t able to get the gift until now because the gift came after I left for campus. I was surprised but happy to get the gift and I wondered what she’d gotten me this year.

This friend, who I’ll call T, always sends a small but very interesting and unusual gift. This year was no different, and it’s by far the most interesting, unusual, and amazing gift I’ve ever gotten from her. A small human heart, made entirely of graphite. A working pencil in the shape of a heart. Take a look below.

graphite heart

I was so amazed when I saw it. It’s so amazing, it’s so macabre, it’s so…me. T knows me, God bless that woman. And I didn’t even know it was possible to carve graphite with such detail. I’m glad to get it. However, I’m not sure I can use it. In fact, I’m afraid to take it out of the box and touch it, let alone use it as an unusual pencil. Still, I think I will keep it. The heart is so my style, and best of all, it’s inspired an idea for a short story. Nothing can be bad if it inspires an idea for a story. I’m not sure what sort of story yet, but I have a feeling a similar graphite heart will be bringing something not human to life. Isn’t that terrifying?

So I’m going to add it to my list of short story ideas (about sixty story ideas so far. Where will I find the time to write them all?), and then I’m going to call up my mother while there’s still time. I need to get T’s contact information (I don’t have it, if that’s not obvious), and tell her that she got me an amazing gift.

Good night everybody!

*Aufruf: a celebration in Judaism the Shabbat before a wedding. The groom (and in some congregations, the bride) are called up to the Torah to do some special blessings and readings, and get a few special blessings in return. Often candy is thrown at the newlyweds after they have finished the blessings and the kids go to get as many sweets as they can get. Didn’t expect to get a lesson on Jewish custom today, did you?

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