Article Review: Blurring the Line: How Reality Helps Build Better Fiction by Scott A. Johnson

Posted on September 11, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

Blurring the Line: How Reality Helps Build Better Fiction by Scott A. Johnson from Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons In Writing Popular Fiction strongly articulated the use of reality in fiction.

Until several months ago, I actually had no idea that Nicolas Flamel was a real person. I, just like many others I suspect, first heard this name from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and assumed that Nicolas Flamel was a character that she created to bring depth to her own stories. A few months ago, I read the Alchemist series by Michael Scott which all dealt with the secrets of the immortal Nicolas Flamel. It was at that point that I realized Nicolas Flamel was a real character and has become creative fodder for several current works of fiction. Seeing this reference in the article helped to bring the ideas of character development in fiction to a much clearer perspective for me, especially when the article talks about how, “J.K. Rowling and Bram Stoker blurred the lines between their realities and ours just a bit, enough to make the reader think ‘what if?’” And that’s exactly what happened with me. As a writer, you start to see the people around you, or read stories about news-worthy events, and start adding that extra bit of fiction to known events or people. You make something potentially believable out of something that might be familiar to other people. As a writer, you start to lay the groundwork for other potential scenarios or how to take a familiar person and turn them into a monster.

Another part of this article that really stuck out with me was the idea of working with “fantastical creatures that do not exist on this or any other (known) planet” (Blurring the Line page 101). This section brought up a lot of key issues about how sometimes writers will create monsters, creatures, aliens, or situations which go against common sense or actual scientific capabilities. While the writer is responsible for creating new and fascinating worlds, the idea is to make that world or those creatures believable. Believable creatures and world-building encourage the readers to ponder their own concept of reality in regards to their own perceptions of the world around them. The article even goes on to talk about how to make your creatures that much more believable. “Doing simple research on the various aspects of your creature’s physical structure, creatures with like attributes and needs, can help you create beasts that give the reader pause and make them wonder if such a monster could exist, and where.” (Blurring the Line page 101). Isn’t that what fiction is all about?

Some of the classic horror movies from my younger days were more classified by what you couldn’t see than by what you could see. The article discusses this aspect of horror from pages 102-103 and I can add a couple of examples from my own youth. The top two examples of this for me were the movies Jaws and Alien. In Jaws, you didn’t see the shark until the very end, and then it became a little bit more ridiculous and slightly less frightening. My imagination definitely took many liberties with my sensibilities by constantly asking exactly how big this shark must be in order for it to cause so much damage to the boat and to be able to eat people so easily. My imagination did even more spectacular things with Alien because the crew is isolated in space and you don’t really see the alien clearly throughout the movie. You only catch small glimpses here and there through flashing strobe lights or dripping water. You see parts of the alien, but never the whole alien until the very, very end. And even at the end of the movie, the alien blends so well with its surroundings that you question what you see or what you think you see. They’re battling the environment as well as the creature and that adds more depth to the levels of human terror.

Using known or familiar settings can give the readers shivers or goose bumps when used correctly, like the house in the Amityville Horror. That house really exists, just like Stephen King used a real hotel as the inspiration for The Shining. Places that are real locations can feel extremely familiar to the readers and create a sense of uncertainty because those real locations are known to us. Someone who reads The Shining and then visits the mountains and Colorado will always wonder if the hotel they’re staying in was the one that Stephen King modeled his story after. And if the hotel feels real enough to be real, then couldn’t the events have really taken place? I’d say that when it’s done well, the possibility that what they’re reading may not be fiction adds to the emotional response to the story, but if done poorly, it might feel like a cheap gimmick.

Posted in Book Reviews, MA in Writing Popular Fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Posted on September 3, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

C.A. Jacobs's avatarC.A. Jacobs

The Haunting of Hill House (Horror 174 pages) by Shirley Jackson is the first book I’ve read out of the required Readings In the Genre: The Haunted for one of my classes this semester. As I tend to do book reviews for everything I read, this kind of assignment tends to work out rather well for me.

