Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict and Suspense
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Authors: James Scott Bell
ELEMENTS
of
FICTION WRITING
JAMES SCOTT BELL
CHAPTER 1
What a Great Story Is Really All About
CHAPTER 2
Brainstorming for Conflict
CHAPTER 3
The Foundations of Conflict
CHAPTER 4
The Structure of Conflict
CHAPTER 5
Point of View and Conflict
CHAPTER 6
Opening With Conflict
CHAPTER 7
Keep It Moving in the Middle
CHAPTER 8
Subplots, Flashbacks, and Backstory
CHAPTER 10
Conflict in Dialogue
CHAPTER 12
Styling for Conflict
CHAPTER 13
Revising for Conflict
CHAPTER 17
Stretching the Tension
CHAPTER 18
Dialogue and Suspense
Trouble is my business.
—
R
AYMOND
C
HANDLER
Once you get a character with a problem, a serious problem, “plotting” is just a fancy name for how he or she tries to get out of the predicament.
—
B
ARNABY
C
ONRAD
You tell stories.
You tell stories because you want people to read them.
You want readers to be moved, entertained, maybe even enlightened.
You want to tell stories that wrap readers up and get them lost in a world you’ve created, with colorful characters and plots that don’t let up.
It doesn’t matter what genre you write in. You want all these things happening because that’s what makes the magic connection in this alchemy we call fiction.
Yes, that’s it. You want to make a little magic.
You can, you know.
Most aspects of the craft of writing fiction can be learned. You can practice them and put them to work for you.
Frankly, I get a little miffed when someone says fiction writing can’t be taught. That would come as news to all the young writers who were instructed by teachers, editors, books, and articles. People like John Grisham, who dined monthly on
Writer’s Digest
magazine.
Or me, reading Lawrence Block’s fiction column as if it were holy writ. And then trying the things he wrote about and seeing how they worked on the page.
I’ve also taught countless writers in conferences and through books on the craft, and have seen many of them break into print.
So don’t buy into the idea that this craft doesn’t have tools and techniques that will make you better.
What can’t be taught is what you bring to your fiction—your inherent talent, background experiences, passion, and heart. The singular
you.
But talent and experience mean nothing if they don’t find an expression on the page that readers can relate to.
Craft teaches you how to connect with readers so they can get lost in your stories.
And what gets them lost?
It really comes down to one thing: characters who are in trouble.
It doesn’t matter what kind of trouble it is so long as it is of great importance to the story people. When a reader describes getting “caught up” in a novel, it’s just shorthand for saying that trouble is happening to a character, or group of characters, and the reader wants—no,
needs
—to see what happens.
Alfred Hitchcock said it this way:
A great story is life, with the dull parts taken out.
A scene without trouble is a dull part. A character who is not caught up in trials and dangers and challenges and obstacles—interior, exterior, or both—is not going to excite us for very long.
It doesn’t matter who the character is, either. A quirky, colorful character overstays her welcome after a few chapters, unless trouble comes calling.
So trouble is your business. And conflict and suspense are the tools of the craft that will take your business to the readers.
Imagine the first storyteller. I’ll call him Og. He has just returned from a hard day hunting meat. He was about to bag him some wolf when he got surprised by a mastodon lumbering by.
Bummer.
He dropped his club and ran. He hid in some rocks. An hour or so later he came back to his prey and found it being devoured by a saber-toothed tiger.
Double bummer.
Then Og had to trek back to the waiting fire. His tribe was sitting there hoping for some steaks (they were quite tired of berries and roots). They looked at Og and grunted something that can be roughly translated, “Where’s the meat, man?”
Og was on the spot. His position as chief hunter-gatherer was up for grabs, depending on what he said next.
The last time something like this happened, and the tribe asked what went wrong, Og merely shrugged and threw dirt at them. This didn’t help matters at all. They seemed unwilling to give Og more chances.
So now Og gets on his haunches and says, “I was out hunting like always, and had a wolf in my sights. I threw a rock and got him right on the head. He went down. I was about to go get him when I heard this ROAARRRR!”
He pauses to take stock of the reactions around the fire. Every face is turned toward him. He can see consuming interest in their eyes.
He has them hooked.
Good, Og thinks.
Let’s see if I can keep them that way while I figure out how to get out of this.
“I spin around,” Og says, “and there is a tiger with those long, spiked teeth. There is spit dripping off those teeth. His eyes were huge, as big as lakes! I could smell his fur. It smelled like death.”
The audience is leaning forward now. Og thinks,
That went well. If I take time to describe things this way, it stretches out the story and the tension. And that bit about the smell, that was pure genius.
Og is beginning to develop a style.
He’s also searching for an ending, and so he lays out, beat by beat, a story of this encounter with the tiger and the ensuing fight to save his own life. He finally gets to the end and speaks of a mighty battle with the beast, until his ultimate triumph.
Someone in the audience asks, “So where’s the tiger?”
Og must think up a twist ending. So he comes up with the speculative fiction genre, and says a god of the mountains came down and took the tiger as tribute. He was about to call down fire from the sky on Og’s tribe. Og told him not to, that it would be bad, and he would fight the god if he had to. The god relented.
So Og has saved all their lives. Or so the story goes.
Well, the reaction of the listeners is so good that Og gets a double portion of berries. An attractive woman gives him a blanket of squirrel fur in honor of his exploits. One of the old men gives Og his best club. A couple of the younger tribe members hand over their favorite trinkets and promise more if Og will tell more stories.
And Og thinks,
Maybe I can make a living at this.
Og’s brother, who collects the booty, keeps 15 percent of it.
So Og starts telling stories every night by the fire instead of hunting for food. His tales inspire the other men to go out and hunt. Encouraged by Og’s fiction, they become brave and successful. They give Og a portion of everything they gather.
