When Fear Turns Logs Into Demonic Crocodiles

Let us open with an anecdote illustrating what an absolute genius I am.




Last night, I had a brief internal discourse with myself that went something like this: Say, you (being me), you're quite an imaginative and creative, reading, writing sort of person whose wild imagination has, of late, been causing you to have a lot of problems with irrational fears and worries. I say, look at this book you've just started reading. You know from the synopsis on the back cover and from the prologue that it features monsters. Slimy, black, betentacled monsters with saggy skin and malicious intentions.




Why don't you stay up after midnight reading this book? I see absolutely no way you could possibly come to regret such a decision.



See how freaking brilliant I am?


No, seriously, I had that conversation with myself. I considered that reading a book that I knew was going to be creepy after dark was probably a really bad idea. And I did it anyway.




And now for an understatement: last night wasn't the most restful night I've ever experienced.




And now for the truth: I spent most of the night slightly terrified. To be more specific, even lying on my bed, which is shoved up against the wall (in other words, even lying in a position that made it impossible for there to be anything behind me) I had to keep craning my head and looking behind me to make sure there wasn't a blind man in a bathrobe there leering at me (I'm sorry, did I forget to say that the monsters take human form, looking perfectly normal except for their pupil-less eyes?).




I also spent a good chunk of the night reading this book because, as previously stated, I'm a genius who always makes good and positive life decisions.




Like flipping to the back to look at the list of illustrations (it's an illustrated book) for the express purpose of finding a picture of a monster in blank-eyed human form. Which I then proceeded to look at.




WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IS WRONG WITH ME?????




Additional factors which made last night even more fun:
1. It was quite windy and there are trees surrounding our house. Thus, the branches clunked against the walls and roof. A lot.
2. My sister's hamster's wheel squeaks, making a constant, very quiet, high-pitched whine that it took me some time to identify.
3. I got thirsty midway through the night and was impelled to creep through the darkened house. The darkened, cold, wind-battered house.




Has anybody else ever been in a situation where you're scared halfway into paralysis, and every time you come to a doorway or a turn you quickly glance around it, and the reasonable part of your brain knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's nothing there, but that part of your brain is being shushed and overridden by the panicky part which is convinced it's going to see an old man with pure white eyes grinning evilly at you?




That basically sums up where I was last night.


The rather depressing thing is that sleeplessness isn't new to me; I just tend to be peacefully or even productively sleepless and not tremblingly, jumpily sleepless.


(An interesting thing to note: the teenage, male narrator of this book happens to be a nervous, stressed out, easily spooked sort of person. I'm not quite halfway through the book and so far he's already fainted twice, suffered from multiple "wake-up-screaming nightmares", had a lengthy, headache-inducingly intense sobbing fit, and spent several nights sleeping on the floor of his laundry room because it's the only room in his house with no windows and a door that locks from the inside. I can really relate to this guy.)


But getting back to my sleeplessness. While I've had my moments of fearful restlessness all through my life, whether they be caused by Orcs, Weeping Angels, or the bizarre specters I created myself as a toddler, the constant watchfulness that I've been suffering from for months officially began on June 13th, when a house in my neighborhood was blown to smithereens thanks to a natural gas leak. Despite the fact that no one was seriously injured and I don't know the unfortunate homeowners (or anyone in my neighborhood, for that matter) at all, I felt violently confronted with my own mortality.


Yes, that sounds melodramatic. But the fact is that a little stubborn worm of a thought sneaked into my highly imaginative mind. What if it had been your house? it asked. And what if you had been inside, asleep, when it happened?


Me being the person that I am, my ensuing mental state shortly thereafter made me think of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.


At the beginning of that famous film, Snow White is scared witless by the news that her stepmother is trying to kill her. Immediately afterward, in her already-frightened state, Snow goes tearing into a dark forest full of gnarled trees. The trees have eyes and their branches fly out, grabbing at her cloak. She even falls through a hole in the ground into a pool of water only to be lunged at by vicious-looking, eyeless crocodiles.



