Last weekend, I attended the 50th
World Fantasy Convention in Niagara Falls. I had great time seeing old friends
and making new ones, hanging out with my agent, and meeting with editors. I moderated
a panel on AI in Fantasy and Horror, and I was scheduled to do a reading, but
when I got to the appropriate room, I found my reading had been rescheduled to
later in the day – unfortunately, it was the same time I was due to moderate
the AI panel. So, no reading for me. I also presented my workshop Build a
Better Monster. I was told I’d have maybe ten to twelve people, but I ended up
with a packed house of thirty or more. I virtually presented the same workshop
for Readercon 31, which is available on YouTube if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWS0llBGrhk&t=48s
In
the workshop, I discuss what makes effective monsters and how to avoid clichés
to create monsters that are fresh and effective, while at the same time tapping
into the underlying archetypes that give them their power. My novelization of Terrifier
2 was recently published by Titan Books, and I’ve written the novelization
for Terrifier 3 as well, although I have no idea when it will be out. I’ve
spent a lot of time with Art the Clown (metaphorically speaking, of course,
otherwise, I’d be extremely dead right now) over the last year or so, and I’ve
thought a great deal about why Art and the Terrifier films are so
insanely popular, and one of the major reasons is that Art’s a perfect example
of how to build a better monster. So this time, I thought I’d talk about why
Art is so popular with viewers, why he’s such an impactful monster, and how you
can use the lessons Art has to teach to create your own kick-ass monsters. But
let me say a few words first. . .
Whenever
Horror creators develop a new monster, some of the choices we make are
conscious, but a lot are unconscious, too. I make no claim that all the aspects
of Art I’ll talk about were consciously chosen by series writer/director Damien
Leone, or by David Howard Thornton, the actor that portrays Art. I’m going to
talk about what I see in the character. And while I may have written two
novelizations of Terrifier films (with hopefully more to come), I have
no special insider knowledge of the character.
A
word of warning, too. If you haven’t seen the movies, there may be some mild
spoilers in this discussion. Proceed at your own risk.
Okay,
let’s get to it!
In
the Build a Better Monster workshop, I talk about the core underlying qualities
that monsters are based on. Here’s the list I use, but I’m sure you can think
of more qualities to add to it. I’ll put an asterisk next to the qualities I
think apply to Art.
·
Predator*
·
Agent
of Death (Deathbringer)*
·
Transformer
(of others, of self)
·
Duality
of Self/Existence*
·
Tormentor*
·
Tempter/Corrupter
·
Controller
·
Disease-Spreader
·
Agent
of Decay/Entropy
·
Embodiment
of Pure Evil*
·
Embodiment
of Wildness/Cruelty/Indifference of Nature/the Universe*
·
Agent
of Chaos*
·
Violator
of Reality*
·
Agent
of Afterlife
·
The
Lifeless Comes to Life
·
Conqueror
·
Opposing
Force*
·
Physical
Threat*
·
Emotional/Psychological
·
Spiritual
Threat
·
Elemental
Force
·
Threat
of Others: Community, Family, Lovers, Parents, Children
The most effective monsters tend to embody
more than one quality on the list. For example, Romero zombies are a combination
of the following qualities: Predator, Agent of Death, Agent of Decay/Entropy,
Disease-Spreader, Transformer of Others, Threat of Others, Violator of Reality,
Agent of Afterlife, Embodiment of Indifference of Universe. Art embodies nine
of the qualities on the list, to one degree or another.
Let’s
get into some specifics.
Art
Embodies the Nightmare/Evil Clown Tropes – but with a Difference.