Og buys a new luxury cave with an interior pool.
What Og discovered was that a story with trouble and threat, drawn out and told with a certain élan, is what keeps people interested and willing to pay for more. This is the true essence of story, a record of how a character deals with high-stakes trouble. In the case of Og’s first tale it was physical death on the line. Og had a thriller on his tongue.
But Og later told stories about his emotions. How he was having to deal with past demons, like his father flicking pebbles at him when he was a boy, and when he fell in love with a cave girl who later got stepped on by a wooly mammoth. He notices that the women of the tribe—and, in secret, even some of the men—cry during the telling of these tales.
And pay him to tell more.
Og starts calling these “character-driven” stories but knows they are based on the same idea: a high-stakes threat to the characters’ interior life and happiness.
And you know what? The essence of story has not changed, from Og to the early myths to the Greek drama to Stephen King to
Lost
and Pixar.
It’s all about trouble and its two best friends—conflict and suspense.
Go to a theme park and ride a roller coaster. Then go home and write a novel. You might find that one feeds the other.
We all know a roller coaster plays with your body, primarily your stomach. It takes you up slowly, then shoots you down and around. There’s a buildup that creates anticipation, then a payoff that is all thrills. Finally, you’re let out—we hope—at a smooth, satisfying ending.
A novel is meant to be a thrill ride for the emotions. This doesn’t mean only the large charges one would find in an action techno-thriller. Even a quiet character novel, done right, has the same dynamic going for it.
You, the author, are a manipulator of emotions. This is not a bad thing at all. Every artist wants to do that. The key to the art is to make the readers forget they are being played, so they can simply enjoy the experience.
Or maybe your goal is not simply entertainment, but to make people think. Michael Crichton was a novelist of this sort.
Perhaps you want to make people mad, because of an issue that chaps your hide. Edward Abbey wrote
The Monkey Wrench Gang
with sense of environmental outrage.
But in all cases, your ability to weave conflict and suspense into your novel is going to be what determines whether it is successful or not.
A well-structured plot is like that fabled bridge over troubled waters, like the Golden Gate in San Francisco. On one side you have the beginning and on the other side, the end. The solid pylons resting on the bedrock of the bay provide the turning points into each act of the novel. Your organic scenes weave together to form the suspension cables. All of this supports the deck and everything works together so the reader gets a view of the churning waters.
You direct them from one side to the other, from beginning to end. You control what happens at each stage of the journey.
At this point there are usually some protests. “I don’t care about rules and techniques! You have to let it flow, man. I’ll tell the story my way!”
Fine. Let it flow. But after all that flowing you want to shape your story into something people read, yes? Lots of people?
If you’re okay with handing out copies of your experimental flow-novel to five or six people, that’s fine, too.
And sell three copies. But you let it flow. If that’s your goal, flow on.
But if you want to connect with a wide audience, you learn the fundamentals of the craft that make it happen.
Once you do, you can be as free as you like, knowing each step of the way what works and what doesn’t. You now pour your imagination and vision into a structure that readers can relate to.
You have them hooked, just like Og.
Conflict has long been recognized as the engine of story. Without conflict there is no drama. Without drama there is no interest. Without interest there is no reader. And no writing career.
In simplest terms,
conflict
is a clash between at least two incompatible sides. One of these sides must be personal, that is, having the ability to exercise conscious will.
For example, a storm rolling into the pleasant weather of a Midwestern town does not offer us conflict. There is no conscious will exerted by the storm or the nice day in the town.
If, however, a safety inspector for the Midwestern town has only two hours to prepare to meet this natural disaster, and takes steps to do so, there is conflict. He is exercising his will toward solving a problem.
This is the conflict involved in
man vs. nature
stories. Man has the will, nature offers the opposition.
But most dramatic narratives involve at least two human agents opposed to one another. They have opposing agendas. It’s two dogs and one bone.
And they each have the ability to think and act toward getting the bone for themselves.
Suspense
arises out of conflict. It is a subset of the dramatic question, Will the character involved in the conflict exercise his will in such a way as to overcome?
Suspense is the tightening of the emotional experience of the reader.
Think of it as a boxing match. The two combatants are in conflict. They are exercising their wills in a conscious effort to knock each other’s block off.
Now suppose one fighter gets the other against the ropes and starts pummeling. The suspense of the moment is whether the trapped fighter will be knocked out. Or, if he’s knocked to the canvas, will he get up?
Or what if the two fighters are circling each other, throwing jabs? The suspense question is who will land a good blow first?
Any number of suspense questions can be raised in the context of the overall conflict.
Your novel sets up a central clash, and suspense is what powers the reader through, turning pages, no matter what the genre.
Conflict lays a foundation. So in
Part I
we will be looking at how you create the best soil for this combat of wills. Out of that ground comes the suspense, which is the subject of
Part II
.
A note about my previous books on the craft. There are a few sections, most notably in chapters three and four of this book, that somewhat overlap material I covered in
Plot & Structure
and
Revision & Self-Editing
. This is unavoidable in a book covering conflict and suspense, so I have shaped those sections with the subject matter of this volume in mind. In this way, those who are unfamiliar with the other books will get what they need to improve the conflict and suspense in their writing.
And those who do know the other books will get a slightly different perspective and some essential review. This will deepen their understanding of the previous material, all with the goal of getting readers to say:
Ever since I started writing, the one compliment I prize most is when a reader says of one of my books, “I couldn’t put it down.”
That’s what we’re all about, isn’t it? What’s the alternative? The reader putting the book down, that’s what. And deciding not to buy your next one.
It could even be worse, as when Dorothy Parker observed, “This is not a novel to be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Our goal as storytellers is to keep the reader turning pages to the end. Conflict and suspense make that happen.