To be fair, I haven’t really read that much horror. I have a very vivid imagination and a lot of the mass market stuff hasn’t appealed to me. So I visited two bookstores and one of the local libraries today to see if I could find the books on the list. I purchased three and found one more in the library about a mile from where I live. I spent a few hours of my afternoon reading The Haunting of Hill House on the porch while a light drizzle sprinkled the world around…

View original post 1,076 more words

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Book Review: The King Of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany

Posted on August 31, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

The first book for my Readings In the Genre: Fantasy Classics is The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany (Fantasy 240 pages).

This book was not at all what I was expecting. Not even close. I learned several books back that I enjoy books a lot less when I read the back of the book, and since this book is required reading, I didn’t feel any need to know what it was about. I based my entire preconceived notions on the title alone, which was a mistake.

I was a little confused about how someone could be a ruler or king of a land where they could just wander off for a decade or so and have things still run smoothly in their absence. I guess the land of Erl wasn’t a very high maintenance area and that the people were very simple and focused on their daily lives.

Which then brings me to the parliament of twelve old men who attempted to change the fate of their village by making it famous and having magic in their land. That goes with one of those ancient proverbs of, “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.” Erl gets magic. Erl gets tons of magic. And then those same old guys go crying to everyone else about how there is now far too much magic in their land and they wish things would go back to the way they were. All this because they cared about how other people outside the village viewed or didn’t view their area. All because they wanted to be famous. But I knew right from the beginning of the story when Alveric’s father kind of said that they were being a little less than smart in what they asked, but it was his job to provide the people with what they requested.

I was not prepared for the way this book was written. I have to say that the melody was fantastic and I really wanted to read this book out loud, just to hear the way the words flowed. This book was written in a very different time than the way things are written now. The sentences were melodic and filled with descriptions in a way that made me nostalgic for simpler times and simpler ways.

Time didn’t flow the way that I expected in this book. I think when I started the book that I anticipated the story mostly focusing on Alveric’s journey to Elfin and his quest to marry Lirazel. And yet, all that happened in the first four chapters. I think that brings up one of the parts that mildly confused me throughout the book, and that was the usage of time. While I thought it was really neat that time in Elfin moved much slower than time in the fields of man, it was sometimes a little awkward for me to jump in and out of chapters that ended at the same time but took a long time to get to the same point in different chapters. In that way, it kind of took some of the suspense out of the chapters because I knew how the chapter would end, just not necessarily how it would get there.

Also along the lines of how time flowed in this story was how the writing really made me appreciate all the small things in my daily life that are sometimes easy to overlook and yet so beautiful. How Lirazel found such beauty in the stars and in the littlest things. Also how Lurulu, the troll, was fascinated by sparrows and by humans wearing hats.

While I appreciate the writing style, I don’t know that I could ever mimic it, nor do I think that I would often read stories written in this fashion. Mostly because I am a fan more of stories told in a strictly chronological way and also because the story was well-written, but I didn’t really care about the characters. The characters were interesting, but the only character I found actually fascinating was the old leather worker. I think he had a wonderful story about Elfin that he just couldn’t bear to remember or that he never wanted to share.

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Book Review: Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Posted on August 26, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

Another book required for my Readings in the Genre: The Haunted for my Master of Fine Arts from Seton Hill University in Writing Popular Fiction is Ghost Story by Peter Straub (Horror 567 pages).

I have to say that this was by far the most difficult assignment for me so far. The rest of the books in this course have been fascinating and moved very quickly. I started this book a couple weeks ago and kept falling asleep while trying to get through it. I don’t know if that was more related to how busy and exhausted I’ve been from work lately or if the subject matter just took too long to draw me in, but I had to restart my readings of this book twice.

I mentioned how it might have been the content that wasn’t keeping me engaged and I think it’s only fair for me to spend some time working to describe why I didn’t find this story as engaging as all of the other books I’ve read for this class so far. Oddly, that means that I marked it up more than the previous books, which kind of makes me think that I might have learned more out of reading a book I didn’t particularly like.

