All posts by Cullen M. M. Waters

Internet humorist, Writer of Speculative Fiction, movie reviewer, and all around good guy
NaNoWriMo

[NANOWRIMO] Day 8, 9, and 10

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Never fear. Though I haven’t been updating here, I haven’t missed a day in the contest. The count is as follows:

  • Day 08: 2105 words
  • Day 09: 1864 words
  • Day 10: 2209 words

According to NaNo, I reach the 50,000 word mark on November 25.

But is the novel going to be finished by then?

I’m going to let you in on a little inside secret. I’m using a novel writing plan. Specifically, The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot. Lester Dent being a pulp writer whose claim to fame is coming up with Doc Savage.

Now should you read this short missive to the world, you’ll see just how glorious this thing is. I’ve spent my life looking for some magic bullet solution. So many How To books, it’s not even funny.

This is what clicked.

If you haven’t checked the link, after coming up with a unique story angle, Dent divided his story into four quarters. In his essay, he deals with a 6000 word story, but the length doesn’t matter. Author Michael Moorcock said he used the Master Fiction Plot when writing about Elric of Melniboné, a character that’s up there with Conan the Barbarian in some circles.

With the first quarter he started as soon as possible with his hero in a jam. He introduces the main mystery, the other characters, and has the protagonist (Dent calls him the hero) try to deal with the problem. At the end of the quarter, the hero gets himself into a physical altercation. Then there’s a Big Surprise.

The next three quarters are basically the same. More problems for the hero, the hero struggles, he gets into a fight, twist. End of the third quarter, the hero makes headway, only for the fourth quarter to have things hit him in a bad way. All is dark, but he manages to escape using his own ingenuity. There’s a wrap up and a final twist.

If all this sounds like formula fiction, then, yeah, it is. And what I’ve given is a vastly simplified version.

What matters is how this is done. Because Dent is vague enough in what he’s talking about, you can write a lot of stories with it as a guide.

Let’s move back to me for a second. Dent says in his essay that he’s used his plan  for “adventure, detective, western and war-air.” Right?

The story I’m using it for is a horror/comedy/cozy mystery.

I know, these are words that aren’t strung together very often.

When I started, I was going for a chapter a day. 1700 words sounded good. Seven or eight chapters would make a quarter. Easy peasy.

And for a while it was.

Then the chapters got longer. And suddenly here I was, at 20,453 words.

I’d introduced all the other characters.

I had the central problem: not only had his uncle died under mysterious circumstances, but the hero got a letter telling him his uncle’s death wasn’t an accident a week before he died. Which is odd to say the least.

I had my hero struggle to learn what happened, a big twist in the end, and a glorious fight. Quarter done.

Which meant my novel will be 80,000 words. Nine chapters down, that meant 36 chapters total.

I wasn’t sure it could make it that far.

What to do?

Well, I went about where the quarter mark should be. That was at the end of chapter 5.

You know what I found?

Central Problem done. While I had other characters coming, all the important characters had appeared and were (after a fashion) helping the hero. The hero, being inexperienced in investigation, gets himself in a physical conflict: he recreates his Uncle’s accident and almost kills himself in the process. He then gets a Surprising piece of information that makes no sense at the time but will by the time everything is said and done.

All baked into the story without me noticing I was doing it.

So right now I’m a wee bit before the halfway mark. Tomorrow’s chapter, chapter 10, will hit half way chapterwise. To make the whole thing hit 50,000 words, I’ll thinking it will be 40 chapters plus an epilogue to wrap up a few loose ends.

No matter what you think of Lester Dent’s Master Plan, whether it’s formula fiction or not, using its guidance has been a huge help. This is literally the best thing I’ve written. With luck, it’ll work again with my next attempt.

This one (for the curious) is called either And Then There Was Frankenstein or Last of the Frankensteins. Just to show you how wild it is.

It’s going to be great.

NaNoWriMo

[NANOWRIMO] Day 7 and an Overview of the Week

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Well THAT was a bust.

Only 1907 words today. What was I doing with my time?

I reworked Chapter 6, touched up Chapter 5, and started Chapter 7. By rights that one should have been finished today. It’s the quarter mark point and needs to have something special happen in the end. Let’s see if I can manage.

Just for fun, here are a couple of charts detailing my progress. Look how the second one dips and raises. It’s positively a roller coaster. If I can swing it, the second quarter begins tomorrow.

A Month of Horror, Lists, Summation

[MONTH OF HORROR] Trick or Treat and a Summation of the Month

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Wow. A whole month, with only one sick day and one skipped day. More importantly, a review every day, plus extra.

A Welltun Cares Presents first!

