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Posts Tagged ‘John D. Brown’

Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 27 – Patterns for Resolution
Element 4-6 & The Series Wrap Up

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is the final part of Key Conditions for Suspense. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

Well, folks. This is it. The final post in the series. I’m going to finish identifying basic patterns for the resolution phase, summarize what I’ve presented on structure, and wrap the whole series up.

Happy, Sad, or What?

Do you remember way back in the second post of the series that I said there were three basic types of story problems? There’s danger/threat, lack/opportunity, and mystery. The first two revolve around a character’s happiness and the reader’s wish to see the good guys be happy at the end. The third revolves around the reader’s curiosity. A lot of times these two types of problems are mixed. Which means that in a good portion of stories the reader’s rooting for the good guys to be happy.

There are stories with sad endings. In these the hero fails to resolve the problem. Or he resolves it but at such a cost that the reader feels it’s a net loss.

For example, Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet ends with the lovers dead. Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan ends by having our heroes save the guy they went to fetch, but at the cost of all their lives. Robin Hobb’s Assassin trilogy ends with the hero having saved the land from the awful Redship Raiders, but he’s had the snot beat out of him and has lost all he loves. He ends up broken and alone.

There are stories with happy endings. In these the hero succeeds in resolving the problem, or she realizes her original goal wasn’t really what mattered to begin with and wins happiness by changing her goal.
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Tags: John D. Brown
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, SFWA Blog, The Craft of Writing, Tips for Beginners, Writing Technique | 5 Comments »

Key Conditions for Suspense Part 26:
Patterns for Resolution Elements 1-3

Saturday, June 11th, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

In my last six posts, I’ve discussed options for the presentation and struggle phases. In my next two posts, I’ll discuss options for the resolution phase and wrap the whole series up.

So let’s look at the resolution phase. Readers want their tension to build to a pitch. Then they want to feel a release. The resolution phase is where you deliver that delicious release.

The resolution isn’t something completely different from what you’ve done before. It’s just another trip around the story cycle. As such, you have:

• Reaction
• Action

• Preparation
• Approach
• Climax

At the end of the struggle phase, something locks the hero into the final showdown. The hero reacts to that thing. The reaction might be short or long, and includes what any reaction would—emotion, thought, discussion, motive, and decision. In Star Wars, this is the sequence where the rebels react to the fact that the empire knows where their base is and is going to obliterate it. It includes the scene where they discuss how they’re going to blow up the death star.
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Tags: John D. Brown
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, SFWA Blog, The Craft of Writing, Tips for Beginners, Writing Technique | 2 Comments »

Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 25 – Patterns for Struggle Elements 5 & 6

Saturday, June 4th, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

In my last three posts, I’ve discussed a number of options for elements of the struggle phase. In this post, I’ll finish those.

What leads the hero into the final showdown

The next thing you want to think about is what locks the hero into the final showdown and moves the story from struggle to resolution. I see three things that can do this:

• An insight & decision
• Some piece of information or a tool
• An external pressure

Which it will be often depends on the main obstacle the character faces.

The stories that use insight and decision are usually those where the main obstacle is the character’s internal problem. For example, in stories where love and friendship is on the line and the obstacle is the main character’s values, it may be that the hero has to make a decision to place love above something else.
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Tags: John D. Brown
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Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 24 – Patterns for Struggle Elements 3 – 5

Sunday, May 29th, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

In my last post, I discussed options for trouble progression. In this post, I’ll discuss options for three more elements that affect the structure of the struggle phase.

Actions the antagonist takes to oppose the hero

Directly related to the progression of trouble are the actions the villain or opposition takes to thwart the hero. I made this its own topic because I’ve found it’s incredibly useful in coming up with great troubles to play the story cycle from both points of view, like a one-man chess game.

Just as I need to know my hero’s goal, motives, and plan, I also need to know the same things about my antagonist. In fact, in some stories the antagonist’s plans are what drive the story.

So my hero takes an action. I switch in my mind to the antagonist’s point of view and ask myself what I would do if I were this villain. How would I react given his goal, motives, and resources? This suggests a course or three of action. I select the one that sparks my interest the most. This action, of course, causes trouble for the hero. So I switch back to the hero’s point of view and ask myself how I would react as the hero. This causes trouble for the villain. So I switch back to the villain’s point of view, and back and forth I go.

In coming up with troubles, it’s sometimes helpful to think of how the antagonist’s actions might escalate. So when the hero pops up, maybe he sends a henchman to give him a stern warning. When that doesn’t work, maybe a smart villain might send the henchman back to quietly remove him. When that doesn’t work, maybe I call in some favors from the chief of police who I have dirt on. When that doesn’t work, maybe I decide to go take the hero’s family hostage. When he comes to save them, I’ll get him then.

Thinking about the situation from the antagonist’s point of view always helps me come up with lots of troubles for my hero. Again, as with all troubles, the one thing you want to keep in mind is that you want the antagonist to gradually escalate the measures used to remove his problem, which translates to a trouble progression for the hero.
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Tags: John D. Brown
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Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 23 – Patterns for the Struggle : Element 2

Saturday, May 21st, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

In this post, I continue with options for the elements of the struggle phase. I focus here on the progression of trouble through the story.

