Pseudopod 165: The Copse

[Robert Mammone]

Hello all, I'm Robert, the writer of The Copse.  Thought I'd give it a week or so before replying to the comments made.

Mate, gutsy move to drop by and comment on the comments -- major props to you!

Ooh, a fellow Melburnian.  Hello!

[Swamp]

I'd've liked my story to have had a better reception (though there have been some nice comments, which I do appreciate) - (I also appreciate the constructive criticism also, don't get me wrong!), but sometimes different things appeal to different people.

Well then, I guess I need to voice my enjoyment of the story.  I loved the atmosphere as well as the content.  Mr. Standish was an unnerving figure.  My only confusion was who the intened victum was.  I guess all three of them. 

From the time Julie started up the stairs, I wanted someone to go get her...no, don't listen to him, go get her now...didn't you here what the woman said...get out...I don't care about you, but Julie... It was very good indeed. 

The POV changes in such a story may have been what threw some off.  Keeping the focus on the mother may have kept it more coherant.

[Robert Mammone]

I'd've liked my story to have had a better reception (though there have been some nice comments, which I do appreciate) - (I also appreciate the constructive criticism also, don't get me wrong!), but sometimes different things appeal to different people.

Well then, I guess I need to voice my enjoyment of the story.  I loved the atmosphere as well as the content.  Mr. Standish was an unnerving figure.  My only confusion was who the intened victum was.  I guess all three of them. 

From the time Julie started up the stairs, I wanted someone to go get her...no, don't listen to him, go get her now...didn't you here what the woman said...get out...I don't care about you, but Julie... It was very good indeed. 

The POV changes in such a story may have been what threw some off.  Keeping the focus on the mother may have kept it more coherant.

Yeah, I think that may be the main failing with it - the POV does shift a bit abruptly.  On paper, you can tell what's just happened, but without the text in front of you, I can understand how the thread can be lost.  A better writer would've worked out a way to make it easy for the audience to follow.  Entirely my fault.

Without going into spoiler territory, in a sense, they entire family is Standish's victim - more directly the father, but the others also.

[Unblinking]

Really?  I would've thought more writers would be keen to come and share their thoughts with their audience.  Pseudopod is a fantastic place to have your work heard by a huge audience.  I've been fortunate to have had a few pieces published on the internet this year, but the feedback and audience compared to Pseudopod is miniscule.

It's not unheard of, but isn't particularly common.  I'm guessing that many don't want to see what may be negative feedback.  Or possibly they do read it but don't have anything to say in response.  I don't know. 

[DKT]

I think a few authors also choose not to participate, because they don't want to influence the conversation.

Thanks for saying hi, Robert! It's always nice to see story authors here

[Robert Mammone]

I'm a little amused at the admission that this was a "pure atmosphere" piece.  It certainly did atmosphere well. 

Thanks for the nice comment.  I've always thought that atmosphere etc in a short story trumped any other consideration (obviously the story has to hang together and be coherent) whereas a novella or novel would need to marry up a different number of requirements (characterisation, pacing etc) entirely.  Perhaps I've got it wrong?

[Unblinking]

Thanks for the nice comment.  I've always thought that atmosphere etc in a short story trumped any other consideration (obviously the story has to hang together and be coherent) whereas a novella or novel would need to marry up a different number of requirements (characterisation, pacing etc) entirely.  Perhaps I've got it wrong?

Wrong for one person is not wrong for another.  Each person values different things in a story. 

[Scattercat]

I'm a little amused at the admission that this was a "pure atmosphere" piece.  It certainly did atmosphere well. 

Thanks for the nice comment.  I've always thought that atmosphere etc in a short story trumped any other consideration (obviously the story has to hang together and be coherent) whereas a novella or novel would need to marry up a different number of requirements (characterisation, pacing etc) entirely.  Perhaps I've got it wrong?

I would agree up to a certain point.  You can get away with pure atmosphere in a short story where you can't in a novel (at least, not without being insanely gifted.)  However, I personally prefer a strong thematic connection and at least one really well-drawn character; nothing but atmosphere is like eating cream puffs: you're filled up, but not with anything of substance.  I like a nice round meal in my stories, even the short ones.

Basically, I think this story obscured too much and threw in too many red herrings.  I am a big proponent of "throw out some details and don't worry about explaining the whole thing," but there's so MUCH going on here that it's hard to draw a coherent thread.  The only things that connect together are the apple trees correlating with the mysterious cider.  The moving shadows?  How do they connect to the trees?  Mr. Standish's lasciviousness that comes out of nowhere at the end?  Again, how does that connect to the man-eating apple trees?  What does he do to get victims when he DOESN'T happen to have an entire family indebted to him and willing to beg for the super-crappy rental home? 

