Nobody Knows What A Monster Is

Nobody Knows What A Monster Is

—

Because it's not about monsters. It's about monstrosity.

Monstrosity is a mutual relationship between the audience and a presented object, and the monster is whatever is on the other side of that relationship. It could be a household pet, or a book of matches. It doesn't matter, only the presentation of it to the audience and the relationship they develop with it matters. A thing is not a monster unless the emotional narrative structure of monstrosity is constructed for it.

Here are three storytelling tips.



1. The audience should be scared of the monster. This is the most fundamental element. Lots of things are frightening- being hunted by a clever pack of hungry wolves, being in proximity to someone with a grotesque and contagious disease, being lost in the dark. All of these experiences are also interwoven with different emotions- excitement, pity, guilt, disgust, confusion, so the relationship between the audience and the monster will be interwoven with them too. But the primary emotional relationship must always be fear- not disgust or pity or love. A monster may be a human being, but it is not a person. It has this specific narrative role to play in your story. (You can have a part-monster-part-something-else, of course, which fills one narrative role at one time and another later, or perhaps a bit of each at once. But the audience must still be afraid of them.)



2. The monster should be an omen of more frightening things, and stir the audience to imagine them. That is what monsters do, etymologically. The goal is to take a reliable assumption that has brought the audience some safety and comfort, and violate it. "If this is possible, what else is possible?" This could be something general- that you are being watched when you assumed privacy, that you were being followed when you assumed you were alone. For a more specific approach, a monster might introduce some new anxiety— some specific aspect of their life they've thus far taken for granted is now extremely important. If they don't pay close attention and manage it just right, terrible things could happen. A more blunt and aggressive form may also seek to create a specific imagined scenario and associate it with something the audience otherwise found innocent- like a murder in the shower.




3. The monster should live on the borderlands of Sense and Nonsense. If the monster is too nonsensical, it loses credibility, and the audience's suspension of disbelief is challenged too much, same as anything in that vein. If it's too sensible, you get a million videos like "How to defeat the Bird Box Monster." If there are too many specific rules, and those rules are too reliable, then the audience approaches the monster as a problem to solve, or an enemy to defeat, or an opponent to outwit. And all of these things sabotage the strength of the fear relationship. A monster must always be a fundamentally unmanageable problem. If hope and understanding are possible, they must be temporary, incomplete, and unreliable. The audience cannot ever feel safe while the monster is out there, and the monster must always be out there.



–
(Pictures are from Panna a Netvor <3)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evil Swords

Image
A Family of Evil Swords by muckngabe The Eight Remain are wicked spirits of devious inclination. They were a family of people once, but ghosts do not retain a human ipseity for very long. They collapse into other, stranger things. Sometimes a person is like a tool of murder, and a family is like an armory.  Each will serve you for a night and a day, in exchange for proper propitiation. You wield their manifest form as a weapon, in your off-hand. There are no penalties for fighting with two weapons this way. Once one of the Eight has left you, it is prohibitively rude to call on it again until you have called on another of its family first. You call on them at their secret place, in an empty house on a high hill in the dark dark wood. Fireflies dance by night. Leave their offering in a place special to them– in the hearth ash, down the well, in the back of the big dark closet (don't look). Turn around, close your eyes, hold your breath. Count to three. You're armed. Butcher-Bi
Read more

FIGHTER

Image
FIGHTER Death's Head , by craww You can feel it. Something is stirring in the night over the earth. Something out of the place beyond persona. There are omens if you know how to look for them. Secret signs in the wings of birds, nightmares of pursuit. This hateful world cannot last much longer. The clouds will part and her armies will come down to scour it clean again. The carrion birds will turn in open sky until the fields are empty. The world has forgotten you. It hates you, like it hates everyone. The Queen of Air and Darkness will make it better. Starting Equipment:  An extremely visible scar that’s somewhere between dashing and disfiguring. Too much makeup, which isn’t helping. An outfit that looks like a costume. Any four weapons. Skills:   1) Disgraced Nurse 2) Mercenary Deserter 3) Birdwatcher 4) Occult Dabbler 5) Avant-Garde Artist  6) Discarded Courtesan Templates: A) The Full Dark World, The Killing Moon B) Butcher Bird C) Death Song of the Eumenides D) Société des Sadi
Read more

PALADIN

Image
  PALADIN The Pleasure Principle , by René Magritte You're right . You'll prove it. You were born under the Moon of the Mare. The Summer Court has many children, and favoritism is rampant and arbitrary. But you're more than a favorite. You're special. Her fire lives in your heart, and her glory shines from your eyes. When you dream, her court attends you, with their blacksmith's hands and neon teeth and hi-gloss skin. Their hearts beat with hate and hunger. They want to kill you and fuck you and eat you. You don't owe them anything. Starting Equipment: A pair of showy custom made handguns. Not custom made for you. Ammunition for the same. An extremely expensive, ostentatious costume you'd never pick for yourself. A hip flask full of gasoline. A book of matches. Skills:  1) Demagogue 2) Sophist 3) Party Animal 4) Media Junkie 5) Street Racer 6) Prophet from Face/Off Templates: A) Summer Teeth, Season of Revolutions B) Hold Me! Touch Me! C) Divinity of Broken
Read more