Tag: writing (page 16 of 33)

It doesn’t matter what kind of story you’re writing — doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a script, a game, whatever, you’re better off learning how to implement suspense and tension into your work. It’s been on my brain lately, and so it seems a good time for another straight-up “List of 25.” Read. Digest. Comment. And above all else, go forth and write like a motherfucker.

1. True Of Every Story

We assume suspense and tension are reserved for those stories that showcase such emotions. “This is a suspense-thriller about the mad ursinologist who runs around town leaving being enraged bears and the beautiful scientist lady who seeks to undo his sinister plans.” Bzzt. Wrongo. Every story must offer suspense and tension. Will Harry get together with Sally? Will the Millennium Falcon escape the gauntlet of TIE fighters? Will Ross and Rachel finally consummate their love and give birth to the Satanic hell-child that the prophets foretold? Suspense and tension drive our narrative need to consume stories.

2. Predicated On Giving A Shit

A small disclaimer: suspense and tension only work if the story offers something for the audience to care about. If the audience neither likes nor cares to discover the truth about La Bufadora, the Assassin Baby of Madrid, then any suspense or tension you build around this infantile killer will flop against the forest floor like a deer with its insides vacuumed out its cornchute. VOOMP. Just a gutted pelt. Never ignore the Give-A-Fuck factor. And stop fucking with deer and their deer buttholes. Weirdo.

3. Ratchet And Release

Constant tension can be trouble for a story: a story where pain and fear and conflict are piled endlessly atop one another may wear down the audience. Creating suspense works by contrast: you must relax and release the tension before ratcheting it back up again. Pressure builds, then you vent the steam. Then it builds again, and again you vent. This is pacing: the constant tightness and recoil of conflict into resolution and back into conflict. Think of Jenga: you remove a peace and, if the tower remains standing, everybody breathes a sigh of relief. Tension, release, tension, release.

4. Harder, Harder, Haaaaarderrr, Ngggghh

In winding tension tighter, escalation is everything. How could it not be? Tension is about hands closing around one’s neck: the grip must grow tighter for the fear to be there. If the grip relaxes, then the tension is lost. A roller coaster doesn’t blow the big loopty-loop on the first hill. Rather, you see it in the distant. You know it’s coming. Each hill, bigger and meaner and faster than the last. The final hill is the culmination, the climax, a roller coaster loop where you crash through plate glass windows and have jars filled with bees pitched at your head. Mounting danger. Rising fear. The hits keep coming. The Jenga tower teeters…

5. The Bear Under The Table

It’s the Hitchcockian “bomb under the table” example — you create shock by having a bomb randomly go off, but you create suspense and tension by revealing the bomb and letting the audience see what’s coming. The first day of a new school year creates tension not because it’s random (SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER IT’S 4TH GRADE) but because you know all summer long that shit is coming. Also, for the record, I think we should revise the “bomb under the table” example to a “bear under the table” example. Bombs are so overdone. But two characters sitting there with a Kodiak bear slumbering secretly at their feet? Oh, snap! Sweet tension, I seek your ursine embrace!

6. Danger A Known Quantity: The Power of Dramatic Irony

This, by the way, is dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is best friend and old frat buddy to Herr Doktor Suspenseuntension. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not. Suspense is created whether or not the characters are aware of the problem, but if the audience is the only one in on the secret, that may go a long way toward heightening tension.

7. The Question Mark-Shaped Hole In All Of Our Dark Hearts

That’s not to say every quantity must be known: the most refined tension grows out of a balance between known and unknown elements. Yes, the boy knows that the first day of 4th grade is coming, but inherent to that are a number of unanswered questions: did his bully and elementary nemesis Brutus “Smeggy” Smegbottom get held back? What will his new teacher be like? Who will he sit next to? Will Peggy Spoonblossom finally accept his Valentine’s Day card? (Smegbottom? Spoonblossom? The fuck is wrong with me?) The first day of school is a known quantity, but what will happen on that day is not.

8. Always Tell Han Solo The Odds

Han Solo says, “Never tell me the odds.” But we need to know the odds. It’s another component of the transparency sometimes needed to create tension: we must know when the stakes are high and the odds of success are totally astronomically fucked.

