The Fury by John Farris

I had a difficult time maintaining interest in this book. When I was getting somewhat involved in the story about the young girl, Gillian, it shifted around to characters I didn't know or care about that didn't appear to have any relevance to the story. (Of course, I knew they would have relevance later on, but at the moment I didn't care about them.)

The book started to grab me when the young girl's twin brother (who died at birth then had to quickly find another body into which to be born) tried to visit his sister astrally at night. That was when I started to see the point of the book. Honestly, if I hadn't been reading it for school I wouldn't have stuck with it.

On the whole, I didn't like The Fury. I know it's a popular and successful horror novel, but at no point was it scary and none of the characters grabbed me because the action shifted around so much. I always felt like I was on the outside looking in as far as the characters were concerned. I think the book was trying to ride on the coattails of Carrie and The Exorcist, jumping on a popular theme of that era (the late seventies.)

This isn't the story I would tell about Gillian and Robin (the astral twins). I would concentrate on their feelings and experiences rather than on constructing some kind of international plot to kidnap them and use them to gain worldwide power (as Farris did.) (Mind you, not that I presume I could do it better than Farris.)

Horror is a personal thing to me. It's the scariness you feel when you're alone in the house at two AM and hear a scratching in the wall, see a shadow in the mirror you know isn't natural or feel something brush against the back of your hair. Horror is not (in the world of Sally) car crashes and political plots.

I found inconsistencies in the plot. The timeline was off. When events start happening to Gillian, they culminate at the end of the book in a couple of weeks. We meet Robin later on in the book when he is kidnapped and taken to PSI Institute. One and a half years pass for him until the end of the book. This bothered me for some reason.

Unrealistic character reaction and motivation was another problem for me. Gillian is in the hospital with a bad flu. Her stay ends in a Carrie-like bloodbath, killing several people. That same night her mother (coincidentally) finds her wandering in the streets and doesn't think anything of it, never calls the hospital to find out what happened. Neither does Gillian say anything about the experience.

For me there wasn't sufficient motivation (or evidence of brainwashing) established to convince me that Robin's father would kill him.

I could ignore these things if I felt more for Robin and Gillian, if we got into their emotions more.

This book made me want to make a concerted effort to not date my writing. The Fury was published in '77, but it had a late sixties/early seventies feeling about it, that I don't find in some of my favorite horror novels written during that same period. Not that's necessarily bad for a novel to be a period piece, but this felt dated. I can't exactly explain the difference.

What I did like: Gillian's impressions of her astral travel are occasionally put into poems that are very apt and give us a feel for what is going on with her without spelling it out. Since impressions from astral travel are very difficult to put into words, I thought this was a fitting device. I wish Farris had used it more.

The sexual relationship between fourteen-year-old Robin and the twenty-nine-year-old female research doctor was interesting and I think fairly well done. It's something that probably wouldn't fly in our oppressively PC times, but in the seventies would have been titillating and edgy.

The concept of the astral twins is fascinating. But, as I said before, I would have made the novel Gillian's and Robin's personal stories. People's inner experiences and feelings are more interesting to me than the larger concerns of the world. I prefer small foreign or independent films that focus on daily experiences than huge action/adventure movies. So my perceptions are skewed to those tastes.

All in all, an unsatisfying read for me, but it did contain some interesting concepts, and I discovered something about what I don't like.

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King

A lot of information contained in the beginning of this book was very familiar to me. For example, Show Don't Tell has been hammered home enough in every book I've read and class I've taken that I didn't need to hear it again. The second two-thirds of the book did contain some info that was new to me.

The dialogue section had some great advice as follows:

R.U.E. - Resist the urge to explain. If the dialogue is well written, explanatory tag lines aren't necessary and are patronizing to the reader. This also prevents your characters from coming to life on the page.

One of the most common reasons for flat dialogue is formality. Try to make it sound natural, the way people actually speak. (Leave out the "Hi, how you doing?" kind of comments.)

Use sentence fragments. This is the way people actually speak. Try varying the sentences, such as stringing together two related sentences with a comma, rather than a period.

Weed out overly-complex words. Use short words packed full of consonants, rather than longer, vowel-heavy words.

Use misdirection. In actual conversation, people often misunderstand each other. Use this to make the dialogue more realistic. Have your characters misunderstand each other once in awhile. Have them answer the unspoken questions.

Read dialogue aloud -- something I always mean to do but never do.

How do you convey a character's geographical or socioeconomic background? -- through word choice cadence and grammar.

Strive to give a sense that the words you write are words real people would actually speak.

Although interior monologue is a way to disclose information that would be difficult to bring into the dialogue, don't overdo it; it can be annoying. This is something I have to watch, because I tend to like getting into my character's heads.

The Q trick: Instead of saying, "He wondered why he always ended up killing them." Say "Why did he always end up killing them?"

Beats (sometimes called stage business) are little bits of action interspersed between scenes. The action has to be add to the emotion of the scene. Don't have your characters performing actions just to have them doing something; everything should be pertinent. Too much of this interrupts the flow of the dialogue. (Something that particularly irritates me is having characters talk over dinner.)

Don't describe your characters' actions too precisely. Give your readers some hints and let them fill in with their own details. Define the action without over-defining it. (Considering my tendency to be minimal, I probably shouldn't concentrate on this.)

Beats are a natural way of defining the ebb and flow of the dialogue. How do you make your beats seem natural? The authors recommend watching your friends, what they do with their gestures when they are bored, anxious, tired. Watch old movies and notice the stage business of the actors. Keep an eye out for little movements that bring a person's personality to the surface.

Be on the lookout for places where your characters make little speeches to each other. In real life, few of us get to do that without interruption. Have your characters talk over each other and mix it up a little.

Watch out for repetition. We're accustomed to looking for repeat words and phrases, but we should also be on the lookout for repetition of effects. Do you have two sentences that convey the same information? Do you repeat settings? Do you have several scenes that serve the same purpose? I know I need to pay attention to this. I have similar scenes between Rosalind and Fred of chit-chat in the costume shop which should go, and I'm afraid that some of the black masses Jack takes Rosalind to are not different enough from each other to warrant the repetition. (I'm using this to show how he drags her into the Black Arts gradually, and I'm not sure of any other way to do it, but I'll think about how I can.)

