Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict and Suspense (28 page)

Like murder.

When the neighbor he thinks is guilty figures out who his accuser is, he comes for him. And Jimmy can’t get away. Hitchcock builds the suspense with the sound of the hall door opening and the shuffling of feet coming toward Jimmy’s apartment.

Can you take something physically away from your character, either before the story or in the middle of it?

Or can you take away some device or person that is necessary for the Lead to solve his problems?

• The car is stolen.
  
• The road is closed.
  
• The friend or ally is delayed.
  
• The bridge is out.
  
• The police don’t arrive.
  
• The phone is lost.
  
• The memory is wiped away.
  
• The alibi dies.
  
• The universe explodes.
  

What occurrences can you think up to make your Lead’s desperate plight drag on? Continue to make lists throughout the writing of your book.

You can also give the opponent greater strength as the story moves along.

What if:

• Allies of the opponent arrive to help?
  
• The opponent acquires more or better weapons?
  
• The opponent discovers a secret the Lead does not want revealed?
  
• The opponent holds a loved one hostage?
  
• The opponent gains access to the Lead’s personal information?
  

Consider the plot from the opponent’s POV, and what tactical plans he would come up with to gain the victory. Make a list of possibilities, like a general planning a battle, and use these for scene possibilities.

Don’t neglect the interior life of the character when you are creating suspense. Here’s why. Any view inside the character delays resolution. It’s a tool for stretching the tension (see chapter seventeen).

In Stephen King’s
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,
Trisha McFarland, nine years old, gets lost in the woods. For most of the book, that’s where she is.

There is a lot of alone time then, and King fills it with varying shades of the interior life of the protagonist:

A little later on, King gives us some of Trisha’s dream:

Then a memory:

You can see the many ways to vary interior shots of the character’s mind and heart, all in service of keeping open the suspense question,
Will she be found?

Thoughts can also come by way of the first-person narrator, as in T. Jefferson Parker’s
L.A. Outlaws.
The protagonist, a female thief, is about to do some robbing at a KFC, but first:

She goes on to recount the manager, Ruby, with a son in prison, being very cool. And then how “corporate” sent in a new manager that gropes, and the whole staff quits:

Now you have a toolbox stuffed with ways to create page-turning suspense at every level. When you’re looking at your manuscript and things seem a little slow (when you don’t want them to be), refer to the strategies in this chapter. One of them will work for your situation.

And you’ll become a master of the craft of storytelling.

R
obert Heinlein said there are two rules for writers:

1. You must write.
   
2. You must finish what you write.
   

Not bad. I would only add that you should keep learning how to write better and apply what you learn, book after book.

You learn a lot by finishing your novel.

And you learn a lot by studying the craft.

Ultimately that’s what “putting it all together” means. Everything you know, everything you feel, your passion and imagination, your craft and your discipline—all in the service of writing a novel that is conflict and suspense from cover to cover.

To help you along on this quest, let me offer you an approach that can be used whether you are an OP or a NOP, an outline person or a no outline person. At the very least, think through the following steps. They will save you a lot of frustration in the writing.

At the very least you need to know your LOCK elements before you start writing in earnest. You may say that you will “discover” these as you go along. That’s fine if you see the “going along” as part of the planning process.

But a little thought up front can save you time better spent writing the actual story.

So, using the principles in chapter three, create:

• A
  L
  ead worth following
  
• An
  O
  bjective with death on the line
  
• A
  C
  onfrontation where the opposition is stronger than the lead
  
• A potential
  K
  nockout ending
  

The last element, the ending, is likely going to change by the time you get there. But having an ending point in mind helps with the actual writing process. It’s a destination to aim for.

Brainstorm these elements for at least a couple of hours. Break those hours up over the course of two days. Let your writer’s mind work on them overnight.

See chapter four and
c
ome up with an opening scene of disturbance. Work that disturbance into the first page.

Then plan your first Doorway of No Return. This is the incident that thrusts your lead into the confrontation of Act Two.

The great film director John Huston (
The Maltese Falcon; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; The African Queen
) once said that the secret to a successful film was three great scenes, and no weak ones.

