By PJ Parrish

Our First-Pager starts off with a bang. Literally. I will leave it at that for now. Let’s take a read and then discuss.

Sweet Sixteen Redux

New Town Mall

I was trying on a polka-dotted push-up bra when the gunfire began. The rat-a-tats came in quick bursts. A chorus of screams followed. The sounds were distant but unmistakable. This was no kid with a cap gun. Someone had come to the mall to kill. And my father was out there.

“Dad…”

The word limped out of my mouth, a prayer. Dad had brought me shopping as a present for my sixteenth birthday. He sat outside the dressing room at The Gap and American Apparel, glancing at his cell and offering some variation of “Looks nice, Grace” when I came out, even when I modeled an orange jumper that made me look like a baby convict. We mutually agreed, however, that it would be best for all parties if I spent my Victoria’s Secret gift card (a present from Mom) without his assistance. The last thing he’d said to me was, “I’ll be in the food court.”

I threw on my shirt and crept out of the dressing room, panic rising in me like a tide.

The saleswoman who’d been helping me was huddled behind the counter, a cell phone pressed to her ear. “I don’t know how many shooters there are. Just hurry.” She ended the call and waved me over. “The police are on the way. We need to—”

More shots rang out. She let out an ear-piercing cry and crawled through an Angels Only door, beckoning me to follow. Every cell in my body screamed for me to go with her, to get as far away from the shooter as humanly possible. But Dad was in danger. Because of my stupid birthday. I couldn’t just leave him to fend for himself.

Outside the store, panicked shoppers stampeded away from the food court, toward the T.J. Maxx end of the mall. I watched them pass, looking for Dad’s blue Cub’s jersey. When it was clear he wasn’t coming, I shuffled over to a cell phone kiosk and crouched behind a cardboard winky face. From there, I could see what everyone was running from: a man, dressed in black, with a short-barreled machine gun in his hands and a SpongeBob mask covering his face. Lifeless bodies were splayed across the floor like mannequins. One of them wore a blue Cub’s jersey.

No…it can’t be.

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I often say here that the better the submission, the tougher my comments are. This is because if the writer is doing the craft things right, if the story is compelling, you want to root for them even harder and help them if you can. Such is the case here. But here’s the catch for me — I can’t find too much negative to say about this! I’m not being lazy here. You all know how much I like to drill down into our submissions. But this writer is doing a lot of things right.

So that is our lesson today, folks. We can learn from submissions that need work. But we can also learn from submissions that don’t. So…

What works here, for me, at least?

Immediate conflict and drama. The writer chose a good entry point moment to begin their story. Something is happening right from the get-go — a mall shooting. The writer could have started earlier, say with daughter and dad talking just outside the store about why they were there — it’s a birthday gift shopping spree. The writer could have been more in the narrator’s head, having her think about how much she is enjoying her day with dad. But no. The writer wisely got the action moving first and kept the backstory out of the way (for the most part; more on that in edits).

Good choreography. Moving your characters around in time and space seems like a mundane craft thing but many writers don’t do this well. Your story is unspooling in your head like a movie — you see it so clearly, right? But your job is getting the reader to see it as clearly. So you have to be careful about telling us where people are, what precisely is happening. It isn’t fancy writing but it’s vital. This writer aces this. (with a few small hiccups).

Point of View. First person is, to my mind, harder than third because everything in this story must be filtered through one person’s senses and experience level. Our narrator is very young, so it’s doubly hard, but I think the writer has a good grip on this so far. I liked the young girl Grace immediately. She feels real to me. Notice the writer told us Grace is trying on a polka-dot push-up bra? The writer could have chosen jeans or a blouse. But the fact it’s a slightly naughty bra is what we call a telling detail — it tells us something specific about Grace.  And did you notice how gracefully the writer inserts the girl’s name and age? This isn’t easy in first-person.

Now, there are a couple things that need tweaking, here and there. So let’s go to a line edit. My comments are in red.

Sweet Sixteen Redux Not crazy about this title. It feels too soft and ambiguous for this story especially given the action opening. “Redux” is one of those weird words that everyone thinks they know but actually get wrong. It means brought-back or revived. Not sure what the writer is going for here. Maybe that her “sweet 16” was far from sweet, in fact, deadly, so she’ll get another chance to relive it? What do you all think?

New Town Mall You don’t need this tag, writer. You cover it, as you should, in the narration.

