Graphics, Horror and a request to Hollywood

This post is something I have wanted to talk (rant) about for a while.

Let me start by saying this is one of the most fantastic movies ever made:

And here is its prequel, which was okay:

When people (such as myself) were eagerly awaiting the prequel, there was a lot of concern because the 1982 movie is such a classic, and its grotesque, practical rubber and animatronic effects are so iconic and memorable. People wanted to know that the prequel would be made with the same amount of love and that the filmmakers would treat the IP with the respect it deserves.

I was particularly interested by the over the top assurance from people involved that CGI would only be used to enhance and augment lots of practical effects. They bent over backwards to assure people that practical effects would play a large part in the new film. When the film was released, as expected, CGI effects totally dominated. Of course people complained. The vehemence displayed in the criticism was astounding.

Here is my take on it:

I had quite low expectations of the prequel, mainly as a defense mechanism because the modern film industry eviscerated most of my beloved franchises in the last decade or so. I thought it was pretty meh, not bad, not good.

The main problem I have with it was not the graphics or the monster, it was that they didn't seem to understand what made original film so scary. For example, in Carpenter's film, the monster only reveals itself when it is attacked or has no choice. In the prequel, it voluntarily reveals itself all the time for the sake of a good computer graphics opportunity. Also, its plot was way too similar to the original, with ostensible changes to memorable scenes and blatant nods to fanboys for continuity with the original. Some problems I can forgive, others I cannot. Basically, it was not scary at all, and that is the most unforgivable problem.

With regards to the graphics, I actually thought they were quite good, and I am a graphics guy (I have written many raytracers and realtime graphics engines for games, not to mention being an amateur 2D and 3D artist myself, so it's not like I'm wowed by any old crap).

I find it funny that the people whining about the computer graphics in the prequel, are the same one lauding the realism of the practical effects in the original.

What happens there is that Norris-thing's chest opens to become a mouth and the teeth clamp around Dr. Cooper's arms. But when the doctor pulls back, his arms rip apart, very easily, far from the actual teeth. His bones break and his skin/muscle tear at the same place on both his arms simply by leaning backwards. And both spider heads are very well done but are clearly just rubber and wires.

Now obviously I am not trying to belittle the movie or Rob Bottin's effects. Not in the least, but if we are objectively arguing for realism, the prequel wins hands down.

The reason why old school practical effects are better than computer graphics is actually because of its limitations. With an animatronic puppet, one half of it is split open, with a bunch of people pulling wires or bundles of cables and controller boxes. This necessitates extreme closeups, dark lighting, quick cutaways, shaky action, etc. Fucking scary! However, in the age of newfangled 'puters, directors have no such limitation and can pull back and show a more realistic scene. Unfortunately this eliminates any horror and is mainly done for 'trailer porn' reasons. In Ridley Scott's "Alien", for example, everything is dark and you barely see the titular beast. It's one of the best film's ever made. By contrast, "Alien 4" has full body shots of aliens swimming, and has my vote for the worst movie ever made.

I thought the creature design of the Thing prequel was very cool, creative, detailed and realistic (well, as far as shapeshifting aliens can be).

And therein lies the problem.

I shouldn't be able to tell whether the graphics were good or not. I shouldn't be able to tell whether the creature was detailed and well-designed. I shouldn't even see the monster. In any film, if computer graphics are used, they should be almost invisible (such as in black swan). In any horror film, the monster should be hidden.

I LOVE alien design. My #1 fantasy job would be a xenobiologist on an alien world. I have given presentations about designing plausible aliens. 90% of the scifi and horror stories I write is about weird aliens/monsters. I giggle like a schoolboy when I see wonderfully grotesque, well designed, well thought out lifeforms. I love to see what the designers came up with for movies like Starship Troopers, or the kaiju in Pacific Rim, or my favourite book of all time, "Expedition" by Wayne Barlowe. However, for a film like The Thing, I will gush over the creature design in the bluray extras, not in the film itself. Goddammit!

Recently I watched "Mama", directed by Andrés Muschietti and produced by Guillermo del Toro (who is my kindred spirit regarding weird creatures). I really loved Muschietti's short film that is is based on. The movie was pretty good, up until the last 15 minutes or so, then it just turned awful. Really awful. The single biggest problem is that the showed Mama in all her ghoulish entirety.

One of my favourite jokes is this stupid kid's joke.

Q: What's red and invisible?
A: No tomatoes.