At least, that's what seems to be happening.


Later, when the fear has faded and she's surrounded by cuddly creatures, Snow White sees that the forest is really a bright, peaceful, safe place, populated by friendly animals and jocular dwarfs. And those possessed-looking crocodiles? They're mere logs.


Where fear exists, more fear follows. As soon as I started worrying I was going to lose my home in a fiery inferno, everyday occurrences began to feel increasingly threatening to me. Unexplained chest pains became heart attacks. Headaches became brain aneurysms. Stomachaches became appendicitis. Creaks in the floorboards became burglars and serial killers.


Logs became demonic crocodiles.


In all honesty, it was almost refreshing to have a night spent in paralyzing, heart-hammering fear of something that doesn't actually exist. I would rather fear the utterly inconceivable, the shadowy specters and expressionless ghouls that vanish at sunrise, than those other, realer phantoms which can haunt my mind and plague my nerves even in the daytime.


This post is going in a rather different direction than the one I'd originally intended it to. Originally, the thesis was going to be some achingly beautiful statement about how terror stems from creativity, how writers and readers and dreamers see ghosts where there are none because they see possibility and stories in everything. Now..... now I don't know what it is. A confession, maybe. Hi, how are you, my name's Pearl and I have trust issues and I'm a hypochondriac and I rarely sleep at night. And also I sometimes do silly things like reading scary books after dark.


Maybe it's some sort of hidden cry for help. I don't know. You decide.


I'm going to keep reading the book, of course. (Allow me to reiterate how intelligent and good at decision-making I am.) But the thing is, despite the creepiness, I'm really enjoying it, and I don't allow my fear to rule me. Much. My fear of getting into a car wreck doesn't stop me from getting into cars, and likewise my fear of a fictional creature won't stop me from reading a good book.


So HA..... and stuff.


Fare thee well.


~Pearl Clayton


"He's scared of everything: spiders, snakes, wicker furniture!" (Place the reference and get a free commendation!)

Literature's (Potentially) Second-Biggest Copout Ending

The night before last, I woke up in the dark in a stranger's house. Having run away from home alone with no possessions or money to speak of (not my wisest decision, I'll freely admit) I'd been very lucky to run into a random guy who was willing to let me stay at his house for a few days (reserve all judgments until I'm done telling this story, please).


Anyway, this person whose house I was staying in (I never did catch his name) had gone..... um..... somewhere (another detail I didn't catch), so when I woke up in the middle of the night on the pull-out sofa bed in his living room, I was in the unfamiliar house alone. I thought I smelled sulfur, so I got up and started wandering around.


Within a few seconds, the smell had faded, but the darkness and the strangeness of my surroundings was causing me to feel increasingly panicky and I started worrying I'd been awoken by some sound or other indication of sinister happenings, and sure enough, the next time I turned around the living room doorway was mostly blocked by an undefined, hulking figure.


I was naturally terrified, but by this time I'd figured out what was going on, and so without a second's thought I ran straight at the figure..... and straight through it into pitch blackness. For a few sickening moments, everything was dark and I couldn't move.


And then I woke up (for real this time) in my room.


When the paralyzing terror left over from the dream had faded and I glanced at my clock, I was quite surprised to discover that I'd only been asleep for about fifteen minutes.


(An interesting fact to note is that this, a dream in which I was staying at a strange person's house for no good reason and in which a mysterious, threatening form appeared out of nowhere, was one of the most comprehensible and plausible dreams I've ever had.)


It was this nightmare that finally succeeded in getting me to sit down and write this post that I've been half-heartedly foreshadowing for weeks.


