Tension and Curiosity – Sloshing Jugs of Rocket Fuel

Adrian

(Ignore the graphic for now, we’ll get to it later)

Like mixing rocket fuels for the big takeoff, getting the right mix for your story beginning is important, but not necessarily formulaic. And we all want to avoid the fizzling dud. The two of the most powerful elements for beginning pages are curiosity (without confusion) and­­ tension (clear goals and obstacles both, creating tension in both character and reader).

But first, why these two?

Why not empathy?

One of my first agent interactions stressed empathy (the agent telling me to consider this before sending her the full manuscript). The need to have the reader relate to your character. And she was right. But this advice is less relevant to the very first pages. Why? Simply put, there’s not enough time.

You need a way to bridge the gap between the early pages and the later ones. Empathy takes time to build. You do probably want to have a ‘save the cat’ moment at some point *. But well before then, you’ve got to hook the reader, or you’ll never get to that point.** You don’t have time to meander around showing the reader how nice a person the character is, without something else going on. You need them flipping pages!

Well then, why not Big Conflict?

Why not crash a few armies together and have heads roll around underfoot, making people trip on their own swords?*** Surely that will hook a reader?

Well, maybe. But likely not. Because it’s confusing. Without empathy (which we’ve established isn’t there yet), the reader doesn’t care terribly about the outcome for the character, and so the stakes are low–which isn’t a recipe for gluing eyes to the page. That’s not to say that you can’t start a story with big conflict, if you’re clever and include a touch of curiosity. 🙂 For example: if a fifty foot onyx statue rises out of the ocean and crushes the seaside castle, but takes only one small serving girl and disappears back into the waters****, that is Big Conflict, but with enough intriguing ‘what if’ questions raised that you could probably get away with it (why the serving girl? Where did the statue come from and why is it stomping a perfectly good castle into a pebbly pile?)

Curiosity:

This one is key, I believe, especially for unestablished writers. Curiosity not only killed the cat, it got a lot of agents and editors and readers to turn pages, even if they weren’t sure where the author was taking them. Even if they didn’t immediately like the character, or setting, or even elements of the writing style. Many things are overlooked for a page-turning story.

But not Confusion!

It’s a fine line to walk–between curiosity and confusion–and one I miss consistently and need many critique reads to pull me back from. You need enough information to ground the reader in time, place, goal, and obstacle (or all but one of them, if that’s the element that you’re trying to keep up your sleeve). Opening a scene in white space, where you don’t know who’s talking, where they’re talking, or why they’re talking, is not the type of curiosity you’re going for!

But what if, as an example, your opening has a little girl aiming a revolver at a policeman in a dusty basement, and she tells him that the only way she won’t shoot is if he shows his true shape…? The questions raised are intriguing, and don’t detract from a reader’s understanding of the character’s setting and goals. They just don’t know motivation and context, which can be revealed more slowly. There is also a chunk of tension in this scene (will she pull the trigger or won’t she?) which is nice, even if it’s not a bang ‘em up shootout.

Later in the story, as empathy builds, curiosity tends to be more useful for scene and chapter breaks, and becomes less important on an ongoing basis. But in the first few pages, it’s crucial, especially for new writer with no established readership and the related goodwill. As Brandon Sanderson points out, his readers give him a lot of leeway because they know how he writes and like his stuff (for example, slow magic system and world-building development) so they know where he’s going and trust him to give their patience the proper pay-off. For you and me, not so much. Not yet. 🙂 This problem is especially true with jaded editors. To get them to turn the pages, you need them to read on despite a sincere intention to put your pages down (or hit auto-reject) at the first excuse and move on to the other million emails blinking at them from their inbox. Curiosity is a powerful way to catch and keep their attention, despite themselves.

Tension:

I know I said Big Conflict isn’t great. But tension is something different. It’s more subtle, more around the edges of a scene. And it is very powerful. If you have a character with a clear goal, a clear obstacle, and a face off between the two, you’ve got tension, even if it’s just in conversation. And you also have a fairly good chance that the reader will stick around to at least find out how the immediate scene goal resolves.

So let’s give an example. Let’s say in your opening pages, you have a thin, pale-faced man show up at a drug lord’s den, dark trench coat trailing, pungent alley behind him. He says he’s come for his brother. Facing him are two muscle-bound bouncers with guns in their waistbands and a heavy steel door behind, that would take dynamite to budge. They grin unpleasantly. Two more bouncers step threateningly behind the man, boxing him in.