So to change it slightly:

Q: What is the scariest monster in a movie?
A: A fantastically designed, beautifully rendered, plausible, horrific, gruesome, offscreen one.

Here is an example of how it should be done (starts at 0:38):

Ignore the fact that this is not horror, and that Gollum will be seen completely in daylight in the next movie. The scene shown above is tremendulously creepy and if that kind of aesthetic was applied to a monster in a horror film, it would scare the crap out of me. But it's always too tempting to have a big reveal at the climax, "because we can" and it always spoils the fim. No execption. If you want, throw some money at me and I will make for you the coolest, scariest, underwear-soiling scifi horror there has ever been.

So, in conclusion, I would like to appeal to Hollywood regarding creatures in horror. Please please please, hide your monsters. By all means go ahead and use cutting-edge computer graphics, but it doesn't mean you should show everything. In fact, please don't. Just show us a tiny part in a darkened room at any one time. Let our imagination do the rest.

They are far, far scarier that way.

Reflexive tweets

In language, a reflexive sentence is one in which the subject and object are the same:

The boy washed himself.

As opposed to a transitive sentence:

The boy ate the apple.

However, the title of this post uses a different meaning of the word 'reflexive'.

Reflexivity is a word used in social theory to mean self-referential. So in this context, a reflexive sentence is a sentence in which the subject is the actual sentence itself.

Confused? Here are some cool mind-bending examples.

This sentence is false.
You have, of course, just begun reading the sentence that you have just finished reading. 
This sentence contains exactly threee erors.

That last one is my favourite. Do you get it?

I first came across this concept (and the above sentences) in a wonderful book called Metamagical Themas. This book has many examples and explores the concept down the rabbit hole.

In 1982, Douglas Hofstadter (a columnist for Scientific American and the author of the abovementioned book) published a self referential sentence that enumerated some of its own words:

In this sentence the word AND occurs twice, the word EIGHT occurs twice, the word FOUR occurs twice, the word FOURTEEN occurs four times, the word IN occurs twice, the word OCCURS occurs fourteen times, the word SENTENCE occurs twice, the word SEVEN occurs twice, the word THE occurs fourteen times, the word THIS occurs twice, the word TIMES occurs seven times, the word TWICE occurs eight times, and the word WORD occurs fourteen times.

This led to Lee Swallows creating this sentence:

Only the fool would take trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sixteen f's, four g's, thirteen h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty-seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens and, last but not least, a single ! 

Which is really impressive (it also enumerates its own punctuation), but is not a true pangram (a sentence containing every letter) because it is missing 'j', 'q' and 'z'.

Later, Rudy Kousbroek, a Dutch writer, improved on Swallows' work by creating the worlds first true reflexive pangram in dutch:

Dit pangram bevat vijf a's, twee b's, twee c's, drie d's, zesenveertig e's, vijf f's, vier g's, twee h's, vijftien i's, vier j's, een k, twee l's, twee m's, zeventien n's, een o, twee p's, een q, zeven r's, vierentwintig s's, zestien t's, een u, elf v's, acht w's, een x, een y, en zes z's.

This sentence only enumerates every letter of the alphabet, and not the punctuation marks.

Lee Swallows and later Ed Miller decided to create computer programs (and even dedicated hardware) to search for other pangrams. Here are some others they found:

This pangram lists four a's, one b, one c, two d's, twenty-nine e's, eight f's, three g's, five h's, eleven i's, one j, one k, three l's, two m's, twenty-two n's, fifteen o's, two p's, one q, seven r's, twenty-six s's, nineteen t's, four u's, five v's, nine w's, two x's, four y's, and one z.

This pangram contains four a's, one b, two c's, one d, thirty e's, six f's, five g's, seven h's, eleven i's, one j, one k, two l's, two m's, eighteen n's, fifteen o's, two p's, one q, five r's, twenty-seven s's, eighteen t's, two u's, seven v's, eight w's, two x's, three y's, & one z.

This pangram contains four a's, one b, two c's, one d, twenty-six e's, six f's, three g's, six h's, eleven i's, one j, one k, two l's, two m's, seventeen n's, fifteen o's, two p's, one q, eight r's, thirty s's, seventeen t's, four u's, four v's, six w's, six x's, three y's, & one z.


But many more were found with exhaustive searches and different starting phrases.

The above historical information is a summary of the information found on this site.

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Anyway, this leads me to my tweet.