The
scary clown trope has been around probably since the first clown thought, You
know what’s missing? A bunch of paint on my face. The Nightmare/Evil Clown isn’t
just scary, though. It’s a monstrous lunatic killer. The Joker is the epitome of
the Evil Clown, and Pennywise is the epitome of the Nightmare Clown. But Art is
both the Evil and the Nightmare Clown combined. He’s also a mime, so he doesn’t
speak, just as Michael and Jason don’t. The tortures Art inflicts on his
victims are, for the most part, realistic, and when he kills, he often projects
the sick satisfaction of a human killer. That’s Evil Clown. But when Art’s
torture continues and moves from realistic violence (he shoots or stabs a
victim) to grotesquely surreal violence (shoving mashed potatoes into the
gaping void of a dead woman’s face while the corpse is seated at a dining table)
he’s Nightmare Clown. His ability to shift back and forth between these two
aspects keep viewers off balance, and since Fear of the Unknown is the basis for
all Horror, this shifting makes Art unknowable, increasing the audience’s
dread. Classic Vampires are safe Horror tropes. We know exactly what they will
do at all times in a story. Nothing about Art is safe, which is a vital quality
for a truly effective Horror character.
Art
makes his victims suffer – often for a long time – before they finally die, and
he enjoys the hell out of it. He enjoys the smallest cruelty he inflicts as
much as the most horrendous torture. He likes to hurt people, both physically
and psychologically (by taunting them, showing them the mutilated remains of
friends and family, etc.). And because he can act silly in the course of
torturing and killing someone, because he interacts with them, victims hope
they can somehow reason with him and get him to stop hurting them. Who bothers
to plead with Jason, Michael, Pennywise, or Freddy? There’s nothing about them
that’s remotely human. But Art sometimes acts human, and because of
this, his victims aren’t sure how to relate to him, aren’t sure what to expect.
They hope what’s happening will somehow be revealed as a big joke. But of course,
the joke’s on them. Jason and Michael are killers, but they aren’t Evil.
Art’s sadism and how he revels in it make him the absolute embodiment of Evil
with a capital E.
Art
Embodies the Fear of an Excruciatingly Painful Death.
Jason
and Michael are reworkings of the Grim Reaper image – silent, with hard white
features that don’t move (like a skull), dressed in monochromatic clothing (like
a black robe), and they harvest lives with metal instruments, Michael with a
butcher knife, Jason with a machete (both substitutes for a scythe). They embody
the fear of an approaching death that creeps up on you and then takes you when
you least suspect it. But Michael and Jason are extremely merciful killers. They
swiftly dispatch their victims who die almost as quickly and easily as if they
have an off switch that gets flipped. Their suffering, if they suffer at all,
is minimal. This makes both Jason and Michael safe killers for an
audience. Their victims basically vanish into nothing like videogame NPCs that deres
when they’re killed. And Jason and Michael don’t have emotional responses to killing.
They kill like mindless, emotionless machines. They’re basically the Terminator,
but wielding blades instead of guns.
Art
isn’t the Grim Reaper. Art is Cancer. He gets inside you (quite
literally, by cutting and gutting you) and kills you from within, slowly,
painfully, and you are awake and aware and feel every goddamned horrible second
of your body dying one small piece at a time. And the audience is forced to endure
that awfulness alongside the victim, heightening the empathy they feel toward
the victim. Who feels bad for Jason, Michael, and Freddy’s victims? They exist
simply to be blown out like a candle flame, and whatever discomfort we might
feel over their deaths passes in an instant, just like they do. But in the Terrifier
films, the audience isn’t given that mercy. Rob Zombie does the same thing in
his films. He does not look away from pain. He does not make death clean and
easy, because in real life death is never like that. That makes Zombie’s and
Leone’s films honest. Their kills are ugly and brutal because killing is always
ugly and brutal. When killing is portrayed as easy and without any real impact
or consequence, it’s dishonest. Worse, it’s importance is minimized.
Art
Isn’t Merely a Killer. He’s a Tormentor/Torturer.
He
has this in common with Freddy. Freddy is basically a repackaged Satan – a demonic
figure associated with fire who torments people in a hellish realm while wielding
a pitchfork (his knife-glove). Freddy torments the kids of Elm Street to punish
their parents for the sin of killing him. Art torments and tortures because it’s
fun and exciting for him. It amuses him to see his victims reduced to what he
views as a ridiculous state. There is no rhyme or reason to how he chooses his
victims (again, he’s like cancer this way). Even Freddy dispatches his victims
quickly when he decides to kill them, and his torments never go on very long.