See, back in January, I read a really weird book. It involved, among other strange occurrences, the main character (who lived in England in the 1930s) romping across the downs will a full Roman battalion, shrinking himself and his friends to explore a hollow tree with a friendly mouse, meeting a demented time traveler who had a serious crush on Alexander the Great on a tropical island (which he was able to leave by riding a magic dolphin), and later shrinking himself again and accidentally getting stuck in a case of stolen jewels. The book ended with a joyous chorus singing in a cathedral on Christmas Eve. Just as the chorus begins floating toward the ceiling of the suddenly-collapsing cathedral, the main character's guardian shakes him awake and asks him if he had a nice dream. He says yes.


(Now this is going to feel like a non sequitur, but I promise it isn't.) I first completed NaNoWriMo as an assignment for my high school Composition class. In the final weeks leading up to November, the class spent a lot of time preparing, mapping out our plots, asking the teacher questions, sketching our characters, etc. During this time, one girl asked our teacher her opinion of the "And then, she woke up", ending. The teacher answered that she doesn't like it because it feels too much like an easy way out, unless the twist is predictable.


For example, as I indicated I-don't-know-how-clearly above, the night before last I was able to determine I was dreaming before the mysterious figure ever showed up, hence my decision to run toward the figure rather than away from it. According to my high school Comp teacher, that could make a good story: someone having a crazy dream but gradually becoming aware of it. I rather agree.


But what about when the author just springs it on you? Is that really a copout ending?


In my opinion, the dream twist ending can also (sort of) work in fantastical stories, like the one I read back in January, or Alice in Wonderland, or The Wizard of Oz, none of which contain any indication throughout that the main character is dreaming. There are just two problems.



Problem One: Dreams aren't that realistic.


Allow me to remind you again that in my nightmare, I had for unknown reasons left my home empty-handed and moved in with the first friendly, hospitable fellow I happened to encounter. Allow me to also reiterate that this is one of the least bizarre dreams I've ever had. I had an uninterrupted dream once (I say uninterrupted to specify that this was a "coherent" narrative and everything that transpired in it was supposedly happening in the same day) that featured a lake so polluted that submergence in it invariably resulted in death, a blindingly white apartment complex several hundred stories tall, an evil flying toaster (I think there was also an evil flying microwave and possibly a blender), and a dark purple ice skating rink which unexpectedly transformed into a dark purple swimming pool.


My point is that no one and nothing behaves normally in dreams. Dreams are not coherent. They're full of unanswered questions, non-functional premises, and nonsensical transitions. While books like those I mentioned above have inexplicable events, they are also generally governed by some form of logic, however twisted it may be. The Wizard of Oz (I'm talking about the movie version; I don't think it's all a dream in the book) even has a plot. Actually, the book I read back in January had a plot too, but it was confusing enough to be almost excusable as a dream.


Problem Two: It's still lazy storytelling.


Why do people use this ending, anyway? Not being a particular fan of it, I've never even considered using it in one of my writings, but I would guess that the motivation comes from the desire to send the protagonist on ridiculously implausible adventures without having to manage the later effects of those adventures on their everyday lives. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not sure it matters if I am, since that's what it feels like. The choice feels lazy, which is why my teacher called it lazy.


My least favorite kind of ending ever seems to send the same message of "Hi, I'm the author, but I don't want to have to write in the character development and readjustments resultant from the awesome adventures I'm sending my main character on". The ending in question? The forgetfulness ending. (A prime and much-resented example of this ending can be seen in the "Doctor Who" episode Journey's End.) This is when primary characters have all their memories of all their great adventures and experiences wiped. And it's ANNOYING, because they aren't just lazy, unsatisfying conclusions, they can also be used as pathos-ridden, emotionally manipulative romps (scroll down for applicable rant).


But now I'm rambling. My final verdict(s)? I like Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. I like The Wizard of Oz. I didn't really like the book I read in January (which is, of course, why I've been wanting to post about it). I think that, like most storytelling techniques, the laziness or effectiveness of the "It was all a dream" twist is dependent on the context of the full story and on the author's writing style and abilities.