I wanted to create a reflexive pangram tweet. Of course, there is not enough room for a true pangram so I had to limit the scope a bit. I initially decided on enumerating the vowels, and various punctuation marks.

I wrote a small computer program to aid me in my quest. Not to search for solutions (that would remove most of the fun) but simply to tell me how many characters there are in the current sentence, so that I didn't have to manually tally characters for every iteration (now THAT would be hell).

Now, the most important contraint (other than being correct) was that the tweet had to fit in EXACTLY 140 characters. All my stories (apart from a few at the begining) are 140 characters.

So I set out to find a valid self-referential, self-enumerting tweet.

Here are some (almost) valid sentences. They are valid except for lying about their character lengths. The actual character lengths are give after each sentence.

"This tweet has eight a's, thirteen e's, six i's, six o's, two u's, seven commas, twenty-two spaces, and one hundred and forty characters." (137)
"This tweet's got six a's, sixteen e's, nine i's, eight o's, one u, seven commas, five apostrophes, twenty-two spaces and a single period." (137)
"My tweet contains eight a's, thirteen e's, six i's, seven o's, two u's, six commas, twenty-two spaces and one hundred and forty characters." (139)
"My tweet has got nine a's, sixteen e's, five i's, five o's, two u's, seven commas, twenty-three spaces, and a hundred and forty characters." (139)
"This tweet contains nine a's, thirteen e's, eight i's, seven o's, two u's, six commas, five apostrophes and a hundred and forty characters." (139)
"This tweet has eight a's, fifteen e's, seven i's, seven o's, two u's, six commas and five apostrophes, in one hundred and forty characters." (139)
"This tweet has eight a's, sixteen e's, six i's, five o's, two u's, seven commas, twenty three spaces, and one hundred and forty characters." (139)
"This tweet has eight a's, fifteen e's, eight i's, five o's, two u's, six commas and twenty-three spaces, in one hundred and forty characters." (141)
"This tweet has eight a's, sixteen e's, eight i's, five o's, two u's, five commas and twenty-three spaces in one hundred and forty characters." (141)
"This tweet's got eight a's, fifteen e's, eight i's, five o's, two u's, five commas and twenty-three spaces in a hundred and forty characters." (141)
"This tweet's got exactly six a's, eighteen e's, eight i's, nine o's, one u, seven commas, five apostrophes, twenty-two spaces and one period." (141)
"This tweet contains eight a's, fifteen e's, seven i's, six o's, two u's, six commas, twenty three spaces and one hundred and forty characters." (142)
"This tweet has got eight a's, fifteen e's, six i's, six o's, two u's, seven commas, twenty-three spaces, and one hundred and forty characters." (142)
"This tweet has got six a's, seventeen e's, six i's, eight o's, two u's, seven commas, five apostrophes, twenty-three spaces and one full stop." (142)
"This tweet's got seven a's, nineteen e's, three i's, seven o's, two u's, seven commas, twenty-two spaces, and one hundred and forty characters." (143)
"There are nine a's, fifteen e's, eight i's, five o's, four u's, six commas, twenty-four spaces and a hundred and forty characters in this tweet." (144)

You can see how frustrating it was, I just couldn't get 140 characters.

Two interesting difficulties popped up:

The first was when I had written "seven i's" but my program told me there were in fact only six. So I change the sentence to "six i's" which of course makes the total number of i's seven. Grrrr!

The second was when I removed the character count ("hundred" contains a 'u'). This left only a single 'u' so I had to write "one u" instead of "two u's". This then made me change "five apostrophes" to "four apostrophes", thereby introducing a second 'u'. Gyaaaaaa!!!!!!

So I had to change my approach.

I decided to count consonants and vowels instead. Somehow this seemed more impressive because the values were larger. It allowed me to find a valid solution:

"This tweet has seventy-four consonants, thirty-nine vowels, five commas, nineteen spaces, a full stop, and one hundred and forty characters."

This is correct and has exactly 140 characters. Yay!
However, I was slightly unhappy with it because it says "and one hundred and forty characters" instead of "in one hundred and forty characters". It kind of suggests more than 140 characters.

So I rearranged it:

"This tweet has one hundred and forty characters, seventy-four consonants, thirty-nine vowels, nineteen spaces, five commas, and a full stop."

Which is the sentence I tweeted. Then I made it better by using a colon:

"This tweet has one hundred and forty characters: seventy-four consonants, thirty-nine vowels, nineteen spaces, four commas, and a full stop."

