Editor’s Note
Burnt Bread

This edition is in celebration of the roughly one-year existence of Stop the Press and adopts an open topic structure to give people the chance to write about the topics they might have missed out on the first time. As usual, the month was filled with promises and procrastination but fortunately, everything pulled together at the last moment in a timely manner. Ironically, this issue was written by the same number of people that the first issue was written by yet manages to be the longest of them all.

But we’ll just blame Disturbly and move on to the exciting stuff.

I would like to take this opportunity to announce that StP Newsletter is going on holiday for an indefinite period of time during which a writing challenge will be issued to all fictionpress authors. The details are as follows:

StP Writing Challenge

When: Until November 30

Where: On FictionPress

Who: You

Writers are invited to sculpt a creative work of any kind (story, poem, prose, etc) involving previous themes of the Stop the Press Newsletter. Participating authors should post their works in their ‘Stories Authored’ section like any normal post. Authors can post as many times as they want. To notify StP of your participation, please send them an email or drop by on the forum.

The joys of participating include:

Adding to the number of posts under your profile

Engaging in a fun writing challenge to hone your skills

Communicating with other authors across the site

A StP recognition image to link to your profile (in progress)

What we need from you:

Your penname and the titles of your work(s) that relate to the challenge.

A link on your profile to StP and/or the StP crest to show your participation.

All the other people you can pester from their writer’s blocks into writing.

Spread the word!

And Happy Halloween.

Superpowers. Everybody wants them; nobody has them. Except maybe Chris Angel, Mindfreak. That man is the devil. You cannot explain it any other way.

But getting back on topic; we've all wished for incredible abilities at some point in our lives. We've been made fun of, and wished we could shoot lasers from our eyes. We've got a Frisbee caught on the roof, and wished we could fly. We've been blindsided by a pop quiz, and wished we could read the mind of the smart kid in the front of the room. Or shoot lasers from our eyes. "Use the quadratic equation to solve for X", Mrs. Crandall? How about you use it to survive a burst of seven-hundred and fifty-thousand degree heat?

But back to the matter at hand. That universal appeal of superpowers has its plus side, in that every person can relate to the idea. But therein lays the problem: because everyone wants them, authors without number have already come before us and thought up, revised, and parodied every one you can think of. Flight, superstrength, superspeed, pyrokinesis, all have been used to death; in some fictional universes, it's practically a given that every major character will possess them. In others, it literally is. What about regeneration? The power to heal from any wound? Done; off the top of my head, I could name nine characters from either DC, Marvel, or Image comics gifted with it, and more anime characters than you could shake a boken at. What if you take a more cerebral approach; what if you make a hero who has the power the make his enemies' nightmares real? I think the list of imaginary people who can't do so would actually be shorter. What if you just go completely out there? How about a person gifted with the ability to talk to squirrels? Marvel has a creatively named character called Squirrel Girl who does just that. Also, Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls.

So, you ask, is there any power that hasn't been imagined yet? No, probably not.

But that doesn't mean you should throw up your hands and give up on your superhero story; as with so many aspects of fiction, the key to writing interesting superpowers isn't to fabricate something new, but rather to use something old in a way that hasn't been done before. But to see this in action, we'll need to go to a land of innovation and creative genius; grab your Pocky, we're going to Japan.

Consider the power to control sand; it's been done before, as anyone who's seen the latest Spiderman movie can attest. Marvel lays claim to the character of the Sandman; DC has actually had three characters who claimed that title (although the only one who actually manipulated sand later changed his alias to, surprise, Sand!). As a power, it doesn't sound so hot. But then watch Gaara of the dessert use it to annihilate his opposition in Naruto. Capable of being condensed into a shield harder than stone and protecting him of it's own accord, Gaara's sand can also be consciously set loose on his enemies in his trademark "Desert Burial" attack. Consider this: humble sand is composed mostly of silica, the most abundant mineral on Earth. In this light, manipulating it doesn't seem like such a gyp power after all, does it?

