Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict and Suspense (8 page)

In the old movie studio days, when actors were under contract, it was said they were in a stable. Not very flattering, of course, but close to the truth. Actors under contract didn’t have a say in the projects they were cast in. They were, indeed, somewhat like cattle.

The days of the old studio contracts are long gone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a stable of your own. No one’s going to know!

So start assembling.

Think of all the characters you really like in the movies. I mean major and minor characters. Who were the actors?

That starts your list.

For example, I always liked the old character actor Alan Hale. Not Junior, who played the Skipper on
Gilligan’s Island,
but Senior, who was in numerous classics including
The Adventures of Robin Hood
and
It Happened One Night.

Hale was versatile and always brought a jaunty stamp to his roles. I want him around for some comic relief on occasion.

I can make him old or young, but he’ll still be Alan Hale.

My favorite actor of all time is Spencer Tracy. He could play a wide variety of roles, and at different ages. The young Tracy could be a tough criminal type or a priest, a crusty fisherman or a doting father.

So I’ll keep him in mind for certain roles.

Go ahead. Make your own list.

Did you know that fictional characters in other books can slide right over and start working for you?

No one has to know: You’re going to change enough about them to make them your own.

Let’s say you’re reading the latest thriller from one of your favorite authors. You really like the character he created, the eccentric cab driver who happens to be a psychic. You like the voice and you like the quirk.

Steal it and shape it to your own use.

Is this legit? Stealing from other authors?

Not only is it legit, it’s one of the best ways to get material.

This is not plagiarism. This is you observing the collective creative mind out there and snatching what you need.

When you read a book with great characters, don’t waste them. Hire them.

Change their sex or age. Or keep them the same and make up a fresh backstory for them.

It’s a time-honored writers’ practice to base characters on real-life folks. You have to be careful here, of course, not to present a thinly veiled portrait that is defamatory.

So if you take a character from real life, consider changing her around a bit. First, can you make
her
a
him?
Yes, you can, and that will often deliver great results. Surprising and fresh. Or you can combine a primary trait of the real person with another person or character.

Play around, but don’t feel shy about borrowing from real life. That’s what it’s there for.

Now that you have a stable of actors and types you can conduct auditions.

I mean it. You have a story you’re creating, now put out the call to the actors and let them come before your mind’s eye and try out for the parts.

Think up scenes in your mind and let several of your actors improvise.

A useful tool for orchestrating your cast is through the
character grid.
You lay out the names of the main characters in a column on the left-hand side. Across the top put in any information you’d like to see at a glance, with one column dedicated to
Conflict.
Here’s what mine might look like:

Now, for each set of character interactions, find points of conflict from the past, present, or future.

Let’s look at our example. In the conflict box for Mary, you might put something like this:

So when Sean suddenly shows up in Mary’s world, there is going to be some residual tension there. The grid allows you to see this relationship at a glance.

Then there is Mary and Hillary. They’re friends, they work in the same office. How might there be tension between them?

It was Mickey Spillane, one of the all-time best-selling novelists, who observed, “Your first chapter sells your book. Your last chapter sells your next book.”

The ending is the most challenging part of your novel. It needs to satisfy without predictability and leave the reader wanting more.

It must solve the conflict and relieve the suspense. It must tie up loose ends and make sense of the story.

You know what’s easy? Throwing in twists and shocks and surprises.

What’s hard is justifying these in a way the reader will appreciate.

Many a book has been a breathless read up to the final chapters, only to be let down by answers that don’t make sense or are too far-fetched to be taken seriously.

Is it necessary to know your ending before you start writing? Yes. But not like it’s carved in marble.

It’s good to have a general idea of how you want the story to come out. Then you can write toward that point, knowing that it’s flexible. You can even conceive of the climactic scene in detail. No one’s going to hold you to it and it will guide your writing.

What you should be looking for is a final battle, a last point of conflict where the stakes are highest and the outcome in doubt.

The battle can be inside or outside, or both.

Inside the character might be a battle for identity. Who is the Lead really? Will he grow and become the person he needs to be?

Take Rick in
Casablanca.
He’s basically a cynic and a drunkard who has given up caring about the world. He doesn’t care if he spends his last days in Casablanca and shrivels up and dies. He thinks he’s been betrayed by a woman who looks remarkably like Ingrid Bergman, and that’s not something a guy easily gets over.

When the woman, Ilsa, shows up in Casablanca with her husband, war hero Viktor Lazlo, Rick has a choice to remain as he is and to withhold help from Ilsa and Lazlo, or he can grow past his hurt and become a decent human being again.