9. Save The Date!

Let’s say you’re a total dickhead parent to the aforementioned soon-to-be fourth grader. If you wanted to foment tension in that child, all summer long you’d occasionally remind him: “Hey, summer’s fading fast, kiddo. School’s on its way!” Every once in a while you’d lay on him a little something extra: “Hey, I heard Brutus Smegbottom got a new pair of brass knuckles.” Or, “I think I saw Peggy Spoonblossom down at the mall eating a froyo with her new boyfriend.” You’d needle him. Remind him of his tension. That’s what the storyteller does because the storyteller is a total fucking asshole. The storyteller must occasionally — not constantly, but just enough to keep it hovering, to keep it orbiting — remind the audience that, hey, don’t you fuckers forget that something wicked this way comes.

10. Character You Love Does Something You Hate

An easy way to create tension: when a character the audience loves does something the audience hates. It’s the whole, “Oh, I’m going to go investigate the creepy noise rather than flee from it and load my shotgun and call all the cops.” John McClane jumps off the building’s edge! Harry ruins his relationship with Sally! They mysteriously elect Jar-Jar Binks to the Galactic Senate! It’s a moment when the audience winces. One’s butthole tightens up so hard it could pulverize a walnut. You say, “Oooh. That was a bad call. This is not going to end well.” That septic feeling in one’s gut — the anticipation of worse things to come — is the splendor of effective suspense.

11. Character You Hate Does Something You Hate

Of course, it’s also effective to have a character the audience hates do something bad, too — that, then, is the power of a killer antagonist, nemesis, and villain. That sense of OH GRR GOD SO MAD RIGHT NOW is a powerful one. Tug on that puppet string whenever you need to for maximum storyteller cruelty!

12. Physical Tension Is The Shallowest Of Tension

A threat against one’s life and limb is totally workable — a character in physical danger is a good way to create fast tension. But sometimes you want to go deeper. You want to stab your sharpened toothbrush shiv into the heart and the brain. Emotional tension is the most palpable and troubling to the reader (and that’s a good thing): fear of damaged love and intimate betrayals and irreversible emotional wounds creates a more vibrant and spectacular tension in the audience. It’s cruel, yes. But as noted, it is not the storyteller’s job to be kind. The storyteller should not be a safe haven. She is not to be trusted.

13. The Pain Sandwich

For maximum evil, ensure that the tension is multi-layered. The protagonist’s wife being in danger represents both physical (she might die) and emotional (he might lose her) tension. Apply with the mayonnaise of escalation and the bread-and-butter pickles of dramatic irony for one dastardly sandwich.

14. Personal Suspense Above Global Suspense

Sure. The world’s gonna end. That’s tough. Mos def. I feel it in here. *thumps heart with fist* Except, really, I don’t give that much of a fiddly fuck. I never do. The global threat is never ever (and once more for good measure: ever) as interesting as the personal threat. Yes, all the world is going to die but if that happens so too shall the protagonist’s daughter die. Boom. Personal. Connection. Meaning. Suspense and tension are best when personal in addition to (and ultimately above) the global or cosmic.

15. The Tongues Of Tension, The Speech Of Suspense

How you write matters in terms of creating suspense and tension. If you’re trying for a tension that is fast, frenetic, a tension born of collapsed moments and microscopic beats, then you wouldn’t use big ponderous paragraphs to tell that tale. Just the same, you wouldn’t hope to convey that slow creeping sour-gut dread with short sharp truncated sentences. As with all things, language matters. The architecture of your language means something — are you building a Gothic cathedral, a one-room studio apartment, or the Winchester Mansion?

16. Drug Dealers And Cliffhangers

The storyteller is a drug dealer dealing out pain and pleasure in equal measure — a hard slap to the face and then a free taste of balm and salve to soothe the sting. Once they’re hooked, you keep them hooked with cliffhangers. Not all the time, no, but whenever they might start to pull away, you surge within the audience that sense of suspense by leaving them dangling from the edge of the cliff. “My favorite character is in danger! Who just walked into the room? Is that a Kodiak bear under the table?” Mm-hmm. It is. Come on back and keep reading and keep watching. Daddy Bird will feed you, little baby.