Let us look to shapeshifting; you can turn into things that you usually aren't. Pretty basic, huh? Not as practiced by the Homunculi in Fullmetal Alchemist. Artificial humans who take their names from the Seven Deadly Sins, they're all possessed of superhuman physical abilities and regeneration, but most of their powers can be chalked up to shapeshifting of some means. Case in point: Greed. Identified by the moniker "Ultimate Shield", he can restructure the carbon in his own body to form a diamond-hard armored skin. He also looks really, really cool doing it.

In Read Or Die (great, great title), Yomiko Readman and several other characters have the distinction of being "Paper Masters"; they're capable of controlling paper and using it as a weapon. I know; I thought it sounded ridiculous too, until I watched the characters gifted with it block bullets, parry lightsabers, and slice the wings off airplanes with it. Granted, they seem to strengthen paper as they use it, giving it properties more akin to steel and committing something of a cheat, but still... There's something very appealing in a hero with no particularly impressive physical abilities who becomes God by walking into an office supply store.

It's a dynamic that finds its place in such franchises as Hellsing, Get Backers, and Trigun, and has kept me coming back for more: superpowers, themselves old and established, being put to new and exciting applications. Try it out. Give your characters problems that look like nails, and make them find a way to use their talents as a hammer. Look at characters that are part plant, or can control plants. It's certainly been done before (Swamp Thing, Floronic Man, Poison Ivy, Blackbriar Thorn, and even Solomon Grundy, just to name a few from DC alone); but has it been done really well? Most portrayals of it are limited to its user sending endless tangles of strangling vines against their enemies to be burnt, blasted, and shredded, but how much thought has been paid to some of the other defensive weapons in vegetation's arsenal? Consider if you will the active ingredient in tear gas, capsicum. It's the stuff in peppers that make them burn; say a plant character can produce it as a byproduct of their physiology, and disable their opponents with it. I wouldn't want to mess with that guy.

I can't recall a character, to date, who kills (or, for the heroes, incapacitates) with his mind. Personally, I don't count telekinesis or telepathy; to me, that's attacking with your thoughts. I've never seen a character who uses the actual structure of their mind in combat; perhaps he could incarnate his own anima as a weapon, giving it form as a separate entity and charging it with lethal intent, letting it fight as a surrogate for himself. Or perhaps another, whose id manifests in her shadow, devouring all it touches voraciously with no possibility of ever being sated. There is potential here, though realizing it might require a more than casual knowledge of philosophy and psychology.

How about hydrokinesis, the power to manipulate water? Usually when it's portrayed, its wielders simply use it to try to drown their opponents, but it has so much more potential. The most prolific substance on this planet, water comes in many forms; a person with total control over it can scald their competition with steam, or skewer them with icicles condensed from moisture in the air around them. And of course, water makes up most of the mass of the human body; basically, we're just big water-balloons stretched across a scaffolding. If someone could manipulate that... I'll put it this way: does the term "hydro-static shock" mean anything to you? Google it if you want, but make sure you have a strong stomach... Actually, in certain scenarios, hydrokinesis might just be too Godlike; without limits, an adept user of it will be over-powerful.

So if you're working with superpowers, try not to stick to the tried and true, "superstrong people throwing cars at each other" approach. Try to imagine new applications classic powers can be turned to; at the same time, consider the changes to your character's physiology necessary to accommodate them, and limits that can be imposed on them. For example, a fact relatively few writers have considered, or so it seems to me, is that a character possessed of superspeed must also have some degree of invulnerability ipso facto; otherwise, a raindrop, an insect, or a speck of dust would carry enough kinetic energy to blow a hole in their chest the size of a dinner plate if they collided with it while running at Mach two. And that's if they could even get up to such speed; more likely, the impact of their feet against the ground while moving at fourteen-hundred miles per hour would shatter every bone in their legs. Say a hyper-accelerator lacked that invulnerability? They'd be useless, right? Or maybe not; they would still be able to throw things that fast. A tossed handful of ball bearings would become a high-powered load of buckshot. A well-tempered knife, an armor piercing missile. Fun fact: an escrima stick swung at fifty miles an hour carries more than twenty times the kinetic energy necessary to shatter the human skull. Imagine what one would do at three to four-hundred mph.