When you try to accomplish the same effect twice, the weaker attempt is likely to undermine the power of the stronger one. (1 + 1 = 1/2)

Be on the lookout for unwarranted repetition on a larger scale. When you write two or more chapters that accomplish the same thing, or when you have two or more characters who fulfill the same role in the story. Character-combining is a good remedy for this.

The most frightening villains are the ones we could imagine ourselves being under the right circumstances. (Here again, I find myself writing more backstory on my backstory. I needed to give Jack a reason for being in league with the devil. I'm going back to fourteenth century France in which Jack began participating in Black Masses in order to overcome the outside circumstances that made their love impossible. He gained immortality at the cost of his soul, but he didn't get the one thing he really wanted - Rosalind's love.)

Proportion - Be wary of flashbacks. Even if they don't make your plot difficult to follow, they can rob your story of its forward momentum. And if you start to play with the time line of the story, it can easily become aimless.

Sophistication - There are a few self-editing tricks that can lend more sophistication to your writing. Avoid constructions that have been over-used by hack writers. Don't use, "Pulling off her gloves, she turned to face him." Or "As she pulled off her gloves, she turned to face him."

Avoid characterization cliché's. Try to cast your characters against type or at least add a discordant note to the character's personality.

Be on the lookout for ly adverbs. Don't say, "Angrily, she set the saucer on the kitchen table." Say "She slammed the saucer on the kitchen table." In other words, use descriptive verbs.

Stringing together short sentences with commas can give your constructions a fresh feel. "Hurry up, let's get going."

Sex scenes - The last thing you want to do is to appear to work hard to achieve your effects. Use a subtler stylistic approach. Always avoid heavy-breathing. Engage your readers imagination rather than being explicit. (Someone should tell Poppy Z. Brite that.) They gave as an example the charged scene from Gone with the Wind in which Rhett whisks Scarlet up the stairs.

Voice - I went to a writing conference in NY recently in which all of the editors, when asked what they were looking for, responded, "Voice, voice, voice." How do you achieve that?

This is getting off the track of this book, but I read an article by Michael Morano on the HWA web site, the gist of which was, "Write the book that only you can write." Don't try to imitate other authors. Let your own individuality come through.

By the same token, you shouldn't overdo style. Your primary purpose as a writer is to engage your readers in your story. When the style starts to overshadow the story, it's defeating the purpose. The advice of this book is to concentrate on your characters and allow them to find their own voices.

The authors suggested reading your own writing aloud and highlighting any sections that you think are especially good, that "sing," as they put it. This represents your voice at its most effective, and making yourself conscious of it will strengthen it.

Do the same thing and highlight sections that either make you wince or leave you cold. (Highlight them in a color you dislike.) Try to analyze what makes them different from the sentences you liked. If flatness is a problem, take a look at the surrounding sentences and either vary the structure of the sentences or make them more specific. If the sentence seems obvious, check for over-explanation.

If the writing seems forced listen to the little changes you are inclined to make while reading aloud. These changes usually reflect your natural voice.

If you don't pay close attention to the people you're writing about, their voices will seem interchangeable. Come to know your characters so intimately that one of them can't speak in the same voice as another. Also, reading aloud consecutively from each character's point of view can help you spot inconsistencies.

Revise again and again until what you are writing rings true.

The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman

"I would never write about someone who is not at the end of his rope." - Stanley Elkin

Lukeman's approach to plot is largely through characterization. If your characters are well-developed enough, they will have such a rich inner life, they will take over your plot and tell you how the story should progress. None of this will be possible, however, unless you know every aspect of your character's inner life.

He offers long lists of aspects of your character about which you should know. Most I had encountered before, but a few were thought provoking:

How big is the discrepancy between your character's inner and outer life? Does he put on a completely different face for the outside world? This would put a very interesting spin on a character. The concept of leading a double life does interest me.

A discrepancy between a character's interior monologue and his actions is a powerful tool to show a character out of touch with himself.

"The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you can leave it to him." - Graham Greene

Oddly enough, writers often develop minor characters more then major ones, because the character operates in a smaller playing field. Also, characterization is often better at the beginning of a book than at the end, because the writer lets down his guard and reduces his standards in order to finish the piece.

The purpose of narration:

1) To tell the story - Consider your protagonist's basic storytelling abilities. These can be tinkered with. For instance, is your narrator insane? Does he get the facts wrong, or is he a liar? This sort of thing is very difficult to on the reader and will probably cause him to give up on your story.

2) The narrator should color the story with his perspective. Without a perspective, the telling of a story can become flat and dull. The power of the narrator's perspective can be more influential than the actual events. Lukeman discourages the use of multiple perspectives, however. And I agree. I think multiple perspectives take the focus off the story. (I'm getting rid of my multiple perspectives.)

3) The narrator should convey his personal involvement with the story.

The writer must assess if the characters he has developed have the potential for good interaction. It helps to have characters with conflicting agendas. That adds to the conflict. Are they working together toward a common goal? Do they have something that drives them apart?

Can a character truly get to know someone during a fleeting encounter? Can he never really know someone, despite living with him his whole life?

Suffering can bring out a lot in a person. How does Rosalind react to having to flee the country to escape from Jack, then learn that some malevolent thing is following her?

Multidimensionality - Characters, being human being, can act paradoxically. For example, a man who devotes his life to charity might beat his wife. This can be difficult to achieve and can be a major problem if not done by an expert. An inexperienced writer could end up creating a character who is not clearly sympathetic or unsympathetic, just morally ambiguous and uninteresting.

A reader needs someone to care enough about, whether positively or negatively, to be invested enough to keep reading. "If a character is endearing enough, we can both love him and hate him, be perpetually confused by him, and yet never want to stray from his presence."

Some exercises I thought were good was making a scene list, listing ten things that could set up a peak experience (good or bad) for your character. Think of how each of these circumstances can be the core of a scene that can more the work forward.

The Journey - story telling is not about giving away information but about withholding it. The information itself is never as important as the path you take in disseminating it. The destination is never as important as the journey itself.

"The task of the writer is to create characters that can propel and sustain such a journey, it is to create characters on the verge of change, characters that will, in some way, be unrecognizable by the end of the work. Ripe characters."

"The ideal character is like a volatile compound: Unstable, unpredictable, a hair breadth away from either curing all disease or causing mass destruction."