Which I think is much nicer.

And here is a variant that removes the oxford comma, just for fun:

"This tweet has one hundred and forty characters: seventy-five consonants, thirty-nine vowels, nineteen spaces, three commas and a full stop."

Phew! Certainly not easy to make it work, but it was fun to do and highly rewarding to finally get a valid reflexive tweet.

Note: I have used reflexivity in one of my earlier horror tweets. It is not great, and is not 140 characters, but will leave you scratching your head.

Have you done something similar with reflexivity? I'd love to see it.

Time travel is definitely impossible

I just wrote a new microfiction story for my Twitter feed:

If time travel were possible, every single star in the entire universe would be surrounded by a fully populated Dyson sphere from its birth.

It's not really a story, but I wrote it to provoke people into to thinking about the ramifications of time travel. In doing so, I came to the logical conclusion that time travel is indeed impossible.

I am no physicist, but I have read a few popular science books from people like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku, enough to know the basics of how the universe works. As far as I know, Einstein's theory of relativity does not forbid time travel. Many people believe the laws of physics do not prevent time travel, but perhaps the energy requirements, or radiation levels within a wormhole might be insurmountable as to be pragmatically impossible. There is also the old grandfather paradox to contend with, although some recent ideas suggest that this may not be as much of a problem as we might think, and if the multiverse hypothesis is true, perhaps killing your grandfather just spawns another universe where you exit but your grandfather doesn't.

I love time travel movies like Back to the Future, Bill and Ted and Primer, but I never really gave much thought to whether it might actually be possible or not. Not until I wrote that micro story.

Now I am totally convinced time travel is impossible.

I thought before that it might be impossible, because we have never had any reports of finding evidence, apart from theories that UFOs are humans from the future, or fossilised artefacts which turn out to be 1920s sparkplugs with concretion. Imagine how many time tourists there would have been at the supposed birth of Christ. There is no way temporal police force could wipe out all trace of tourists.


But that was thinking too small. I realised that if time travel were ever invented, travel that is stable and relatively paradox free, then the result would be that the entire universe, for almost its entire life would be completely populated. And technology advances, so more advanced races would constantly be going back to overpower less advanced races, and occupying the same space and time as them. It would just keep going. There would not be a single part of the universe untouched my multiple iterations of civilisations evolving, progressing and travelling back to conquer and settle in the past.

So why don't we see all that? Why can we see stars in the sky, not hidden within Dyson spheres? Why can't we detect radio or other signals from everywhere? Why is our own planet's history untouched by future invaders?

The only conclusion I can come to is that time travel is impossible. This is similar to the fermi paradox, which wonders, if life is so probable, then "where is everyone?" The answer to that night simply be that life is very rare, and that we are the first to evolve sentience. Or that there has been sentience before elsewhere in the universe, but it destroys itself before it can get too fr. Or that there are other civilisatons but they are so far away we haven't detected them yet.

But the time travel problem is more severe. All it takes is for a single sentient species, anywhere in the universe, and at any time in the life of the universe, to invent time travel, and that would instantly fill up the universe with god-like life.

Well, there is another conclusion. Perhaps time travel is possible, but no where and at no time in the life of our universe, past present or future, does a species develop enough technologically to achieve it. Either because it is so hard, or that no species every survives to be technologically advanced enough.

Kind of a sad thought. I'd rather believe time travel is just physically impossible, than believe that no species, including our own ever lasts very long.

The ultimate guide to writing twitter micro horror

In my last post I announced my hobby of writing micro horror for my twitter feed, @AlexSivier. Trying to make a coherent, evocative, compelling, twisted tale in 140 is not an easy task and needs a lot of creativity and linguistic skill.

The hard limitation forces you to be terse. You can't introduce characters or set a scene, you just have to get right in there with a jab to the face. No time for powerful uppercuts.

For the first handful of stories I wrote, my focus was purely to tell a good story within 140 characters. But since then, I have made it a rule to construct my stories in exactly 140. It is more of a challenge, and thus, more fun.

So here are some tips when writing a story in such a small space. There are two kinds of tips, one kind for telling good, powerful stories in such a limited space, and the other kind for keeping the character count down.


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1) Names

This is the easiest way to control character count. If you have a name in your story and need to reduce it by a character or two, simply choose a different name. Just google "X letter names" and you will find tons.

