When to Kill the Character...

And when NOT to kill the character ;-)
(btw, Amy Leigh Simpson would probably have some different comments to say about this :-)

I'm on deadline for my second book in the Penned in Time Series so my mental abilities, time management skills, and patience are being tested to the brink.

So before you think I created this title because of the pressures of deadline, I'll put your mind at ease...I didn't, mostly.

As tempting as it might be, in all actuality this blog post evolved from a very real experience while writing a few weeks ago. I needed to decide whether someone in my WIP needed to die or not.

For some writers, it's a no brainer.
If you write books where no one ever dies, this blog post might not pertain to you.
For other writers, lots of people die in their books so the answer to this question might always be 'yes, kill 'em off."

But for those of us who write somewhere in between, there might be a real time when you have a dilemma about whether to kill off somebody or not. Which is what happened to me.

When creating stories we are constantly bombarded with the idea that we need to increase tension and conflict.

Make your hero bleed! Make your heroine weep! Break them until the black moment reduces them to a puddle of emotional puddy on the floor!

And though it's true that conflict increases tension and therefore may also increase the power of your story, there are times when killing off that person or causing that tragedy or increasing the suffering, might be too much.

Here are two ways we can make too much tension...too much!

Playing the Job Card (I struggle with this one so I put it first)

There's something to be said for solid, organic tension. Conflict that arises from your story and makes sense in the overall growth of your characters, is a beautiful sight to behold, but when bad things happen just because bad things happen, or just because you feel like tension is low, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the right time...or the right tension.

The best conflict comes from the natural storyline. In other words if killing off that person grows your character in the direction you want, or moves the story along as it should, then maybe you should kill off that person.

Otherwise, should murder really be in your future?

Bloodbath Analogy

Unless you're writing the next horror bestseller, Game of Thrones remake, Zombie apocalypse 10000000, or sparkly teen vampire romance, then there is a point where too much tension is too much tension.

I found myself at this place a few weeks ago.

I was planning on one of my secondary characters dying in a house fire. To me it would have given my heroine another way to deal with suffering and trust God, deepening her character development. Good reason, right?

The choice would have been an organic one from for her character arc, however I knew the future too. I knew my heroine had just finished dealing with the death of someone she loved and I also knew she was getting ready to face one of the most heart-wrenching battles of her life, so I begin to second-guess killing off another character. Why? Because it was just too much.

No, it wasn't conflict for conflict's sake. It would have given added depth to her growth, but it somehow felt a little contrived because of the intensity of consistent pain (and I'm not a pansy about killing characters or causing fictional pain, btw)

Some people may disagree with me on this choice, because they think any tension must be good tension, but I disagree. Maybe it's just my reading preference but when I get to the point where all I feel is loss, loss, loss in a story, then it's too much for me. Besides, sometimes killing off a person isn't what will cause the best tension. Sometimes, there something much worse that will have great impact to the overall story.

So, how's that for a happy Monday post! :-)

 I'd love to hear some of your opinions about tension, killing characters, and went to much is too much.
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Pepper Basham is an award-winning author who writes romance peppered with grace and humor. She’s a native of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a mom of five, a speech-language pathologist, and a lover of chocolate. She enjoys sprinkling her native Appalachian culture into her fiction whenever she can and loves annoying her wonderful friends at her writing blog, The Writer’s Alley. She is represented by Julie Gwinn and her debut novel, The Thorn Bearer, released in April 2015. Her first contemporary romance novel, A Twist of Faith, released in December. You can connect with Pepper on her website at www.pepperdbasham.com, Facebook-  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pepper-D-Basham or Twitter at https://twitter.com/pepperbasham

The Four Types of Dramatic Tension – Part Two

In my last post I discussed the necessity of creating tension on every page of your manuscript. We learned that in the world of drama, there are four types of tension used to engage the audience:

1. The tension of relationships
2. The tension of the task
3. The tension of surprise
4. The tension of mystery

We then explored the first type of tension in-depth, using the bestselling novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett as our example. If you missed it, click here to catch up.