Realization about others - We often live with blinders on. To wake up one day and acknowledge what is wrong will cause a character to travel down the road to self-realization. For most people, this is scarier than anything else. So, Rosalind has to wake up and realize that Jack is bad for her.

The character who embarks on the journey of self-realization will not realize that his group is a cult, but will go one step further and recognize that something inside him led him there. Once they reach that point they might set new limits, not allow certain treatment anymore. Rosalind goes through the experience with Jack and is a very different person once she is in Montreal, however, her journey continues with fighting off the Dop and coming to terms with letting Ian into her life.

Next the character must take action based on that realization.

What if someone comes to a realization of wrongfulness, but is forced, by reason of external circumstances, to continue his evil actions? Perhaps Rosalind will come to know that what Jack is doing is wrong but will not be able to break away because he would harm her if she did.

Most satisfying of all, you can have the character come to a realization and resolve to take action but have it be too late. Rosalind may take action to stop Jack and find it is already too late. He has already killed Fred as a human sacrifice, because he was trying to turn her against Jack.

Endings - Many writers do not know how their work will end. Even though it is true that plot should evolve through character, the writer cannot allow the characters to wander aimlessly. Nor should the writer force the characters follow a preconceived path. By virtue of having a predetermined ending, the characters can become more creative within its confines. If having one final destination for your work is too intimidating, you can start by breaking the work up with several smaller destinations.

Change - We love to see characters journey and change. We get a rush from the first week on a new job, having a new lover, buying a new car. Change is an affirmation of free will.

Suspense - Suspense is about anticipation, what we do not have, what has not happened. It is about the process of watching events unfold. Suspense is about creating and prolonging anticipation. Elements of suspense are:

1) The objective. The first step toward creating anticipation is having an objective (or destination) in mind for your character.

2) Raising the stakes.

3) Danger.

4) The ticking clock - Adding a time limit goes a long way toward creating suspense. Stay in touch with the time line of your story. Most works can accomplish just as much over a shorter period of time. In the process, a sense of urgency will be added. When you want to give a crucial scene the greatest suspense, slow down your work to nearly the actual time of its transpiring.

5) Inability to take action - One of the most powerful forms of suspense comes when a character has an important objective, but is unable to take action. Rosalind is unable to kill the Dop because by killing it she will kill herself. She must find a different approach.

6) The unknown - There is nothing more terrifying than the unknown. We can bear nearly any form of torture as long as we know what it is we are getting into. But keep us in the dark, give us time to ponder the possibilities, and the suspense will be unbearable. This is because our imagination usually conjures up worse scenarios than will ever happen.

7) Sexual tension - Sexual tension can create one of the most powerful forms of suspense. Forbidden romance is one of the most effective. Suspense disappears when the courtship is consummated, when the lovers are content.

8) Dramatic irony - "Dramatic irony" occurs when we, as readers, are privy to something the characters themselves are not - often something that is about to affect them.

9) Living in the future - Lukeman says that a simple way to increase suspense is to increase the sheer amount of time a character spends anticipating something. We tend to spend little time showing our characters anticipating the future. This can be a way to build suspense. It also gives the audience joy in watching the difference between anticipation and reality.

10) Lack of resolution - This relates to cliffhanger chapter endings. End a subplot at a crucial moment, leaving the audience dangling.

11) The Secret - Lukeman states that, if properly used, the secret can create enough suspense to propel an entire work. However, for the secret to be used for suspenseful effect, we have to know that there is a secret. The secret of the true identity of MOG in Richard Laymon's "In the Dark," kept me eagerly reading until the end. (Of course, when I found out it was a complete stranger who had nothing to do with either of the characters, I was let down.)

12) The Character - Some unpredictability or mystery about the character can build suspense.

Prolonging suspense: I think I often build up to an opportunity to create some good suspense then inadvertently dissipate it. It all comes down to being able to identify those suspenseful moments and maximize them. You can't prolong a scene then let the audience down at the end. As an exercise, go through each suspenseful scene and identify how you can prolong the suspense. Also, take each suspenseful scene and turn it into two scenes by means of a cliffhanger break.

Conflict: Every choice in our life implies a conflict. Here are the basic forms of conflict.

1) The Characters - Create and bring together characters who are complete opposites so that conflict is inevitable. Every character in your work must have the potential to conflict with every other character. (This concept gave me the idea to have Fred [the gay assistant] conflict with Rosalind in the matter of going out with Jack. This resulted in the idea to have Fred be the human sacrifice.)

2) Groups of people

3) Forced to be together

4) Conflicting objectives: How characters deal with conflict reveals a great deal about them.

5) Raising the stakes of objectives: To bring out maximum conflict, the writer must raise the stakes of the objectives.

6) The power struggle: Once you've located the struggle, heighten the stakes.

7) Competition

8) Time

9) Family: Lukeman states that the family can be a breeding ground for special forms of conflict found nowhere else.

10) Romance: Lust and physical attraction can blind a couple to each other's faults.

11) Work

12) Perspective

13) Inner conflict

Look at your choice of characters. Can you change them to cause greater conflict?

Can you prolong conflict leading up to a major life decision? I'm at the point now when Rosalind is almost ready to flee from Jack. She is at a motel for a couple of days to get away from him, but what will make her leave her home and business and flee the country?

Repetition: Edit your work for repetition, not only of words, but of characters, settings and concepts.

The last chapter in this book was titled, "Transcendency," and it had some interesting issues to consider:

Character Multidimensionality: In works that have stood the test of time, the characters are not always so black-and-white. "Often in transcendent works, we love characters despite their faults, we hate them despite their virtues." We can relate to these characters because they remind us of ourselves.

These kinds of characters also allow the work to be open to interpretation. These are the kinds of books we can read over and over again, because we can come to different conclusions each time. However in the hands of an unskilled writer the work can seem confusing or ambiguous.

Timelessness: I'm always amazed every time I see "Rosemary's Baby," at how well this thirty-year-old film holds up. Is it the writing of Ira Levin, the excellent direction of Roman Polanski, the fine acting? Probably a combination of all of these. The theme is timeless and hits a chord (especially in anyone brought up Catholic) -- selling your soul to the devil. We wonder if we perhaps would do the same thing in a similar circumstance.

The writer's task is to incorporate the time without making the work a product of the time. Would readers be able to relate to your book thirty years from now? Here are questions I would like my book to generate: How many times have I done something stupid for a man? Would I sell my soul to the devil if motivated? Would I compromise my ethics to win approval?