The point I'm trying to make is, you can start with superpowers at the same place everyone else has, and you'll probably have to. That's ok, though; you can always blaze your own path from there. And isn't that, in and of itself, pretty super?

Maybe, but I still want that laser vision.

To begin or to end

Simple matters, but important to get right.

When do we begin?

Why should we begin?

Where do we begin?

How do we begin?

What do we begin with?

In fact, there are unless possibilities as to how we may begin a story. Before you do have an urge to begin, I suggest you think twice about it, though. It is easy enough to say begin, to write something down and call it a start. Yet, what does that mean? What does it mean to actually begin? It means a lot more than just beginning.

You need to be committed to finishing what you have started. As often people have the desire to start, but not continue, do not rush into things straight away. Planning, at least of some sort is important. See that the story is feasible. Do not stop some way in and realize what you are doing is a joke. There are too many discontinued stories and dead ideas. Give it depth too. Think of the future early on and see the possibilities. It must live to expectations and be consistent from the start.

Where to start?

Where do we start a story?

The real answer is, wherever the author wants to. A story in essence is simply a portrayal of a segment in life the author felt the need to present. Realistically, stories could go on forever, from start to finish, and yet start again.

The start often begins with nothing, and builds on, yet often it begins with everything, and goes down to nothing. It is a choice, and ultimately comes down to the structure of the story.

Then?

The only restraint is that it has to start, and it has to be enough to capture the reader. Most humans only have short attention spans. Whatever you do, you must start off with a ‘killer’ and break out from the norm. Even very early on, in the first few segments, you must totally involve the reader and get them thinking in the minds of the characters. The important information, such as setting, can in fact be saved for later. What matters is something strikingly stunning that will keep people reading on.

Do not bore the reader with loads of information they do not need at this moment. It is a common mistake. Only introduce and explain what is or will be relevant to the story at this point.

Me and Beginnings

The best example anyone can find is themselves.

To tell you the truth, I have a million ideas of how to begin a story. I can essentially think of an average beginning every hour, and a better one every second day. The best ones might come once a month. The point is – that is not the hard part.

The hard part is understanding that it must be able to build on. It must be able to set things up for later and be useful to the story as a whole. I am not talking about random scenes that appear off my mind. I do not want to be in a mess for most of the time. It is important to finish what you have started. Too many beginnings will end up being out of hand.

I tend to begin stories with a scene – something dramatic and explosive that will win on day one. Success or not, I cannot claim, but at least that is my aim.

I do not intend to tell people – “It’s okay. Yeah, I know, it’s a little boring. Trust me, it gets better. The next chapter, please read on, and everything will get more interesting.”

Or... “I’m working on it. I’m still explaining the story. The action comes in the next chapter. Just keep reading.”

Give me a break. Who falls for that? Oh, and since people say if you, yourself do not have interest in what you write, then how could the readers? Precisely, introduce the story that way. You must be amazed from the start.. Do not write for the sake of writing. Those are but a bunch of meaningless words.

Prologues

The prologue fashion does have its times now and again. People do abuse it, but since everything can be abused, we’ll skip that for now. Prologues tend to be shorter than normal chapters and simply try to suck people in. If you like, it is a preview, or sample, like with other mediums. It is meant to give you a taste of what it will be like. In that sense, it should be done a lot better too.

It gives you a chance to evaluate the story, yourself, before you write on.

In the end

In the end, it’s a responsibility. Think of it as a contract that you signed with the story, agreeing that you will continue it, or else you will be penalised. Do what you think is right, but remember your actions are representative of who you are on this world.

Villains are not villains.

Okay, so maybe they are. But they don't think that way. You know what I'm talking about. No one wakes up and says, "So today I'll kill seven innocents, eat two babies, and send a missile to every big town in the world and watch stuff blow up!" And, even if they do, their motivation isn't because they're e-hee-heevil. No one believes that they're evil. It defies all reason.