He’s way more merciful than Art in that sense. And once Freddy became a
jokester, he lost his edge as a monstrous force. Art can be both a jokester and
a terrible force of annihilation at the same time, without ever losing his effectiveness
as a monster.
Art
is Unpredictable.
The
audience knows that Art is most likely going to kill someone he encounters
(although not always), but we don’t know when or how that’ll happen, how long
it will take, and how bad it’ll be. Art’s like a cat that way. He plays with his
food before eating it. Art is an Agent of Chaos in the deepest sense. Jason,
Michael, and Freddy all have rules. Jason kills whoever’s foolish enough to
come to Camp Crystal Lake. Michael kills people only on Halloween, and (in most
versions of his story) he wants to kill his sister (or niece or nephew) most of
all. Freddy wants to torment and kill the children of his murderers. Rules make
Horror characters safer for audience members. Art has no rules. He’s bloody
fucking anarchy from start to finish. He’s an (un)natural disaster.
There’s
a Deep Ongoing Mystery to Art.
Michael
is an enigma in terms of his motivations and internal world (if he even has
one). Jason’s only mystery is how the hell he came back to life after drowning
as a child. Freddy’s mystery is how a murdering child molester became a dream
god after he died. Only Michael’s mystery is an actual part of the movies. Jason’s
and Freddy’s are just plot holes. Art’s mysteries are part and parcel of the films.
What the fuck is he exactly? Human, demon, some combination? What’s his
connection to Sienna’s dad? What’s his connection to the demonic entity
embodied as the Little Pale Girl in T2 and Victoria Heyes in T3? What the ever-loving-hell
is the Clown Café? How does Art get there? Can he travel through dimensions? It’s
clear he has some purpose related to the Big Bad Demon, but what is it? Is he
just a servant? Is he a full-fledged partner? Do the demon and Art have any
purpose beyond mutilating and killing as many people as they can? What’s Art’s
connection to Sienna? Can she really defeat him and the demon?
Leone
is creating a mythology for Art and Sienna piece by piece, and the audience is witness
to the ongoing evolution of this mythology. No other Horror icon I can think of
has this rich of a background. Pennywise is just a fucking giant space spider. And
Michael, Jason, and Freddy are so small in comparison to Art.
There’s
a David and Goliath Aspect to the Ongoing Story.
Sienna
vs. Art is the age-old struggle of Good vs Evil, but with a David and Goliath element
tossed in. Sienna is portrayed as a real, everyday-type person, not an
idealized figure (her brother Jonathan is portrayed this way too), so we can
empathize with her and root for her more deeply than we might for Ellen Ripley,
Laurie Strode, or Sarah Conner. In the third film, Sienna and her brother are
still dealing with the trauma of their encounter with Art in the second film,
and even with the Divine help that Sienna receives, there’s no guarantee she
can stop Art or the Big Bad Demon. She sure as shit hasn’t been able to stop
them from killing all her family and friends.
Art
is An Active, Present Monster, and He Interacts with People.
Art
does not lurk, stalk, or hide. He does not spring out from behind a tree in the
woods, kill someone, then disappear. Art shows up, interacts with people –
often in small, silly ways – and he communicates with them (silently) and responds
to their words and actions. He interacts. Jason and Michael don’t
interact with the outer world or anything in it, including people. Freddy
torments his victims verbally as well as physically, but he talks at
them. There’s no real back and forth between him and his victims. Art is an intimate
monster this way, and his seeming connection to others makes the tortures he
inflicts on them so much worse. Michael and Jason don’t know their victims are
people. They’re just moving meat they want to turn into unmoving meat. Freddy’s
victims are just names to be cross off a list as he pursues revenge. But Art knows
his victims are people, and he delights in destroying them. And Art is present
in the world. In T2 he goes into a laundromat to wash his blood-soaked outfit. He’s
right there, out in the open, naked, for anyone to see. He walks down streets,
he drives vehicles, he wanders into stores and bars. . . He can be anywhere at
any time, and he’ll be right there, out in the open, and although you can see him,
although you know he’s coming, there’s still not a goddamned thing you can do
to protect yourself or escape him.