Jack has to kill someone he loves for the sake of gaining absolute power. This is why he created the Dop. He must kill Rosalind, but he loves her so much he creates the Dop with the intention of transferring Rosalind's soul into it to enable her to have immortality. I'm also realizing that Jack must come back toward the end of the book for a final confrontation.

Ian starts out trying to help Rosalind, but in the end, she must rescue him. Toward the end it should seem that perhaps Ian is in the whole thing with Jack. Maybe he sold his soul to the devil to gain fame as an actor in exchange for delivering Rosalind to Jack. (I did kind of want Ian to be a good guy, though.)

Relatability: This is something I've often heard referred to as "scope." To me a perfect example of this is the film, "American Beauty." Who can't relate to being numbed by their present circumstances: a thankless job, a meanligless existence, thankless kids, a spouse for which you no longer have any feelings? Who hasn't wanted to break away from it all?

Great works span various cultures and make us realize that human beings are the same all over, thereby making us feel a little less alone in the universe. People want to feel connected.

Lasting impression: I thought back to books that have really left an impression on me and why that is. I know I can relate to the characters. These books never had goody-goody characters, they were always morally ambiguous.

Lukeman suggests speaking to the audience's subconscious by means of symbolism, imagery and metaphor. Imagery resonates with us on a deep level and will often bring us back to a particular book. He warns that the elements must be organic, not manufactured.

The Audience Arc:

Curiosity: The reader is curious enough to pick up your book and begin reading.

Interest: The reader is intrigued by your opening, characters and plot.

Need: The reader HAS to know how the book ends. "The work has created such strong characters and circumstances, initiated so many journeys, created such a lack of resolution, earned deep sympathy, and made the audience utterly relate to the character that is as if they are watching their own lives play out. If they haven't seen it to the finish, they feel as if their own lives hang in the balance."

Action: Very few works reach this stage. The reader is inspired to take action based on what they've read.

One way to help arouse interest is stir the audience's emotions. Emotions are much more powerful than reason. Consider having emotional characters in your book. Although wildly emotional people are exhausting to be around, they are also exciting and unpredictable.

Your conscious motivation: Why are you writing this book? What's your motivation? How are you hoping to affect the reader? What attracted you to this idea? Get in touch with your own unconscious motivation. Your unconscious motivation will show in the writing and will resonate with the audience. Check yourself at the deepest level. Where are you coming from when you write?

Lukeman tells us that stories are as necessary as food or water. They have supreme importance for the human race. There is a mystical, magical element in storytelling that defies definition. Few things on earth are more powerful than human thought.

This book actually raised questions that helped me to clarify my plot. Through all of my reading, I'm realizing the importance of connections. Having the plot and characters tie into each other in never-ending circles is of tantamount importance.

In the Dark by Richard Laymon

This book hooked me from the very beginning. It's the first book in a long time that I have not been able to put down. I think it's an example of the kind of 'slow build' horror novel that we were talking about at the residency (the kind that women like better than the ones with the big bang right at the beginning.)

Jane, a librarian, finds a note on her seat with a $50 bill in it asking her if she would like to play a potentially profitable game, giving her a clue and signing it MOG (Master of Games). As Jane is searching through the stacks after closing time for the next clue, she runs into Brace and is momentarily startled. Brace seems to be a nice guy, local college prof, who invites her out for coffee then agrees to help Jane in her quest to hunt down the notes which have exponentially larger and larger denominations of bills in them.

Is the likeable Brace in actuality MOG? Does he have a warped, evil side Jane doesn't see? They go through some strange adventures, the plot takes some twists and turns. A nice romantic edge develops between them.

What I like is that Jane is not a stereotype. She's a tad overweight, somewhat of a loner, yet Brace is very attracted to her. Though she is at first somewhat afraid of Brace it is Jane who makes a move on him the first night they meet. He responds that he has to go home but will be back the following evening to help her hunt for the next clue.

The mystery of the secret notes, along with the chemistry between the two characters made me really care about this story. (It made me really hope that the nice Brace was not really MOG and some sort of psychotic killer, but deep down inside you know he is, because that would be the irony and surprise of the story. But you hope he really is a nice guy.)

Throughout the book, the small details made it believable and realistic.

Laymon handles the woman's point of view quite well. I didn't find any lapses or out-of-character moments for Jane.

Toward the middle, Jane's exploits (as the sums hidden in the envelopes become higher and higher) turn somewhat unrealistic as the story progresses. At one point Jane is sent by MOG into a house in which women are being held hostage and being tortured. One woman is so hungry she is eating her own body parts.

Laymon kept the suspense building until the very end as the reader wondered if Jane would escape alive (while also wondering if Brace was in fact the evil MOG.)

The end was a letdown. MOG turned out to be a scrawny, evil, little guy who was paying a big, burly guy to masquerade as MOG. MOG's connection to Jane was random. "Why me?," MJary asks toward the end of the book when she is getting ready to shoot him. "Why not?" he answers. It would have been a so much stronger ending of Laymon had figured out some way to connect Jane to MOG, give him some reason for pursuing her with the money and strange notes other than the fact that she happened to be there.

I have to credit the author with holding my interest until the very end. I was compelled to continue reading to find out of Brace was in fact MOG.

The Joy of Writing Sex by Elizabeth Benedict

This book helped me immensely. Throughout it illustrated that the principles of good writing must be carried over into erotic writing.

The main thrust of this book is that a sex scene had to connect with the larger concerns of the work and tell us something about the characters. The needs, impulses and histories of the characters should drive the scene. The relationship the characters have to each other is critical.

There is a section entitled, "What Will My Grandmother Think," that has interviews with several notable authors telling about the struggles they had with thinking about parents or friends reading an erotic scene they had written. This was something I can relate to. One author went so far as to say that he wouldn't write certain scenes until his parents were dead (which is kind of extreme). The basic idea is that, as with all writing, you have to write for yourself and not for others. If you're being safe and toning it down you might as well not bother.

What is important is not the mechanics, but the emotions of the characters. " . . . the swoon. The delicious palpitations of one's heart is the real eroticism." This is what is lacking in pornography. The details have more to do with the body parts than with the people.

"The truth is every time you make love it's entirely different, it's as though you've never done it before and no one else has done it, and if you as a writer can't capture that, you've failed." I like that idea of the uniqueness and special-ness of the event.