The first issue that really struck me was that the story kept jumping around in time and with characters, which confused me as to what was going on. There were also so many characters that I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to pay attention to and who was just listed to add detail and depth to the story. I think some of the back-and-forth that I experienced was because I couldn’t tell what time frame things were taking place in. The story starts with an unnamed man and an abducted young girl and it takes eight pages before you start getting names to anyone, and they aren’t even the right names to the people actively engaged in the current story. So the Prologue has all the main characters listed, except I didn’t have that “ah-ha” moment of who the abductor was until Don shows up in the main story as someone the Chowder Society wants to write to and encourage to come out to help them with the mysterious violence in their life. I spent most of the book thinking that the Wanderly that’s listed in the prologue is somehow Edward and not Don and that they were all paying for a heinous sin that Edward committed in his youth by abducting and killing a little girl. Obviously, that’s not what happened and the prologue is actually more of a first epilogue. After I finished the book, I appreciated the prologue more, but if I didn’t have to read this book, I probably wouldn’t have kept going after I got into the first chapter.

The second thing that really struck me was how writing popular fiction can actually date your story enough to make it less poignant to readers thirty years later. I marked fourteen places throughout the book that made references that I either didn’t understand at all or couldn’t form a mental picture of in my head. The story references characters looking like actors and actresses, places and events, and a world that is foreign to me, though I suspect that this world would have been intimately familiar to people reading this story twenty or thirty years ago. So in that sense, I think this addresses one of the key concerns of writing popular fiction. Your stories might sell very well during the time when your characters are making references that speak to the readers, but even in another ten or twenty years, some of the concepts in this book won’t make sense to the next generation. The lack of technology, cell phones, the internet, etc., would pose a variety of issues to those who have grown up not fully comprehending how vicious winter could be without modern, technologically designed clothing. Or even what a tape player is and why the main characters in the story couldn’t take pictures of what they saw or do a google search to find out information on the creatures plaguing the town.

The third thing that I wasn’t entirely satisfied with about this story was the incredibly long, densely descriptive paragraphs. I think that also, for me, goes with the feeling that I couldn’t really relate to any of the characters in the story. I didn’t really care about any of them until Don and Peter really entered the story. I actually liked Stella enough to be angry when I thought she was going to be killed when she went out into the snow after Ricky to the Robinson house. While I fully understand that this novel is a mirror of the time when it was written, with certain assigned ethnic and gender roles, that didn’t make me any more comfortable reading about how the world was back then, with women being assigned passive roles, mostly as housewives. I absolutely enjoyed Stella’s role in the story, especially when she made comments about how you could never trust men’s reasoning because they always assumed they had to do everything themselves and how she took action against the thing in the car and killed it *with a hairpin*.

The most sympathetic I became with a character was with Don, the writer, on page 224, “Which is to say no more than that love cut me off at the knees. My notions of getting back to novel-writing vanished. I could not invent feelings when I was so taken over by them myself; with Alma’s enigma before me, the different enigma of fictional characters seemed artificial.” This struck me because it’s exactly where I’ve been in my own life lately. I’m pretty sure it was that paragraph that changed my original opinion of the book. Until that point, I read the story as though I was trudging through snow that was taller than me. It was a chore; it was painful. But after that, I finally had a character that I wanted to cheer for because I related to him and what he was going through.

Overall, I enjoyed the last quarter of this book and thought that the tension started building fairly nicely around halfway to three-quarters of the way through the book. I’m not sure I would have kept reading to get to that point if I didn’t have to, though. I’d probably rate this book as a two. I’m not sure I would ever read it again.

