I Can’t Look: Plotting Killer Scenes

Transcript

Scenes are some of the smallest segments we can break a narrative into, but they hold considerable sway in the minds of our readers.

What is it about certain scenes that makes them so compelling? How is it that an author, with words alone, can make us feel that we can't look, but we can't look away?

I'm Mary Brydon-Kehoe, writer and owner of Elixir Editorial. Divine the secrets of the written word together with me in The Laboratory.

What really drives a narrative forward is rising and falling tension. It's a tension that's built up over time and that has periods of relaxation in between. We need that rest in between to drive home the point when we see things at a fever pitch.

I know as writers we can kind of enjoy torturing our characters and our readers at the same time, but we do need to allow them to have those moments of rest and to recuperate. That's part of pacing, really. But if you're looking at things on a macro scale, those periods of rest actually contribute to that feeling of tension over time.

The way that I'd suggest tension has to be done or can be done effectively is to capitalize on those moments of rest and to bring back that tension maybe two times, three times the size of what it was before. You can adjust the level of tension over time, especially in the beginning of a story. You want to turn that screw ever so slightly over time. It's not something that your audience might notice right at the beginning, but there should be some evidence that there will be tension throughout the story. There should be some kind of conflict. This isn't about necessarily introducing immediate danger to your characters, but these are factors that will push our readers closer to the edge of their seats over time.

Tension has an interconnected kind of relationship to itself. Different tensions might exist at the same time in a narrative, and though we get those moments of respite, we can come back to a higher place of tension, a bigger wave than the last. It's a good way to think about it, is that wave.

So how do you create that tension in a scene? One of the biggest driving forces of tension in stories is conflict, of course, whether it's internal or external. For example, you can think about two characters who are completely diametrically opposed in their goals. Each of them stands in each other's way, and when they clash for that last time before one is actually victorious, it should be a result of a release of that tension.

You need to create stakes and something to lose or win. And it helps if your character is someone that we can root for over that time, or at least that we are invested in their story. That final peak in that tension, maybe that crescendo, that biggest wave is where you pay all of that off. If we've anticipated it with that previous tension, that ramping tension, there will be more of an impact on the readers and a greater payoff at the end of the story.

Tension requires the right pacing. You have to get to know your characters and what drives them. You have to get to know them pretty well before you can ramp that tension up completely. There has to be that interest, that reason why we're following along with them. It's difficult to create that tension without actually sitting down with the characters for a little while. As readers, we want to develop relationships with them. We want to connect with them in certain ways. It might not be that we see ourselves in those situations, but we have to have some point of reference for a character, at least in the story.

It's not impossible to create that tension in a short time. If you look at Indiana Jones, for example, in the beginning of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” we're rooting for him to get the golden idol and to return safely. But of course, like I say, there are internal factors, there are external factors, and here external factors really play an important role.

We do get a slight glimpse of his character before we see him running for his life from the boulder. It's when he talks about his profession. He talks about a colleague who had been there first and who's gone through this trial before him. We're actually treated to this character's fate as Indy passes through the obstacles of the temple.

And then there's the ramping tension of the obstacles themselves. We are very successfully introduced to Indy as the main character in the beginning of Raiders. So there's some investment that we've made already to see him succeed. We're seeing him for the first time maybe, but we do know that he's going to be the hero and that we hope he's going to make it out alive. And that's what that tension in Raiders really comes down to in that first little glimpse of Indy. There is that question of “Who is this person?” even to begin with. And Spielberg does a really excellent job of establishing just who he is, why we should be rooting for him before he even enters the temple.

He actually faces down one of the people who's helping him or supposedly helping him when he sees him draw out the map and he turns the whip on him. We're led to believe that he's pretty capable, but the challenges of the temple themselves are something other than just a man who's facing him down. That external pressure is built into the environment around him.

But of course, scenes can be tense for other reasons. They don't have to necessarily have the mustache twirling villain. Sometimes the big threat in the scene is nothing external to the character. Sometimes it's internal completely. Maybe the big threat in the scene is that the hero is actually stacked up against their morals, their own ethics, their own code that they might have. Maybe some choice that they need to make means that they must make a sacrifice of some kind or even compromise on their principles.

Sometimes even just having the character reflect on these inner conflicts is enough. Even if they ultimately choose the right thing, the fact that they've even contemplated taking certain actions may be drama enough.

But of course, I have a real soft spot for situations where characters do take those actions and it really pits them up against something that they didn't anticipate. If you consider the terrible, nightmarish reality that plagues Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde's novel, it's characterized by Gray's descent into impurity, which he then enacts on other people. When we see him considering such terrible actions as killing another person or reflecting on his role in the misery of others, it's extremely internal, which is in turn represented by that hideous portrait and the layers of decay that start to build up around it.