Nearly every bad thing a person does, they justify in their mind. If I take the last cookie from the cookie jar, I don't take it because I want to be evil. I take it because I'm hungry and cookies taste good. If a starving boy walks by and asks for food and I have no cookies to offer him, that's okay, because my actions were justified. I didn't do it just so that the boy would starve; I did it out of basic self-interests. Besides, if I beat myself up over that, I'd just go psycho (see Beasts article).

Even when villains do things that they know will hurt others, there is a certain justification. I hit him because he hit me first. I hit him because I'm angry at my teacher for giving me an "F".

Excuses don't have to be horrible pasts. While having abusive drunkard parents can certainly make someone cold, withdrawn and cruel, I know plenty of cold, withdrawn, cruel people who have very pleasant parents. People can become spiteful for the littlest of things. And some people are born self-interested.

In that sense, I ask you to re-evaluate your villains. Think deeply about their motivations for what they're doing. Even psychopaths have to have a reason for their actions. Just because they don't have the basic range of human emotions doesn't mean they randomly decide to kill kittens. They have a reason. They're curious. They're testing their power.

In that sense, villains are just morally challenged heroes. But who chose what was morally right in the first place?

Think about it.

FictionPress is an ocean of shit. Human waste. Faeces.

It's nobody's fault, really. People can post anything they want, and a large number of the authors on the site aren't out of high school high school. Heck, some of them aren't even out of puberty.

Within the shit, however, there are gems to be found. There are pearls, the stories and poems that are simply amazing. They're the ones that you can't forget, the ones that may even change your life. Diamonds in the rough are also hidden in the shit; they just need a bit of editing or reworking to be really, really good.

The problem of FictionPress readers is that it's so damn hard to filter through the shit to find the pearls and the diamonds in the rough. C2s, forums, and other people's favourites lists help, but there's a lot of shit in them, too. What is a quality-loving reader to do?

It's simple: stop. Stop looking for quality on this site. Read anything that catches your attention, but don't expect it to be well-written. Use this site for entertainment, or hone your critical skills by paying attention to what's wrong with what you read.

For your really good literature and poetry, pick up a book! They've been edited, so that the diamonds in the rough are nice and shiny, and even the pearls are brighter than before. Try a classic! They've stood the test of time for a reason. And if you find a pearl amid the shit on this site, for the love of God, add that author to your alerts!

Writing the Villain
Disturbly

Villains. They're the driving force behind your story. They're the reason a dwarf, a cleric, a paladin, and a half-drow would unite to venture on an epic quest. They're the reason your gritty anti-hero, Cordite, would even deign to be seen alongside a flaky magic user like Beltane in the first place. They're the reason you sit down and work the keyboard to begin with.

It's been stated before how important a solid villain is to a good story, and it can't be overemphasized. Don't worry; I'm not going to try. Rather, I'd prefer to give you some tips and tricks about what goes into a good villain. I am by no means an expert, although as a person who uses the phrase "In Praise of Evil" an average of forty-seven times a conversation, I'm not without some perspective. The way I see it, there are about four essential things to keep in mind when creating your villain.

1. Villains are proactive, in contrast to the reactive heroes. The bad guys are the ones with places to go, people to melt, and planets to dominate. They're the catalyst for the story. Let's face it; if crime didn't exist in the Marvel universe, Peter Parker would still be working the wrestling circuit to buy Mary Jane that new Mercedes. If heroes didn't exist, though, Dr. Doom would have taken over the United States and rechristened it "New Latvia", and Carnage would be devouring orphans for his amusement. And also because they're low-carb.

2. Villains don't see themselves as "evil". People rarely commit any deed without at least some private justification, and no one's motivated by pure evil (well, there's me, but I'm lazy enough not to present too big a threat). Self-interest is the watchword here; "I'm robbing this bank because I want a plasma TV, and I'm not over fond of working". Sometimes, a villain may be motivated by what they believe to be good, but they may use terrible methods, or their goal may seem evil to an objective observer. In Alan Moore's (excellent) graphic novel Watchmen, the antagonist's ultimate goal is to unite mankind, and he simply does it in a way that causes the deaths of millions; the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and all that. Even in real life, we can observe this; strange as it may seem, Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and Kevin Federline all believe that their actions are morally right. Terrifying, no?