17. Flaws And Foibles And Frailties And Other Awesome F-Words

Character flaws. Use ’em. Excellent tension creators. Knowing that a character has a drug habit or a propensity to break hearts lets us know that at any point they might fall off the wagon and lash out with the whip of their most intimate frailties, sending ruination far and wide. But we must know that the flaw is on the table, or at least have it hinted at — this does not work in a vacuum. You know what else doesn’t work in a vacuum? A vacuum. True story!

18. Agitation And Discomfort

Comfort is the enemy of tension. You want characters and readers alike to remain in a state of agitation and discomfort. Even during times where the tension is relaxing rather than ratcheting up you still want to create a sense of dread and foreboding, using language, circumstance and situation to deepen discomfort.

19. Failure Most Certainly Is An Option

The audience needs to know that things can go wrong. If they become trained by you as a storyteller that you’ll save everything and everyone at the last minute, the storyteller will no longer suspect you of being an untrustworthy malefactor. You are not the reader’s buddy. Failure must be on the table. You must be willing to let things go all pear-shaped once in a while. Tension without fear is a defanged and declawed tiger dressed as a banana. Harmless and deserving mockery over fear.

20. Speak Of Ke$ha And Ke$ha Shall Appear

Sorry. Tic-Toc joke. I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. (And shut up, I actually like that song.) (I SAID SHUT UP.) Never be afraid to use a ticking clock to instill tension and suspense. Character’s only got one week to save the little girl? One day to get the random? One hour to defuse the bomb? Works in any type of story — “The girl of my dreams is about to board a plane in 30 minutes! Can I make it to the airport on time to profess my life and tell her that I got her cat pregnant? Uhh? What? Nothing! I didn’t say anything about a cat being pregnant! Let’s go back to talking about Ke$ha.”

21. Deny Your Audience The Satisfaction As Long As You Can

Storytelling is Tantric. You withhold the audience’s orgasm as long as you can. The audience wants to know that everything’s going to work out, that it’s going to be all right. They want answers. Comfort. Solace. Don’t give it to them. Not until late (if ever). The longer you can hold out on ’em, the deeper the tension digs into the meat and marrow.

22. Look To Your Life For Suspense

Seriously, that example of the first day or school? Or a new job? Or that feeling you get when you speed past a cop car? Or when your mother goes sniffing around your closet and almost finds the leather-clad gimp you keep in there? That’s suspense. Harness those feelings from your own life. Find out what makes them tick. Replicate in your fiction. And seriously: gimps are so 199os. Get a hobo butler like the rest of us.

23. The Fear-Maker’s Promise

Suspense and tension are about fear. Plain and simple. Not just fear in the characters, but fear — actual honest-to-Jeebus fear — in the audience. Find a way to invoke fear and dread and you’ve won.

24. Suspense Keeps Them Reading

This’ll be a future list — 25 Things That Keep Them Reading — but for now, be content to know that effective implementation of suspense and tension will keep them coming back and turning pages.

25. Suspense Keeps You Writing

Thing is, it’s also what keeps you going. Creating powerful suspense takes you along on a journey, too — the writer is not immune to his own magic, or shouldn’t be, at least. If you feel like you’re not engaged or that your own sense of suspense and dread just isn’t in play, then you might need to look at what the problem is. Just as readers need a reason to keep reading, writers need a reason to keep on writing. And you, as writer, are the Proto-Reader, the first line of defense. If the tension is as limp as a dead man’s no-no stick, you’ll feel it. And that means it’s high-time to find a dose of high-test narrative Viagra to tighten everything up.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or the newest: 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

It’s NaNoWriMo time.

That means you’re going to be absorbing what might be a metric fuck-dumpster full of writing advice into your daily writing regimen — at least, I assume so, given the way my looky-loos here spike through the roof and launch high up into the night-time sky.