I was trying on a polka-dotted push-up bra when the gunfire began. This is a grabber first line but a nit to pick here. The way this is phrased feels almost like she’s thinking about the episode in retrospect. Most laymen, when they hear gunfire, do not immediately identify it as such. Victims of mass shootings describe it as car back-fire, fire-crackers, etc. In the first few seconds, their reactions are purely visceral. Not sure she would say “gunfire.” The rat-a-tats came in quick bursts. A chorus of screams followed. The sounds were distant but unmistakable. This was no kid with a cap gun.  See comment above. She evidently thought she was hearing a cap gun. Someone had come to the mall to kill. And my father was out there. Good ending to the graph!

“Dad…”

The word limped out of my mouth, a prayer. I like this line…Dad had brought me shopping as a present for my sixteenth birthday. He sat outside the dressing room at The Gap and American Apparel, glancing at his cell and offering some variation of “Looks nice, Grace” when I came out, even when I modeled an orange jumper that made me look like a baby convict. We mutually agreed, however, that it would be best for all parties if I spent my Victoria’s Secret gift card (a present from Mom) without his assistance. The last thing he’d said to me was, “I’ll be in the food court.” Okay, this needs some work. It’s too long (backstory) and thus puts a brake on the great action of the scene. I get that the writer wants to establish WHY Grace and dad are there because it creates sympathy and empathy. But just shorten it, maybe to:

I yanked open the dressing room curtain. Dad had been sitting there, thumbing his cell phone, while I tried on clothes. “Looks nice, Grace,” he had said when I emerged to model an orange jumpsuit. But now he was gone. Then  I remembered he had muttered something about meeting me at the food court.

I threw on my shirt and crept out of the dressing room, panic rising in me like a tide. Cliche…you can do better, writer. What does it FEEL like specifically to this girl? Bring up next line. The saleswoman who’d been helping me was huddled behind the counter, a cell phone pressed to her ear.

Need new graph when new person speaks. “I don’t know how many shooters there are. Just hurry.” She ended the call and waved me over. “The police are on the way. We need to—”

More shots rang out. She let out an ear-piercing cry and crawled through an Angels Only door, I have no idea what this is beckoning me to follow. Every cell in my body screamed for me to go with her, to get as far away from the shooter as humanly possible. But Dad was in danger. Possibly. Maybe it would be smarter to have her think that she has to FIND him. Because of my stupid birthday. I couldn’t just leave him to fend for himself. Why do I suggest cutting this last line? Because the line before it is much more powerful. Also, Dad being in danger isn’t really caused by her birthday. Unless you add something here that she was the one who insisted he bring her? Can you make it more personal to their relationship. She feels guilty — so give her a good reason!

Outside the store, choreography hiccup here. You have to move her outside first. Did she decide to go out the front entrance of the Gap? panicked shoppers stampeded away from the food court, toward the T.J. Maxx Another choregraphy hiccup. Is the Gap right next to the food court? The stampede she sees implies it is. Be specific. end of the mall. I watched them pass, looking I scanned the crowd but didn’t see Dad’s blue Cub’s jersey. When it was clear he wasn’t coming, I shuffled Not the right word, I don’t think, as shuffle is a slow casual verb. Scuttled? But that’s not a 16-year-old’s word. Scrambled? over to a cell phone kiosk and crouched behind a cardboard winky face. I’m probably dense as a log but I didn’t know what this was. A smiley face, or one of those yellow winking icon? It didn’t compute with cell phone kiosk for me. I stumbled for a moment so maybe it needs fixing? Not sure…

Then I saw him — From there, I could see what everyone was running from: a man, dressed in black, black what? trench coat? with a short-barreled machine gun in his hands machine gun is an old fashioned term. Need help here from my gun experts — what would you call this, keeping in mind this is a 16 year old? and a SpongeBob mask covering his face. if she can’t see his face she can’t tell us for sure it’s a man. Could be a boy. Could be a woman. Lifeless Ditto, she can’t KNOW they are dead bodies were splayed across the floor like mannequins. I like that you’re trying for a metaphor here in keeping with your setting but not sure it works. mannequins don’t normal “splay” — they stand upright. I’d lose the metaphor. Also, be careful that you don’t get too “writerly” here and slip into metaphoric thinking in such a visceral moment.

Also, like your verb choice of “shuffle” the word “splay” might not be accurate. It’s a nice word but splay is very specific in meaning — all limbs thrust out from the torso at oblique angles. Some of those shot would crumble inward; some would be merely prone. Also question whether Grace, at 16, would think in such a wording. Keep every emotion, reaction, word choice in her realm of experience — not yours.