Of course, there are successful villains to be found in fiction that are evil for its own sake. Yes, the Joker, Carnage, and plenty of others; the technical term for these people is "completely out of their freaking minds". As psychopaths, they're compelled to make people suffer; that compulsion is their motivation. It's overdone, but at least it's there. A villain must have a motivation. Remember that.

3. The best villains are, in some way, a reflection of the hero. It may be a reflection as seen through a funhouse mirror darkly, but it is nonetheless. This hearkens back to the concept of the "shadow self" in Jungian psychology; the aspects of our own personalities we don't like to face. We shunt them into a dark place instead; some good villains have come out of that darkness, making the heroes look into the abyss within themselves.

The example that springs to mind first is Batman and the Joker; much has been written about the parallels between the Dark Knight and the Clown Prince of Crime, and this dynamic has been the fodder for many a storyline. While Batman uses his skill and intellect to prevent murder, mayhem, and destruction, the Joker uses his to cause it. Just as "Bruce Wayne" is the costume Batman hides behind, while Batman is the true identity, Joker is himself; the only difference is that his mask doesn't come off. The two are as fundamentally different, and fundamentally identical, as two sides of the same coin.

The same dynamic can be found in Kohta Hirano's Hellsing, between the vampire Alucard and the paladin Alexander Anderson. Alucard, though the title character, is firmly wrapped in the mantle of the anti-hero; he'd be much better suited to slaughtering the innocent than protecting them, and is held in check by bonds whose natures have only been hinted at. Just as morally ambiguous, Alexander Anderson is an ordained priest, much loved by the boys of an orphanage (note my restraint in not making any cheap "alter boy scandal" jokes). If the tale were told from a different perspective, maybe he would be the hero... If not for the fact that he's a berserker who revels in carnage, cackling with insanity between chanted prayers as he slaughters his victims. No, Alexander "Angel Dust" Anderson is a monster, to the same degree that Alucard, "The Black Peril", is himself; the only difference is who they serve. Anderson is a "monster of God" (not to spoil volume eight, for anyone waiting on it...); Alucard is a monster for his own sake.

As a last example, let us turn to the pages of Lester Dent's "Doc Savage" novellas. Pulp fiction in every sense of the word, and a good example of why the term came to be a pejorative, these stories are full of deus ex machina plot events, pseudo-science, and Mary Sue characters. They're also one of the richest sources of inspiration that later comic book writers drew upon, with more traits being "recycled" from the Man of Bronze for the development of Superman and Batman than I have the space to delve into here. In all of the books, only one villain survives to face the good Doctor a second time, making him his arch-nemesis by default, but he fills the role well. That scoundrel is John Sunlight. While physically less magnificent than the bronze man, and less scientifically gifted (indeed, in the story where he's introduced, he steals Doc's own inventions to sew mayhem after stumbling upon them at the "original" Fortress of Solitude), he's the only character who comes close in shear cunning, and possesses eyes that have a similar, although more sinister, hypnotic quality to Doc's. More telling, Sunlight claims to work for the same goal: the unity of the world, and an end to all warfare.

When this is revealed, Doc is struck silent. John Sunlight's motivation is something he can, in essence, agree with. Furthermore, from the reader's perspective, it's hard to say whether the villain's means are, truly, objectively worse than the hero's; particularly jarring to our modern sensibilities are the "special operations" Doc gives to thugs he captures alive, chillingly similar to lobotomies, that erase their memories and rob them of the free will to choose to do anything criminal. So what is it, really, that divides the two? Mostly, the fact that John Sunlight just happens to plan to set himself up as emperor in the new world order he creates. The hero is motivated by the good of mankind as a whole; the villain by his own self interest, regardless of its effect on everything else. That's vaguely important. And:

4. A good villain must, in some way, be capable of posing a threat to the hero. Pretty basic, right? Obviously, if the villain didn't have any potential of hurting the hero, there would be no conflict, tension, or drama, correct? I could have left this unsaid, couldn't I? Oh, I only wish...