As an author, you want your readers to experience the thrill of connection and (if the situation warrants) the despair of knowing that the connection can't be a lasting connection.

A good sex scene engages us on many levels: erotic, aesthetic, psychological, metaphorical and sometimes philosophical. When such a scene is working, the reader is so completely enthralled he/she doesn't realize that all of these concerns are being engaged, they simply read and enjoy. (I always return to John Gardner's "fictive dream" idea.)

This I found very interesting on a personal level as well as a writing level: "Sex is the most intense dialogue that could possibly go on between two people in which you're never sure what the other person is thinking. . . There's so much strategy that goes on in people's heads during sex. . . There's always endless debate over strategy, and that is never confided." As a writer, that is another layer to consider -- the strategy going on in your character's head. It's so much less about the physical actions than it is about the intent.

In "Aspects of the Novel," E.M. Forester states, "When human beings love they try to get something. They also try to give something, and this double aim makes love more complicated than food or sleep."

What makes sex so powerful is our urge to connect with another person. "You long for an unfamiliar heartbeat against your skin . . ."

Top ten principles:

1. A sex scene is not a sex manual.

We all know the physiology of sex, what a writer needs to tell the reader is the things we don't know. What we don't know are the particulars about the character.

2. A good sex scene does not have to be about good sex.

The aim of pornography is to arouse the reader. In writing fiction, it may be more interesting to show a connection that goes awry or has very bad consequences. (Hence the conflict.) Also, the experience can be physically satisfying for the characters, but leave an emotional emptiness.

3. It's okay to be sexually aroused by your own writing.

John Updike admits to being aroused by his own scenes. Again, the connection to the characters is of utmost importance.

4. Your fear is your best friend.

There is no way for a writer to be completely exposed and still be safe. It's necessary for the writer to go out on a limb, to expose oneself emotionally. We should just get used to it.

5. Sex is nice, but character is destiny.

The writer has to be continually aware of what the characters want, not what the writer wants. The writer has to make the reader care about the characters.

6. Only your characters know for sure what to call those body parts.

I definitely faced this when writing my sex scenes. What do you call various body parts without sounding silly or sounding like your words were taken from a Penthouse Forum? The basic rule is to call it what the characters would call it, make sure it's appropriate for the tone of the book, don't be cute or evasive. Also, you may not have to call it anything at all. Benedict quoted several very effective scenes in which the action was all illustrated by metaphor.

7. Take your cues from your characters.

Let your characters take over and show you what they would like to do. If you're having difficulty, you may want to ignore one of them for the moment and direct all of your attention to the other. What does he/she want to happen in the next ten minutes, the next day, the next month? Does the character have anything else on her mind? Is there anything she is afraid of?

Once you have a feel for one character, turn to her partner and decide how the other character responds to this person's desires or fears.

8. Your characters must want it and want it intensely.

Take stock of what your characters want. In fiction it's always more interesting when the character doesn't get what she wants, or gets what she wants but with a heavy price. (This relates to my story. Rosalind gets Jack but at the price of having to flee the country.) A character who wants something that her partner does not is what dramatic conflict is all about.

9. A good sex scene is always about sex and something else.

Sex needs to have a purpose beyond the momentary physical interaction of your characters. It has to reveal something about the characters and reflect something about your plot. Revealing something about the plot is something I'm especially taking stock of. It also can be symbolic, act as a metaphor or develop the theme of the book. For my novel, Rosalind's interactions with Jack have to show his inherent evil.

10. Who your characters are to each other is the key.

The writer has to keep in mind that the dynamics of the scene will vary greatly depending upon how long the characters have known each other and the circumstances. It would be very different for people who have been married for thirty years than it would be for people having an illicit tryst.

Don't forget to use the physical surroundings to create the mood. In pornography the action takes place in a vacuum. In fiction, the setting must reflect something about the characters and plot.

Remember that the characters can speak to each other during the sex scene. It reveals information about the characters, can show (or resolve) conflict, and it can reveal something about the characters' attitudes.

A sex scene has to be specific. The specifics are what cause us to fall in love with one person over another. Perhaps there is some need that only one particular person can fulfill at the time. This is achieved through details of emotion, action, setting, culture, age. Being specific doesn't mean being explicit. For example, if the character is a musician, the scene may be portrayed showing musical metaphors. The scene must be very individual to the characters.

Probably the biggest new thought this book had for me was showing the element of surprise. In life we like everything to go smoothly. In fiction we long for conflict, characters who are difficult, selfish, diabolical, vain, in short, people who are trouble. (This goes right along with my evil character, Jack LeFevre.) We are drawn to the conflict that swirls around the characters. The best characters continually surprise us. (Reminiscent of the Donald Maas exercise of thinking of things your characters would never do then making them do these things during the course of your novel, introducing the discordant note.)

When writing about intimate moments that are generally not characterized by conflict, we must create some kind of conflict, tension or surprise. Things that can be surprising are role reversals, the entrance of an unexpected person or unexpected event, speech that is surprising for the characters. In one example, the woman continually stops to ask, "Does your wife do this for you?" (Pretty obnoxious, but out-of-the-ordinary.) A character could get distracted by something, a noise, a disturbing thought. A particular insight could be surprising. The surprise can be in use of language. This is not what the characters say, but writer description. Jeanette Winterson in "Written on the Body" uses sea analogies . "She opens and shuts like a sea anemone. She's refilled each day with the fresh tides of longing."

Benedict discusses sex in the age of AIDS, from both a gay and straight point of view. There is the awkwardness of having "the talk." It occurs to me that I should have Rosalind try to have the talk with Jack and he tells her that condom use isn't necessary because he's been in monogamous relationships. This would show the beginnings of his manipulation of her. She's too entranced by him to care and takes his word at face value. (And he's lying, of course.)

No matter how it is handled, the "safe sex" discussion should be used to further your characters' development.

First time sex was discussed. In this chapter, Benedict used a section of Mary Gordon's book, "Spending," which uses no anatomical references whatsoever. It is very effective, none-the-less. "Then with his lips and his tongue, he struck fire." You get the idea.

In the wedding night section, Benedict uses Charles Baxter's, "Feast of Love," to illustrate a man knowing that the woman is thinking of someone else when she's with him. "Diane brought more fever to our lovemaking than she ever had before, but it was the wrong fever, as if she were trying to get rid of an internal pressure through physical means." Again, another example of adding conflict.