So while I did enjoy the atmosphere and felt creeped out, I didn't feel satisfied afterward.  It was a cream-puff, and a nice one, but without something meaty to get my teeth into and a little fiber and greens to anchor everything, it's not something I'd go back to very often.  I know it sucks to hear that sort of thing, even more than a flat "this was terrible!"  (Damning with faint praise is horrid.)  It is only my opinion, in the end.

[Sgarre1]

What does he do to get victims when he DOESN'T happen to have an entire family indebted to him and willing to beg for the super-crappy rental home?

I would have thought was self-evident: the rental home is rarely rented out for long...

[Scattercat]

What does he do to get victims when he DOESN'T happen to have an entire family indebted to him and willing to beg for the super-crappy rental home?

I would have thought was self-evident: the rental home is rarely rented out for long...

It was more that the house was explicitly described as pretty shabby.  The impression I got was the family was desperate or else they wouldn't have had to stay there.  There aren't THAT many desperate people around, is my point, and a trap baited with an unpleasant house isn't much of a trap.  It was just another incongruous element that jumped out at me. 

[kibitzer]

Ooh, a fellow Melburnian.  Hello!

You're from Melbun? Cool! You an Aussie?

By the way, further to what I said earlier, the atmosphere WAS great, really great. Classically creepy.

[Sgarre1]

There aren't THAT many desperate people around, is my point,

I guess.   Where are you living?

[Robert Mammone]

Ooh, a fellow Melburnian.  Hello!

You're from Melbun? Cool! You an Aussie?

By the way, further to what I said earlier, the atmosphere WAS great, really great. Classically creepy.

You betcha.  Currently slaving away in King Street.  Home soon!

[Robert Mammone]

What does he do to get victims when he DOESN'T happen to have an entire family indebted to him and willing to beg for the super-crappy rental home?

I would have thought was self-evident: the rental home is rarely rented out for long...

It was more that the house was explicitly described as pretty shabby.  The impression I got was the family was desperate or else they wouldn't have had to stay there.  There aren't THAT many desperate people around, is my point, and a trap baited with an unpleasant house isn't much of a trap.  It was just another incongruous element that jumped out at me. 

The place they're renting is in the sticks, so isn't what they expected when they moved from the city.  I suppose I could've made it seem filled with polished chrome fittings and garishly coloured plastic, but that would undercut the tension in the marriage that I thought helped flesh the characters out a little.

Originally, I was going to have Roger a victim of the GFC - I did have him blaming Gordon Brown for losing his job, but thought that that would take the listener right out of the story, and date it pretty quickly given the likely events at the next UK General Election.

I don't know that I actively thought whether Standish was regularly sacrificing people - if he was, vanished families would stand out like a sore thumb, even far from civilisation.  I imagine I thought that once in a generation would suffice for his purposes.

There is a line where he has invited the family over for dinner as a welcome/recompense for accidentally disconnecting the gas - this is his method of getting them to come over  - I suppose a straight invite would've sufficed, but I thought making him seem slightly useless as a handyman only serves to make him more menacing later on?  As for him taking up with Roger's newly widowed wife - again, in the back of my head perhaps Roger has used up his present wife and now wants a new plaything - it isn't about having a male heir as his daughter will suffice for future generations.

[Scattercat]

And those are all perfectly reasonable explanations.  If I were making stuff up to suit the story, I'd probably have guessed along those lines.  It's just that there's a LOT of random things going on, and they don't cohere very well.  It's like watching "Serenity" without seeing the first fourteen episodes of Firefly; there's obviously something happening, but it's going by very quickly and the characters seem to be reacting to things in slightly unexpected ways without a lot of on-screen justification.

However, you have said that you were explicitly going for mood over plot, and as has been noted, you whipped up a very thorough atmosphere to it.  Mission accomplished, I say; it just didn't work for me because I prefer more than just atmosphere.

[yicheng]

No offense to the author, but I was completely bored to death with the story.  The whole story could have been better had it been trimmed down to the last 10 minutes.

[Robert Mammone]

No offense to the author, but I was completely bored to death with the story.  The whole story could have been better had it been trimmed down to the last 10 minutes.

Specifically, what was it that you were bored with?