Tension comes from knowing that there will be consequences to certain actions. Scenes work over time, rising again and again until they reach their zenith. So if you take the portrait of Dorian Gray, for example, the painting is, as I say, that brilliant visual representation of Gray's descent. Those layers are built up over time. Those scenes have wear and tear on Gray's soul that we can see. And what it does as readers is it ramps that tension for us because after a time it becomes a pattern and we start to expect that these things are going to be even worse. We immediately connect his behavior with that painting.

As an exercise, maybe consider how you might dial up tension in one of your scenes. Is there something internal that you can add to it? Is there something external? Maybe someone's being hunted by something that they can't see. And as a bonus, maybe that something is actually some kind of alien entity.

Maybe you have two characters who sit down to talk in a coffee shop, whom we know are actually mortal enemies. What would they actually say to each other? Would they try and talk each other out of it? Those kinds of scenes can be pivotal in informing how we see their interactions later on, especially if they're hurtling towards some kind of inevitable clash or confrontation.

Of course, there's dramatic irony as a tool, which can really ramp the tension if you use it the right way. Sometimes characters have a habit of holding things back from each other that maybe we as the audience have been treated to, but that this character is not willing to share with the others. It can be really tempting to use characters in a way that makes communication difficult, but over time if you rely too much on a trope like that, like miscommunication, it can get a little bit wearing for your readers. Real life might have its ups and downs in communication, but the world of your story has a lot more that you might be able to draw on.

There's advice out there to write dialogue as if somebody has a secret that they're keeping or they're not entirely being honest with the person that they're talking to. And those things can be important to use in a dramatic irony sense when it makes sense to do so. I would say that you have to know those characters really well, again, to be able to pull that off. And why I say that is because if the tension could be resolved just by one character saying something to another, that can kind of undercut what you might be trying to say. But if we've been properly introduced to these characters, if we know that there is a motivation to not say something, for example, if the other character that your main character is talking to cannot be trusted, then that introduces some real stakes.

There's different kinds of tension that you can play with that you can layer into a scene. Maybe you have a situation where two characters are mortal enemies, but they're also facing down some kind of a tornado or wild weather element that's coming at them. Then that tension that they had before is amplified and the question starts to become, well, are they going to act on their animosity towards each other or are they going to save one another despite that? You want to give your characters challenges to overcome.

Like I say, the majority of good tension in a story comes from conflict and it can be both kinds. It can be internal, external, it could be environmental. And like a well-woven cloth, those threads can convalesce and come together to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

I would argue that in that example I gave with Indy, the reason that the tension is so effective despite the fact that we don't really know him is because we've already been introduced to very small types of tension along the way. There's the fact that the people he has with him are secretly trying to thwart him. There's the fact that he's competing against other people in his industry who are very good and then there's the actual environment itself. We get to see those consequences of what it looks like if Indy were to fail and that's on top of everything else that we've experienced with him thus far. So when Sabito betrays him in the temple, it feels like all of those things coming together. And the tension just keeps ramping from that point because Indy sees him later on the spikes in the trap and then he faces down that famous boulder.

So you can have these pockets of tension that are created and released over time. But again, the next thing that we see Indy do even after he gets out of the temple is be confronted by a whole host of people pointing weapons at him. That action doesn't settle down for quite a while in those first few scenes, but then after that we're treated to some rest before he goes on what will become the biggest part of the quest for him, finding the Ark of the Covenant.

And for Dorian, that question is kind of similar. What are the overlapping things that he's done? Well, it's largely reflected in not just the painting, but in the consequences that his actions have on the people around him. His friend, the artist who created the painting, dies by his hand. (And sorry for any spoilers, although I will say that this has been out for quite some time, so I'm hoping that this is a safe book to discuss!) And because of his negligence, because of his wanton disregard for other people, the actress who he's been sort of courting before then actually kills herself. So you have to start to wonder what's the end goal for him? Where does he go after that? What kind of consequences are waiting him beyond the painting? Because we know that while he's looking at it, it may be protecting him under these circumstances, but there will be consequences for his actions.

So see if you can do this in your own writing. Take a scene, maybe take a couple characters that you know really well, pit them against each other or pit them against some kind of challenge, some kind of obstacle to get through. See how many obstacles you can add without it becoming ridiculous, of course.

Play around with it and have some fun while you're scaring the pants off of us.

With that, I want to thank you for listening to today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you have any questions on the topic discussed, or if you'd like to suggest a future topic, please don't hesitate to reach out. Contact me through elixereditorial.com or find me on Instagram, Blue Sky, and LinkedIn @elixireditorial.

Intro and outro modified from Danse Macabre by Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com and licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0 License.

See you next time in The Laboratory.

Mary Kehoe provides structural, stylistic and copy editing services for a variety of written works through her agency, Elixir Editorial. From time to time she dabbles in her own writing projects which tend toward the speculative genre.

She is a member of both Editors Canada and the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), as well as a founding member and former chair of the Toronto Arts & Letters Club writing group. A longtime lover of the English language, Mary is passionate about supporting writers on the journey to inspire the world.