Category Archives: Story Problems

In the introduction to Lester Dent’s Weird Adventures of the Blond Adder, Dent expert Will Murray mentions that the 1933 stories fell into a sub-genre pulp magazine editors were calling the “menace” story. Murray quotes literary agent Lurton Blassingame, who cites Phantom of the Opera, Hound of the Baskervilles and the Fu Manchu novels.“In this type of story,” Blessingame said, “some person or thing hangs a veil of horror over the characters in this story; we never know when this menace will strike but we do know it will continue to commit depredations until the hero does his stuff and overcomes it in the final climax.” An editor Murray quotes says the figure can be a mystery until the climax or, as in Dracula or Fu Manchu, the heroes know who he is but still can’t stop him from striking.

For example in the first Blond Adder story Nace goes out into the woods to meet someone. A man comes running up to him, bound and gagged, and suddenly explodes. Several more people explode later in the story, but who’s behind it? What does he want? How does he do it?

Dent applied this approach in a number of Doc Savage yarns. in The Flaming Falcons the eponymous bone-grey birds appear and people drop dead, then the birds explode in a ball of fire. Not all mysterious-death stories in the series qualify: the disintegrator in Land of Terror is a formidable weapon but it’s treated as just that, a super-weapon, where the matter-destroying Red Snow feels more terrifying and mysterious. I think the latter novel qualifies.

The “menace” motif didn’t disappear with the pulps. It has a lot in common with slasher films; Freddie Kruger and Michael Myers both seem to qualify as the menace that “will continue to commit depredations” until defeated. Scooby-Doo would seem to qualify: lurking figures like the Phantom Shadow or the Ghost Clown threatening everyone until the masks are pulled off. Classic Joker stories such as his first appearance in Batman #1, “The Laughing Fish” or “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” fit the menace sub-genre: the Joker’s out there and he’s going to kill with a smile until Batman finally stops him.Clearly it’s a trope that still works. Which brings me to its presence in my own work. Questionable Minds, for instance is very much in the menace mode. Jack the Ripper, enhanced by psychic powers is out there killing; nobody knows where he’ll strike, nobody knows why, and nobody seems able to stop him.  Southern Discomfort, out later this year, has menace elements too. Readers know the villain is Gwalchmai, out for revenge on Olwen McAlister but we don’t know why. Maria, Olwen and the other characters have no idea. All they know is that they’re under attack: a flock of aggressive ravens, a kelpie, a barghuest, hanging a black teenager in his bedroom, putting a hospital into magical sleep so he can confront Maria.

Then there’s my work in progress, Let No Man Put Asunder. In the first chapter, Mandy Buchanan and Paul Templar find themselves mentally linked, and the target of the mysterious Community of All. From that point on they’re on the run from magicians, martial artists, vampires and elves out to capture them for the Community. Their enemies are ruthless, relentless and powerful; when Mandy tries driving them out of town it turns out space has been warped so they can’t leave.

Just having menace isn’t enough by itself though. At some point the heroes have to fight back; at some point they have to get answers, even if the answers raise more questions. Dent gave a hypothetical example where the protagonist learns the bad guys are kidnapping someone named Elmer. They rescue Elmer, but he’s a ring-tailed monkey; why would they steal a monkey? And why are the rings on the tail painted on? Saving Elmer’s a win but the hero doesn’t even know why it matters.

About a third of the way through this draft, I realized I didn’t have enough menace: once the cops came on board it was too talky. This is a problem I’ve seen in some published books, that once the authorities realize you’re right and start helping, things get too easy. I went back and rewrote to keep Paul and Mandy (not a couple by the way, she’s more the big sister he desperately needs) on their own and in peril for much longer. But at a certain point just flinging peril at them wasn’t enough; as Dent says, action has to do more than move your protagonist over the scenery. They begin to push back, have some wins, but then the Community of All ups the game and things end up worse.

At that point though, my ability to write it seemed to fade. I think part of the problem was that I was still moving them over the scenery; the individual battles were fine but they were interchangeable. The plot wasn’t moving enough. Hence my decision to move to the end. It’s an imperfect end but it reveals the stakes and the nature of the Community of All. That”s much better than having vague ideas in my head, even if I change what’s on the page completely (as Sherlock Holmes says, “any truth is better than indefinite doubt”).

I’m sure that when I finish the second draft, it’ll still be a menace story. But the menace will have a much stronger arc.

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