Today we’ll move on to the remaining three types of tension. Once again we’ll use Stockett’s novel for illustrative purposes. This is for two reasons. Firstly, because I want to demonstrate how even a “quiet” genre like women’s fiction can be made to crackle with tension on every page. And secondly, because it’s easy enough to pull examples of the different types of tension from any novel you could name – but it’s far more helpful to see how one author has incorporated the various tools into one book.

Because that’s the whole idea, isn’t it? – to vary the techniques we use to create tension, and then layer them one on top of the other in order to produce the most wildly compelling read possible.

1.             The tension of the task

Give your hero or heroine something to accomplish, then set obstacles in their way. A ticking clock adds urgency – so create a deadline for the protagonist to accomplish their goal.

In The Help, Skeeter’s central task is to compile a book of stories about the lives of black maids in the South. The author skilfully ratchets up the tension surrounding this task in incremental steps:

   -  An editor tells Skeeter she needs at least a dozen more women to participate in the project or she won’t be interested, but Skeeter has trouble persuading more than two maids to help.

   -  The editor wants the book finished as soon as possible in order to coincide with external political events. This puts Skeeter on a tight deadline.

   -  The women who eventually agree to share their stories are putting their lives at risk, a fact illustrated by a series of explosive racial events.

   -  Just as it’s looking possible for Skeeter to complete the task in time, the editor informs her that she will need the book a whole month ahead of schedule.

           2.             The tension of surprise

This tool is an invaluable fix for those sagging moments in your manuscript. A manuscript sags when it becomes predictable – when the reader feels they already know what’s coming, only it’s taking far too long to get there.

These are the moments you want to shake things up a bit and turn the reader’s expectations on their head. Often a surprise is used as a cliff-hanger at the end of a chapter.

Examples are:

- A plot twist we didn’t see coming.

- A new reveal of information.

- A shot of humor in the middle of a bleak situation.

- The appearance of an unexpected character.

- A crisis or major event that catches us by surprise.

- A character who does something unpredictable, even shocking.

Kathryn Stockett keeps us guessing throughout the The Help by springing several unexpected surprises. Here’s one example:

All the way through the book, Skeeter’s friend Hilly is on her case to include a racist “Home Sanitation initiative” in the newsletter Skeeter edits. Skeeter won’t do it. Then at the end of Chapter 21, after an explosive confrontation with Hilly, we see Skeeter finally typing the initiative:

“I place it on the second page, opposite the photo ops. This is where everyone will be sure to see it… All I can think while I’m typing is, What would Constantine think of me?”

End of chapter.

The reader is taken by surprise. This is the last thing we would expect Skeeter to do. It goes against everything we’ve come to know about her character. What is going on? Has she finally caved to the pressure? Will the antagonist, Hilly Holbrook, win out after all? This can’t be happening!

You can bet most readers will be flipping forward to find out what on earth has come over our beloved Skeeter. Of course, in the next chapter, the author has another surprise waiting for us as we learn what Skeeter is really up to.

4. The tension of mystery

A mystery is any unanswered question you place in your reader’s mind. These questions are what keep your readers turning pages. Often there is a central question or mystery that runs throughout a whole book, with the final reveal left for the climax.

The underlying mystery in The Help is the single question – what happened to Skeeter’s beloved maid Constantine? At the beginning of the story, Constantine disappears and Skeeter is told she quit. But Skeeter can’t believe that the woman who raised her from childhood would vanish without a word of farewell or a letter of explanation. It’s not until the end of the novel that we find out what really happened to Constantine.

Other, more secondary mysteries, are used to tease and draw us further into the story. What was the “Terrible Awful” that Minny did to her ex-employer? What is in the bottles Celia Foote hides in her closet? And why is there a bloodstain on the carpet of her bedroom, concealed beneath a rug?

The trick here is to tantalise the reader by raising questions and then not answering them straight away. It’s a delicate line to walk – you want to keep the thread alive by referring to it here and there so the reader doesn’t forget about it and lose interest; but you also don’t want to hold all your cards too tightly until the end, or the device can become irritating and you’ll frustrate the reader.

Some mysteries should be revealed along the way. With the central mystery, it’s enough to drop hints or clues so the reader feels some sense of progression and an increasing hunger to learn the truth.

So there you have it – the four types of dramatic tension.