Posted in Book Reviews, MA in Writing Popular Fiction, Readings in the Genre | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Article Review: You Have to Start with Something, So It Might As Well Be Something Like This by Gary A. Braunbeck

Posted on August 24, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

My first article assignment for the Reading in the Genre: The Haunted for my Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction through Seton Hill University is from Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction. The article is called, “You Have to Start with SOMETHING, So It Might As Well Be Something Like This” by Gary A. Braunbeck.

Finding the proper place to start a story is more complicated than people think. The author of any story needs to know what happened before the readers jump into the story, but where to draw them in is sometimes a very difficult point to find. Do you start with the abusive relationship and the fight that lead to murder or do you start with the body? I think that this is a point that all writers struggle with – where to start the story so that readers will want to continue until the story is done and then beg for more?

Gary A. Braunbeck says on page 17, “I have, through the experiences of my own reading and writing, come to the conclusion that there are three and only three types of opening lines, which can best be summed up by the following words: Assault, Intrigue, and Beguile.”

The article goes on to define and articulate examples of each of these opening lines, siting a variety of books across a variety of authors. Some of the opening lines are quite subtle, while others are very active and almost violent while still others border on the slightly confusing.

When Gary A. Braunbeck talks about Assaulting Them, he says, “It machineguns so much information at you so rapidly and so skillfully that it might as well grow a leg and kick you in the teeth” (page 17). He uses examples of opening lines that are short and very poignant as well as examples that are fairly long paragraphs. All of them have a good bit of action, especially in the verb usage where the choices demonstrate characters or events moving forward very quickly. In this way, the reader is grabbed so quickly that they often continue reading to keep the forward momentum.

Intriguing Them is like providing them with secret, juicy gossip. If presented in the right way, this kind of opening inspires a sense of mystery and encourages the reader to keep reading in order to share new details.

And lastly, Beguiling Them provides them with a sense of confusion which can only be cleared up at the author’s mercy by reading the rest of the story. You distract the reader or provide them with some sort of amusement or deceive them into continuing to read your story. I think that this one would probably be the hardest to classify and also the hardest to pull off successfully. As a reader myself, if I’m too confused by what I’m reading, I may not actually keep reading. Or if I feel like the story isn’t what the author promised back in the beginning, I tend to lose faith. There aren’t that many books out there that I have started and not finished, but I suspect that those I didn’t finish stemmed from starting a novel and having the rest of the story be nothing like the beginning.

The other side of this article is that sometimes, we spend so much time working on the beginning of our stories that we stop working on the rest of the story. Finding the right place to draw the readers in is a difficult balance between introducing them to your world and drawing them in to want more. How much do they need to know right off the bat? What’s the most interesting place to jump in?

This article provides a great foundation for opening lines and might even set the tone for your entire story.

Posted in Book Reviews, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Movie Review: Ghostbusters

Posted on August 9, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

It’s been years or even decades since the last time I watched Ghostbusters, but it is one of the required movies for my Readings In the Genre The Haunted class in order to get my Masters in Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University.

I have a lot of fond memories of Ghostbusters from watching it while I was growing up and some of those memories and general feelings of enjoyment have likely colored my reaction to rewatching this movie for this class.

One of the first things I noticed about Ghostbusters is the tone used throughout the movie. The rest of the books and movies for The Haunted have approached the topic of hauntings with the desire to inspire fear or terror in the audience. Ghostbusters works to promote a sense of humor while still discussing the same topic and in that sense, I think Ghostbusters did a much better job with making a memorable addition to supernatural events.

I’m fairly certain this is the oldest movie in the list of required movies for The Haunted class, and it really shows in the graphics and the animation, and even in the way the characters interact with their world. While this is not chronologically the oldest movie, as The Others took place in 1945 and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Amityville Horror, and Ghost Story would have happened in the late 1970s, Ghostbusters was a unique movie for its time. Yes, it was campy and ridiculous in some ways, but I don’t remember there being much of a push to advertise paranormal investigators or ghost hunters in the past. It’s only because of movies like Ghostbusters and the fascination people have with supernatural occurrences that have resulted in our modern acceptance of shows like Ghosthunters. This medium and genre have become something of an acceptable troupe and I believe a lot of that acceptance is based on the history in the genre of movies and entertainment venues such as Ghostbusters.

