In my opinion, the best way to truly make setting a character is to have some conflict for the characters arising from the setting. It may sound specialized, but the setting probably provides opposition to characters’ goals in some form in almost any work of fiction.

In its most obvious form, setting can provide the main conflict of the story, as in disaster fiction. This use of setting always makes me think of movies like Twister, The Day After Tomorrow, or 2012.

The disaster genre uses setting very effectively on a macro level. A natural disaster—be it hurricane, tornado, earthquake, fire or flood—stands between our heroes and their goals. Often, the heroes’ goal is just staying alive, and, uh, dying really puts a damper on that.

Of course, natural disasters aren’t really characters. They may be the main antagonist in a story, but they’re still no villain. However, we have to establish that the disaster is truly a threat, if not evil (just like with human antagonists). And (also just like with human antagonists), the best way to do that is to show the antagonist in action: someone getting caught by the disaster, or its after-effects or foreshadowing.

Showing the natural disaster’s capabilities can be one form of the other end of the spectrum, a scene-level conflict arising from the setting. This type of setting-conflict is more common, and probably appears in almost any book. It can be something as simple as a traffic jam that makes our characters late for the big meeting.

Sometimes I find myself relying on setting for little conflict like this maybe a little too much, however. A traffic jam or two might not push our readers past their capacity for the suspension of disbelief, but if every time the star-crossed lovers are supposed to meet, the Interstate suddenly backs up, maybe the state DOT should get involved.

What do you think? Do you try to use setting to create conflict? What’s your favorite setting-conflict (that you’ve seen or created)?

Photo by Adam Stanhope

This is very related to yesterday’s point on getting information in there while keeping the tension. Sometimes the dialogue that’s used to convey that information is losing readers and we can’t find any secret agent monkeys or secret bad guys to help out. (And sometimes the dialogue is just dull. Fix that first, and then see if the scene needs more tension.) Now what?

I’ll turn the time over to two of the books I’ve been reading for this series: Don’t Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden and Revision And Self-Editing by James Scott Bell.

Bell can start us off with a point we’ve touched on: “Your Lead should be dealing with change, threat, or challenge from the get-go. At the very least, whenever she is in dialogue with another character, that inner tension is present” (97). Bringing out the inner conflicts can add subtext to even the dullest small talk. (But please, make sure that the small talk isn’t so small that it can’t support subtext .)

Roerden adds several techniques specifically for increasing tension in dialogue, since mysteries may require a lot of talky investigation. (And really, how many people would poison a PI’s potato chips?) She mentions bypass dialogue, borrowed conflict, simulated disagreement and flat-out editing (179-184).

Bypass dialogue is when two characters speak but don’t communicate. Naturally, this can be boring, but it can also be used to increase tension: make sure that the speakers have opposing agendas and different priorities, even if they’re friends. (“Transforming allies into temporary adversaries not only increases tension but also builds the reader’s empathy with your protagonist . . .” [180]).

You can also borrow conflict from a background source (a bit like yesterday’s fix). Roerden uses an example from a novel, a reporter interviewing a couple with a tennis game on TV in the background. When she asks about the victim, the husband suddenly swears. The reporter thinks she’s onto something—but he’s just upset about the game.

Simulated disagreement is a bit more tricky—obviously, the name refers to when two characters seem to disagree without actually doing so. In the example Roerden cites, two female characters are trying to relate a creepy occurrence (which we’ve already seen dramatized) to a male third character. He has no real reason to disbelieve or oppose them, but he repeatedly interrupts them (increasing the tension) with stories of his own. One of the women (his wife), gets on his case for interrupting, further heightening the tension.

Finally, flat-out editing can help—especially for phone calls. (Eesh. I hate those!) Roerden uses the example of a phone call from a novel where the protagonist is in her car, realizing she needs to get a clue from her husband. She’s already thought about the context—when they heard it, what bit of information it is exactly—so why show that in a phone conversation? Indeed, after the words “she called him,” the author skips right to the husband’s answer: “‘Yeah, I’ve got it right here. . . ‘”

CLOSING CAUTION: Overusing any technique or tension fix can be gimmicky or hackneyed—and can actually undercut the tension. Mix up your tension techniques to keep your readers reading without getting bored.

What do you think? Any good examples of the above fixes? Any other tension fixes? (Next week, we’ll look at suspense fixes, so let me know if there’s another tension fix you’ve used successfully—and if you’d like to guest post about it, just let me know!)

