"1408" & S King showing the way?

Just checking in to say, of course, that I haven’t been writing on SL. I have, however, been up to my eyeballs in Icebox, which is a good thing overall. But I took a mental health evening tonight and went to seen “1408” with John Cusac, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to get some things down, and by doing so, allow this blog to not die.

I am still stuck with the same problem with audio horror. Film does the genre so much better. The ability to control the frame controls the audience’s ability to see, and by doing that, you create dark corners just out of frame that the beasties can jump out at you from. I know of no similar tool to the audio playwright.

What gives me some hope is the author of “1408” Stephen King. I recall when he became a huge name. I remember being surprised that a mere book could frighten the way a movie could. King was usually labeled a ‘cinematic’ writer for this reason. And he did it with monsters that the movies could not use any longer because they were too hack-kneed. Go back and read ‘Night Shift’ a collection of early short stories, and you’ll find vampires and mutant monsters and all kinds of bad guys who had been abandoned by Hollywood years earlier. And yet, from his pen, they took on new life. On the screen, a forty-foot bat is just a forty-foot bat. But not so when it was from your imagination. There has to be a way to do the same thing in audio. There has to be.