Well, the same can be said for fiction, only I want you to come up with ten killer scenes. Here’s how:

1. BRAINSTORM SCENES:
Find yourself a nice quiet spot, or someplace you like to work (the local coffee joint, perhaps). Sit down with a stack of 3 × 5 cards (the reason will become clear) and a pen and give yourself at least an hour.

Now brainstorm away, writing your scene ideas on the cards. Don’t do too much thinking about this. Let your mind give you all sorts of possibilities without censoring them. The ideas should be kept simple, as in:

And so on. Keep going until you have at least twenty scene ideas.

2. SHUFFLE YOUR WAY TO MORE:
Shuffle your pack of twenty or more cards. Pick two cards at random and see what sort of connection they suggest. Write a new scene card based on the suggestion.

Set those cards aside and repeat this step five more times.

3. TAKE A STEW BREAK:
You now have spent about an hour and you have thirty to forty scene possibilities. You need to let them stew. So put these aside and come back to them tomorrow.

4. CHOOSE YOUR TOP FIVE:
Plan another session in another quiet spot (or chug coffee again). Look at your cards and choose the five scenes that excite you most.

5. DEVELOP THOSE SCENES:
Use the scene outline principles in chapter seven. Come up with: Objective, Obstacles, and Outcome

Here is where you pack in the conflict and suspense. Brainstorm especially on the Obstacles. Come up with lists of possibilities and choose the ones you like best.

And one more thing: Stive for something surprising in each scene. A line of dialogue, a character action, an event. Any small thing that a reader would not anticipate.

6. REPEAT STEPS 4 AND 5 WITH FIVE MORE SCENES:
And then you’re done. Only a couple of hours of brainstorming, and you have ten killer scene ideas ready to go. Put them in a rough chronological order. It’s okay not to know where a particular scene might end up. The important thing is you have ten scene ideas that are “signpost scenes.” That is, you can write toward them and when you get to one, you can write toward the next.

Whether you outline or fly by the seat of your pants, these scenes are writer’s gold. You can start writing knowing you have a solid foundation and plenty of great material for your book.

7. WRITE A NOVEL WITHOUT THE PARTS PEOPLE SKIP:
This is one of Elmore Leonard’s famous writing tips.

Once you’ve written your first draft, take a break. Then revise. Take out those parts people tend to skip. The dull parts.

As you read every page, ask: Could a tired agent or editor put this thing down?

If the answer is Yes, look at conflict and suspense, the two page-turning keys.

8. START PLANNING YOUR NEXT NOVEL EVEN AS YOU’RE FINISHING THE PRESENT ONE.

9. TAKE NOTES ABOUT EVERYTHING YOU LEARNED BY FINISHING YOUR NOVEL.

10. REPEAT THE PROCESS.
Getting the words down is what makes a disciplined writer. Getting them down with the craft working for you is what makes a professional writer.

This ten-step process can help you get there.

Because, you see, we haven’t come all that far from the days of Og and the fireside tale.

A great story has been, and always will be, about a character facing conflict and the suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen next.

If you don’t have conflict, you don’t have readers who care.

If you don’t have suspense, you don’t have readers who finish.

If your story is dull and predictable, people will not want to buy it.

But if your story is packed with confrontation and tension and complications and surprises and twists and cliff-hangers and emotions, you just may have a shot at a writing career.

That’s why, when all is said, done and written—
trouble is your business.

So go make some.

L
et’s take a look at two novels in completely different genres. First the literary novel
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee, then the suspense thriller by Thomas Harris,
The Silence of the Lambs.
The principles in this book apply to both.

This novel by Harper Lee is, of course, a modern American classic and the basis for an equally beloved film. The story is narrated by Jean Finch, looking back at a portion of her life as a child, when she was known as “Scout.” It gives us a couple of summers in her life, observing her father, Atticus, her older brother, Jem, and their new friend, Dill. The pace is leisurely in this character-driven story, tensing up considerably when the trial of Tom Robinson begins.

Remembering the foundations of conflict, we first need to ask, does the book have a Lead worth following?

Scout certainly qualifies. She is young and vulnerable, but tough. She’s not afraid to get into fights with boys. Nor does she just accept the status quo. She asks questions and wants answers. She’s honest about this. She’s got a bit of a rebel in her. She exhibits courage.