Writing advice and writing chatter is — well, it’s a good thing, from my perspective, but only to a point. And so it seems proper to jump into the month with a look at 25 things you should know (i.e. these are the things that I think) about writing advice. Please to enjoy, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on writing advice, too. Where you go to get it, what you think of it, what kinds of advice you seek, whether you think it’s all bullshit, etc. The comments section awaits your tickling touch.

1. It’s Just Advice

Let’s say you’re trying to get to Big Dan Don’s Dildo Emporium in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I might give you directions and say, “You want to take I-81, but if you’re going around noon, that’s when Big Dan Don holds his Mega Noon-Time Dildo Sale, and traffic gets backed up, so you might want to take the Old Fuzzknuckle Road.” And you might say, “Thanks,” and do that thing, or you might say, “Thanks,” and do something entirely different. That’s the deal with writing advice. Someone is offering you advice. That’s it. Nobody’s handing you a book of laws. Nobody’s beating you about the head and neck with gospel (though they may think that’s what they’re doing). Writing advice proffered is just advice on one way to go with your writing.

2. Put Differently, It Ain’t Math, Motherfuckers

Writing advice is not the product of an equation. “If you do X, then Y will occur” is false in this instance. “If you name a character John Q. Hymenbreaker, your book will be an instant bestseller” is crazy-talk. Writing advice is not about providing certifiable answers. It is about making suggestions.

3. Tools In A Toolbox

Put differently a third time, I like to use the metaphor (mis-typed as “meataphor”) of tools in a toolbox. Every contractor job requires a different tool-set. Today you need a hammer. Tomorrow you need a pipe wrench. The day after you’ll need a high-powered drill-dildo (“drilldo”) from Big Dan Don’s. You’ve got to pick up each tool — i.e. each piece of advice — and weigh it in your hand. Debate its merits. See if it’s going to help you do the job or just get in the way and club you in the nuts.

4. The Only Inviolable Precept

In my mind, only one inviolable precept exists in terms of being a successful writer: you have to write. The unspoken sub-laws of that one precept are: to write, you must start writing and then finish writing. And then, most likely, start writing all over again because this writing “thing” is one long and endless ride on a really weird (but pretty awesome) carousel. Cue the calliope music.

5. The Almost-Inviolables

I should say it upfront: I find the word “inviolable” fun to say. It makes my mouth have fun! Hee hee hee, ha ha ha! Ahem. Right. Some other rules are perhaps worth putting in the “usually true but not necessarily” camp: writers read, writers write every day, read your work out loud, writers should draw on their own lives, if you don’t have caffeine and/or alcohol in your life you will explode and die, etc. But even these aren’t universally proven.

6. Question The Chestnuts

Chestnuts: the new name for boobs? No. No. Why would you even say that? Get your mind out of the gutter. No, by “chestnuts” I mean, “those old pieces of writing advice that you hear as common refrain.” Write what you know. Adverbs give Baby Jesus hemorrhoids. If you write a prologue, an orphan loses his sight. All the “old saws” need to be put on the chopping block.

7. Fuck It, Challenge All Advice

What I’m trying to say is, don’t assume any one piece of writing advice is etched in stone with the whetted bones of your ancestors. Challenge all advice. Try it out. See what flies and what dies.

8. No Such Thing As “Bad” Writing Advice

Okay, fine, some writing advice might be bad (“Staple your manuscript to a starving pony and drop it from a helicopter onto any potential literary agents”), but for the most part, writing advice falls into two categories: “Writing advice I can use,” and “Writing advice that doesn’t work for me.” That’s it.

9. Writing Is A Craft And Craft Can Be Taught

It’s way too easy to say that “all you need to do to learn writing is write and read.” Sure, at the deepest molten core of the thing, that’s totally rock solid. But it also sells this writing thing way short and makes it sound like it’s as easy as fucking Skee-Ball. “Just throw the ball enough times and you’ll learn how to get the big tickets!” Writing has endless fiddly bits and is an ever-evolving practice — it’s a craft, by golly, and it uses language to tell story. That means there’s a lot to know and an unforgiving dumpsterload of questions potential authors have. That’s why writing advice is valuable to some people.