There are some questions here, but they’re on the margin (mostly, what makes this guy think he has a prayer of succeeding?  Or is he just delusional and about to be squelched? The reader probably also suspects that the man is hiding something under his trench coat, and if so, what?). Mostly though, this is just tension. They guy wants in, a clear goal. The bouncers have no intention of letting him past, a clear obstacle. You can almost smell the confrontation coming. Many readers will keep reading just to see how this resolves, for better or worse. If you keep twisting and surprising in your story line, you can keep this going for a while, without necessarily having a fight break out.

BUT, while you can lean on tension by itself, it’s interesting to see how it becomes even more powerful when partnered with curiosity. So let’s return to the same example:

What if I added that the thin man has an expression of pain on his face? That his body is hunched and face twitching as if something is trying to claw its way out of his body, sweat sliding down his cheeks? The bouncers look uneasy.

Okay, now even I’m curious. There is more going on now than appears on the surface. Is the man going to shape change? Collapse? Turn a glowing red-veined yellow? I’d turn a page or two more to find out the answer to that minor mystery. And give the author the chance to build some empathy along the way. And conflict. And world building. And all the other good stuff that makes a satisfying story package, but doesn’t necessarily help out in the first few pages.

So, finally, in Pictures:

Because I’m a visual person (shocking, I know, given all the art on the website) I figured I’d draw a picture. 🙂

The Page Turning Chart

The bottom yellow band is the traditional story arc, the rise and fall of conflict. But I think that I’ve made the point by now that you can’t wait for the later pages to hook a reader. The gap of the yellow and orange bars early on need to be filled with green and red, curiosity and tension, to snag the attention of readers and agents, and keep them reading. Unless you’re a big name author who already has a hard core fan base, like Brandon Sanderson. In which case, I have a manuscript I’d like you to blurb. 🙂

In Summary:

I hope that some of this helps with your openings. Curiosity and Tension. Powerful beasts, that you can harness to your story’s benefit, especially in the opening pages. I know I’m planning to focus more on this for my own future works. Because I want to pour a double jug of rocket fuel into my story and blow a hole in that dratted moon.

Or have a pair of dark wings explode out from my thin ordinary-looking character, and show those bouncers why they should have stayed in bed that day! 🙂

________________________________________

* Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book ‘Save the Cat’ suggests having a character do something early on that makes the reader like them, like his famous example of saving a cat. This helps build empathy.

** For full disclosure, many of my earlier stories, even the ones I like, don’t have this insight in them. It will be something I have to fix in the pieces that I’d like to rework, and honestly, it’ll probably be harder to do in revision than if I’d known this earlier and mapped out the story properly. Oh well.

*** An easy mistake to make—starting with big conflict, not falling on my own sword–and one I’ve been prone to doing, even recently. Hey, I like action. 🙂 So take this as a well earned and reluctantly conceded admission.

**** My idea, hand’s off! Stomp, stomp, stomp. 🙂

As noted, this image was created for the post, to help illustrate my point. I kind of like this concept and may build on it later. Not to toot my own horn, but I haven’t seen things presented quite this way, visually, before, and I think it helps make the concept a little more concrete, particularly how different story elements can have different emphasis through the story.

My Spherical Pink Mass has an Uzi (or when the Creative Mind rebels)

Adrian

Bit of a disturbing image, sorry. But a fun cartoon. But when the going gets repetitive, my mind starts going… well, anywhere but the grinding routine it should be doing.

My best whimsically funny writing comes after a day of being incredibly organized and single minded at work. My hottest flashes of plot innovation come while robotically brushing my teeth or walking the dog. And flashes of incredibly compelling story ideas bubble up and call to me when I’ve committed myself to editing.

Um, like now.*  🙂

Edit, edit, edit. God, I’m bored with it. Fun and shiny ideas call to me! Grrr.

My chubby pink warrior will do anything to not grind out one more revision. Even draw himself armed to the proverbial and missing teeth. He he.

Unfortunately, the fun’s now up. Post’s done. Back to editing, big guy! 🙂

_________________________________________

Still working on polishing Black Diamonds, for the record. Be so nice when it’s done and I can move on to editing something else. 🙂 Or creating. Oh yes, or creating.

This image was done with a new set of Prismacolors that I bought myself out of nostalgia for looking at all my old teenage pictures. Of course, actually using them reminded me that you can get pretty rusty not using a certain media for twenty years or so. 😉

 

Boat dragon

The Ocean, the Wind, and—Maybe I’m Just Weird.

