By Dana Mentink
I know you’ve heard of it. The movie Snakes on a Plane released in 2006 and since then it’s reached the level of a cult classic. As a writer, I can’t help but admire the genius at work behind that slithery suspense story and I’ve often thought, “Why can’t I come up with ideas like that?” Really Dana? You write clean, Christian fiction. Is an R rated movie your cup of writing tea? Not exactly, but as a suspense author, I can absolutely admire the brilliance of the idea.
Let’s talk titles:
It’s genius, you know, the ability to capture a complete novel in one measly phrase. It’s an established fact that I’m terrible with titles. Just ask my publisher and they’ll confirm. With each novel, they ask me for a list of brainstormed titles and then politely decline each and every one. I can’t seem to get the hang of how to capture the essence of an entire book with only a few words. I’ve attended writer’s conferences where publishers say they are looking for “high concept” novels. In regular vernacular, that means books that have a unique, appealing premise that a reader can grasp quickly, a story that can be summed up in a handful of words. Need an example? Tada…Snakes on a Plane. Those four syllables capture the suspense, the setting, and the tone perfectly. Your brain instantly runs wild. Imagine it…you’re trapped on a plane…with snakes! In the time it took you to read the words, you got the whole picture. Boy, do I wish I’d come up with that.
Now about that plane:
The locked room trope is always intriguing to me. Wilderness survival novels are a metaphorical form of that “we’re trapped, and we better find a way out or die” situation. I adore that type of setup and I’ve written about it often, but the perfection of having a locked room thirty thousand feet in the air on a 747 is something I wish I’d dreamed up. Can you imagine the terror? You’ve already got your snakes in there, which must be on the top ten list of what people go weak in the knees about. (It’s called ophidiophobia, if you want to get all high falutin’ about it.) And to think there is absolutely NO escape from that situation except to land. None at all. A bonus to this flying locked room is that it’s somewhere most people can easily picture because they’ve likely experienced flying before, probably many times. I write a lot of wilderness stories but honestly, how many of us are going to find ourselves trapped near an erupting volcano with a stranger’s baby? Show of hands? Exactly, but how many of us have flown at some point and had that tiny niggling thought…. “What if something goes wrong on this plane?” Uh huh. EVERYONE. Talk about universal relatability.
No need for street signs:
I am directionally challenged, which is an issue that comes up when I write real world settings. I’ve provided a smashing fictional adventure set in the wilds of Washington and some savvy reader will inevitably message me with a correction about abstract concepts like “north” and “south” or possibly provide a comment like, “There’s actually no highway that runs from Mount Blah Blah to PickingPacking City.” Another excellent quality of the Snakes on A Plane movie. The whole thing takes place in the AIR. The screenwriter was completely off the hook as far as topography goes. Brilliant, don’t you think?
Cockroaches on a Choo Choo?
It’s true. I don’t myself write books with swearing or graphic violence, so while I admire the genius of the Snakes on a Plane creators, I concede it’s up to others to create cult classics like this creepy crawly movie. I’ll settle for trapped by earthquakes, running from volcanic eruptions, and maybe I’ll try my hand at suspense on a train someday. Title suggestions anyone? Cockroaches on a Choo Choo? Piranhas on a Pullman? How about Scorpions on a Subway? See? No talent for titles at all.