10. What Do You Think Teachers Teach, Anyway?

English teachers? Communication and journalism teachers? Writing teachers? What the heck do you think these people teach? Surfing? Trigonometry? How to properly apply chapstick? They teach writing advice. (And, by the way, therein lies a subtle notion that what they teach is valuable, but by calling it advice, I’m also suggesting it’s not inviolable. You dig?)

11. We’re All Sucking At The Teat

Every writer has partaken of the sweet teat-meats of writing advice. If they tell you different, they’re a lying-faced liar whose pants are totally on fire — whether they take a note from an agent, an editor, a friend, a fellow writer, whatever, they’ve utilized the essence of writerly advice.

12. The DNA Of Writing Advice Hides On The Bedsheets Of Every Story

Here’s another way we’ve all supped at the soup-bowl of writing advice: if you’ve ever read a story and then you took a lesson from that story and applied it to your own, you took writing advice. Because encoded in every story are the lessons that storyteller has learned. Each story is a memetic blueprint for how that author tells the tale. For good or ill, for better or worse. Take something — anything! — from that and that’s a lesson learned, folks.

13. My Work Is The Product Of Reading Writing Advice

My writing — which, for all I know, you think is a smoldering shitwagon of inelegant word-rape — comes to you because of (and in some cases, in spite of) writing advice. I’ve a small shelf of writing advice that I hold dear and I also look back and look upon many writing teachers, mentors and acquaintances who have taught me colon-loads of critical information. And, frankly, who continue to teach me. I’m humbled by that and it’s why I don’t think the practice of providing or reading writing advice is bullshit.

14. Can Be Both Pragmatic And Philosophical

For me, writing advice takes on two faces: first, pragmatic. Pragmatic advice is the day-to-day inkmonkey shit, the “digging trenches” stuff. Here’s how a query letter looks, here’s an exercise to shatter the skull of writer’s block, here’s the problem with your addictive misuse of commas, and so forth. Philosophical writing advice talks about larger issues and questions and talks as much about being a writer as it does about writing itself.

15. A Third Axis: The Professional

A perpendicular in-road to this is that some advice is about writing, and other snidbits are about professional writing — professional writing tends to follow a course detailing how to get published, how to get paid. Here it tends to get a little more strict (the crack of the bullwhip stinging against your tender pink buttocks!) because here certain things remain truer than others. How you deal with agents, how you format a manuscript, what kinds of caffeinated bacon-and-chocolate products will soothe a deranged editor.

16. The Fourth “P”

No, not “golden showers.” Zip it up, piss-boy. I’m talking about “Personal.” Nearly all bits of writing advice are personal. That’s what I do here. It’s me yelling at me first and foremost, espousing my own lessons, exposing my own fears, ripping the scales of my eyes before yours. Advice like this should be personal — it should be the writer saying, “I took this path, maybe you want to, as well. Then again, maybe you don’t, and that’s fine, no skin off my back, I’ll just wander the desert alone, drinking my own lonesome tears to survive YOU MONSTER.”

17. We Need To Talk About What We Do Or We’ll Go Nuts

Writers are goofy-headed moon-units. Total fuckbrains, each and every one of us. Many writers are quite nice. But most are crazy, at least in their own special ways. As such, we’re driven to talk about what we do because — well, it’s what we do. Writers sit by themselves all day, sobbing and drinking vodka and pounding out imaginary bullshit for hours heaped on hours, and so sometimes we like to emerge from our foul-smelling caves and join the communal penmonkey water cooler and talk about what we do. Some don’t like to talk about it, and that’s all good. But many do. And many must.

18. Beware Its Hypnotic Swirl

Writing advice can very well be just another distraction. It can be a waste of time that feels productive — after all, you’re learning! You’re exploring! You’re thinking heavy thoughts critically. Blah blah blah, snargh, poop noise. Whatever helps you sleep at night, slugabed. Truth is, writing advice can be just another slurping time suck stopping you from doing that thing you’re supposed to be doing. What was it, again? OH YEAH WRITING.