Adrian

Once a year for the last few years, patient more about despite the early complaints of the mighty hooligans (especially Hooligan #2, viagra who was not a fan of any disruption to his routine), my wife and I have taken a Disney cruise to warmer climes*. Since the kids still nap, we have to take shifts. For the last couple of trips, she has taken the sunbaked days, for her alone time, while I take the swirling nights. But you’d be mistaken if you thought I was out partying, hitting the bars and making friends with other frazzled fathers. Nope. Instead, I wind through suger-hyped families and packs of kids up way too late, to find a quiet secluded corner, with a smoky rum at hand, under a cool dark sky, washed over by a smooth warm breeze. As my family sleeps, dark and powerful words and conflict crash together like great waves in my laptop.

In other words, I find a quiet corner and I write.

The experience is powerful, wonderful. Am I introverted? Not really. Not all the time. But I still love it. Maybe I’m weird. But hopefully one day, if my fiction sells, I can claim some credit to those dark and light-dotted nights where my inhibitions were broken down by wind and rum and waves, to produce prose that is more powerful than would otherwise be created.

Full disclosure: the bones of this post were written on a cruise, with the Caribbean wind in my hair and face, and some random girl asking me why on Earth I’m working when I’m on a cruise?

I smile politely. If only she knew.

For writers out there, particularly those who might have distractions, kids, jobs, a rare hard-fought minute that they have to write in, I highly recommend it. If you can afford it, it’s a trip. 🙂

____________________________________________________

 

*For those wondering why a Disney cruise, one answer: good daycare and/ or babysitting. That became our top vacation criteria as soon as my Lovely Wife and I had kids. We may learn the hard way, but we learn quick… 😉

PS, the Disney cruises look nothing like the image here. 🙂 Although they do come with a costumed pirate or two… This image took me about an hour and a half, mixed media, simply to save time, a bunch of watercolor washes, some ink to pull out the lines, white charcoal (I think) to pull out some highlights, then the background blurred on the laptop afterwards. I’m finding this style seems fairly effective for quick post images, although I’m also tempted to dig up my old acrylic paints and test them too, as I think that they might also be more efficient than watercolor alone, where drying time has to be factored in and it’s just too time-consuming to do a watercolor only image.

sky dive

Standing at the Edge

Adrian

Once, when I was traveling the world and living on an island in Australia, I stood on a great rock, looking down at blue-green water, with a small circle of darkness. The blue-green meant shallow water, and a broken leg, likely, if a jumper landed on it from where I stood. The darkness represented a deep hole, a couple of body lengths deep or more, and maybe my arms’ length in diameter. Deep enough to land in safely, and swim to the surface. It was in the middle of nowhere, so that if you misjudged, you were in trouble. I’d seen several people jump from the rock, land in the darkness, and swim away safely.

I stood on the rock and stared down.

When an author goes from unpublished to (traditionally) published, or non-traditionally best-seller, it is almost like one person to another. They go from the vast pool of unpublished authors, to the perhaps-still-uncertain but undoubtedly recognized professional, with external validation of their path. What I find most fascinating, at least in terms of their writing journey, is what they wrote on writing and publishing BEFORE they crossed the line. How similar to mine were their doubts, methods, and perseverance? What were their honest thoughts and emotions? To what extent am I the same, or different? Is my potential as great or less?

Because it could be less. It is rare for anyone to know their own limitations. Instead, there is a slow drip of reality in this world that eventually brings harsh visibility to the limits of reasonable expectations*. And I don’t say that out of arrogance. When I was a kid, I tried really hard to sing. Not once did I ever get positive reinforcement from an unbiased outsider. Reluctantly, I came to accept my limits in that field. Having some respect for an unblemished forehead, I stopped banging it against that particular wall.

With writing (and even more with art), it’s been different. I’ve always had kernels of success, and some especially enthusiastic responses to my art. Writing is a longer and less visible endeavour, but I’ve had some positive reinforcement there, too.

With novels, the work to produce them is a year or more. I’m getting close to finishing Black Diamonds, sending it out into the world. I’m standing at the top of that rock, staring down at the darkness, knowing that if I miss it’s going to hurt. A lot. But knowing that if I don’t jump, it will be cowardice. I need to know.

In Australia, I took a single step forward and jumped, my thoughts cold and clear as ice. I hit the water and sank down. Into the dark well. I won.