But then a twist. Ilsa declares that she still loves Rick and wants to go away with him. For Rick possesses two letters of transit that mean escape from Casablanca.

Now Rick has the woman of his dreams, but inside a battle begins. Would it be the right thing to do?

And outside there is a battle, too. Rick and the Nazi Major, Strasser, have been playing cat and mouse over the presence of Lazlo. One false move and Rick could lose this battle and his life.

A powerful ending trope revolves around sacrifice.

Think back through the cultural memes of civilization.

Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son. He offers him up but is stopped at the last moment, and rewarded with the promises of God.

Go to the Athenian democracy and a playwright named Euripides. He offers a play called
Alcestis.
In this play a king named Admetus is given a gift. He does not have to die if he can find someone to die in his place.

He cannot, except for his wife, Alcestis, who takes his place out of love.

Off she goes with Death.

But Heracles (the Greek name for Hercules) hears of this and vows to battle Death and bring Alcestis back from the dead.

Which he does.

Alcestis has given the ultimate sacrifice but now has been resurrected.

This theme remains powerful.

In Hammett’s
The Maltese Falcon
, Sam Spade has within his reach the woman he’s fallen for, Brigid O’Shaughnessy. They belong together. Spade knows he’s in love with her. She’s a liar and manipulator, but maybe he can knock that out of her. Maybe he can believe in her and find rest with her.

But Spade has to sacrifice this, because someone has to “take the fall” for the murder of his partner.

After Spade justifies his position to Brigid he says,

In this sacrifice, Spade “wins” because he has upheld the moral order of his universe. When a partner’s killed, the other partner has to “do something about it.” And he’s not going to play the sap.

In Mel Gibson’s film
Braveheart
, William Wallace dies at the end. And not in a pretty way. He can end his torture just by confessing to treason. But he does not. And in his death he “wins” by inspiring his followers, and most notably Robert the Bruce, to fight on like free men.

Remember Rick, the saloon owner we left back in Casablanca? He’s now at the airport with Ilsa, his great love, and she’s ready to go with him. But then he stops and tells her no, this is wrong. We’ll regret this, maybe not now but soon and for the rest of our lives.

But we’ll always have Paris.

Rick sacrifices the thing he wants most. He has become human again. He has won the inner battle, and also the outer. For though he has killed the Nazi major, his new best friend, the little French captain, Louis, lets him go.

In return for his sacrifice, Rick is resurrected. He’s no longer a dead man walking (or drinking). He and Louis go off to join the war effort.

Sacrifice is powerful because it cannot exist without high conflict. It’s no sacrifice to give up your seat on a bus. But to give your life for a cause, or another person, that’s conflict of the highest kind.

Or to give up a cherished dream. Scarlett O’Hara finally realizes her dreams of Old South respectability, and love for Ashley Wilkes who embodied those dreams, has to be sacrificed (though it may be too late for her to get Rhett back).

When you get to thinking about the ending, suspense is weakened in direct proportion to the expectancy of outcome.

In other words, the longer you can keep the reader from guessing the ending, the better. You should be compiling events in such a way that the reader is wondering how on earth this thing will end. And then, end it in a way that, looking back, makes perfect sense.

This is not an easy task.

1. Write down how
   you
   would expect this tale to end.
   
2. Come up with five alternative endings.
   
3. Choose the best one to end on.
   
4. Choose one of the other endings as a possible “twist” at the very end. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. But it’s good to have the option.
   

Do these things to head your ending toward a knockout:

1. Keep track of all questions that are raised and need to be answered. Keep these on a separate sheet of paper or in a dedicated file. Or place comments right there in your document so you can scroll through them later. Let’s say you have a guy show up in your Lead’s car with a knife in his back. Why? You don’t know. Your comment might be as simple as this:

Or you can use the comment to brainstorm:

2. When you’ve written the final chapters, see how many threads you left dangling. Are there some you can do without, plot developments that seem, upon reflection, to be tacked on? If so, cut them.

But if there are threads that need explanation, consider having them handled by a minor character. Someone you’ve planted earlier in the book (or that you do so upon rewrite) who can come in at the end and explain what happened.

3. Go for a final resonance. By that I mean your very last paragraphs. Work these until you have just the right sound, the right mood. Some examples that, if you know the book, feel just right:

And there you have the foundations for a novel of conflict and suspense. Know these elements as best you can before you begin. Your story—not to mention your readers—will thank you for it.

Now we have one last question to answer: Where do we put these elements on the time line of our book?

You do it in three acts.

Now you’ve got the solid foundations for a novel full of conflict and suspense.

Take a stab at writing your own cover copy.