One of them wore a blue Cub’s jersey. Nice. I might put it on a line of its own. But can you sharpen the image and make her reaction more visceral. Suggestion:

I spotted a body in dark blue shirt. There was a red target-shaped logo on the back. It was a Cub’s jersey. 

You told us Dad was wearing such a jersey so it’s more impactful to just stay with the visual of the jersey and let US connect the dots. And note the use of “target” in logo.

No…it can’t be. Good that you’re in her head. But unattributed thoughts need to be in itals.

So, as I said, I really like this opening. The solid writing bodes well. I want to know if Dad is alive, of course. And I want to know, of course, how this life-shaking event affects our protagonist. That is, I would guess, the dramatic trajectory for Grace. I am very curious what genre we are in — young adult or regular no-age-specific? I am curious, too, where the plot will go from here and what its main thrust will be. What kind of journey are you taking us on, dear writer? Mystery? Police procedural? Thriller? Where does Grace go from here? When you have such a dramatic opening, that is a big big question.

But I am curious. And that is a very good thing. So good job, writer.  

“Wortham’s outstanding sequel to The Rock Hole (2011)… Burrows combines the gonzo sensibility of Joe R. Lansdale and the elegiac mood of To Kill a Mockingbird to strike just the right balance between childhood innocence and adult horror.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

I read that review back in 2012 and wondered, “What’s Publishers Weekly?”

I honestly didn’t know much about reviewers, or starred reviews, but I hadn’t written a horror novel, had I?

Burrows was simply the second book in my Red River series about precocious ten-year-old kids living in a Mayberry-like setting when a killer comes to town.

But horror?

Always a fan of that genre, I cut my teeth on H.P. Lovecraft, graduating from there to Stephen King, Karl Edward Wagner, Gary Brandner, Richard Matheson and I admit, I read a lot of John Saul and shame on me, V.C. Andrews, but I hadn’t set out to write a novel meant to scare, startle, shock, and even repulse my new readers. I just wanted to tell a creepy story and start it with something I’d written years earlier.

They say the key focus of a horror novel is to elicit a sense of dread through frightening images, themes, and situations.

I didn’t know that either, at the time.

But I did remember that Lovecraft wrote, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

It was the unknown part I was shooting for somewhere around 2001 with an attempt to get Stephen King’s attention as part of an online short story contest after his book, On Writing, was released. Once I learned that he was looking for short stories, I sat down to write one.

Wait, what? I’d never written a short story.

Well, that wasn’t completely true. I’d attempted one back in the 1980s that was damned near a novella and it was almost published by a magazine that shut down only a month after they accepted my submission. Sigh.

Hey, just write shorter, I thought. And I did.

Five entries out of 1,000 submissions won the contest and their names were posted on Mr. King’s website, but my story, Drip, didn’t make the cut. Not wanting to waste the effort, I submitted Drip to several magazines. No one else wanted it either. I wonder if it was the title. Anyway, with a stack of rejection notices the size of a ham sandwich, I stuck it in a drawer until my editor called.

“Well, now that The Rock Hole is scheduled for release in a few months, when can we expect your next novel?”

“What!!!???”

“We need it pretty fast.” She gave me a deadline. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with. Toodles.”

I spoke into the dead line. “Neither can I.”

Somewhat desperate, I had an idea and dug that old short story out of my computer files to re-read what I’d written so long ago. It began with one word, drip, hence the title. The scene? Kendall Boden has a casual, one-sided conversation with a man with a bullet in his head, as blood slowly drips from the victim’s nose to puddle in his lap.

From there, someone discovers a headless body in the Red River, and the novel is off and running with Cody Parker’s nightmare premonition playing out in real life. A hoarder of the first order has filled the multi-story abandoned Cotton Exchange with tons of scavenged garbage and booby traps. Pursuing a lead, Cody and Deputy John Washington find themselves inside the fire trap, lost in a deadly maze of burrows and their own personal terrors.

Everything revolves around a suspect from the town’s past who needs to be caught before more headless bodies pile up, and they do.

So what was it that made some reviewers call this a horror novel, while I thought I was simply writing a second mystery?

Well, it scared the pee-waddlin’ out of folks for one thing. Trapped inside a shoulder-wide burrow?

Brrrr.

Some readers said they couldn’t finish it because it was too claustrophobic. That makes sense, we all have certain things that terrify us, and that includes spiders…

…that are in the novel, as well as rats and moldering corpses…

…yeah, they’re in there too, along with a lunatic who is the architect of it all, but even that crazy person isn’t as he seems.

