FILL: They should have let the horse bite him

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 18 December 2008

Although I doubt if he would have.

Lunch time, the NHK people are visiting a horse farm. And the big bruiser who is their visiting TV talent gets handed a folded mass of greens to feed to the friendly horse.

He sticks it out close to the horse, who clearly wants to eat this and stretches out to get it. The horse gets a little of it, but the TV talent opens his hand and backs off, dropping most of it outside the horse's stable.

The horse farm guy says something about how friendly he is, and gives the talent another handful of greens. He steps forward again, and the horse manages to get a mouthful. The horse farm guy urges that the talent pet the horse, and he reaches out . . . and drops the greens, sort of waves his arm in the air near the horse, and backs off again.

I'm watching this on TV and diagnosing "someone is scared of horses" while they just keep on with the rest of the show. Of course, I'm also rooting for the original horse, who is probably standing in his stable wondering just why this stranger offered him a treat, then dropped it before he could get a good bite of it. TWICE! He may be thinking to himself, "I shoulda bit him."

But horses are pretty friendly critters. And these were well-kept horses. Racing, I think. Still, offering a treat to an animal and then dropping it, twice? Why not admit the first time that this is just too scary, and let someone else feed the horse?

I guess that would break the "masculine bruiser TV talent" mythos, though.

(Mr. Ed would have bit him, I bet :-)

EXERCISE: Juxtaposition, a.k.a. unstoppable force meets immovable object?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 21 December 2008

Fair warning. It's the end of year, things are winding down a bit, and my wife wants me to clean up my magazines. Part of that is the stack of Writer's Digests that I haven't quite had time to look at. So I'll be at least glancing through them and perhaps putting up some odds and ends here. For example, the February 2005 issue on page 12 has a quick exercise on juxtaposition. The entire thing, from the Pocket Muse by Monica Wood, is:

"Juxtaposition, whether subtle or extravagant, infuses even the quietest stories with dramatic tension. Think of big Lenny contrasted with his pet mouse in Of Mice and Men, or the frigid winter landscape that provides the setting for Ethan's brief inner blooming in Ethan Frome."

"Try writing a scene in any genre in which two seemingly opposite things go on at the same time. A French lesson being offered at the site of an excavation, a meditative letter being written at a barn dance, a lover's tryst going on at a wake. Notice how the uneasy fit between two elements forces you to imagine differently."

Sounds like fun! So you work on writing that scene, and I'll continue cleaning up. Just watch out for the bits and pieces over the next couple of weeks. Is it littering when you extract odds and ends from a print journal for dispersal on an electronic media such as this? Or just creative re-contextualization? (wow, that's a mouthful :-)

Do you suppose she meant I had to throw them out? After I read them, right?

TECH: Three Secrets of Suspense (with a bonus exercise!)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 22 December 2008

I warned you! Now, it's time for a moldy article from Writers Digest, February 2005. Pages 20 and 21 are the column Fiction Essentials by James Scott Bell, and in this issue, he's highlighting the three secrets of suspense. Wouldn't you like to know what they are?

"What happens next? When you're writing a novel, that's the question you want in your readers' minds all the time. That's what keeps them flipping pages long into the night. That's suspense. And every novel needs it."

What do you think suspense is? Well, Bell starts out by telling us that "suspense in fiction is a feeling of pleasurable uncertainty." When we don't know what is going to happen -- although we may have suspicions -- and we really want to find out -- that's suspense!

Kind of like waiting for the three secrets of suspense :-) So without further ado, here they are!

1. The Death Threat

"The best suspense is about death." Physical death in various variations -- serial killer, villain, malevolent conspiracy -- death abounds. However, professional death -- loss of work or livelihood -- also works. Or psychological death, the inner death that results from not having a reason to go on living, not dealing with dark secrets from the past, not healing.

"Here is the key to creating a convincing threat to your character's life, whether it's physical, professional, or psychological: Include scenes early in your novel that explicitly show what the central problem means to your protagonist. Get your readers to feel what's at stake from the very beginning of the story."

When death in one guise or another awaits the character, we have to keep reading.

2. The Sympathetic Protagonist

"No matter what kind of danger is present, if readers don't care about your protagonist, they still won't worry much about what happens. To really care about your story, readers need to feel sympathy for its lead character." So what makes readers sympathize with -- feel emotionally bound with -- the hero?

First, a well-rounded character, with flaws and strengths. Neither perfection nor complete failures are terribly interesting. Second, guts -- make the hero active. Third, characters who care about someone else are more sympathetic than self-centered egotists.

3. Scene Tension

"Every scene in your novel should have tension, whether that comes from outright conflict or inner emotional turmoil." Outside tension comes from the character having a goal that matters to him or her and significant opposition to achieving it. Most scenes end with the character failing. Even success comes with a cost. I've seen it described recently as "yes, but..." Yes, we succeeded, but now there's a bigger problem! As for failure, that usually is "no, and furthermore..." Not only did we fail, but we're further away than before. Even relatively quiet scenes can have inner tension -- growing worried, concerned, irritability, anxiety.

"So put a sympathetic character into a life-or-death situation and maintain tension in all your scenes. You'll create the pleasurable uncertainty that readers love to feel, page after page."

Check your story against this checklist:

1. Do you have a sympathetic protagonist?
2. Are they facing life-or-death problems?
3. Does every scene maintain the tension?

Your exercise -- take a character, imagine a situation that faces them with a life-or-death challenge, and make a list of at least three scenes where they try to solve the challenge, and fail. Go ahead and write those up -- if you add a beginning and ending, you'll have a whole short story.

No ideas? How about pick a number from one to six? And you have selected the
following situation:

1. A building on fire, with people calling for help
2. An automobile accident, with people pinned inside
3. A building collapsing, with people trapped inside
4. A train wreck, with people hurt
5. A snow storm, with the power out, and people needing help
6. A boat drifting, with engines out, and people looking for help

Go ahead -- walk your character into that situation, and let them try to help.