I knew Patrick Carman was on to a good thing with SKELETON CREEK — a YA horror novel with an online component — when my own 11-year-old son who doesn’t like to read was reading it. Here, Carman talks to BOOKGASM about the book’s interactivity, as well as the future of the medium and the town of Skeleton Creek.
BOOKGASM: At what point in writing SKELETON CREEK did you think, “Wait, this needs a web element as well,” or was it the other way around, where you had to find a story to fit into an idea of a multimedia experience?
CARMAN: SKELETON CREEK is a case of two ideas coalescing unexpectedly. Having different ideas come together is not an uncommon event in the development of my stories. With ATHERTON, it was climate change and Frankenstein — two ideas I’d been exploring separately that became the story of a mad scientist creating a new planet in a dystopian future. For SKELETON CREEK, the format had been on my mind for quite a while. At the same time, I had long wanted to write a mystery/ghost story, but couldn’t settle on a location or a thread that would hold things together.
When I visited the dredge in Oregon, everything merged together pretty much overnight. Sometimes a location or a character will do that for me. When I walked into the dredge and saw the massive gears and conveyer belts, then heard about a legendary ghost story, well, that was it for me. The idea of shooting video inside this place at night was very appealing. The story of two teens — one who wrote and one who filmed — felt right for the setting. After that, things started to really move.
BOOKGASM: Given that you were writing for a jaded young adult audience, did you find yourself in the difficult position of having to make it scary without having to make it too scary?
CARMAN: I knew going in that if I was going to write something scary, it would be in the Gothic tradition. The nice thing about this kind of story is that it’s the feeling of the story that scares you more than anything gory or over-the-top. The feeling of dread or fear in SKELETON CREEK comes more from how the words and images make you feel emotionally than they do from any scare tactic I might have used.
If you read a skillfully crafted Gothic story — Mary Shelley, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe — it’s not in the monsters or the ghosts that you’re left feeling shaken; it’s in the emotional punch of the story, the trepidation the characters and the setting make you feel. That’s where I’m coming from. When a reader is done with SKELETON CREEK, they should feel something for days afterward — a sense that they’ve experienced something that shakes them awake.
BOOKGASM: The obvious reference point I kept thinking of while reading and watching was THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Was that an actual influence for you? What else shaped your thinking in this undertaking?
CARMAN: Well, you and I are both showing our age, because most young teenagers have never seen that movie. I was mildly influenced by BLAIR WITCH, far more influenced by the YouTube generation, serialized web content like Lonelygirl, and classic Gothic writers like the ones mentioned above.
I wanted to create something a younger generation would see as fitting into their worldview, so the webcam in Sarah’s room was important, as were the length of each segment, how they felt, and what the shots on the dredge looked like. I’d say it’s more a coincidence how the project feels like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, although I suppose you could call SKELETON CREEK a BLAIR WITCH for the YouTube generation … hmmmmm … not bad.
BOOKGASM: Do you think this kind of multimedia read is the wave of the future, or just a novelty that can only work for so many kinds of books and stories?
CARMAN: I absolutely believe this is an important new method of storytelling. Storytelling, in my view, is ever-changing. We began with someone standing up and telling a story. We’ve traveled a long way from there to here. Books, radio, television, movies, the web – what’s left, in my view, is what I would loosely describe as a media mashup.
Creative people who understand how to maneuver in the digital world will be incredibly interesting storytellers in the next five years. I’m particularly interested in merging film with books, because I think they complement one another beautifully. I also think it’s one of the best ways to keep people reading, by tethering the story to compelling video content.
BOOKGASM: Where do you go from here? Is the idea to retain the same protagonists for future novels, or will the site of SKELETON CREEK be the constant for other characters to explore?
CARMAN: I’m exploring a lot of different story ideas right now, but two things I can say for sure. There is at least one more SKELETON CREEK project. It’s already written, filmed and edited, and slated for release in early September. And I’ve signed on with Scholastic to do another series: a thriller with more cameras and characters. We’re going to cast for the new project at bookstore events around the country, so stay tuned for a chance to try out. Bottom line: Bigger projects in this format are on the way. —Rod Lott
OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with THE NEW ANNOTATED DRACULA’s Leslie S. Klinger
• Q&A with NIGHT OF THE FURIES’ David Angsten
• Q&A with Underland Press’ Victoria Blake
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
its very good i love it its very scary!!!!!!!!!!!!
These are interesting questions; however, you didn’t ask the most important one. Does he feel that it is age appropriate? My son to this day still has nightmares. He was read this story at school and he is 8 years old.