Next, what is her objective? What are the stakes? How is “death” involved?

Certainly we’re not dealing with physical death. There is the scene where Scout and Jem are in danger of getting knifed by Bob Ewell, but that only happens at the end of the book. Nor is this about professional death, though that does play a part in the subplot involving Atticus and the trial of Tom Robinson.

This leaves us with psychological death.

Remember our definition:
psychological death means dying on the inside. The character will never realize his or her true human potential.

What does Scout need to become? Someone who is tolerant and compassionate about other people.

When the dirt-poor boy from school, Walter Cunningham, is invited by Jem for dinner, Scout has an instant reaction to one of the boy’s practices. He asks for some molasses and proceeds to pour syrup all over his food—vegetables and meat included. Scout wonders out loud what in the Sam Hill he is doing.

This causes terrible embarrassment in Walter. Furious, the housekeeper Calpernia orders Scout into the kitchen:

And so Scout is given a crucial lesson in compassion and not being “high and mighty” with people less well off than she. Should she fail to learn that lesson, she would grow up to be one of those Southern women who are mean, cantankerous, intolerant. She would never grow into the full humanity she now inhabits.

Earlier in the day, Scout had been told by her teacher, Miss Caroline (a newcomer to the town), that she must stop reading with her father, because he didn’t know how to teach properly. Scout gets in trouble, and gets some whacks, and then harbors harsh feelings for the teacher.

Later, after school and the incident with Walter, Scout sits with her father on the porch, telling him of her troubles. Atticus offers her a lesson:

Again, this is crucial to Scout’s growth. It is the key to her future life.

The entire novel unfolds from here, reinforcing this lesson to Scout. It will culminate with her seeing the “malevolent phantom” Boo Radley—and by extension people of any stripe—in a whole new light. It will save her from the psychological death of being an intolerant adult.

In
To Kill a Mockingbird,
opposition to Scout’s “becoming” is prejudice, but that is not enough. It has to be embodied in a character, or groups of characters. It is most specifically embodied in Bob Ewell. His opposition to Atticus Finch over the defense of Tom Robinson is the thematic threat of the whole book.

If Scout does not change, she will be no better than a Ewell. She could end up like Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, the old lady next door who screams at Scout and Jem because their father has the temerity to defend a black man.

Since this is a frame story—the narrator looking back at past events—the disturbance is given in past tense. In the first paragraph, Scout tells us about her brother Jem breaking his arm. Then the second paragraph:

The ripple in Scout’s ordinary world was the arrival of young Dill, who instigates the thread that is to run throughout the book, namely, get a look at the “malevolent phantom” Boo Radley. What exactly is happening to Boo in that house down the street? What sort of person is he?

That mystery, hinted at in the opening, is enough to keep us reading.

The first doorway happens in chapter nine, when Scout finds out her father is going to defend a black man accused of rape. She’s first clued into that by a boy at school and almost gets in a fight with him. But Atticus confirms it is so.

This forces Scout into a world where she will have to confront previous beliefs and form new ones. Because of her father’s noble decision, the door to her old life slams shut behind her—in a coming-of-age novel, that’s what it feels like. You have to leave the children’s room and enter the real world. That world can be a dark and scary place.

The second doorway, a major setback, is the guilty verdict in the Tom Robinson case. It is incomprehensible to Scout and Jem. “It ain’t right,” Jem says, eyes filled with tears. “No, son, it’s not right,” Atticus says.

Scout has changed. When school starts up again (she’s in third grade), she walks by the Radley place, but it no longer frightens her. Instead:

At the end of the book, when she has finally come face-to-face with Boo Radley, she has overcome psychological death. She is kind to Boo, and unafraid. She walks Boo home, holding his hand.

Later, as Atticus puts Scout to bed, the injured Jem asleep in another room, Scout reflects on the story Atticus was reading to Jem. It was about a misunderstood character who was, in reality, “real nice”:

This best-selling thriller by Thomas Harris became the basis of the hit movie. It tells the story of Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, who is suddenly thrust into a major serial killer case through her encounter with one of the most diabolical minds in the thriller canon, the flesh-eating Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Will she be up to the challenge? Can she win the cat and mouse mind game with a criminal mastermind? Can she do it in time to save another potential victim of the killer known as Buffalo Bill?