Art
isn’t Just Duality of Self. He is Legion.
Sometimes
Art is a primal evil force. Sometimes he’s a clown performing silly bits for the
people around him. Sometimes he’s a mischievous, naïve little boy (and the
innocence he projects at these times is an effective counterpoint to his sadism).
Sometimes he’s a cold, methodical sadist. He’s a killer, a tormentor, a torturer,
a butcher. He’s a physical being (who sometimes has to wash his outfit) who can
be injured like anyone else (although he’s more resilient than regular humans),
but he’s also a supernatural thing that can return from the dead. He can shift
between these aspects of himself with fluid swiftness, and we never know which
Art we’re going to get, so we’re always off balance, always holding our breath
because we know that eventually, he’s going to become the monster he is deep down.
This makes him the absolute embodiment of Chaos. We have David Howard Thorton’s
genius as a performer to thank for this complex portrayal of what might seem at
first to be a simple Horror antagonist. Art is anything but simple.
My
absolute favorite moments in the Terrifier films are when Art drops all
the pretense, stops putting on a performance, and his eyes go cold and dead and
his features go slack. Only in those moments do we get to see what Art really
is, and that’s when he’s the most terrifying.
Summing
Up
The
Terrifier films are a delight for gorehounds. They’re like a walk
through a haunted house attraction (like the Terrifier itself) to see how much
you can endure, and then you can laugh about the experience with friends once
you’re safely outside. And there’s nothing wrong with appreciating the movies
on that level alone. But Art the Clown is a fantastic case study in how to take
an old worn-out trope, breathe new life into it by combining different Horror
archetypes, and end up with one of the greatest movie monsters of all time. If
you’re a Horror writer, see if you can do the same in your own work. And if you’re
a Horror fan, I hope you come away from this essay with a deeper awareness of and
appreciation for our boy Art.
It's
Art’s world, and we’re just (until he catches up with us) living in it.
DEPARTMENT
OF SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION
Terrifier
2 Novelization
Released
My
novelization of Terrifier 2 came out Oct. 8th, just a few
days before the release of Terrifier 3 movie (almost as if Cineverse and
Bloody Disgusting planned it that way). It’s 100,000 words long, and half of
that is material I added to the story. So far, reader reaction has been
overwhelmingly positive, which warms my cold, dead heart.
Synopsis:
The
nightmarish Art the Clown returns from the dead to continue his murderous and
mad spree, in this gruesome novelization of the hit horror film.
It
has been one year since the sleepy town of Miles County survived the murderous
spree of demented killer Art the Clown, but little do they know the nightmare
is about to begin anew.
Resurrected
by a sinister entity, Art is back with an appetite for murder and
mayhem—setting his sights on the recently bereaved teenager Sienna and her
younger brother Jonathan. The streets are about to run with blood, and Sienna
must somehow survive this gruesome Halloween night and discover how to defeat a
brutal and unforgiving killing machine from beyond her nightmares.
There's
no stopping Art once his sights are set on you…
Order
link:
https://titanbooks.com/72530-terrifier-2/
(Titan
has links to various sites where you can buy the book.)
Fangoria Review of the Terrifier
2 Novelization
I
was thrilled that Fangoria decided to review the Terrifier 2
novel. I believe it’s the first time I’ve ever had any fiction of mine reviewed
by Fango, so this was a definite bucket-list item for me. It’s a positive
review, but be warned: it’s a bit spoilery.
Excerpt
from the Terrifier 2 Novelization in Variety
I
was really surprised to discover that Variety published an excerpt from
the book. Writers are always the last to know about things like this. If we
didn’t do daily Google searches on ourselves, we might never find out. If you
haven’t seen the movie, be warned: the scene Variety chose to publish
was the absolute most brutal one in the film. If you’ve seen the movie, I’m
sure you know which scene I’m talking about.
