I’ve written before (here and elsewhere) about the writing workshop I participated in, fifteen-some years ago.
An odd cast of characters, maybe: three writers of poetry and literary fiction then seeking their graduate degrees in English, with an emphasis on creative writing; one writer of comic action stories (think Carl Hiaasen, maybe with a touch of Elmore Leonard); one writer of horror and science fiction…
…and I.
I was the only one who’d published a book to that point, my mystery Crossed Wires. But I didn’t think of myself as a “mystery writer.” (Crossed Wires‘s prose and structure, I think, suggests the crooked posture of a writer in a genre he knows he’s not suited for.)
I didn’t know how to classify myself. My reading tastes were all over the map. I’d read a great deal of science fiction while growing up; liked reading mysteries and thrillers; had been bowled over by the caliber of the romances published by friends*; was moved and challenged by fiction I read in The New Yorker and similar magazines.
Horror? Well, I’d read a lot of horror comics when I was a kid. I didn’t mind “scary movies,” but didn’t get many chances to see them (other than classics from the ’30s). When I got older, I read some King and Koontz, and — on the strength of the paperbacks’ striking covers — I read some of Brian Lumley’s Necroscope series. But for the most part, horror fiction didn’t interest me. Beyond what seemed a core of authors with wider aspirations and deeper, more complex psychologies, y’know, It Was All Just Blood.
But the SF/horror writer in our workshop kept bringing to us his inventive little fantasias of things gone frighteningly wrong. And this got me thinking: I wonder what it’s like to write horror? So I tried it. Once.
My objectives: I wanted to write a horror story featuring a monster, but not a monster of a type readers would recognize — I didn’t want them to use a familiar noun for my monster. I wanted to write the story from the monster’s point of view. I figured there’d have to be a certain amount of blood, but it didn’t need to be onstage (so to speak). I didn’t want to make the monster sympathetic, tragic, or misunderstood: I wanted him to be unrepentant. And one night, in that twilight mental state between waking and sleep, a title came to me.
“In the Ruins on Borphyr Road” started out as a fairly tight story which the workshop’s readers liked. But they kept wanting to know more. Where the heck had this guy come from? How the heck did he even, well, work? (The anatomy and physics seemed impossible.)
I was pleased enough with the result, after several drafts, to submit the story to maybe two or three horror markets. I got some interest, although not enough to encourage me. And then the coup de grâce: a popular movie came out a few years later, whose monster was not identical but way too similar to my own protagonist. Working on and/or submitting the story further seemed pointless, and it went into the virtual file cabinet.
Having re-read it now, fifteen years later, I almost certainly would not have written some of this in exactly this way. Nevertheless, here’s an excerpt — the first two sections of “In the Ruins on Borphyr Road.” (If prompted for a password**, it’s that one oddball word in the story’s title, entered exactly as spelled — capital B, and so on.)
_____________________
* We all are snobs about something — especially those things which we’ve never experienced… right up until we experience it ourselves. (Of course, it betters the odds if we start at a good point. Sturgeon’s Law and all that.)
** “Password?!?” you wonder. I know, I know. Humor me for now.
Nance says
Part II hooked me hard enough that I began to feel both compelled to read on and compelled to stop. It was fortunate that I got called to supper (DH’s turn to cook) in the nick of time, because that gave me a chance to sort out both ends of my reaction before I finished reading.
Here’s the grabber line for me:
“Whatever his mother’s other resources, whatever amount of tolerance she could conjure up or feign, in hindsight he had to allow that she couldn’t possibly have slept with enough orthodontists to eliminate that problem.”
I think you succeeded wonderfully at every objective except the one about keeping the monster from being sympathetic. I blame the Mother Switch, which, once activated, cannot be deactivated. I think all mothers of sons know those moments where our boys begin to turn into something we don’t recognize, something possibly alien, something strong and potentially dangerous, something that makes us alternately want to run away or to write another check to the orthodontist.
We mothers know what it’s like to conjure and feign tolerance. And we know what it’s like to stay anyway, BECAUSE we can’t have our boy experience shock, misery, and self-pity for even fifteen minutes. The mother and the boy together became a matter of acute sympathetic agony for me right there. I wondered if I could steel myself for what came next. And Iwas hungry and needed to eat.
If you decide to shape this piece up and write on, I promise you that you’ll scare the hell out of mothers of sons.
Nance says
P.S. There’s something really funky going on with shift-changed marks… apostrophes and quote marks… both in the post and in my comment.
DarcKnyt says
I can’t WAIT to sample this! Thank you John!
If we’re so inclined, is there a way we can get more of it? Like, the rest of it?
John says
Nance: Wow. Thank you for that (yes) sympathetic reading.
