Category: On Writing

The Story isn’t the Whole Story

Anyone who says ‘the story’ is or should be the only thing that an editor uses to pick out a table of contents is being at a minimum naive.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have an open call for horror: no caveats; no themes; no restraints. Now, in your top ten stories, SIX have nearly an identical plot. For example: family haunted by a demon, turns out to be kid’s teddy bear.

Now, these are all great, they are in your top ten after all, but you will not pick all six to be in your anthology. In fact, you probably won’t pick more than one of them, despite the fact that they ranked as highly as they did in your reading. Why? Because if you put six stories with identical plots in your table of contents, people will not like your book.

‘The Story’ fails you as solo criteria in this case, and now you have to re-address criteria for decisions.

Think of ‘the story’ as step one in the process. If the story isn’t good, then the rest doesn’t really matter. But, just because the story is good doesn’t mean the rest doesn’t matter.

The quality of the prose is a factor. A fantastic plot with amazing characters and a great hook will utterly fail if the prose fails. Prose is easily the glue that holds everything together. If it is weak, it takes the story with it.

Is a story a reprint? Where is it reprinted? In your open call, are all your top stories vampires? werewolves? Lovecraft? Does this fantastic story even fit your call? (I do get this one all the time; great stories that aren’t right for the publication) Is the story great, but relies on something factually incorrect to work, like Romans with diamond tipped weapons, or Denver’s very large sea port?

Is it too long? too short? Do I have the word count in my budget for this one? The financial aspect of making a book cannot be overstressed.

Does it completely not fit with the rest of the TOC in theme, tone, length, or any other host of reasons? An anthology is a lot like a mix tape in composition. The stories can ebb and flow as you read, but some, no matter the quality, aren’t a good fit.

Even with the authors themselves, we still have criteria. Was this person in the previous issue / anthology? Did they just generate a lot of bad press about something? Sellability and marketability can both be factors (though, personally I try to not use these as criteria).

The idea that ‘the story’ is the only criteria a piece is chosen for is simply not true.

If the product of this open call was an anthology of all straight white men, no one would notice. If it was all black women, the implication would be that it was a ‘special’ call, or that I had somehow sacrificed ‘the story’ to get such a TOC in the first place.

That is the real insult. The implication is those of us who produce work with diverse TOC’s have somehow sacrificed ‘the story’ to get there. It is insulting to the editors, to the writers, and to the readers.

This is, of course, for open call anthologies. If it was an invite-only anthology, then the makeup of the TOC is 100% on the editor. The criteria for these anthologies was not ‘the story.’

But the open call editor’s don’t get a reprieve on this. Every table of contents is choice by the editor.

Every table of contents was a choice made by the editor.

Say it again until you believe it.

Every table of contents was a choice made by the editor.

As a gatekeeper it is important to audit yourself, important to look back at your decisions and choices. It is important to look at ourselves with the same level of scrutiny we are looking at the writers.

And if your TOC’s have been homogeneous, it may be time to reflect and ask yourself “why?”

The reason why these factors should be taken in account is that they can help you see any personal biases you may have. What is your reading list? Did you reject a good story because it was too “feminine” or too “foreign”? Is there something in your tastes that is influencing “the story” in ways you aren’t noticing?

As editors, we do not have the luxury of ‘comfort zones’. We should be constantly stretching ourselves just as we ask the same for writers.

Because, to be blunt, if you say your criteria is “the story” and your TOC is all white men, I don’t believe you.

So, You Want To Write Poetry, Part Four

Life, Death, Love

When we think of poetry, we often associate them with these three–attaching poetry with emotion, the spontaneous overflow, as Whitman called it.

These things, however, are too big for your poem. They will rip it apart at the seams. The weight is too much.

This is not to say you cannot write a poem with these elements. I dare say poetry and language itself owes quite a bit to these things.

But yours is not a poem about LOVE, rather it is about your love. But even then your love for someone is a huge thing, and will not fit on a page.

Instead your poem is about a moment–breakfast two years after your wedding; the wilted flowers in the vase from your first date; the stolen glance back when you saw them dancing as they walked away from your first kiss.

Don’t put a net around the galaxy and try to hold it in lines of poetry. Instead look at the moment for poetry, find the whole galaxy in the sparrow on the window sill.

Keep your images tight as well. “Love” or “Death” may bring a grocery list of things to mind, but a list of those things is not as strong poem as a poem about each thing is.

So focus your poetry on the moment, the specific.

And in these small moments, you’ll say what you need to about life, love and death.

What Is Horror?

What is horror? Most answers will say “horror is fear,” leaving it at that. But it is not that simple. Fear is complex, and so must then be the answer. “I know it when I see it,” works here to some degree. A serial killer movie could be a mystery, or horror. And while the line may be thin between them, we can sense it when we cross it.

The Stakes

What is horror? An emotion–Fear. But what’s horror fiction? We experience fear as a motivator in many stories. There is fear when someone cannot pay the mortgage. There is fear when the doctor has news. There is fear before a big speech. There is fear before asking someone out on a first date.

