Well, I promised, and now I'm delivering. An update that requires more than 3 minutes of hot cut-and-paste action to complete! If you were disappointed with last week's update, I'd like to say in my defense that it seemed a lot funnier as it happened. Anyway, I've got something extra special for you this week.
So we all remember Goosebumps, right? Well, if you're between the ages of 16 and 24 you should, and I think the majority of my audience fits into that demographic. If for some reason (say, a change in history caused by Marty McFly giving in to temptation and banging his hot teenage mother, thus altering the universe forever) you aren't familiar with Goosebumps, they were a series of mid-90s young adult horror books crapped out by Robert Lawrence "Real Incest 'N' Beer Wort" Stine (In case you're curious, "Strobe Lite 'N' Wren Race" is another anagram of Robert Lawrence Stine).
Somehow, in the span of a mere five years, Stine managed to produce 62 Goosebumps titles. Before you whip out your calculator (or open the Windows calculator, if you're like me), I'll save you the trouble and tell you that's 12.4 books a year. Wow. I barely produce 12.4 bowel movements in a year, although on the plus side, those require considerably more effort and are ultimately far more pleasant.
The secret of Stine's success was simple: aliteration. However, his other secret was the fact that he wrote sixty-two versions of the same book. I remember way back in grade five when everyone was jumping on the Goosebumps bandwagon (I, with my vastly more mature reading taste, was still on the Mr. Men/Little Miss bandwagon), I picked up a few copies to see what the big deal was about, and quickly noticed that they were as different from each other as the Olsen twins (except one wasn't anorexic). A little-known fact is that the technology used to create Dolly the sheep was modified to pump out these cloned books. In at least three instances, Stine simply went through a previous book's Word document and used the Find/Replace function to change the name of the protagonist, then printed it off, used it as toilet paper, and mailed it to his publishers.
To give you an idea of what your average Goosebumps looked like, I'm going to recreate one here. I've even provided a handy chart so that you can play along at home, by watching to see if I use all of Stine's cliches and gimmicks. What fun! So pull out your markers (preferably the erasable kind, unless you're already planning on buying a new monitor) and get ready!
| Yes/No | Protagonist has modern, "hip" name like Skyler or Madison.
| Bonus! | Protagonist's name has "creative" misspelling, like Ashlee or Katelyn.
| Yes/No | Book begins with protagonist facing a real-world problem that every kid can relate to, like having to babysit a younger sibling, or moving to a new town.
| Bonus! | Real-life problem is phased out within first 2 chapters and never mentioned again.
| Yes/No | Protagonist's best friend/brother/sister is a good-natured goof who loves pulling practical jokes.
| Bonus! | One of the aforementioned practical jokes causes a cliffhanger ending to at least 50% of the book's chapters.
| Yes/No | First several chapters end in red herring, false plot points in order to pad the book out past the pamphlet/novel barrier.
| Bonus! | Protagonist's best friend/brother/sister is responsible for at least 50% of false plot points.
| Yes/No | No chapter is more than 6 pages, and at least 3 chapters are less than 2 full pages.
| Bonus! | The above 3 chapters are even shorter than they seem, because half of the first page is taken up by the vertical indent and enlarged chapter title.
| Yes/No | Protagonist, through some act of naivety/foolishness/strong-headedness, unleashes a monster/curse/ghost/alien/other evil and/or supernatural force.
| Bonus! | The protagonist did this against the advice/warning of a wise adult, such as a gym teacher or crossing guard.
| Yes/No | The evil force, while making easy work of anyone else that gets in its way, has a laughably difficult time disposing of the protagonist through the bulk of the book.
| Bonus! | Story features several glaring leaps of plot/time in which protagonist miraculously escapes death by no apparent means.
| Yes/No | Ending Scenario #1: The protagonist manages to save the day through some last-minute deus ex machina.
| Yes/No | Ending Scenario #2: The book ends ambiguously, with the protagonist mere seconds from doom.
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(File is .rtf extension, use Word or Wordpad to view)