The final feature of the month was Trick or Treat, which tells you absolutely nothing as there’s a bunch by this title. This particular one is a sort of Carrie clone, as a picked upon teenager uses the evil spirit of his Heavy Metal hero to get revenge upon those who wronged him. Very Eighties, very fun. One of my favorites and frankly the best way to end this series.

And now an overview of what I’ve watched. The dates are when the movies pop up as Sister Site reviews. The asterisks (*) are the ones with Long Reviews. This might change without notice.

Here’s the list:

Week One

  • As Above, So Below (10/13/23)
  • Demons (10/27/23)
  • Demons 2 (11/10/23)
  • Man Made Monster* (11/24/23)
  • The Comedy of Terror (12/1/23)
  • The Church (12/8/23)
  • The Curse of the Doll People (12/15/23)

Week Two

  • Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes [12-22-23]
  • V/H/S/99 [12-29-23]
  • V/H/S/85 [01-05-24]
  • The House of Seven Corpses [01-12-24]
  • Evil Dead Trap [01-19-24]
  • One Dark Night [01-26-24]
  • The Other Side of the Box [Short Film]
  • The Chair [Short Film]
  • Stalled [Short Film]
  • Friday the 13th* [02-09-24]
  • The Conference [02-02-24]

Week Three

  • Killdozer! [02/16/24]
  • Phantasm [02/23/24]
  • The Bridge Curse [02/29/24]
  • Ghoulies II [03/08/24]
  • The Cat and the Canary [03/15/24]
  • Kiss of the Vampire [03/22/24]

Week Four

  • The Breach [03/29/24]
  • Schlock [04/05/24]
  • Noroi: The Curse [04/12/24]
  • Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell [04/19/24]
  • Hospital [04/26/24]
  • Prince of Darkness [05/03/24]
  • When Evil Lurks [05/10/24]
  • The Barn [05/17/24]

Week 5

  • V/H/S Viral [05/24/24]
  • Dementia 13 [05/31/24]
  • Trick or Treat [06/07/24]

Next is the obligatory pointless Awards for the week. I’m going to mix it up a little and do top 5 lists instead of the usual way of doing things.

Favored Five

These are the five films I liked the most this month:

  1. Prince of Darkness – This classic John Carpenter flick is always a welcome view.
  2. Dementia 13 – A nice surprise, especially because I’ve been avoiding watching it for decades.
  3. Demons 2 – Pizza Schlock at its finest!
  4. Comedy of Terror – Vincent Price and the gang have a blast running a funeral home that seeks out clients.
  5. Trick or Treat – Never meet your heroes. Especially if they’ve become evil spirits.

Scariest I’ve Seen This Month

While not Favored, these flicks put the fear in me and should be commended/list for it.

  1. When Evil Lurks – Too bleak for my blood, but I can’t deny its power.
  2. Noroi: The Curse – A great Found Footage flick with Lovecraftian overtones.
  3. V/H/S Viral – The whole series seldom misses a step, but so far this is the best of the bunch.
  4. The Conference – Probably the best Slasher flick I’ve seen in years.
  5. Phantasm – Don’t ask me why, but as familiar as I am with this flick, it still gets me in places.

Worst of the Lot

This goes in order of very worst to pretty damn bad:

  1. Schlock – Hands down the worst movie I watched this month. Not so much bottom of the barrel but in a subterranean cave beneath the barrel. A cave that has toxic waste leaking in. Gah.
  2. Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes – Artsy fartsy bull crap.
  3. Man Made Monster – Lon Chaney Jr. deserves better. And if rumor is true this movie helped him get it. So it has that going for it.
  4. Ghoulies II – Bad puppets couldn’t save this flick
  5. Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell – This is a terrible movie, but in an entertaining way.

And that’s the month! Has some fun, got my Sister Site running right on into June. I might add some Golden Oldies to that mix (pushing some of the dates back), I might do fuller reviews to replace the brief ones I’ve done, I might even get so more fresh content in there. Sky’s the limit. No pressure to perform for a change.

Next week is NaNoWriMo. Fingers cross it goes as well as this month.

A Month of Horror, Sister Site

[MONTH OF HORROR] Dementia 13

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I’m not saying a thing about Dementia 13‘s story. It should be experienced without spoilers.

I watched this one back when I was a wee teen, over thirty years ago. I’ve been avoiding it ever since, thinking I didn’t like it. I watched this for the Sister Site and ended up giving it a perfect score.

The Hell were my standards back then?

Anyways, tomorrow is the last day of Month of Horror. I’ve done this at least four years (though most of those years have been washed away by the reboot). This is the first time I’ve made it to the end without ennui killing things.

Maybe it’s the quality of the movies I’ve watched.

Sure hasn’t been planning things out; I’ve only watched four movies on my planned list.

Next month is NaNoWriMo and it is my earnest intent to actually finish a novel this time.

I’ll keep you posted on that.