Each story will feature different types of conflicts and obstacles (as well as different types of help and aid along the way). I can’t find any pattern in the stories I’ve looked at to suggest you must include certain types of conflicts and obstacles. What I can see is that the troubles need to get worse the further the character goes.

Form follows function. We’re trying to build reader tension to a high point and then release it.

Methods to identify and sequence troubles
One way to approach this is to think about some of the key things that can go wrong–our hero’s car breaks down, he gets shot, someone informs the villain about the hero’s plan, a key member of the team turns traitor, the hero’s sidekick is killed, etc.–then sequence them from least to most dire.
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Tags: John D. Brown
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Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 22 – Patterns for the Struggle: Element 1

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

In the presentation phase, readers are introduced to the problem. But they want more than a moment of sympathy or worry. They want their hopes and fears for the character to build to a pitch.

How do we do that?

We don’t let the characters solve the problem. Not yet.

So our character forms a goal—solve the problem—identifies the first step to do just that, and takes action. Of course, she won’t solve it with that one action. We’ve talked about this. If she solves it right out of the gate, the story is over. We want reader tension to build, not dissipate. And so she’s going to go around the story cycle a few times trying to solve the problem.

How many times?

There’s NO set number. There are many variations that work. However, I will say that with the central problem you probably need at least three revolutions (some subplots might only require one revolution). First, you need that many to create a story long enough to make it a novel. In fact, you’ll probably need many more. Second, there’s something about three that makes it feel significant, that the character has achieved something. Finally, three seems to be the number that sets a pattern. If someone fails the first two times, we’re likely to think they’ll fail the third. I believe this helps build tension surrounding that third attempt.

So while our hero makes some headway, she also runs into troubles that seem to threaten complete failure. The reader feels the hero has a chance of winning, but the troubles and failures make the odds of her losing seem to grow. Furthermore, the hero begins to run out of time, the stakes (what might be lost) are raised, vague threats become very specific. These are all the problem intensifiers we talked about in the first post in the series, and all of them make the reader’s worry grow.

So what about the structure of this phase? Do you have to follow a strict pattern of “pinch points” and “mid act reversals”?

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Tags: John D. Brown
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Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 21 – Patterns for Presenting the Problem: Elements 4-5

Saturday, May 7th, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

As I said in my last post, the story begins when we present to the reader (a) the main character, (b) the problem she’ll face, and (c) a good reason why the character can’t or won’t walk away from the problem. If the main character is sympathetic and interesting, the reader will root for her and want to see what happens. If some of the particularities of the character and problem are surprising to the readers, it will generate more interest than if it’s something they’ve seen many times before. (more…)

Tags: John D. Brown
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, SFWA Blog, The Craft of Writing, Tips for Beginners, Writing Technique | 2 Comments »

Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 20 – Patterns for Presenting the Problem 1-3

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

In my last two posts I talked about looking for plot/structure patterns. I’ll start now with patterns for presenting the problem.

The story begins when we present to the reader (a) the main character, (b) the problem she’ll face, and (c) a good reason why the character can’t or won’t walk away from the problem. If the main character is sympathetic and interesting, the reader will root for her and want to see what happens. If some of the particularities of the character and problem are surprising to the readers, it will generate more interest than if it’s something they’ve seen many times before.

Here are some elements to think about when you structure the event sequence of the presentation phase.

• Number of scenes to present the problem
• Straight or twist presentation
• Central problem or a subplot problem start
• The reason why the hero can’t or won’t walk away
• Size of the presentation phase (proportion)

In this post, I’ll briefly discuss some options for the first three elements.
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Tags: John D. Brown
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Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 19 – Use Patterns & Options, Not Formulas

Saturday, April 23rd, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

Too Many Variables

The three phases of problem solving form the basic structure of a story that builds suspense in readers. As I said in my last post, we need a bit more detail to translate the three phases into the events and scenes of a specific story. But before we move into those details, I want to take a moment to talk about what I think is the wrong way approach to structure.

That wrong way to is to use formulas for the details that go in your three phases. A formula is a static thing. It’s a specific set of steps you follow every time. So one plot formula might be to structure your story with a 25-50-25 proportion—25% for the presentation phase, 50% for the struggle, and 25% for the resolution. Another formula might be that the structure must show the character change. Another formula might state that you must have a major reversal at the 50% mark. Another one might be that the hero has to refuse to engage the problem, and so the presentation phase must include this. I remember one popular story guru had a formula he taught to screenwriters in which he claimed every romantic comedy required that the two love interests must dance!
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Tags: John D. Brown
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Key Conditions for Suspense: Part 18 –
The 3 Phases of Problem Solving for Suspense

Saturday, April 16th, 2011

by John D. Brown

The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.

Key suspense structure elements

In the last post, I explained that structure and plot are about problem solving. So how do people solve problems? What’s the process?

Well, wait a minute. We have to add a little to that. We’re not just having characters solve problems. We’re showing characters struggle with problems in ways that engender and build suspense in a reader. Then we’re showing them resolve the problem in ways that provide the reader a wash of cathartic relief.

In order to do that, we show our characters work through three phases. I believe all of the elements below are necessary, which means if you take any one of these away, it will prevent the reader from feeling tension, feeling it build, or feeling it release.
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Tags: John D. Brown
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