A few weeks ago, I happened across the worst story I've ever seen, and it was of course on ficpress. I won't name it or the author; partly out of some vestigial sense of propriety, but mostly because I suspect the editor would delete it. And, incidentally, I'm trying to suppress the memory... But it will suffice to say, amidst a sea of damning flaws, one of the worst was the dynamic between the protagonist and the antagonist.

In said story, the main character is sweet, virginal, and gorgeous. Her nemesis is, and I may be quoting, "bitch-queen among bitches", promiscuous, and has terrible tastes in make up and fashion. Also, her "forehead was too broad", whatever the hell that means. Here is what said authoress was saying when she introduced said antagonist: "My villain doesn't like my protagonist, and that means she's bad. I don't like her; you're not supposed to like her either." The final product was so awful, I'm at a loss for words to describe it; that has never happened before. I might compare it to the Cambodian genocides, but I'd prefer not to tarnish the name of the Khmer Rouge. That is seriously how terrible that characterization was.

So how could it have been avoided? So very, very easily; power up your villain, and maybe give them some redeeming qualities. If your setting's a contemporary high school, make your character's rival prettier, or a ladies man. If it's a fantasy, make them a better swordsman or spell caster. Make sure your villain has an advantage over your hero in at least one area; the more, the better. In their confrontations, it should seem as though Luke can't possibly beat Darth Vader, or that the final female survivor couldn't ever beat Jason Voorhees. For them to do so, they should have to call on reserves of stamina, endurance, determination, and willpower that are simply beyond measure. Because in the end, that's what heroes do; and what does a villain do, but define the hero?

What indeed?

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a shark? If you haven't, pull up a new window and Google it right now. Find the first picture you can with a good view of the eyes. Stare at it for a long time.

Sharks have completely expressionless eyes. Black. Cold. Unnerving. They don't feel sorry about the people whose limbs they rip off, the people who they maim for life, or, worse, kill. As far as they're concerned, it's our fault for venturing into their feeding grounds. We're just a minor inconvenience to them. Oooh, yummy fish. No, wait, that's a person. Yuck. That doesn't taste good. Moving on.

Frighteningly enough, many humans think this way. The technical term is 'psychological numbness', and it is defined, by Wikipedia, as "a mental self-defense mechanism used to prevent psychological trauma, in which a mental entity chooses to ignore thoughts of emotions relating to a specific body of knowledge, emotions, or ideas".

There are two common examples: eating meat, and killing other human beings.

The former is the one that sharks personify. However, note that they have a lower level of intelligence, and their numbness is less of a defense mechanism and more of a lack of mental capacity to comprehend their actions beyond feeding. But, for humans of at least average intelligence, it isn't difficult to imagine that your hamburger was once part of a living, breathing cow, one who its farmers probably liked very much and named Betsy before eventually putting her down. We react to these thoughts in the only way we can. We shove them to the back of our mind and think of them no longer, then slather our burger with ketchup: either that, or become vegetarians, and put cute bumper stickers on the back of our cars that have little yellow chickens with adjacent speech bubbles, reading, "I am not a nugget".

The second example, to some, is far more dire, but, essentially, is almost the same. The elimination of other human lives happens nearly every day. Think about wars. Think about the arduous training that soldiers go through every day to become sheep, to dehumanize their victims, to mindlessly follow orders. It sounds impossible to some of us, to imagine being able to kill without remorse. But, the fact of the matter is, it's the only way that those people can cope. It is far easier to kill and not feel sorry than to kill and feel it. Imagine your characters going through this kind of conditioning, losing their sympathy for the dead. Imagine them becoming the beasts they once may have despised, simply for the sake of maintaining their sanity.

Now look back at that picture you Googled earlier. Look long and hard. Stare at it until the image becomes blurred and your mind wanders to unicorns skipping through meadows. You want to make a beast? Give them those eyes. The eyes of a shark.