In Ghostbusters, there are a lot of the standard hauntings and ghost experiences, but Ghostbusters adds a little bit of a different level by having the ghosts be actually visible. Most of the hauntings so far have all demonstrated events where things simply moved of their own accord as witnessed by the characters involved and not necessarily seeing the entities causing the disturbances. The very first ghost the team encounters is the ghost of a librarian, going through the stacks in the New York library. They attempt to make contact with it in the most obvious way possible, by actually talking to it like they would talk to a normal person, and the ghost changes into something terrifying and chases them out. This provides the team with a new purpose and direction and also presents new challenges, such as now that they have conclusive evidence that ghosts exist, what are they supposed to do about it?

Another different aspect that Ghostbusters shows from the other movies and books in The Haunted is that paranormal events could be triggered by events from another plane of existence. While the team doesn’t go into much detail as to where Gozer and Zool come from, it certainly appears as though they come from a place that exists separately from our own world, but that this place has the ability to interact with our own world. Most of the previous works for this class seem to have more of a religious feel and the occurrences are linked to demons or spirits from people with a religious background or other people involved with religion are brought into the story.

All across human history, there are stories or myths about paranormal events, long lists of things that can’t be explained through normal methods. One of the most common reactions to things that we can’t explain or understand is to have fear of those events or the circumstances surrounding them. Ghostbusters take the time and their scientific backgrounds to search out not only explanations for the paranormal events, but also to work towards finding solutions to prevent those manifestations from harming anyone. The big difference between Ghostbusters and the other readings and movies so far is that there is no religious aspect to their work. It’s purely based on science and I think that’s the fascinating part because it’s kind of like showing physical proof as to why these things happen.

Overall, I would probably rate this movie as a three on my rating scale, but most of that probably stems from my memories of the movie from when I was a kid.

Posted in MA in Writing Popular Fiction, Movie Reviews, Readings in the Genre | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Movie Review: Paranormal Activities

Posted on August 8, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

One of the movies required for my Readings In the Genre The Haunted class for my Masters of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University was Paranormal Activities.

I first watched this movie a couple of years ago while I was visiting my family and we weren’t terribly impressed with it then. I can’t say that watching it again for the second time was any better. There’s bound to be spoilers in this review, so if you haven’t seen the movie and you’d rather be surprised by what happens in the movie, you’re probably better off not reading this. You’ve been duly warned.

I remember when this movie first came out and there were so many people who firmly believed that this was genuine footage of actual supernatural happenings because there was no way that this movie portrayed special effects because how could they possibly do that? I’m not saying that I don’t believe in supernatural occurrences. I’m saying that Hollywood can do just about anything. While I do appreciate the attempt to draw the audience in with an experience that feels authentic because of the amateur video footage and the normal-looking special effects, I still know that this is a movie, produced for entertainment purposes and financial gain.

Some people might feel as though this sort of camera work lends credibility to the potential truth behind the story, but I felt that if this were real in any way that Katie and Meeka would have spent less time focused on the camera and more time focused on their own safety, or each other’s safety.

Meeka did have a couple really good ideas about how to verify the other presence, including sprinkling the white powder across the floor to see the footprints and setting up the audio and video recorder, but I spent most of the movie not liking him at all. One of the first things that struck me both times about Paranormal Activities is that the guy is a total arrogant dick. He spends the vast majority of the movie trying to antagonize and piss off whatever entity it is that is causing their supernatural occurrences in their house. In some ways, I’m sure he views himself as being Katie’s heroic protector, but really, he’s just making things worse by not asking for expert advise when it could have helped both of them. Because he’s too macho to ask for help. Maybe if I had liked Meeka better, I would have liked the movie better, but as it is, he was just too much of an arrogant dick for me to care about what happened to him.