Aunt Amy had been dead for months but they could always smell her favourite perfume. Until the stench of her rotting corpse grew too strong.

Janice stood over the rapist with a gun to his head. "In your twisted world, 'no' means 'yes'. So let me ask you, shall I pull the trigger?"

You can also do this with numbers, months and days of the week:

He turned back to his five year old daughter and shouted over the chainsaw and screams. "When you're a big girl, I'll buy you your own saw."

9th May 2013 FOR SALE: Time Machine. Never used. Contact Jim on 09054766990 : 10th May 2013 WANTED: Time machine. Contact Jim on 09054766990



2) Synonyms

Sometimes, you might want to use a synonym to alter the character count without altering the meaning. Sometimes the meaning will be changed, but often it is for the better.

It's up to you to find good synonyms, but they are easy to find with a word processor or google.

Here is a list of synonyms one website gave me for "horrible":

grim, mean, awful, cruel, eerie, lousy, nasty, scary, lurid, fairy, sickie, grisly, horrid, unholy, unkind, hideous, heinous, beastly, fearful, ungodly, ghastly, dreadful, gruesome, shocking, shameful, terrible, execrable, abhorrent, appalling, frightful, loathsome, obnoxious, offensive, repellent, repulsive, revolting, horrendous, terrifying, scandalous, abominable, disgusting, detestable, disagreeable

Some are completely unusable (fairy, sickie???) but most could replace the original word without problem and allow me to control the character count easily.



3) Gender and viewpoint

"she" is three characters, "he" is two and "I" is one. Changing the gender or viewpoint is another method of altering the character count. But be careful, it can cause ripples along the story and change it in unpredictable ways.

She never looked in the back when she got into her car. The escaped lunatic was there and he had an axe. It was hers, embedded in his skull.

He never looked in the back when he got into his car. The escaped lunatic was there and he had an axe. It was his, embedded in his skull.

I never looked in the back when I got into my car. The escaped lunatic was there and he had an axe. It was mine, embedded in his skull.

The first of these three versions is the actual story and is 140 characters. It is easy to understand and plays on the "murderous male lunatic vs. vulnerable female" trope to pack its punch.

The second version changes the female to male and completely does not work for many reasons. First it is difficult to understand who the axe belongs to and in whose head it is buried. Second, it is more about two guys fighting rather than flipping the tropes and stereotypes that movies have conditioned us with. And finally it is only 137 characters.

The final version is better than the second, mainly because first person is more of an immediate threat. Also, it is easier to understand. However, that little runt is only 135 characters.


4) Punctuation

Like synonyms, punctuation manipulation is another way of changing character count without changing the meaning too much.

Contractions can useful for taking out characters:
"could not" -> "couldn't" - 1 character difference
"should have" -> "should've" - 2 character difference
"will not" -> "won't" - 3 character difference

The Oxford comma can change character count by 1
"red, white, and blue" -> "red, white and blue"
Warning, sometimes removing this comma can completely change the meaning:
"I had a dream about my best friends, Justin Bieber, and Hitler" -> "I had a dream about my best friends, Justin Bieber and Hitler" Best friends with Bieber and Hitler? Wow!

Related to the Oxford comma, adjective lists use commas but sometimes you can leave them out.
"The sly, dirty, old, man."
"The sly, dirty, old man."
"The sly, dirty old man."
"The sly dirty old man."
These are all fine to use. However, the word "dirty" seems to change meaning from "filthy" to "pervert".

Gerunds can also be used to change character count:
"He smiled as he wiped the knife clean." -> "He smiled, wiping the knife clean." - 4 character difference

You could also leave off the very last period, since it is a tweet and the end is implied. However, I consider it cheating so I will not do that, but if you are less pedantic, it is an option.


The enormous, creepy artifact brought back by NASA, with blades and spikes protruding from its surface, was not just alien, it was AN alien.

Carl ran to the toilet and bent over. Four things came out of his mouth: first vomit, then the thing, then a scream, and finally his tongue.
 
The huge creatures hibernate below ground for thousands of years, but their mating season is near, and when they awake, they will be hungry.

These stories have a lot of punctuation. It is okay be creative and break the rules now and again, as long as it is subtle and not done too much.



5) Self aware stories

Some stories are aware that they are twitter stories, and can actually use that to deliver their punch.

Insanity is an infection that spreads from a diseased mind to a healthy one and germinates. Do you like my stories? Starting to grow on you?
 