Those are the stakes.

When we first meet Clarice Starling, she has been summoned to the office of the head of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit
.
That is the opening disturbance, and it happens in paragraph two of the first page.

Thomas Harris does not warm up the engines. The story begins
in medias res,
the “middle of things.” Clarice is in a meeting that will start a string of events that changes her life forever.

Page two begins to establish sympathy for our Lead character, Clarice.

We find out that she had been “spooked” by the summons, a bit of emotional jeopardy. Remember being called to the principal’s office in school? Clarice has a twinge of that feeling.

Then we get a small snippet of backstory:
Starling came from people who do not ask for favors or press for friendship, but she was puzzled and regretful at Crawford’s behavior.

And then some inner conflict:
Now, in his presence, she liked him again, she was sorry to note.

Two competing emotions add conflict automatically.

Then Harris gets back to the action. Remember: Act first, explain later. Concentrate on action in the first few chapters.

Further information about Starling (exposition) comes in via dialogue, so it is also contained within action (dialogue is a form of action):

By the end of chapter one we know that Jack Crawford wants trainee Starling to interview the formidable criminal Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. This is a further sympathy factor, because Starling is an obvious underdog.

We also know that this is a huge professional opportunity for her. The director himself will see her report. She will be on a fast track to success in the FBI.

The obvious implication being, of course, that fumbling the task will hurt her, perhaps irreparably.

Thus the “death” that is at stake for Clarice is professional.

The action moves immediately to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Here is where Starling will interview Lecter, but first she has to deal with the sleazy administrator, Chilton.

Harris masterfully orchestrates the casting. Chilton’s attitude provides plenty of fodder for conflict with Starling. He drops a line about how attractive she is and refers to her as a “girl.”

Starling ignores all this and tries to get on with business. Chilton keeps making inappropriate remarks and Starling has a thought that tells us exactly what she thinks of Chilton, even as she verbally stays even-tempered.

This shows us a couple of things. First, Starling is not a wimp. A wimp is someone who takes abuse but does nothing about it. Don’t ever let your Lead be one of those.

Second, it shows that Starling has self-control, a hint that she is strong and able to meet challenges.

But, of course, the biggest challenges are yet to come.

In chapter three she has her first encounter with Hannibal Lecter. He is polite to Clarice in an imperious way. But he very quickly shows his intimidating intelligence. He is the one in control of the conversation. Clarice shows guts by sticking with him, even when he delivers an entire psychological profile about her and her “rube” upbringing, information she can’t deny.

Clarice comes right back at him, asking if he’s strong enough to look at himself. And there seems a bit of admiration for her when he says, “You’re tough, aren’t you?”

But a moment later he dismisses her: “Go back to school, little Starling.”

She did not get what she came for:

At the end of the chapter, after Miggs (in the cell next to Lecter’s) has insulted and humiliated Clarice in a disgusting way, Lecter is sympathetic, and gives her a bone: a clue about a past murder. He is offering her “advancement.” That’s his gift.

The clue Lecter gives her is to look in the car of an old murder victim named Raspail.

This brings us to a scene that can be analyzed this way:

OBJECTIVE:
Clarice wants to get in to the car belonging to one of Lecter’s victims.

OBSTACLES:
Time, bureaucracy.

To overcome the obstacle, Clarice uses cleverness (pretending to be a Ford recall person).

OUTCOME:
Setback. No helpful information.

I have spent considerable time going over this first act, showing the various techniques Harris uses to establish a reader bond with Clarice and showing what a truly masterful antagonist Hannibal Lecter is.

Now we are about one-fifth into the book, where the first doorway of no return should happen, and it does.

In chapter nine, Lecter gives Clarice a key clue about Buffalo Bill, the serial killer. This leads to Jack Crawford pulling Clarice onto the case. Now her professional life is really on the line. She is part of the serial killer investigation. To fail here is to fail big time. “School’s out, Starling,” Crawford tells her.