19. The Time For Testing Is Complete

Here’s how you make hay from writing advice: you put it into play. Take a thing you just learned, and go use it. Try it out! Write your next thing and see if this tip, trick or technique holds any weight at all. And if it doesn’t? Chuck it into the garbage disposal and listen to it scream as the blades crush its tiny pinbones. Writing advice is fucking worthless unless it actually helps you write better or write more.

20. As Always, Beware Zealots, Fundies, Cult Leaders, And Fevered Egos

The Internet is positively cancerous with the self-righteous, and I have at times counted myself woefully among them — but here, come close, let me whisper this in your ear (ignore my tongue planting my little Wendigo Egg-Babies into your brain) so it’s clear: nobody has answers. They just have suggestions. Guidance. Possibilities. Nobody has a hard and firm answer. Like I said: this ain’t math, son. Those who tell you that it’s their way or the highway are usually selling something. And while I am, admittedly, sometimes selling something, I don’t know any more about writing than countless other writers. I just have thoughts, ideas, and opinions, and you should always be free to take them into your mouth, swirl them around, then choose whether or not to spit or swallow.

21. Why I Do It

I first started talking about writing because, like I said: we have to. It’s like I got a head full of hornets jacked up on trucker meth and they need to get out somehow. It was me talking to me — or, as I’ve said in the past, me talking to my stupid dick-brained 18-year-old self who thought he could get away with a hundred bad habits and be successful (he couldn’t). It has since evolved, though, this thing I do here, because over time I started getting emails or tweets. I get a few a week, sometimes several in a day, and it’s someone telling me that I helped them — maybe to get back into writing, maybe to solve a problem they were having with a story, maybe even to get published. And it’s like — oh. Ohhh. That’s awesome. I’m not so self-important to say they couldn’t have done it without me — please. They could’ve, totally, and probably would’ve. Just the same, I’m honored and happy and positively tumescent to have many contributed in some small way to the ways of other penmonkeys.

22. Evolution From Pen-Monkey To Pen-Neanderthal

Writing advice is allowed to change because writers are allowed to change. Once you absorb a piece of advice, it’s not like you’re growing a tail or a new dick — it’s just an idea. Ideas can change. Don’t be afraid to evolve.

23. On Publishing Advice

Publishing advice is, as noted, its very own sub-species of writing advice. It’s not bad to read it and you’ll find lots of variant opinions on the subject. Just know that Tobias Buckell said it best, and I’m going to paraphrase him here: you can control your writing, but you can’t control the publishing industry, so control what you can control and leave the rest to fate. Stop obsessing about it. I’ll take it one step further to say, you can control your publishing strategy, and that’s it. All advice in this regard is about you figuring out your angle — not the angle of others, not the Prognosticated Fate Of All Publishing Ever. Though, just in case, here: sift through these bird guts, see if you can divine some answers.

24. Life Provides Its Own Kind Of Advice

Yes, you need to write a lot. And sure, you need to read a lot. But those things are regurgitative: it’s just you puking from one mouth to another and back again. Digesting pop or literary culture and then throwing it back up does little for your work — what will elevate your work and make it your own is to live life. Learn from your existence and borrow things from your day to day. Have adventures. Take risks. Put yourself into your fiction. Because life offers a kind of writing advice you just can’t read about — it’s something only you can experience. Like dropping acid and fighting your totem animal for control over the little man that pilots you.

25. Every Monkey Constructs His Own Pen

The story goes that every Jedi constructs his own lightsaber, and every penmonkey constructs his own pen. Meaning, we all find our own way through this crazy tangle of possibility. This isn’t an art, a craft, a career, or an obsession that comes with easy answers and isn’t given over to bullshit dichotomies. We do what we do in the way we do it and hope it’s right. Read advice. Weigh it in your hand and determine its value. But at the end of the day — and at the start of it — what you should be doing is writing. Because thinking about writing and talking about writing just plain isn’t writing.

* * *

Want another booze-soaked, profanity-laden shotgun blast of dubious writing advice?

Try: CONFESSIONS OF A FREELANCE PENMONKEY

$4.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

Or its sequel: REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY

$2.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF

And: 250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING

$0.99 at Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), B&N, PDF