One of the things that felt inconsistent to me was Katie and Meeka’s living environment. She’s a student, studying English and he’s a day trader and they live in this amazing house in San Diego and she drives a convertible. The entire movie, we only see them go out once, and it kind of feels like neither of them are real people. School, class, or work never comes up. Katie says she’s doing her homework once and she has a book, but it doesn’t seem like she’s very far into her studies. I do realize how ridiculous it is for me to sit here and critique the lack of reality in the lives of fake characters in a movie I really didn’t like, but I think it’s important for my own ability to tell stories to acknowledge the things that I find inconsistent in other works of fiction. Acknowledging inconsistency in other people’s work will hopefully make me more inclined to find those same potential faults in my own work and repair those mistakes. To be fair, Meeka really could have made a lot of money on a trade and that’s maybe how they could afford to live that kind of lifestyle in someplace as expensive as California, but that’s not what my own experience and my own feelings say about that situation.

After finishing the movie for the second time, there was a discussion about how there’s a lot in this world that doesn’t make sense and a lot that we just don’t know. The general consensus for us was that whether you believe in supernatural occurrences or not, it’s never a good idea to be a dick or to piss off other beings or entities in your life, especially if you don’t know what’s going on or what you’re doing. So all the times when Meeka decided to try and call out the entity hanging out in the house and following Katie around was probably a really bad plan. And inviting it in with the Ouija board was also a bad idea. He was warned multiple times about what kind of reaction that might create, but he still did it anyway. But then, horror stories aren’t told by the people who made the smart decisions. It’s not marketable entertainment if you see people actually being smart about how to deal with uncomfortable situations.

Which brings me to the idea behind marketable entertainment. People like this kind of movie because they want to feel fear. They want to feel terror. They want their heart to race and to hear the doors slam around them in full surround sound. Fear is one of the most base emotions that humans have and people want to feel alive. Fear is one of the easiest ways to invoke an emotional response because it appeals directly to the fight or flight part of the primal survival mechanism.

I think I’ve liked The Exorcism of Emily Rose the most from the movies that I’ve watched for this Readings In the Genre class. I think that movie did the best job of matching good, believable characters with frightening story and good special effects. The Exorcism of Emily Rose inspired just enough doubt in the plausibility of a medical explanation to create even just a fraction of belief in supernatural events whereas Paranormal Activities continued to feel like cheap Hollywood gimmicks to me.

Overall, this movie might barely make it to be a two on my rating scale. I’d rather not watch it again because I found it terribly annoying both times I watched it.

Posted in MA in Writing Popular Fiction, Movie Reviews, Readings in the Genre | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Movie Review: The Others

Posted on August 8, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

One of the movies for my Readings In the Genre The Haunted was The Others. This movie took a different look at hauntings and I enjoyed watching it.

This review is going to have spoilers so if you haven’t watched the movie and you want to be surprised by the storyline, you’re probably better off not reading my review. You’ve been duly warned.

Grace Stewart is a devout Roman Catholic and spends a lot of time throughout the first portion of the movie tutoring her children, Anne and Nicolas, about religion and the punishments for not being good Catholics. Anne and Nicolas are super light sensitive, which means that the doors in the house have to be opened, closed, and locked in order so as to prevent the children’s accidental exposure to the light. I don’t know if this is a real ailment or if it was another in the long list of potentially misunderstood medical conditions from previous eras. This part was a bit confusing to me because I could never tell what time of day it was throughout the movie because it always seemed to be at least partially light outside. In some ways, I understand that this is because you can actually see better when your eyes naturally adapt to the time of day.

When I typed up my review for The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I discussed the time factor and how everything seemed to happen at night and in the fall and winter, but The Others went a different direction. I couldn’t actually tell what season The Others took place in and it had no bearing on the story, other than being at a time of year that would produce a good deal of fog to make the story believable for Grace, Anne, and Nicolas. It certainly appeared at the end of the story as though the outside temperature was at least mostly nice and there was no snow on the ground or any other indications of excessive cold.