X Novelization
Released
I
was thrilled to be asked to write novelizations for Ti West’s X Trilogy, and
the X novel came out Sept. 1st. Unlike the Terrifier
books, the X Trilogy novels are slim, around 44,000 words apiece. Ti West
didn’t want me to add any material of my own to his story, and movie scripts
are too short to make full novels. Ti’s feelings about someone else expanding
his stories are perfectly understandable, and work-for-hire is a different
beast than writing your own original work. The IP holder is the boss, and you
have to do what the IP holder says. Plus, A24 went with a retro 1960s/1970s
pulp paperback vibe for the trilogy’s cover designs (which were created by artist
Matt Ryan Tobin), and those books were always short, fast reads. So shorter
books fit the aesthetic A24 was going for. Reaction to the X novel so
far has been extremely positive, and I’m glad people are enjoying the book.
Synopsis
When
screams of X-tasy turn into cries for help!
In
1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film in rural Texas.
But when their reclusive, elderly hosts catch them in the act, the cast find
themselves fighting for their lives…
Written
by four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning writer Tim Waggoner, this thrilling
novelization is printed in throwback pocket-sized paperback format, bringing
beloved scream queens Pearl and Maxine to a new medium. Relive the tragedy that
befell Lorraine, Bobby-Lynne, Jackson, Wayne, RJ, and Howard with grisly new
details drawn from West’s original screenplay.
As
Sherrif Dentler would say: it’s one goddamn fucked up horror story.
Order
Links
B&N:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/x-tim-waggoner/1146311639?ean=9781960078209
Fangoria Interview About
Writing the X Trilogy Novels
Want
to know all about the writing of the X Trilogy novels? Fangoria interviewed me
about the books, and you can learn all the behind-the-scenes goss here:
The
Desolation War
– the Concluding Volume in the Custodians of the Cosmos Series – is Released
I
had a blast writing this dark fantasy adventure series, and if you’d like to
see me write more adventures of Neal and Gina, contact the good people at
Aethon Books and let them know. If you’re not familiar with the series, the first
volume is The Atrocity Engine and the second is Book of Madness.
Synopsis
Rachel
Blackburn is back, and she’s more powerful – and terrifying – than ever.
She’s
now one of the Lightbringers, an ancient race of cosmic beings dedicated to
“saving” the Omniverse from the ravenous Gyre by absorbing it into themselves
piece by piece.
But
Rachel doesn’t give a damn about the Lightbringers’ mission.
She
intends to use her new powers to get revenge on the two Maintenance agents who
stopped her from activating the Atrocity Engine – Neal Hudson and Gina
Sandoval. And when she’s finished with them, she’s going to destroy Brother
Nothing and the entire Multitude.
To
complicate matters further, Neil and Gina find themselves trapped on a
devastated parallel Earth overrun with Aberrants – and where a Kaiju-sized
version of Teguzilla lives.
If
they don’t find a way to win this war, they won’t have a home to return to.
Time
to roll up their sleeves and get to work . . . one last time.
Order
Links
Authorcon V. March 28th to March 30th.
Williamsburg, Virginia.
Scarelastic Book Fair III. April 5th.
Scarlet Lane Brewing Company. McCordsville, Indiana.
StokerCon. June 12th to June 15th.
Stamford, Connecticut. I’m one of the guests of honor!
Books & Brews 2.0. August 2nd.
Scarlet Lane Brewing Company. McCordsville, Indiana.
A Really Cool One I Can’t Announce Yet. I’ll let you
know more when I can!
WHERE TO FIND ME ONLINE
- Newsletter Sign-Up: https://timwaggoner.com/contact.htm
- Website: www.timwaggoner.com
- Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tim-Waggoner/author/B001JP0XFM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
- Blog: http://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/
- YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/timwaggonerswritinginthedark
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.waggoner.9
- Instagram: tim.waggoner.scribe
- Threads:
@tim.waggoner.scribe@threads.net
- Bluesky: @timwaggoner.bsky.social