The fact is, what I like about the Alice books and The Wizard of Oz are the fantastical elements, and I think I would prefer those stories if those elements were real, like they are in, say, The Chronicles of Narnia. I find this ending and the forgetfulness ending disappointing, not just because they feel lazy, but also because I would hate to go on a life-changingly wonderful adventure that made me an explorer or a vanquishing hero only to forget it or discover it wasn't real. These endings aren't only unfair to the readers or the watchers; they're unfair to the characters, too.


Like I said: this ending can work okay if done by a good author. But I like it better when stories are true for the characters within them.


(Although I am quite content to have my freakishly weird dreams remain dreams. Just saying.)


~Pearl Clayton  


 




  

An Impassioned and Sloppy Rant Against Pathos

Warning: Blog post may contain British swear words


See that title? See it? I guess you can say what you will about pathos (and trust me, I intend to) but you can't fault it as being ineffective. Trouble is, I'm supposed to be mad at a character in a book right now. And I am, just not the one I'm supposed to be mad at. But I'm more mad at the author.


At the moment, for school, I'm having to read a certain book. Interestingly, I've read this book before, but it was some years ago and I remembered very little about it. I certainly didn't remember the icky, emotionally manipulative chapter I've just finished reading. I probably blocked it.


This chapter, or more specifically the story arc it concludes, is at its heart about a horse. This horse is the dearest possession of his conviction-lacking, easily controlled, and in all other ways depressing master. The one good thing the master has ever done has been the gentling, training, and befriending of this horse. In an earlier chapter, another character even observes that despite the uselessness and extreme lack of personality of this man, his treatment of his horse shows that he can't be all bad.


CAN YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING YET?????


Here, I'll tell you. Dorky Mr. I-Have-No-Strength-of-Character, who's broke because he gambles too much and can't keep a job, sells his horse to an INFAMOUS horse abuser who insists that he'll just keep the horse until the horse's rightful owner has enough money to buy the horse back. Long story short, the horse is dead within about 15 pages of the transaction.


I think I'm supposed to be mad at the horse abuser. Maybe I'm even supposed to be irritated with the poor, mindless fool who sells the horse in the first place.


But I'm not.


So who (besides the author) do I feel like strangling right now?


Our hero.


Yes, our brave, epic hero, who stands silently by watching the transaction, knowing the inevitable result, and doing nothing. Oh, no, wait, he does do something. He encourages the easily swayed and very trusting owner to sell his horse to the abuser. Hooray for him.


Oh, yes, our hero, who allows the idiotic abuser who knows nothing about horses to have his own way when they're planning how to transport some horses. The result of this? Ultimately, the abuser is left alone with the horse in a creepy wood that makes everybody jumpy, a location which would have been avoided completely had our hero taken charge of the situation from the start.


Our bloody hero, who finally beats the tar out of the abuser only after he's inflicted a good deal of abuse on the horse. And the result of this? When the abuser is later left alone with the horse in the creepy wood and the horse tries to run away and the abuser gets the bright idea of firing a shot in front of the horse, thereby scaring the horse into running back to him, his arm is stiff and bruised. So he misses and hits the horse's leg. So the horse has to die.


And did I mention that when the abuser gets back to his ranch, the horse's rightful owner has arrived with the money he's earned to buy his best friend back? No? Well, he has. And of course, the abuser lies about how the horse died. So the chapter ends on this incredibly happy and uplifting note:


"He rode away in mournful spirits. For he had made so sure of once more riding and talking with Pedro, his friend whom he had taught to shake hands."


Oh.


My.


Word.


You know the really upsetting thing about all this? I'm not even entirely sure that this passage was originally intended to be pathos-ridden.