When writing a horror story in 140 characters there isn't enough room for all the details, so I can't tell you the monster is hiding in your
 
With every keystroke the vicious twitter demons close in. If I can just make it to 140, they will be banished forever ... 137, 138, 139, 14

That last one is only 139 characters, which is exactly the point.

If you think this sentence is false, demons won't come to torture you tonight. Sweet dreams!

This story is one of my earliest, so it is not 140 characters, but it uses reflexivity, of which I have been a fan since I read this book. This particular tweet is a version of the simplest form: "This sentence is false." It is a logical paradox and can drive you crazy if you thing about it too much. Another version is: "The following sentence is false. The previous sentence is true." Mindblowing eh?

You can be more subtle with this. A classic example is the scene in "Labyrinth" where Sarah has to choose between two doors, one with a guardian who only tells the truth, and one whose guardian always lies. Great stuff!


6) Sink and Twist

In my early twenties, I went to see "The Sixth Sense" with my girlfriend. It is a classic example of what I call Sink and Twist.

There are two types of horror: terror (sink) and shock (twist).

Terror is about gloom and oppression. It is slow and depressing, more about the horrific situation and its ramifications.

Shock is a what makes you jump, it is sharp and quick, and slaps you hard. It can either be a cheap scare, like a crazed killer jumping out of a cupboard with a loud shrill scream, or it can be an intelligent twist that makes your brain do a backflip.

That's why I think sixth sense was so successful. The Sink was the situation the little boy was in. Seeing horrific things wherever he went. Nobody to turn to, nobody to believe him, nobody to provide comfort and safety. And nowhere to hide, the grotesque ghosts could be anywhere at any time, and no amount of locked doors could keep them out. Chilling thought.

Then comes the Twist it is well known for. People say it was predictable, but I was flipped by it. It was a great setup and a great twist at the end. But there were also many shocks along the way. After the scary, sinking build up, when I saw that girl vomiting in the tent, I actually screamed out loud. Well played Shyamalan, well played.

In micro horror, you don't have the space for a long slow setup. You can't build oppression or dread, but that doesn't mean you can't have Sink. You can leave the reader with a terrible sense of dread at the ramifications of your story.

When hypnotically regressed back to her childhood, she remembered her parents' bodies coming back to life after the monsters crawled inside.
 
The evil programmer uploaded his enemy into a perfectly real torture simulation and put it in a solar-powered probe in orbit around the sun.

Only Dominick could see and hear the ghosts. They were everywhere. They couldn't touch him, but they could scream in his ears night and day.

Twist is slightly easier, you just take something straightforward and turn it around. In the first half, you build up the reader's expectations of what will happen, then in the second half, you flip it. It may be easier, but it is still difficult to get right.

They brought in the exorcist from next door as a last resort. Little did they know, it was he who was creeping around their house at night.

He took the little girl with the promise of sweets. They found the body a few days later ripped to shreds, but they never did find his head.

The first thing I saw when I woke up was the decapitated head on the pillow next to mine. I am planning on having fun with the body tonight.


7) Using quotes

Using a well-known quote or song title/lyric gives you, the writer, a springboard from which to work, and allows you to paint a scene larger than 140 characters. It also holds the reader's hand and lets you lead them down a path, which makes it all the more powerful when you twist.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but no technology can banish your soul to the eternal inferno of hell.

This uses a very famous quote from Arthur C. Clarke.

However, this imposes other limits that make it even more challenging: the character length manipulation had to be done in half a tweet.



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So there you have it. That's my 7 solid tips for writing powerful twitter microhorror and making it fit in 140 characters. I hope you find them useful and if you don't already write twitter stories, I hope you will at least consider it. It is a fun little exercise and doesn't take too long.

If you do write any good stories, let me know either in the comments, or as a public tweet. I am really interested in reading your spinechilling micro horrors. Punch me in the face hard with your twists and imagery.

And if you like my stories, please subscribe, but whatever you do, don't look behind you.

Twitter micro horror

Well, after a long hiatus I am getting back into blogging. I have been so busy with work this year that my writing has been put on the back burner for a while. But I'm getting back into the mood and have more free time so here I am again.

I have started something new, and very very fun. It started as an exercise in editing, but now is my main writing hobby.