Most would say that horror has nothing to do with those kinds of fear. This fear, the horror fear, is a fear of loss, death, madness, fear of losing a loved one. This fear has a different kind of stakes, a more base level. This is primitive fear, the kind of fear that takes over the mind, that seizes upon something deeper. This fear is the one that is the base emotion of horror.

The fear of losing one’s home, having family, children, evicted into the street–is there horror there? How do we distinguish the horror from the drama? Does the on-coming blizzard? Does the need for medicine?

When we talk horror we are talking something more than normal fear. More than fear of the average. We have to elevate the situation to lower the fear to this primitive level. But the question is: is this due to the nature of fear? or is this a constraint of the genre? Are we basing our understanding of horror on this fear? or are we limiting our work to artificial constraints of genre?

The Monster

Do you need a monster to have a horror story? There are horror stories where the evil is human–but that is dancing around the question. Do you need a monster to have horror?

Why is The Martian, a story about a man trapped, surrounded by death, not horror, but The Thing with a similar setting is?

Mark Watney’s foe is the environment–this is Robinson Crusoe. Mars is a desert: no water, no food, no resources to get anywhere, no air to breathe. We are at the basic fear level here, and yet. And yet.

It is not merely the fear of death that brings horror.

Do we need a monster? In the sense that we need intent, I think so. Horror needs something more to feed it than simple fear. Something more than high stakes. It needs intent.

Evil? Evil is, perhaps, a lazy way, to describe what horror needs. No doubt there may be counter examples, but for now, evil it is.

Power

There is another side to “monster,” linked to both “monster” and “stakes”–power. Our monster cannot simple be monstrous, it must also possess the necessary ability to cause harm.

Two stories, both with a dog with rabies, threatening a child, parent present: Cujo and To Kill A Mockingbird. In Mockingbird, the dog, Old Tim Johnson, gets rabies, and Atticus has to shoot him. There is tension in the scene, but it lacks any horror, especially compared to Cujo.

Both dogs are deadly to humans: any bite will pass on rabies which is deadly, even if the bite itself is not. But Cujo has something Old Tim Johnson doesn’t: power. Cujo is bigger, stronger, and now with the madness of rabies is dangerous.

In this example, most of this is in the narrative for sure. Both dogs are deadly in real life, but it is a good example to work with.

The Monster

Zombie movies offer a large variety of stories, but usually we have a group of survivors and a much large group of zombies. How is a zombie horde different from an orc army? How is a zombie infested world different from Mars? The outcome is the same, death in the environment, lack of supplies, food, etc.

Zombie in a single word, describes the dangers outside. They represent “monster”, unlike the orc army, which, despite monstrous properties, is described as “enemy.” In horror, while there are enemies and friends, the evil is a monster. In fantasy, while there can be monsters, the evil is an enemy.

The Evil

So how do we separate horror from fantasy, such as The Lord of the Rings? Sauron is the image of evil, raising an army of monsters to destroy the world. He has the intent. We have fear. Our stakes are high, and I will reject the notion that the setting itself is a defining feature. So what differentiates The Lord of the Rings from horror?

Is it number? Can we have an army in a horror story? Is it the kind of people in the story? They are important, leaders, kings, they are special. Horror tends to be about normal people–but that is not a requirement.

The Nazgul hunting Frodo has every trapping of a horror story: a person hiding from impossibly strong creatures of evil. They are hunting him, not lashing out at random, like an orc army might. All of the things are there. This is a horror story trapped in the larger narrative of a fantasy epic.

Wrongness

There is something else as well. As evil as Sauron is, his presence in Middle Earth is normal. Horror brings something abnormal into the world of the story. That abnormality is part of what makes is horror–the “not right” is crucial component to this primitive fear. The fear of not just stakes, but of ‘wrong.’

And yes, I rejected the setting earlier–but that was in the sense that Middle Earth is a fantasy world. The fantasy setting in of itself is not enough to dismiss horror.

These components all come together to make horror. Fear is the basis, but not just any fear, fear of the wrong. We need to have high stakes, but–and this is important–this does not mean death. Stakes can be lower and horror still exist. We need a monster: with power and intent.

And there is one final piece to the puzzle–hope.

Hope

In many ways hope is a part of fear. They work together in the story. Hope is an amplification of fear. But they are not opposites, nor do they cancel each other out. Instead they each play a role balancing each other out.

An example against this is Hostel. In an attempt to ramp up the tension, we see several people killed, horrifically, but in a situation where there is no change to escape. There is no hope.

Torture and death without hope is tragic. It is grotesque. It is revolting. It is not horror.

There is no fear in an inevitable situation–the outcome is known. It is not until later when there is a real possibility for escape, that we have fear. The chase, being one of the dances between hope and fear, best conveys how this works.

This hope of escape, paired with the fear of being caught provides the tension. We are gripped in the horror, held firm in fear by our hope.

Hope’s dance can be a burst, like the chase. It can also be a slow release. Hope, held high at the start of our story, dwindling over time. Slowly we have replaced one with the other. This descent into hopelessness brings with it. We are holding onto hope, not realizing there was a leak in the container, not until we need it. Only then we discover how little was left. What do we do in these moments?

The Story

We are going to take all of these components to make horror: fear, stakes, a wrong monster with evil and intent, and enough hope to hold it together to create our story. Here is the foundation we will build from to find the horror.