To envisage ourselves made of stardust is a romantic and empowering thought. Imagine the seemingly boundless power, glory and light of a star coursing through our veins. Infinity is ours.

Yet when that spark of life has left the body and rendered it cold and limp and grey, it’s really hard to imagine anything more to do with it. Traditionally, there might be some minimal mutilation followed by burial or cremation. And then? Then we grow distant and eventually fade even from memory. In the end, we’re nothing more than a bunch of elements (oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and calcium are the main ones) slapped together in funny shapes.

Now, for a delightfully morbid twist…

Diamond is the hardest natural substance known to man. It rates 10 on the Mohs Scale, is basically made of carbon and disperses light awfully well. The worldwide mining of diamonds is a multibillion dollar industry. Perhaps a less considered fact is that diamonds, like more and more things these days, are often synthetically produced – created in laboratories. The basic idea is to crush carbon at high pressure and temperature, then voila! Shiny rock.

You’re shaking your head. You’ve put two and two together and now it’s time for me to type it –

Yes. Human diamonds. It’s ingenious really. Instead of being dispersed into the winds or kept in jar after cremation, why not become a diamond? I’m certainly not the first to make this connection; in fact, there’s already a commercial market out there for making deceased loved ones into diamonds. For a few thousand dollars you can spend the rest of eternity sparkling.

Of course, cremation and blingfication is probably not a relevant option for you at this very moment, but it certainly might give you some ideas about how to nurse aspects your infant fantasy culture that you’re creating for that new story. After all, diamonds make much prettier and hygienic trophies of conquest (as oppose to heads on pikes).

Certainly, the thought of humans being made into synthetic diamonds must be mind blowing. And being stardust might be grand, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

At the Heart of the Monster
Disturbly

It doesn't really matter what genre you're working in. Monsters in fantasy and sci-fi need to be frightening, to amplify the thrill we get when the hero defeats them. In horror, they have to be downright terrifying. In any context, in any story, monsters are supposed to make the reader regress to when they were kids; sitting up at night, sure there was a monster under the bed, with nothing to protect them but their blanket and their cutlass... Actually, I'm told for most it would be a Teddy Bear; just one of the areas where I can't relate to most people, having been raised in a pirate household...

But back to business. You want a monster to frighten your reader on a deep, visceral level. To do that, you have to know what triggers the fright response. You're going to have to go deeper than your audience's guts; you're going to have to go to their very DNA.

Unless you hail from certain states in the U.S. (states than tend to have a higher rate of methamphetamine use than adult literacy), you most likely accept the theory of evolution. And even if you don't accept the fact that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestors, you have to admit that we all share a certain amount of DNA. A fact I've noticed is that the closer an animal is on the evolutionary tree to us, the less we're going to fear it. Look at bears, wolves, and tigers; sure, they scare the hell out of us if they're near us in the flesh, but see them on TV or safely behind the bars of cages at the zoo, and they aren't going to make you wet your pants. Furthermore, we attribute noble characteristics to furry predators, and envy them their prowess; the wolf's cunning, the tiger's stealth, and the ursine's brawn. And when they're in their infancy? We think they're adorable. Knut the Polar Bear became an international celebrity by virtue of just how blasted cute he looked when he yawned or fell down; by now, he's probably big enough to rip your face off. And believe me: he'd like that.

In contrast, look at the snake; most people loathe them, and expect them to be slimy even if they know better. Or the shark, staring with those soulless black eyes. And spiders. Eight legs, eight eyes, bristles of hair sticking off of some species, and others completely hairless... and somehow worse for that . Seriously; if you walked outside one morning, and saw a spider that had grown to be about four feet tall, you would never leave your house again without a substantial quantity of napalm. You'd find a recipe for it, and you'd make it.