Soon I’ll hit the send button  on Black Diamonds. I’m standing on the cliff again, feeling fear creep up. I hope the manuscript does well. If it misses, it will hurt, I know. Hopefully not too much. But either way, I’ll send it out. And the next one too. Because positive feedback, even if minor, continues to come. The opening chapter of Black Diamonds recently got a five star critique on OWW. I haven’t hit the wall yet.

And if I hit that black well at last, sinking into the cool water of success, it will be worth it…

I hope. At the very least, it’ll hurt a lot less. 🙂

__________________________________________

  • I don’t mean for this to be a discouraging post for those have doubts either. Writing is a calling for many, and I don’t want anyone to stop on account of me. Reinforced by the fact that writing is a craft, so no-one should judge their potential by their early awkward efforts. Same as you wouldn’t judge your hockey playing ability the first time you stepped on the ice. And even beyond that, if you like writing, why would you even want to stop? There are a plethora of pool halls filled with people who have no intention of being the next Minnesota Fats. But I thought it might be worthwhile to share how I view my own journey, my doubts and aspirations, for those who might be traveling it with me. And even more if I have some success and someone is curious about what my thoughts were before I crossed that line…

The image here was a quick whip-up for the post. About a half an hour’s work, still wet when I photo’d it, watercolor washes (blurred slightly on the computer) and charcoal. 

Swordsman WIP

Roses are red, violets are blue–Is that an axe that’s stuck in you?

Adrian

Poetry and fantasy novels. Jim Butcher and Dr. Seuss. Have they got anything in common–other than Tolkien’s rambling poems and songs (which, I admit, I still skip, despite reading ‘Lord of the Rings’ a dozen times)? I claim yes.

Full disclosure: This post is different than others I’ve written so far, in that I’m still figuring out my opinion on it. Not so much on the value of the technique, which I’m convinced has some value, but rather the trade off between the ‘value add’ and the ‘time spent’, which isn’t inconsiderable, and an important consideration for a commercial writer. But I’ve found this topic only marginally explored in my pile of Writing Craft books, so maybe my ramblings are of interest. And if I’m overlooking an authoritative source for this topic, please mention in the comments!

To bring it back to writing, this post is about ‘voice’. And the benefit that basic poetry skills can bring to it. If you haven’t yet recoiled in horror at the topic, from a horrible memory of an ancient English teacher with massive jowls and knuckles like a fifty-year-old boxer, let me backtrack. 🙂

First, about me. Growing up, I had two creative outlets: a love of art and a love of fantasy and science fiction novels. I read Anne McCaffrey, Orson Scott Card, and David Eddings, along with many lesser known names. And I spent hours in my parent’s basement, drawing and coloring the type of images you see on the site. Some kind of dark. I’m sure my parents were thrilled. 🙂

When I was older, and looking to get back into the arts, it occurred to me that I could combine my interest in writing and art in the field of picture books. So I joined SCBWI and started writing and illustrating (NOT the same dark style, don’t worry). It was fun, and I learned a lot. And even got an occasional sniff of agent and editor interest. But the picture book market was tough (still is) and my writing skills were still budding. Eventually, I got restless and shifted to longer fantasy novels, my first reading love and the genesis of this site.

Hang with me; I’ve got a point, I promise. 🙂

In my picture book journey, I went through a period where I wanted to develop my skill at rhyming stories. So I joined an online poetry group, which included some published poets, and put some effort into it. At one SCBWI event, an agent read an anonymous sample of mine (in a ‘first pages’ session) and announced that “the author obviously had a lot of talent”.  I also had a humorous poem published on a reputable poetry site. Not to toot my own horn here, I just want to establish that I have a grounding in rhyme and meter.

Fast forward to a year or so ago, when I finished my first draft of Black Diamonds, a story written much quicker than my two previous books. I’d embraced the idea of an outline and some world and character building before I typed the first sentence, encouraged by the quality of writing that one of my critique partners produced in her first draft, using the same type of approach. Another critique partner noted that she thought some of the line-level writing could be improved, based on the first draft.

At the same time, I happened to read David Coe’s mention on Magical Words about how he reads his words aloud–I think David has exceptional sentence and scene-level technique–as well as a few tangential mentions from other authors. So I decided to give it a try. And when I did?

I realized that it was exactly what I had been doing for my rhyming stories. Spoken out loud, I could hear the meter, the BEATS of emphasis that gave the words rhythm and music. And I could smooth it out, make it sound more pleasing, more musical.