Upon submission six months later, my agent told me that first chapter was the most frightening thing she’d ever read. Yeah, the unsellable short story, Drip, was Chapter One. Take that, Mr. King.

We’re all familiar with movies in this genre that startles us with people who suddenly jump out of nowhere, or shock us with a hand reaching from the darkness, or a human-like creature who looks at the audience with psychotic eyes from under lowered brows. I call them shock films.

But movies are different than horror novels.

Written or literary horror slowly feeds on audience’s deepest terrors, and not the abovementioned Shock Factor. It’s built upon those things which scare us as individuals, such as death, evil, the supernatural, or creatures that slither around out there in the darkness. It’s built upon the unknown.

How do you write horror? In my opinion you have to quit trying to say things that you think are scary.

Instead, create an atmosphere of dread. Show, don’t tell.

Horror isn’t splattered blood and guts. Oh, I guess that’s horrific if you really come across it. When I was a kid I followed my grandfather into a murder scene (he was a constable), and was witness to fresh blood still running down the walls and dripping from the ceiling in the living room of a small frame house out in the country. When he realized I was behind him, he knocked me back through the screen door with the flat of his hand and ordered me to stay outside.

Come to think of it, the sight of all that blood wasn’t horrific at all, but maybe it waited somewhere deep inside to reemerge in a more subtle way through my writing.

Again, horror is a carefully designed build of dread and suspense. To be successful, get inside the reader’s head and show them what scares them the most. Create a world where their deepest fears can be reality. Find something that’s common and benign, and dig deeper to reveal a surprise or twist that will haunt your reader long after they close the book.

Find something that’s festering inside them, and pick it out.

What’s more creepy than a huge old decaying building full of living, squirming creatures that live in absolute darkness and brush up against you, or crawl over your trapped body.

What about a troubled character with a pitiful, miserable past full of secrets that comes calling after years of treatment in psychiatric hospitals?

One reader told me Burrows scared him because he had a personal fear that tons of refuse could come down at any minute to crush him into paste. I’ve often wondered where that dread originated.

I thought I’d written an historical mystery thriller, but in the end, I hammered out a work that seriously creeped people out. Fans still tell me, “That was the scariest book I’ve read in years.”

“Why?”

They answer, “Because it could happen.”

Or, “Because I’m deathly afraid of rats.”

And often, “Because I’m claustrophobic. I had to read one chapter a night, then calm myself each time.”

I’ve heard, “I was shocked at the twist.”

And when they say, “Because there could be people like that living amongst us.”

I reply, “There are, and that’s horrifying because it’s real.”

What’s your creep factor?

Today is Global Recycling Day, created in 2018 to recognize the importance of recycling in preserving our natural resources. “Think resource not waste.” Are you using any creative ways to use “waste” as a “resource” in your house, your writing space, or writing process? Or, are you recycling materials that would otherwise be discarded?

In our ever-changing world, it’s nice to have something constant that we can point to, so I’m happy that March 14 is celebrated as National Pi Day.

Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and it’s a constant. (It’s also an irrational number, but that’s another story.) It doesn’t matter how big or small the circle is, the ratio of circumference to diameter is constant. The actual number begins with 3.14, hence our celebration of pi on 3/14.

Here are a few interesting facts about pi that I gleaned from piday.org:

• The notion that there was a constant ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter has been known for about 4000 years.
• Pi is such a fascinating concept that it inspired a style of writing called Pilish, where the number of letters in each word match the corresponding digit of pi (e.g., “Buy a girl a watch” corresponds to the first five digits of pi: 3.1415.) Software engineer Michael Keith wrote an entire book, called Not a Wake in this language. (The ebook sells on Amazon for $3.14.)
• The Greek symbol for Pi wasn’t always used to represent the mathematical concept. It was introduced by the Welsh mathematician William Jones, a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, in 1706.
• In 2015, Rajveer Meena memorized and recited pi to 70,000 decimal places.
• Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879.

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But there are other celebrations on March 14. Have you ever used the National Day Calendar? It’s a great source of information about everything we celebrate in this country (as well as good fodder for blog posts). Today is also the national day of:

Write Your Story Day (This one should motivate us all.)

Learn About Butterflies Day

Potato Chip Day

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It’s fun to look up birthdays, anniversaries, or other special occasions in the National Day Calendar. I just looked up my husband’s and my anniversary. Oh – it’s today! Time to make dinner reservations at a restaurant with really good pie.

So TKZers: Take a moment to look up your special days in the National Day Calendar and let us know what you find. Extra credit if you write a few words in Pilish.