Nobody thinks spiders, sharks, or snakes are cuddly when they're babies (and if anybody does, they just aren't quite right). But why is it that while dog attacks are responsible for more fatalities every year than spiders ever will be (unless they hit that growth spurt I mentioned), that we call the canine man's best friend while the arachnid sends shudders down our spines? Simple. Dogs are closer to us on a genetic level, and it makes us empathize with them. Fur and warm tongues are more or less an instant "in" with homo sapiens, while chitinous exoskeletons, scales, or cold blood send us running for insecticide, shotguns, and flamethrowers. We feel sympathy for what's familiar to us, and fear for what's alien. Having branched off the evolutionary tree long ago, and adapting to habitats that we didn't, creepy crawlies are about the most alien life forms to be found from our vantage point unless you make something up.

Fortunately, that's a basic definition for what fiction is; you can simply make up a creature as alien as you can imagine, and few have done so better than H.P. Lovecraft. A writer who got his start in the pulps, he wasn't without weak points; he's not renowned for his characterization or dialogue. But nonetheless, Lovecraft has been called the father of modern horror, and one of the reasons was his knack for terrfying readers with the alien. The entities he wrote about were too horrible to describe, and often, he actually didn't; he'd refer to them as beasts from the nightmares of Euclid, or insist that a single glance of their forms would drive men mad, rather than deign to give any hard details. Despite that, however, his catalogue is still read frequently today, making him one of the most enduring authors to ever wield a pen.

A more modern portrayal of the alien, in the most literal sense, is in the movie Alien (surprise!). Director Riddley Scott did many things in this little gem, taking the conventions of the archetypical monster and haunted house movies and setting them on a spaceship, but one of the best was bringing on Swiss artist H. R. Giger to design the suit for the actress playing the Xenomorph. It's wasn't for naught that Giger won the Oscar for Best Visual Effect for that effort; the chitinous, slimy, blind alien is a creature from the nightmare you forgot you had. When monsters were discussed last time around, Burnt Bread suggested it as a must see film to watch a monster do what it does best; I can only second the nomination.

But what if you don't possess the imagination to come up with a creature too horrifying to be imagined? Do you have to give up? Not necessarily. There is another fear trigger in the genetic care package our ancestors left us; in a way, it's more effective. If we're spooked by the alien, we're deeply and irrevocably disturbed by the familiar, when marred by disease or disfigurement. We fear Corruption.

This originally served us in mate selection, to weed out potential partners afflicted by disease; we developed a powerful aversion to the sight of degradation of the human form, for the sake of producing healthy offspring. In day to day life, this can be detrimental to modern man; I believe handicapped individuals who've faced stares or outright discrimination can attest to that. But in fiction, the corruption of a human can make for a powerfully disturbing monster. It can be subtle, like the corruption of the mind of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Or it can be overt; I really don't think a better example can be had than the critically acclaimed video game Silent Hill 2. If you're a gamer, and haven't played it, acquire a copy on whatever format you have and try it. The symbolism of the monsters' decayed shapes have made for essays longer than this, and it wouldn't be relevant to hash any of that out here. It will suffice to say that the demented forms of the Patient Demons, Demon Nurses, and Pyramid Head make for a lesson in visceral horror. Fun fact: when my sister was about ten years old, she watched me play the game for a half-hour; that alone gave her two weeks of nightmares.

To conclude: a good monster is supposed to be scary; to make one, you have to know where the buttons that spark the fear response in your readers lie. I've outlined a duo of options you have at your disposal to accomplish that, and in greater detail than I actually meant to... But don't think that there aren't any others. You have to ask yourself what frightens you, and pay attention to the answer.

As a great man once observed: "There's nothing scarier than a clown at midnight."

LEMMINGS

Concerto49
Remains oddly shy of self introductions, even on the profile page. A constrast to-

Disturbly
The Hate Based Lifeform and self-professed Master of Blasphemy
Disturbly represents Ireland every day, despite polite requests from the people of Eire to stop.

Sakka Fenikkusu
The great, powerful and egotistical phoenix who somehow manages to hold a pencil without burning it.

multiples of six
kicking ass and taking names since 1588.

Burnt Bread
Protector of Wheat and Dairy Products
Finds the concept of tootsie rolls both offensive and erotic