In this movie, you’ve got all the trappings of a classic haunted house, including the feelings of a presence sharing the room, things moving in other rooms where no people are present, random sound effects, and other mysterious occurrences. You’ve even got Anne who keeps trying to tell her mom that she sees a boy named Victor.

I think it’s interesting that it seems as though religion has a part in most of the stories I’ve read or the movies I’ve seen so far. You typically have people who are somehow heavily immersed in the religious world, like priests or strongly religious family members, and they have biblical reasons for the things that happen, or they have twisted the words of their religious texts in order to corrupt or influence more of their familial relationships. The only book so far that didn’t seem to have any strong religious ties was The Lovely Bones, which I apparently didn’t actually need to read for this class, and which might be considered to have religious tones because it talks about the experiences in heaven.

The different direction that The Others took was in telling the story not from the perspective of the living who are dwelling in a haunted house, but rather in telling the story from the perspective of the ghosts who are trying to deal with both the knowledge of their deaths and in learning to exist in the same space as the living.

I guess one of the big questions this movie brought up for me was what encouraged Grace to smother Anne and Nicolas in the first place? Is the house something that inspires the people in it to die so that they won’t be lonely, like it felt like the house in The Haunting of Hill House did? Or was it purely coincidental that Grace killed her two children and then herself in the same house where at least Mrs. Mills, Mr. Tuttle, and Lydia died of tuberculosis Are there other ghosts that might be hanging out in the house as well and they just haven’t met them yet?

Overall, this was an okay movie, but not one that I thought was spectacular. I do like the idea of telling the story through the viewpoint of the ghosts and thought that was pretty neat. The music and sound effects added to the suspenseful aspect of the movie. I think I would rate this as a low three or a high two on my rating scale.

Posted in MA in Writing Popular Fiction, Movie Reviews, Readings in the Genre | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Movie Review: The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Posted on August 7, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

One of the movies required for my Readings In the Genre The Haunted class for my Masters of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University is The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

One of the first things I noticed about this movie was that Erin looked at the clock at 0300. I noticed this because it seems to be a rather prominent time for hauntings and things of that nature to occur in the books and movies I’ve gone through for this class. I mentioned it to those I was watching the movie with and how it seemed to be a pattern and sure enough, Father Moore in the movie goes on to explain that 0300 is the witching hour. I’m going to paraphrase the idea I heard behind what Father Moore discussed in the movie, so please forgive me if I get it wrong. He said something about how that time in the morning is kind of a mockery of the hour of power, which is 1500 (3pm) and how it also mocks the trinity because it’s a power of three, but not in a positive way.

I guess that kind of means that if I’m ever inclined to write a story of any sort with hauntings or paranormal events that I make it a point to note the time around 0300 in the morning for things to happen. That’s not a bad thing to know as far as troupes go.

I’ve mentioned several times before how I don’t like reading the backs of books because I feel as though they give away too much of the story. I think the same goes for movies for me, as well. We started The Exorcism of Emily Rose and I was asked if I knew that this was going to be a trial movie and I said no and went on to describe how I actually didn’t know anything about this movie, other than that it was a homework assignment for this class. I really do enjoy going into books and movies with an open mind and no expectations. I think that makes it easier for me to get engrossed in the story and to experience everything from my own perspective without bias. In a lot of ways, I think that this is an important way to approach fiction, but it also means that I might miss some other references that those more familiar with the story or the background might get that I might not.

I’m not really a fan of the shaky camera style of movie-making and the times when the camera work was done like that in this movie sort of made me feel like the movie producers just didn’t have enough money to pay for real camera people, not as though I was genuinely witnessing something that was supposed to be actual amateur camera footage. It was slightly annoying, but it wasn’t severe enough to make me sick, nor to make me notice it any more than to acknowledge the slight annoyance. It’s worth noting because I seem to remember a good deal of movies in this genre working to attempt to feel like more realistic eye-witness accounts by using this kind of camera work. In some movies, it might work. In this one, it didn’t work for me to affect my emotions.