Most of you will find you already use these four types of tension instinctively. But being aware of what you’re doing – and why – is the first step toward strengthening your writing. Perhaps you favor one type of tension at the expense of the others. Perhaps there are one or two tension-producing tools listed here that you know are lacking in your novel. Why not try to weave them in and create some extra layers of conflict in your story?

Let’s talk: What types of tension do you naturally favor, and which do you think you could use more effectively?

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Karen Schravemade lives in Australia. When she's not chasing after two small boys, she spends her spare minutes daydreaming about the intricate lives of characters who don't actually exist. Find her on her website, on Twitter or getting creative over at her mummy blog.

The Four Types of Dramatic Tension - Part One

 What is the number one rule of writing? Simply this:

Don’t bore the reader.

We all dream of writing novels that readers can’t put down. Stories so engrossing they cause people to run into stationary objects while flipping pages; plots so compelling that perfectly sensible adults will sacrifice sleep in order to read “just one more chapter”, even if it means falling asleep on their desk at work.

But how? Donald Maass, author of “Writing the Breakout Novel”, advises writers to inject tension on every page.

Easy if you write action thrillers, right?

Before all you romance-writers out there start to panic, hear this: “tension” doesn’t necessarily mean car chases, shoot-outs or even scenes where characters yell at each other. EVERY genre needs to be imbued with tension, even if it’s a quiet tension that crackles off the page.

In a former life, I used to teach drama to high-school students. In this role I learned there are four main types of tension used to engage an audience:

1. The tension of relationships

2. The tension of the task

3. The tension of surprise

4. The tension of mystery

I found this exciting because it applies so beautifully to writing, and it made me aware of a whole arsenal of tension-producing tools that I never consciously knew existed.

The secret is to vary your use of the different types of tension, because too much of any one thing becomes predictable and the tension is lost. (Anyone else ever fallen asleep in an action movie after the sixth car chase…?)

The other trick is to layer the types of tension one on top of the other to create the most compelling story possible.

To illustrate how one successful author has layered the four types of tension throughout her story, we’ll look at the bestselling novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Today we’ll begin with the first type of dramatic tension:

1.              The tension of relationships

This is a staple of romance and women’s fiction. Interpersonal conflict comes in so many shapes and forms that the possibilities really are endless. A good, meaty novel will contain layers of relationship conflicts – the heroine with the hero, with her mother, with the antagonist, with her children...

Of course, as mentioned earlier, this doesn’t mean you need to pen a string of shouting matches or have your protagonist argue with everyone she encounters. Once more, VARIETY is key, and often quiet tension is the most powerful and effective.

Let’s have a look at how Kathryn Stockett does this in The Help. There are a multitude of interpersonal conflicts in this book.

 -       Mother/daughter: Protagonist Skeeter wants to be a writer, but her mother is only interested in “fixing” her appearance and marrying her off. Added to this, her mother has cancer, so every negative emotion Skeeter feels is tinged with guilt.

-       Girl/guy: A reluctant dater, Skeeter eventually falls for a young man only to discover that his ideological views run totally contrary to hers.

-       Between friends: Skeeter disagrees with her friends’ treatment of their black maids, a stance which causes escalating conflict throughout the book.

-       Between an individual and a social group: Celia Foote struggles to gain acceptance into the local women’s clique, but is ostracised by all.

-       Between maids and their employers: Minny, a black maid, is fired by her white employer for using the indoor bathroom. Another maid, Aibileen, struggles with the harsh way her employer treats her daughter, Mae Mobly.

The tension of relationships is often shown through dialogue between characters, but also through subtext (the unspoken undercurrents beneath the dialogue – the things the characters DON’T say) and through snippets of internal monologue.

For my next blog post, I’ll be discussing the remaining three types of tension. Don’t forget to tune in to learn about the tension of the task, the tension of surprise and the tension of mystery!

Let’s talk: Does your WIP have tension on every page? How conscious are you of delineating between different types of conflict in your writing? Do share!


Images courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Karen Schravemade lives in Australia. When she's not chasing after two small boys, she spends her spare minutes daydreaming about the intricate lives of characters who don't actually exist. Find her on her website, on Twitter or getting creative over at her mummy blog.