Wright Morris's novel, "Plains Song," illustrates the huge difference in attitude during different time periods. In this story newlyweds have their first sexual encounter at an inn while crossing the country in a covered wagon circa 1900. The woman likened the experience to "an operation without anesthesia." (Quite a strange thought for our 'pleasure-centric' society.)

Life Sentences: Husbands and Wives -- This section illustrated the different concerns in portraying married sex. I liked this: "She remembers her first husband's bold sexuality, their playful, open sex life, in sharp contrast to Thomas's "limited repertoire of moves," which he always ran through in the same order, like a folk singer who plays the same songs in the same sequence."

The next section, "Three Cheers for Adultery," talked about the rich possibilities and conflict inherent in this situation. It's pre-heated because of the element of secrecy. Desire for a person you can't have and don't know very well can take a long time to dissipate. One good point is that there is a "new Puritanism" that wasn't in effect during the time Erica Jong wrote "Fear of Flying," a novel that explored the politics of sex and feminism. Rather than leaving her lackluster marriage, she searches for an uncomplicated, anonymous fling. My character, Rosalind, does have a live-in boyfriend, but it's a problematic relationship. At the beginning she does worry about going home late, having to confront the boyfriend, etc., but that relationship ends early in the story.

Recreational sex: I think most of my novel, "The Dop" falls into this category. Special concerns in this case are: to give us information about the characters and the relationship. On the role of sex in it through dialogue, voice, interior monologue and details that offer insight into character. It's usually a given that the characters don't know each other very well, they have individual histories but not a common one, they may currently have other partners, they may be sexually uninhibited but emotionally guarded, and they may have vastly different expectations of the encounter.

Conflict develops then one character's feelings move at a different pace, and in a different direction, from the other's. There is nothing more important in revealing who the characters are than specific details in dialogue and description.

You can make a sex scene a turning point in your story when your characters do or say something especially revealing while making love.

I think what I mainly gained from this book was the thought that the sex scene has to do something to further your plot and reveal more about your characters. It can't be just a nice moment, it has to drive the action forward.

Dark Half by Stephen King

Suspense:

King writes great suspense. There's a scene in which a cop is checking out Stark's gory, abandoned car in a quiet parking lot that had me ready to jump. Yet it was unpredictable, because the officer never actually was killed as I expected.

He creates a ticking clock by letting us know in no uncertain terms that Stark is going to go after Thad, his wife and kids and do unspeakable things to them. It's only a matter of time. He will do this unless Thad writes another Stark book, which Thad has no intention of doing, because he is sure it will kill him.

Toward the end, King jumps back and forth between the viewpoints of Thad, Stark, Pangborn and Liz. This very effectively ratchets up the suspense and makes the action move very quickly.

Language and characterization:

King has an ease of language usage. His dialogue sounds very natural, and he has a knack for succinct descriptions and word patterns that pinpoint the character.

We like Thad. He's a good, descent guy, and we care about what happens to him. I've noticed that most of King's characters have good relationships with their wives. If there are children present, they are very devoted to the children. His appealing description of the twins in this story almost made me like kids. It was very important to the effectiveness of the suspense that the reader intensely care about Thad's wife and children.

Very seldom are there spots in which the actions of the characters are inconsistent with their personalities. (Though at the end, I think that Stark would have taken a few people with him. He definitely would have killed Sheriff Pangborn when he showed up at the summer house.)

When the police first go to Thad's house and accuse him of murder, King makes it very believable. The reader can feel what it must be like to be accused of a crime that he/she hasn't committed, especially if the evidence is fairly damning, as this evidence is. Thad writes a journal entry in first person dramatizing this, which makes it very immediate and personal to the reader.

Weak points:

The logic of how the physical Stark was created is shaky to me. Thad had a twin growing in his head, which was removed when he was twelve. Apparently, Stark was inside of him somehow and emerged when Thad began writing the Stark novels. When he stopped writing the novels, Stark became a physical entity. "He didn't have to be a separate person until Thad tried to kill him."

It's pretty darned convenient that George Stark begins deteriorating because no new books have been written about him. This happens without Thad having to do anything. I thought the protagonist was always supposed to take action to defeat the enemy. But I guess the action Thad took was to stop writing the Stark novels.

Overall:

The book is an organic whole. There were no places in which I had to look back and think, "Now what's going on here? Who's this character? Etc."

Dark Half's plot pulled me right along. The murders begin close to the beginning of the book, so we know that something evil is happening right away.

The sparrows are flying -- I recently red the book and saw the film of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror." In it, the flying birds represented the soul leaving the body. This may be in folklore elsewhere. But it reminded me that horror is often derivative of other sources. (In fact, "Mr. X" borrowed heavily from "The Dunwich Horror.")

Every once in awhile I notice King breaking viewpoint. "This would be the last time I would ever . . ." Like a person telling a story, his characters often foreshadow what is to come. I like this, because it makes me anticipate what is to come, but I know that it's a form of talking to the reader and isn't generally accepted.

As far as the ending goes, here are a few things that bothered me:

- - Thad has hastened Stark's demise by refusing to write more novels. The birds signify Stark's approaching death. It's just too convenient. Once Stark returns, Thad doesn't have to take specific action to cause Stark's death, because he is already dying.

- - Thad uses a bird whistle to call the sparrows in for a final meltdown. Where did this come from? King mentions earlier something about every magician having his tools, but it seemed to me that the bird whistle came in from left field.

- - When Stark (by long-distance telepathy) stabs Thad in the hand, Stark is also wounded, however, at the end when That stabs Stark in the throat Thad is not affected. (Presumably at some point, their physical conditions became converse. When Thad started writing the novel, Stark began healing and Thad began deteriorating.) The logic of this escapes me, however.

- - At one point Stark is referred to as the ghost of Thad's twin. How can a ghost be stabbed and killed?

Toward the end I began to wonder if the whole novel wasn't a metaphor for writers' block. I especially liked, "He had learned that, if he kept at it, if he simply kept pushing the words along the page, something else kicked in, something which was both wonderful and terrible. The words as individual units began to disappear. Characters who were stilted and lifeless began to limber us, as if he had kept them in some small closet overnight and they has to loosen their muscles before they could begin their complicated dances."

