IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT...

When I was a child, perhaps pre-teen, I had the opportunity to watch a few old horror movies — the black-and-white ones that came from a simpler time cinematically and from an equally pre-adolescent society with now-outdated mores. In these films, there would almost always be a scene similar to this:

A woman wakes up (alone in bed, of course,) during the night due to a thunderstorm. Lightning flashes. Something in the room is illuminated unexpectedly, and she screams a little, thinking she has an intruder in the room due to the interplay of shape and shadow. She turns on a lamp, and she sees that it’s just a hat and coat hanging on a hook that gives a momentary impression of a person but actually turns out to be harmless. She breathes a sigh of relief and puts out the lamp. She settles back into sleep. An intruder enters her room…

Anyway, it bothered 12-year-old me at the time that this woman would scream. She literally lives in her house, and as the sole person on the planet with this level of intimate knowledge, she should be familiar with its layout, contents, and her habits within. Doesn’t she remember she keeps a hat and coat there? I even remember being so annoyed by this trick that I wasn’t sure if this was poor writing, so I vowed never to use such simplistic trickery in my own writing. Surely, there has to be something more original!

Fast forward four decades. I recently married a truck driver, and I had the opportunity to accompany him on the road for a few months while writing my fantasy novel manuscript. I counted myself fortunate to see this temporary glimpse of his daily life and gain an understanding of that as well as see some magnificent outdoor views of our country for inspiration in describing landscapes. During this time, I had to buy a high-visibility, bright neon-yellow safety jacket so that I could traverse the lots of the various distribution centers we frequented. It had a few brighter white reflective stripes woven into it, as well as black trim.

Upon returning to the house once that stint was over, I put that jacket on a hook behind the bedroom door due to a lack of space elsewhere. I had it there for months. I knew it was there, and it was never an issue. Last week, I awoke in the middle of the night to a dimly lit room, and I was facing away from the door. I turned over, and as the jacket on the hook entered my view, it gave me a start. (I didn’t scream, though!)

The high visibility aspect functioned perfectly, so I saw a torso and arms shape quite clearly, but the black trim at the top made for the impression of someone’s head. I remember that I underwent a rapid-fire, survival-based sequence that started with a perceived threat recognition (someone is in my room,) personal fear (they must wish me ill intent,) floundering panic (“wtf” do I do – I am stuck on this bed,) and embarrassed relief (oh, it’s just the frigging jacket,) and all of that took place within the space of a fraction of a second.

I later remembered that old film and the reaction I had had decades ago to witnessing the event. I was no longer an external observer; I was an actual player within this type of scene. I now felt the sincerity behind such a reaction, and a revelation followed that understanding: This phenomenon is real and is not just a contrived suspense device.

There is this old adage for authors, a gift to the profession from Mark Twain: “Write what you know.” While there exist cases as to when it doesn’t have to apply, and not everyone entirely agrees with it 100% of the time, I feel I now at least understand the point this statement strives to make. Originally, I had interpreted the phrase in a non-fiction type of form, such as don’t write about biology if you aren’t a biologist, or avoid industry jargon for an industry with which you are unfamiliar, etc. [Your main character might be a sailor or ship captain, but don’t throw nautical terms around without having researched what they all mean, and make sure your intended word means what you thought it meant.]

Having undergone the flipside of what I once thought of as manufactured, I “know” this experience, and I was able to adjust my opinion of it accordingly. The added perspective derived from actually living through it gives me the confidence and human connection necessary to create such situations and describe convincing reactions. The takeaway from this is that experiential memory and epiphany are resources just as valuable as knowledge and imagination. We are all human, and by reading and experiencing internally what occurs based from a genuine, human experience in a book, we all learn we are not alone in what we feel.