I’ve never heard of the “Mother Switch” — did you make that term up??? It’s wonderful no matter what the source. Not that I’ve experienced it firsthand of course, but I think The Missus (and maybe other mothers?) would instantly recognize what it refers to. As you would see if you could read the rest of the story, Wells’s mother does (sorta, kinda, like) reappear, but not by choice. In terms of the Mother Switch, I think maybe she’d tried to flip it but couldn’t quite bring herself to complete the act. Not that I blame her!
John says
Nance: Oh, and about the weird punctuation effects: can’t explain or even investigate it, ’cause all looks peachy to me both at work and at home.
This WordPress theme automatically converts straight quotes and apostrophes to their “smart” (= curly) counterparts, which sometimes causes a problem for me because it’s a little too aggressive about doing so. In the story, for example, I use a made-up term — scoping, preceded by an apostrophe, presumably a shortened form of something like telescoping. Because the apostrophe represents something merely implied in its place, like a contraction, I wanted it to be represented as a “right single quotation mark” — otherwise, the theme thinks it’s an opening (left) single quotation mark. (I’ve run into the same problem in referring to decades, e.g. the ’60s — unless someone has fixed the theme since the last time I tried it, that will show up as left single quote-60s, NOT right single quote-60s.)
Anyway, that’s neither here nor there… Have you recently upgraded or replaced your Web browser? (It’s possible to FORCE the browser to mangle special characters like these — maybe that’s the default setting now!)
John says
[Damn. How about that — it didn’t goof “the ’60s” up after all!]
John says
Darc: Since you are one of my few known horror readers, your reaction would count for a lot.
Special Arrangements can always be made. :) You just might want to factor in that what you can see in the page I’ve linked to constitutes about 20% of the whole thing. (I’d like to blame my former workshopmates for asking me so many questions I felt compelled to answer. But alas, the compulsion was all inner!)
marta says
Hmm. I’m torn between wanting to read what you’ve written and not wanting to be scared. And as a mother of a son, reading Nance’s comment was…intimidating. So. Here’s me. Thinking. Tapping fingers on the desk…
John says
marta: You’ve mentioned before that you don’t “do horror” (as a reader or movie-goer), so, y’know, no problem.
If you decide to plunge ahead, however…
Jayne says
Oops – sorry, John, I think I left my comment at the wrong place! Anyway, it’s back with the story, and I have to thank Nance for putting into words what I was trying to identify, what really pulled me in, and it’s precisely the “Mother Switch”. Having a 14 year old son, I can relate to that. All too much.
So, not long ago I wrote about Mary Gaitskill’s dark stories which go to those places–the dark other side of our conscience (I’ve been ridiculously consumed by her shorts). They are scary as hell. Your story has that same effect.
I want more. And the monster MUST be sympathetic! ;)
(That photo is really creepy.)
John says
@Jayne: Where you comment is not a problem (for me, anyhow) — I’ll reply to that comment over there, too. (The advantage to commenting there would be to avoid spoilers for anyone who has NOT read the excerpt.)
I think you might’ve mentioned Gaitskill’s stories before. Looks like something I need to add to my wish list — are you reading or can you recommend any particular collection?
Loved the photo when I saw it. I’ve reproduced only a sliver of the original above — it’s from a poster for the recent Benicio del Toro version of The Wolfman. (You can see the whole thing by clicking on the slice at the top of this post.)
marta says
@John – I will consider plunging in June.
John says
@marta: No pressure. I have no desire to freak you out!
(Although your latest story-a-day makes me wonder if maybe you’ve got a stronger resistance to horror than you think!)
marta says
@John – That’s funny, because one friend of mine stopped reading my first novel after the first chapter because, “I had to stop reading it, Marta. It scared me. Really. I just couldn’t read anymore after that.”
ha. And I’m more open to reading something scary than watching something scary.
Jayne says
@John – Ah, that photo gave me the chills!
Gaitskill has the sort of checkered past requisite for writing dark, compelling stories. Her book of shorts Because They Wanted To would be a good place to start. You might like, also, Lydia Peelle’s Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing. Very different style, but excellent short stories in this first book by Peelle. (Her husband, incidentally, is Ketch Secor from Old Crow Medicine Show. More birds!)
John says
Note: For anyone else following this side conversation with Jayne about Mary Gaitskill, a couple of resources:
Jayne says
@John – Thanks for posting that, John. I should have just directed you there myself. There is also another good interview w/Gaitskill regarding “The Other Side”–(which, I think, is one of her best–it’s the POV!). That can be found [at the page you linked to in the previous comment].
Jayne says
Duh, never mind. You have the link! I ought to know better by now! Please delete! :)
John says
@Jayne: Haha — I can’t bring myself to outright delete something, but I did patch it up a bit. :)