Photo credits: fraying rope—Govind Chakravarti; acorn hanging by a thread—Karen Dorsett

Eventually, all suspense and tension must be released—since anticipation is the source of suspense and tension, it’s probably not fair to readers not to eventually satisfy that anticipation. Naturally, this will happen to some extent throughout the story as we build up anticipation for events along the way. But the overarching suspense of the story reaches its ultimate payoff in the last part of the story, in the final act.

In fact, Raymond Obstfeld refers to Act III as The Payoff in Fiction First Aid. Here, we have to satisfy all that suspense we’ve worked so hard to build—and that payoff had better be commensurate with the anticipation, or our readers will feel cheated.

Obstfeld says, “The key to a good payoff is not to give the reader what you think they want” (55). That’s not to say that the hero and heroine shouldn’t get together in a romance (they should), or that the hero can’t catch the villain in a thriller (he should). It does mean that giving the reader exactly what you promised all along and only that is not enough to reward the suspense you’ve created for that goal.

This is a common reason why we don’t like the way a book ends. I read a book last year where the entire book was about the heroine learning about others and herself—but at the end, she went back and did the same thing she’d been planning to all along (and it was rushed). All along, I was promised some revelatory, life-changing experience, but in the end, the character didn’t change.

After spending hundreds of pages with these characters being thwarted in their quests, yes, they have to see some measure of success in the end (unless this is a tragedy, I guess). But that hard-won success probably shouldn’t just be the exact thing they’ve looked for all along. Take Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indy is reluctantly dragged into looking for the Holy Grail, which he doesn’t really believe exists. What does he find in the end? (Yeah, he finds the grail—but is that all?)

A good payoff is both unexpected in some way and commensurate with the suspense the author has created.

What do you think? How else do we see suspense in Act III?

Photo and baking credit: Heartlover1717

Oh, the sagging middle. The bane of most Americans’ existence. And also tough for writers .

The sagging middle is where we can start to feel a little lost. Even if we’ve done a good job establishing conflicts and the stakes in the first part of the story, sometimes the middle has us feeling like we’re running in circles or spinning our wheels. Are our characters making progress, or are all these obstacles we put in their way (because you are putting obstacles in their way, right?) starting to make them wander aimlessly?

In Fiction First Aid, Raymond Obstfeld acknowledges that this part of the book is a challenge—as we try to make the story more difficult for the characters, it’s often more difficult for us.

But he also offers a structural solution. He explains that Act II is The Complication where we “increase [the] suspense by complicating [the] plot through increasing stakes and/or decreasing [the] ability of [the] character to achieve [his/her] goal.”

So in Act I, we established the stakes—whether the character will lose his job or let a killer go free if the hero fails. In Act II, we increase the negative consequences of failure—the character will go to jail or the killer will go on a rampage if the hero fails.

Also, we can “inhibit [the characters'] ability to get what they want.” The guy clinging to his job tries to do something to impress his boss, but it backfires and ruins a major project. The hero after a killer gets suspended from the force/agency/whatever after his drive takes him just a little too far.

Interestingly, many plotting methods and structures have specific events designed to accomplish these things. In Larry Brooks’s Story Structure, for example, Act II contains two “pinch points” that are designed to raise the stakes by showing us just how bad the villain is. Even the Mid-Point is designed to help with this, showing the hero more to the story, changing the way he views the world.

Simply establishing suspense in Act I isn’t enough. We have to build on it in Act II to keep our readers reading—and hooked.

What do you think? What other ways can we increase the suspense and keep the tension high in Act II?

Photo credit: Todd Stadler

Yesterday we established that conflict is the source of suspense and tension, and what gives meaning to surprise. Combined with structure, we can create a plot with enough suspense and tension to keep our readers engaged.

In Raymond Obstfeld’s Fiction First Aid, he looks at the intersection of conflict, suspense and plot, taking it act by act in the three-act structure. This week, we’ll take a look at his structure for creating suspense.

Obstfeld defines suspense creation as “a series of . . . promise-payoff scenes.” In act I, the setup, we establish the conflicts and the stakes to create suspense. Says Obstfeld:

• Plot conflict. This focuses on what the characters are pursuing. It could be a romantic relationship, money, a new job, an education—anything they think will make them happier.
• Character conflict. This focuses on the internal/emotional problems that get in the way of the characters achieving what they think will make them happier. In fact, this conflict may involve the characters pursuing the wrong goal, one that the reader realizes won’t make them happier.
• Stakes. This focuses on the intensity with which the plot conflict affects the characters.

Now I’ll turn it over to you. How do these elements work to create suspense in the first quarter of a book?

Photo credit: Damon Brown