What I can extrapolate for my own writing:

Darn, I had my doppelganger getting stabbed in the hand resulting in Rosalind getting cut before I read the Dark Half. Now I guess I'll have to change it, because it will seem like I'm copying.

One of my problems is that I'm choppy and uneven at times. King has a smoothness that pulls the reader right along. I know that writing for hours and hours every day, would help me to become smoother. I think because I leave the book for a several days at a time, the book cools off to me and I have to get my momentum going again.

His writing of suspense scenes is brilliant. He knows just how to escalate.

I'm wondering of I need some kind of body count in "The Dop." No one has been killed yet, but I was trying more for psychological than physical horror.

Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper by Robert Block

This story uses a very difficult-to-pull-off technique: The viewpoint character is the murderer, but the reader doesn't know until the end. The only other story I've known this to be used in was, "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," by Agatha Christie. I had read this book because I was interested in using that technique in another book I was working on at the time. (I didn't do it, because I didn't feel myself skilled enough to make it work.)

The question is, is the writer cheating the reader by withholding the identity of the murderer until the very end? In reality, the murderer would be thinking very different thoughts. He might be worried about being revealed before he was ready. He might be thinking about how he could play with this guy then get him into a situation in which he could knife him. In a sense I did feel more cheated than if the story had been told through sir Guy Hollis's viewpoint. However, I was more surprised at the end. Since this is considered to be one of Block's best stories, I guess the technique is acceptable. He does it with such skill, however, I suspect in the hands of someone less masterful, the reader would be annoyed.

The concept that Jack the Ripper killed women in a pact with the dark forces to gain eternal youth is an interesting one. In my book Jack is also going to take part in human sacrifices to the dark gods in order to gain the ability to perform true magic and immortality.


Danse Macabre by Stephen King

Even though this book is very dated (references to books and films end at around 1980), King presents some very valuable background info about horror films and books, as well as some very insightful observations about the nature of horror.

I've written down ideas of his that sparked my interest and commented upon them.

Several of the concepts caused me to reflect on my motives for writing The Dop.

" . . . books and films which have been the most successful almost always seem to play upon and express fears which exist across a wide spectrum of people." In the 50's and 60's the monsters in horror movies were usually the result of being exposed to some form of radiation (relating to our fear of the Soviet Union and nuclear war). In the 70's horror films related more to social commentary of the times (Stepford Wives plays upon men's fear of women gaining too much power.)

" . . . we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones." I've long felt that horror is a way for people to make the real horrors of live seem less daunting.

Tales of the Hook:

"Exactly what is a monster? Begin by assuming that the tale of horror, no matter how primitive, is allegorical by its very nature; that it is symbolic. Assume that it is talking to us, like a patient on a psychoanalyst's couch, about one thing while it means another."

Allegory is built-in with horror. It says in a symbolic way things we would be afraid to say straight out.

This caused me to ponder what I was personally trying to say with the Dop? Rosalind gets involved with an evil, dangerous charismatic person. The result of is that Rosalind gains strength and deals with her problems herself no matter what kind of peripheral people are involved with her at the time. She makes a mistake, pays for it and emerges victorious and stronger than when she began.

"We're waiting to be told what we so often suspect, that everything is turning to shit."

Tales of the Tarot:

In Frankenstein we see the horror of being a monster through the monster's eyes.

"All tales of horror can be divided into two groups: those in which the horror results from an act of free and conscious will -- a conscious decision to do evil -- and those in which the horror is predestinate, coming from outside like a stroke of lightening." Psychological stories often revolve around the free-will concept.

It's the concept between id and superego, the free will to do evil or deny it.

Back to The Dop, I have to wonder if Rosalind is intentionally doing evil. Certainly, she wrongs David, her original boyfriend, and she does knowingly get involved with the dangerous guy. In a way her fault is that she was so unaware of what was truly going on (the fact that Jack was, bit-by-bit, drawing her in as an ally into his demonic world.)

The split between Apollonian (intellect, morality and nobility) and the Dionysian (emotion, sensuality and chaotic action.)

When Rosalind meets Jack, she is in an Apollonian state, working on her business, enduring her unfulfilling relationship with her boyfriend. When she decides to go with Jack, she switches over to the Dionysian state of pleasure-seeking.

King attempts " . . . to lull the readers of my stories into -- that state of believability where the ossified shield of 'rationality' has been temporarily laid aside, the suspension of disbelief is at hand, and the sense of wonder is again within reach."

Yes, King is a master of that. He says he does it through the use of details and every day settings.

Radio and the Set of Reality:

"Nothing is so frightening as what's behind the closed door." That is absolutely true. I was so let down when I found out that "IT" was a giant spider and not the evil clown who had been appearing to the kids.

"What's behind the door or lurking at the top of the stairs is never as frightening as the door or the staircase itself. And because of this, comes the paradox: the artistic work of horror is almost always a disappointment. It is the classic no-win situation."

There is a school of writers who believe that the way to beat this rap is to never open the door at all. Blair Witch does this and I believe pulls it off fairly well.

The Modern American Horror Movie - Text and Sub-Text:

The concept of what is scary changes with the times. "Nothing in the world is as hard to comprehend as the terror whose time has come and gone." Think about "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." People were terrified by that movie and now we laugh and make wise-cracks at the guy in the rubber suit.

Stepford Wives is a film about explosive social change of the late sixties and seventies.

"Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of power, and what men fear about women and women's sexuality." "High school is a place of almost bottomless and conservatism and bigotry, a place where the adolescents who attend are no more allowed to rise above their station than a Hindu would be allowed to rise above his or her caste."

"When the lights go out and we find ourselves stranded in a shoal of darkness, reality itself has an unpleasant way of fogging in." I can relate to this, because I have been terrified alone in the dark by myself in my own house during a power figure. Objectively we know there is nothing different there when the lights are out. Subjectively, we're not so sure.

Horror Fiction:

Gothic horror: " . . . ghosts, in the end, adopt the motivations and perhaps the very souls of those who behold them."

In Peter Straub's "Ghost Story," Don asks the little ghost girl. "What are you?" "I am you," she responds. "What is the ghost, after all, that it would frighten us so, but our own face." This very much ties in with the concept of the doppelganger.