The drawback? It took FOREVER. Doing poetry level polishing on language takes a long time. I estimated that it took me roughly an hour a page, and there were days it was much slower. The first draft took me maybe four months. The sentence level edit took me about eight more.

Ouch. I mean, not all was to do with voice. But still.

The problem was, and still is, that the exercise undoubtedly improves my writing. Aside from improving the ‘musicality’ of the words, reading a story that slowly makes you realize when the meanings aren’t quite right. When a description or reference doesn’t tie into later chapters. It does a lot of things to make the story better.

But it doesn’t touch story. Plot. Character development. Or premise. The bones of the story. Polishing for sound is the most superficial of skills. I would recommend, if you do it all, to do it last, even after you send it to a developmental editor. It’s a final draft skill. And it still begs the question: is it worth the time invested?

I don’t know.

And that is the crux of it. I polished Black Diamonds (my current work in progress) this way, for 75% of the story. Then a good critique and major edit came around, and I changed a lot of those words. Did that time invested make any lasting change? Was the time spent worth it? I don’t know. And honestly, how would you even know? You can’t send out two different versions of a story to the same audience. How do you disentangle a reader’s liking of word-level polish from their view on the bones of a story? Ahh.

I should clarify a bit on why the time spent was so disproportionate. Another issue with this type of edit? You’re reading it out loud. While I let the utter obviousness of that statement wash over you, 🙂 let me clarify. I can’t do it riding on the train (or at least don’t want to). I can’t do it in a coffee shop. I can’t do it in my backyard as people walk their dogs on the other side of the fence. This last winter, I would drive to a coffee shop, buy a coffee, and sit in the passenger seat of my car, window fogged up, so that no-one would look at me strangely as I muttered to myself. A couple of times, I forgot to turn off the headlights and drained the battery. CAA loved me. 🙂

But don’t take that slow timeline as set in stone. For one, I just discovered a partial solution to the obstacles above. Only last week, and it may be because of my own lack of tech savvy, I read an author’s post about how she used the Apple text to speech option* to hear her own words. That comment hit me like a smack of bricks to the forehead. I could make my laptop read to ME? Using HEADPHONES? ARGH!

And it works. Mostly. The tone is a bit flat, it doesn’t read things as naturally as you would yourself. But it also doesn’t get tired, distracted, or bored, ending up watching a squirrel nibble on an old muffin instead of actually working on the manuscript.

Did I mention: Argh! Oh well.

In any event, there you go. It’s worth thinking about: Meter. Rhythm. Reading your words out loud. You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes. Of course, polish is nothing without solid story structure and the other writing skills that you need, most mentioned in this post. Reading out loud is not a first draft tool, but a last draft one.

But if you want to improve your voice. If you have a solid story and sentence level problems are holding you back, it might be worth a try.

Your big-jowled English teacher be damned**.  🙂

____________________________________________ 

A book that I found a helpful resource is The Ode Less Traveled. Even better were SCBWI’s discussion boards—or at least they were a few years ago when I frequented them, as they had real poets willing to guide you in the basics, although I can’t weigh in on whether that’s still the case…

*If you have a Mac laptop like me, it’s the Speech and Diction option in Preferences, and has a default Option Esc key combo to make it work, once you’ve selected the text you want it to read.

** My apologies to English teachers everywhere. I’m just kidding, of course. My English teacher was a lovely lady and actually spurred me on to writing, with her encouragement and enthusiasm. I still remember and appreciate it.

Other random thoughts:

  • Shakespeare had a great command of plot and scene. But isn’t it interesting that one of the most enduring writers of history wrote in a structured and proven meter pattern (iambic pentameter)?
  • The first time that this concept was even partially introduced to me was in a writing craft book–I believe Bird by Bird, although I could be wrong–where the concept of ending a sentence with a hard beat was discussed, to add power and emphasis. I was rocked by the thought that a successful author cared about the SOUND of the word and not just its meaning.

The image for this post is actually not a finished one, but rather a few snapshots of the current piece that I am working on. I thought it looked kind of cool to show the progression, rough to more finished, and I didn’t have it completely done for today. Instead of waiting for the final piece, I thought I would include the roughs instead. It’ll save me rushing and potentially ruining the artwork through haste, or holding up the post until it’s done. I will probably post the final piece later, unless it takes a turn for the worse…