The book was adapted into one continuous narrative from a collection of short stories the author had written and published previously. This section of the book is actually the first short story in which the book's grand hero originally appeared. It was based on an actual experience that the author had. Reportedly, he witnessed a horse being horribly maltreated and felt wretched because he was powerless to do a thing about it. Thus, he created the story's hero, a brave, strong, just man powerful and willing enough to punish the abuser for his wrongdoing. Now that would actually be a great story and not even remotely pathos-y. Instead of some angst-ridden outcry to..... something, it would have been a story told simply for the author's own benefit, a mental reimagining of events in which a man the author held in contempt and had long desired to punish finally received his just desserts.


Which is why it makes no sense that the horse ultimately dies because of the hero's vengeful actions against the abuser.


Or does the horse die because of the hero's ridiculous silence(s) earlier in the story?


Seriously, why would you create a hero for the sole purpose of avenging a horse's memory, and then have that hero be almost completely responsible for the death of the fictional horse based on the real one?


Also, why make the horse's original owner such a pathetic creature? The notes in the book I'm reading that explain about the story inspiring this passage have no comment on the owner character, so it's impossible to tell whether some version of him existed in the true event or whether he was born of the author's imagination. If the latter is the case, the whole thing becomes even more disgustingly Nicholas Sparks-y. Let's see, how can I make this scene even more affecting? I know! I'll make this horse the only bright point in the exaggeratedly depressing life of a character whom I describe over and over as being a "lost dog"!


(No, seriously. The first chapter in the two-chapter-long story arc is called "Progress of the Lost Dog".)


Is my confusion striking anybody else here, or is my anger making my writing confusing? I really don't know. I'm too furious to really know anything at the moment.


Here's something else I don't know: What emotion is this moronic writer trying to appeal to? What lesson is he trying to teach? Be kind to animals? Don't let yourself get cowed into selling your most precious possession to a known jerk? Don't beat people up? I honestly have no idea. The only person whose conduct is painted as reprehensible is the abuser's, but as I've already said multiple times, it's the hero's negative reaction to the abuser's behavior that finally causes the horse's death. Although I guess that the hero is never blamed. In the horse's death scene, the writer seems to fault the abuser's impulsiveness in firing the warning shot before endeavoring to figure out what is causing the horse's skittishness.


Okay, now that I think about it, I think (key word being think) that the writer's ultimate message is one against losing one's temper. It is anger which makes the abuser abusive and frustration which makes him fire a shot with a bad arm.


Considering this post, it would be somewhat hilarious if that was in fact the author's intended message.


But see, that's the thing about pathos. It invariably seems to have the opposite effect on me that it's meant to. Things that are supposed to be making me sad annoy me. Things that are supposed to incense me do, but I always end up getting incensed at the author or at a character I'm supposed to be rooting for.


Don't get me wrong; as a writer myself, I have no objection to a little emotional manipulation in storytelling. But it has to be subtle. For example, as of right now only one scene in a book has ever made me shed material tears. In this scene, the gravely injured main character has a dream. In this dream, he is surrounded by all the loved ones he has lost over the years, save one, who happens to be the one he misses most of all. When he discovers that she's a long way off and he tries to get to her, all the others hold him back, protesting that they can't bear to lose him again, and dang nab it, I'm tearing up just writing this (granted, I'm in a bit of an emotionally unstable state at the moment). But do you at least see what I mean? Yes, it's emotionally manipulative, but it's not pushing some agenda or trying to force me to act or think in a certain way. (Note: That previous sentence may be redundant. I'm really not sure, my mental faculties now being greatly compromised by my emotional upheaval.) I don't feel when I'm reading it like the writer wrote the scene with the express intention of eliciting strong emotion from me. I just feel like I'm reading a story, a very good story, about love and loss and longing.


As I indicated it would be in the title, this post is sloppy and impassioned, but I really needed to get my feelings sorted into semi-coherent thoughts somewhere, and my blog felt like a reasonably good place to do it.


Here's the really special part: I still have four more chapters I need to read tonight if I want to finish this stupid book by the deadline.


Ugh.


If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go mope and eat cookies for a short while. Maybe after that I'll be in a good enough mood to continue reading.


Maybe.


~Pearl Clayton