"Straub has a hall-of-mirrors approach which keeps us constantly aware that the face looking out of all those mirrors is also the face looking in; the book suggests that we need ghost stories because we, in fact, are the ghosts."

In "Ghost Story," when Don makes love to the creature in its Alma Mobley incarnation, he touches her in the night and feels "a shock of concentrated feeling, a shock of revulsion -- as though I had touched a slug." During a weekend spent with her, he wakes up and sees Alma staring blankly into the fog. When he asks her if anything is wrong, she replies, "I saw a ghost." A later truth forces his to admit she may have said, "I am a ghost." A final act of memory retrieval convinces his that she has said something far more telling: "You are a ghost."

The different levels of perception really fascinate me. (Some of my favorite X-Files episodes use this technique of altered layers of perception. Just what perception can you trust?)

Inside Evil ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde") vs. Outside Evil ("Dracula"): "Ghost Story," as well as "The Haunting of Hill House," by Shirley Jackson blurs these lines. " . . . it is exactly this blurring about where the evil is coming from that differentiates the good or the merely effective from the great, but realization and execution are two different things, and in attempting to produce the paradox, most succeed only in producing a muddle."

Straub says, "I wanted to play around with reality, to make the characters confused about what was actually real."

He built in situations in which the characters feel they are:

1. acting out roles in a book
2. watching a film
3. hallucinating
4. dreaming
5. transported into a private fantasy

"The material is sort of naturally absurd and unbelievable, and there fore suits a narrative in which the characters are bounced around a whole set of situation, some of which they know rationally to be false."

The concept of the bad place: Haunted houses might be psychic batteries absorbing the emotions that had been spent there, absorbing them much as a car battery will store an electric charge.

"The truest definition of the haunted house would be a house with an unsavory history."

Stephen King goes into a long analysis of Anne Rivers Siddons "The House Next Door," a book I am quite fond of. It is a haunted house story about a new house, one which the protagonist watched being built on the vacant lot next door. The difference here is that the evil is being carried by the person who built the house. (Dionysian change is coming to this Apollonian suburb.)

"The House Next Door" is a frame story. Tales of the misfortunes of the neighbors are told through the vehicle of Colquitt Kennedy watching her life and way of thinking change as a result of her proximity to the house.

"Much of the walloping effect of 'The House Next Door' comes from its author's nice grasp of social boundaries."

"The purpose of horror fiction is not only to explore taboo lands but to confirm our own good feelings about the status quo by showing us extravagant visions of what the alternative might be."

"The real secret of the house next door is that it is a dressing-room for were wolves."

In "The Haunting of Hill House," Eleanor is obsessively concerned with herself, and in Hill House she finds a huge and monstrous mirror reflecting back her own distorted face." (She has been profoundly stunted by her upbringing and family life.)

"One thing we do know about Hill House is that it is all wrong. It is no one thing we can put our finger on; it's everything. Stepping into Hill House is like stepping in the mind of a madman; it isn't long before you weird out yourself."

" . . . when you tamper with a man or woman's perspective on their physical world, you tamper with what may actually be the fulcrum of the human mind.

The juxtaposition of the unimaginable terrible with the utterly ordinary achieves its peak in Ira Levin's "Rosemary's Baby." This is an urban horror story (much like Fran Lieber's "Smoke Ghost.")

King says that Ira Levin is the Swiss watchmaker of the suspense novel. This is why film makers have been so faithful to his plots. Pull one plot twist and everything comes tumbling down.

I always wonder why "Rosemary's Baby" stands the test of time while other horror or sci-fi films seem so hokey. Perhaps it is Polanski's expert direction. Perhaps it is the fact that the story hits us so personally and (especially if you've been brought up Catholic) tales of possession by the devil ring an especially resonant note.

"Polanski's directorial style of not aiming the camera squarely at the horror but rather letting the audience spot it for themselves off at the side of the screen coincides with Levin's writing style.

"'Rosemary's Baby' is a splendid confirmation that humor and horror lie side by side, and that to deny one is to deny the other.

The major theme of "Rosemary's Baby" deals with urban paranoia.

"Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness. In a crazy sort of way, Rosemary's story is of a coming to that sort of awareness. We become paranoid before she does." Levin does a great job of creating suspense. We're worried for Rosemary. We see it coming before she does. This is an effect I'd like to be able to achieve. Levin does it with such subtlety with side glances, whispered conversations, things that are not quite right.

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers." ". . . one off-key note, then two, then a ripple, then a run of them. Finally the jagged, discordant music of horror overwhelms the melody entirely." Again, this is something I would like to do with my book, but my build-up is not effective. All of my opening supernatural elements are on the same level. I definitely need to learn to build.

" . . . the horror story is in many ways an optimistic, upbeat experience; that it is often the tough mind's way of coping with terrible problems which may not be supernatural at all but perfectly real."

"All fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at a great cost or lost it tragically."

"The Shrinking Man," Richard Matheson. "We can understand Matheson's decision to use flashbacks in order to get to the good stuff early on, but one wonders what might have happened if he had given us the story in a straight line."

Ramsey Campbell - "In a Campbell novel or story, one seems to view the world through the thin and shifting perceptual haze of an LSD trip that is just ending . . . or just beginning."

"James Herbert and Ramsey Campbell . . . write that clear, lucid, grammatical prose that only those educated in England seem able to produce."

King points out that many writers of fiction seem totally unable to explain simple operations or actions clearly enough for the reader to be able to see them in his or her mind's eye. Some of this is a failure on the writer's part to visualize well and completely. This made me examine my own ability to write clearly and made me much more aware of explanations of the actions in my story.

"James Herbert comes at us with both hands, not willing to simply engage our attention; he seizes us by the lapels and begins to scream in our faces."

Herbert on "The Fog." -- ". . . it had no limits of structure or place. It would simply go on and on until the thing resolved itself. I liked working with my main characters, but I also liked the vignettes because when I got tired of what my heroes were up to, I could go off on just about any tangent I liked. My feeling throughout the writing was, 'I'm just going to enjoy myself. I'm going to try to go over the top; to see how much I can get away with."

"You try to catch the madness in a bell-jar so you can cope with it a little better."

"My stories all speak of courage and ethic and friendship and toughness."

King's book caused me to watch some of the movies he talked about and purchase some of the horror novels (with the intention of reading them when I have the time.)

I'd say the biggest effect this book had on me was to make me question my motivations for writing what I do.