Some of the signs of possession were different here than in some of the other haunting-style books and movies I’ve seen so far. Or maybe some of them were similar, just in different ways. For instance, The Amityville Horror had the sewing room which was constantly infested with flies while The Exorcism of Emily Rose had the giant wasp nest on the front porch in the beginning. I’m not sure if there really is a correlation there or not, but it felt in The Exorcism of Emily Rose that the fact that the wasp nest was so huge that it might be relevant to hauntings and possession. So maybe there is something that relates insects or flying insects to possession? Like how Emily was going all crazy eating dead spiders and other nasty critters? I think this is something I might keep my on for my future readings and movie watchings.

Another correlation that I’m noticing is how all the really dark things tend to happen during the fall or winter. In The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the attempted exorcism takes place on All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween), The Amityville Horror lasts from December through January, and The Lovely Bones also occurs in the fall. In some ways, I can see this has a historical sense of paranormal events because humans have a history filled with myths, legends, and stories about the dark deeds that happen when darkness is more prevalent. Humans have always been solar powered and feared the darkness. Since the winter months have extended periods of darkness, it makes sense that more events would either happen during that time or that our imaginations would be more active during those times. But the other side of that could be true, as well, that the powers of darkness have more sway over our world during the fall and winter months.

I was actually a pretty solid fan of the characters in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. This is one of the few times where I feel as though the main religious character did the right thing and was actually strong enough in his faith to make a positive impact. In my opinion, most of the religious connotations in these types of stories are part of the problem as to why the powers of darkness get so much power over the humans and characters in these types of stories. And I don’t often have a positive view of lawyers in stories like this, but I actually hoped that nothing bad would happen to Erin and that she would find a way to win the case, not so she could get promoted and such but because I felt like she genuinely cared and was working towards the greater good. It’s a strange thing for me to say, but that’s how the story made me feel.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie far more than I thought I would and would probably rate it at a low three on my scale. I think it’s worth watching again, but I’m not sure I would pay full price for it.

Posted in MA in Writing Popular Fiction, Movie Reviews, Readings in the Genre | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted on August 6, 2014 by C.A. Jacobs

I had the privilege of seeing Guardians of the Galaxy today with family and had a very enjoyable afternoon with it.

This movie was pretty much exactly what I was expecting. A little ridiculous, a little amusing, a little heart-warming, and a little retro. You know all this going in just based on the previews.

There were a couple of things that really stuck out with me. The first was the sheer beauty of space. I really liked how the ships were designed and how the movement through space looked on the screen. But above and beyond all of that, I really loved all the screenshots of space and I was thinking about how amazing it would be to get some of those as still-shots and use them to decorate my potential future dream cabin. It made me wish that I could be a space pilot and learn how to fly around the universe.

The movie had a talking raccoon that saved more lives than Superman did in Man of Steel. That raccoon showed more humanity than the superhero protector of our planet. Rocket was also a really good translator for Grout and that made the movie really interesting to me because I wondered about the back story there.

The idea of spending 26 years listening to the same mix tape kind of makes me nervous. I do tend to listen to the same things over and over and over again, but I don’t know that I could only listen to one 90 minute mix tape for 26 years straight without having anything else. Which then made me wonder if Peter Quill ever went back to Earth just to get new music and what kind of transition he would have if he returned to Earth now.

The movie didn’t take itself too seriously and had a lot of fun with people like me with a good bit of comic knowledge that spanned several decades of experience. It also included some great tidbits from the rest of the Marvel Studios movies and storylines going on right now. I liked those references and I feel that Marvel is doing a great job with combining and matching a lot of their stories.

Overall, this was an enjoyable movie and is something I would watch as a brain candy movie. I think it’s a solid three on my rating scale and I will likely purchase it when it comes out.

Posted in Movie Reviews | Tagged , , | Leave a comment