[eytanz]

I just finished hearing this story - I have to say that I am in agreement with the majority position here, which is the atmosphere is really great but the plot does not really cohere. For me the main problem was Emma - what was her role in the proceedings? Sometimes she seemed to be pretty much in control, at other times she seemed to be as much a victim as everyone else (she was found bleeding and unconcious in the wardrobe, after all). Was she being dominated by Standish, like the wife, or was his successor and accomplice? Or something between the two?

Also, Julie's fate was never clear to me - Roger died, Sarah ended trapped. What happened to their daughter? The last we see of her she was attacked by something dark, then she was cold and nearly lifeless when Sarah found her. Was she dying? Was she also trapped? Something else?

Overall, this struck me a bit like a 1970s horror movie, thick on atmosphere and thin on intelligability. Not a bad thing, by any means, though not my preferrence either.

Also - and this isn't a problem with the story itself - I had started noting that marital tension is really becoming a cliche in this sort of horror story. An argument between spouses in act I more or less guaruntees at least one of them will meet a grisly end at the hands of a third party by act III...

[Scattercat]

Y'know, it strikes me that I wouldn't have had nearly so strong a "meh" reaction if the intro had said something like, "This week's story focuses on atmosphere and inspiring that spooky sensation more than on the events themselves."  Like, if I'd known what the aim was, I'd have gone along with it cheerfully and said, "Yup, that did pretty well at what it wanted to do."

I'm not suggesting this as a new policy or anything, but I think it's interesting how expectations can alter the experience of a thing.

[eytanz]

Y'know, it strikes me that I wouldn't have had nearly so strong a "meh" reaction if the intro had said something like, "This week's story focuses on atmosphere and inspiring that spooky sensation more than on the events themselves."  Like, if I'd known what the aim was, I'd have gone along with it cheerfully and said, "Yup, that did pretty well at what it wanted to do."

I'm not suggesting this as a new policy or anything, but I think it's interesting how expectations can alter the experience of a thing.

The problem with this is judging how much information to give - podcastle discovered this in its early days, when they had intros that set the scene for the stories - and in some cases, explicitly explained the subtext of the stories. This was met with a lot of upset from forum members, including myself, who felt that we were being forced down a specific path of interpretation.

And I think the same holds here. Yes, in this case everyone more or less got what the author intended, though some people liked it more than others. But in theory, a story could be written as an atmosphere piece but some readers could see much more in it. Building up their expectations otherwise would probably deprive them the chance of that.

[Robert Mammone]

In acknowledging the comments of most about atmospherics trumping coherence (personally, I don't see it, but I'm closer to the text than anyone, so that's understandable), do you think that if you were to actually read the story, you would have had a different response? 

Also, given Pseudopod is a listening experience, does it matter if the story wobbles a little as long as what you are listening to evokes a visceral response - like sitting around the campfire swapping ghost stories and looking to the edge of the light and wondering what might be lurking in the dark?  I suppose what I'm asking is what experience of horror are you hoping for?

[kibitzer]

In acknowledging the comments of most about atmospherics trumping coherence (personally, I don't see it, but I'm closer to the text than anyone, so that's understandable), do you think that if you were to actually read the story, you would have had a different response? 

Almost certainly, in my case. When listening to an audio story I am, to some extent, listening to the reader's interpretation. Assuming they've read it through themselves to determine how present characters, words, phrases, it can't help being anything but.

When I read a story from the page, I have a -- was going to say "more intimate connection to the story" but I'm not sure that's true. Anyway, I set my own pace through the text; I can stop if I want to and go back; I can stop and savour a particularly visceral or poignant or flat-out beautiful piece of prose.

I'm certainly saying nothing new here, so I'm not sure I'm answering your question -- perhaps I'm interpreting it too literally?

As to what I want from a Pseudopod experience -- well, that varies. I can try to explain why some of my favourites are, in fact, favourites -- HTH.

6, "What Dead People Are Supposed To Do" -- I loved this because it's an hilarious story. Arguably not horror -- except for the zombies -- it was a hell of a great ride and very well-read. (Even my wife liked this one). Atmosphere: not at all scary.

13, "Redmond's Private Screening" -- a great piece. It drew me in with its tension building to an act of harakiri, graphically described. The story that followed -- essentially ghostly revenge -- was well done with a bloody ending. Atmosphere: more of a tension and "eeew OUCH" piece for me, although the resolution was satisfying.

45, "The Goon Job" -- was a clever piece of writing, describing a world I'd like to hear more of. Atmosphere: graphic but not scary.