On my twitter account, @AlexSivier, I am posting a micro horror story every day. The good thing about this is that I can be lazy about it. If my work gets too much again and I can't focus on maintaining my twitter account, no problem. I have already written hundreds of these stories and use a website called Twuffer to automatically post one per day.

Occasionally I may make requests to my followers, to spread the word a bit, or perhaps check out a link to something I am advertising, like a new book or story I publish, and in that case I will reward my devoted fans with more than one per day. That's the plan anyway.

Here are some examples of the stories I have posted so far:

"I'm not a stalker," he thought. "Stalking implies motion, and I have been standing over her, watching her sleep, for hours."

They brought in the exorcist from next door as a last resort. Little did they know, it was he who was creeping around their house at night.

Their kissing got really hot and passionate, sucking at each other's faces. Then his eyes snapped open. "That's not a tongue," he thought.

I cut flesh, it forms beautiful lumpy scars. I break bones, they set in exciting new configurations. I just wish she would stop whimpering.

"It's not a toy," shouted Melody's father as she waved the chainsaw in the air. "It all depends on your definition of 'play'," she muttered.

If you think this sentence is false, demons won't come to torture you tonight. Sweet dreams!

'Robotically assisted suicide' they called it. When he asked it to kill him, it slit his throat from ear to ear without blinking an LED.

So check it out if you like your horror short and stinging. And spread the word with twitter, facebook or blogging. I'd be most grateful

Next post I will discuss writing micro horror. Until then, sweet dreams.

A sense of wonder

This is a very personal post. Not embarassing or deep, simply a solidification of my own thoughts, rather than something of interest to the masses. It's also a bit touchy-feely, as it expresses explores my feelings a bit.

I have always had, as long as I can remember, a particular feeling of something important. It's kind of like waking up and not being able to remember the dream you just had. It's on the tip of your tongue, whirling around in the darkness of confusion, just out of reach. You are so close, you can almost taste it. And yet, it eludes.

And what kind of feeling is it? It is the feeling of the vastness of space and time, of infinite clouds and unimaginable magnitude. Presumably we all have a sense of wonder, but it's not just about looking around and saying "wow". It is a deeply spiritual feeling.

Now, if I were religious in any way, I would say it was glimpses of the divine, a feeling of enlightenment, or of being one with the cosmos. But I'm not, so I won't. It's more like a faint memory of childhood impressions, of the beauty, magnificence and magnitude of the sky. To describe it, I would say it is like the images of 'the nothing' from The Neverending Story.

One of my stories, "Old Girl" was about a lifeform in the atmosphere of Jupiter. I didn't dwell on the scenery, but writing about it evoked this elusive, magisterial feeling. Vast planes of clouds, as far as the eye can see. Stretching farther that any human eye has ever seen.

And music can take me there. Oh boy! This audiobook takes me to the infinite in a way nothing else can come near, with its slow, sustained pipes, so fitting for Lovecraft's poem about unimaginable realms and the infinite gulfs of space and time.

So that's all I wanted to say. The brief, elusive glimpses of the infinite are something I treasure dearly. My favourite writers, such as Lovecraft, Clarke, Lem and Baxter, have and tried to put it into words and musicians like Jean Michel Jarre can open the veil a crack for me. It is something I would strive for, to evoke similar emotions in the readers of my fiction. I will of course fail miserably, but it is the attempt to glimpse or reveal the infinite that has lead to the greatest works of art and spiritual experiences of humanity.

Life on mars? I hope so.

Is there life in Mars? It is a question that has plagued mankind for centuries, especially since Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli's description of observed channels was translated into English as 'canals'.

We now know that are no little green men eyeing our planet and making plans of invasion. However, there might have been life in the planet's ancient past, since geological evidence suggests that there was once liquid water. If so, there might be evidence for it, and, perhaps even some extremophiles still there, living in its harsh environment.

Now the team at Mars Science Laboratory, has announced they have found something 'earthshaking'. Unfortunately they won't tell us what it is because they are wainting to verify their data. Rightly so, since there have been several occasions where scientists have jumped the gun and claimed earthshaking results, which turned out to be human error.

But anyway, I am hoping they have found strong evidence that life once existed there. If true, it will be a monumental discovery. Perhaps life was created once in this solar system, and spread by hardy organsims carried on rocks spewed out by violent collisions or volcanism, but perhaps, just perhaps, life originated separately at least twice around our humble sun. If so, then the possibility of finding life elsewhere in the universe will jump from whatever you think it is now, to 100% certainty.


NPR, iO9