(I'm starting to feel like a real pretentious dick here, so I'll stop after the next)

134, "Bait" -- my all-time PP fave so far, this probably qualifies as an atmosphere piece. As several commented, the premise, the twist, was telegraphed early on, but that didn't matter to me. I think the claustrophobic and intensely focused setting (the... thoughts? obsession? of one man) threw the events into sharp relief in such a way that the arguable flaws in the story didn't matter. I must also say that the reading, for me, contributed in NO SMALL PART to the whole -- it was stunning. Atmosphere: creepy. chilling.

So look, I really hope this helps. And please remember, few here have said your story was awful, because it wasn't -- the atmosphere thing worked in spades!! If you have the time maybe listen to "Bait" to see one person's reaction to a great piece of audiopod (is that a word?)

Also... there's a reason I chose this moniker ;-)

[eytanz]

In acknowledging the comments of most about atmospherics trumping coherence (personally, I don't see it, but I'm closer to the text than anyone, so that's understandable), do you think that if you were to actually read the story, you would have had a different response? 

Well, in general, I find horror a lot more enjoyable in audio format that when I read it. That's why I subscribe to pseudopod but generally do not read horror anthologies or print magazines (as opposed to fantasy and SF which I both read and listen to). So, while I may have understood a bit more, I would probably have gotten less out of it overall. But that's just my personal taste.

I should point out that my post above reports my post-listening thoughts - while I was hearing the story I was not feeling confused. I was not feeling too scared or anxious, either, because the family was so obviously doomed from the start I did not invest too much in them emotionally. But I definitely was along for the ride.

Also, given Pseudopod is a listening experience, does it matter if the story wobbles a little as long as what you are listening to evokes a visceral response - like sitting around the campfire swapping ghost stories and looking to the edge of the light and wondering what might be lurking in the dark?  I suppose what I'm asking is what experience of horror are you hoping for?

I think it really depends. I think the stories that are more visceral tend to affect me more while I'm listening to them, but the ones that are stronger narratively tend to stay with me longer. There have been pseduopod stories that have been on my mind for days, if not weeks, after I've heard them; there have been others (like this story) that have evoked a response while I was listening but it ended when the story ended. There's nothing wrong with the latter category, but I guess if I were to rank them I'd rank it lower.

[Unblinking]

In acknowledging the comments of most about atmospherics trumping coherence (personally, I don't see it, but I'm closer to the text than anyone, so that's understandable), do you think that if you were to actually read the story, you would have had a different response? 

Also, given Pseudopod is a listening experience, does it matter if the story wobbles a little as long as what you are listening to evokes a visceral response - like sitting around the campfire swapping ghost stories and looking to the edge of the light and wondering what might be lurking in the dark?  I suppose what I'm asking is what experience of horror are you hoping for?

This was actually a good story to have in audio, as the amazing reader and the atmospheric writing worked well together.  I wasn't confused or lost during the story, but I was expecting some of the seemingly random bits of mystery to coalesce into something at the end, and after the words stopped I started to wonder if I'd simply missed something important, or perhaps several somethings.

[yicheng]

No offense to the author, but I was completely bored to death with the story.  The whole story could have been better had it been trimmed down to the last 10 minutes.

Specifically, what was it that you were bored with?

Nothing seemed to happen for a long stretch of the story.  The reader is treated long lyrical descriptions of the twisting road, the trees, what people are wearing, and how they're hunched over a map, etc., but it has very little to do with what's actually happening in the story.  Once I realized that all that was happening for the last 10 minutes was the characters getting dressed and driving some place dark for a dinner party, it was very very hard to continue to pay attention.  Some of the similes and metaphors also seem to stretch poetical license at bit too far for my taste.  At one point, we are told that the apples on the ground reminded somone of a baby's head.  Those must have been pretty big apples!  In what way did they resemble a baby's head, because other than a general roundness, there's very little about an apple that's actually like a baby's head.  Was it soft and smooth, like how a baby's skin is?  As opposed to hard and crunch like an real apple?  Did it have little wispy hairs?  Was it gnarled and bumpy resembling the features of a baby?  We don't know. It just felt like that simile was thrown in there for atmosphere, when if you really thought about it, it didn't really make a lot of sense (at least to me).  At another point we are told that a car's headlights resemble two drops of mercury, when in reality a car's headlights driving down a road looks nothing like mercury (they called it quicksilver for a reason).

In the end, I felt like there wasn't much of a pay-off in terms of an explanation.  How was the evil guy related to the treees?  What was the girl-shape that the husband saw sprinting outside?  What happened to the little girl Julia?  What exactly are the trees anyway?  Demons?  Space aliens?  Just carnivorous plants?  What's up with the deranged evil wife and evil girl?