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Ever have trouble with plots and subplots? Characterization keeping you up at night? Having issues with suspense and tension?

You can read a ton of books, take writing courses, get critiques like you always have, or you can spend a couple of hours a day for a few days or even a week watching the work of writers who have mastered all these skills.  Infamous for their ability to suck in a new viewer, sneered upon even more than romance writers, you gotta hand it to them.  Soap opera script writers know what they're doing.

Their plots and subplots are written very well and are extremely well-balanced.  They have to be.  Remember, they have to keep an audience interested enough that they'll wait through some of the most obnoxious commercials aired on tv, second only to late night infomercials, to continue watching.  During the dread commercial break a viewer can easily switch to a different soap or plug in a non-commercial-laden DVD. 

 

Their characterization is strong.  The viewers may know who the bad guys are, but not all the characters do know who the bad guys are and that makes for a lot of fun.  (Take a lesson from that right there.)  They write bitches like no one else and put honey in their mouths when those bitches are a wooing.  If you have trouble writing good guys that aren't boring, look no farther.  Each character has a distinct voice, goals, agenda--they're well-rounded and unique.

Suspense and tension?  They've taken it to extremes that have become laughable in the tv screenwriting industry, turning the cliff-hanger into a cliche' and drama into new heights (or lows, if you prefer) of melodrama.  What's beautiful about it as far as learning how to do it from a writing perspective is that the snippets of plot are broken down into very short frames and you can examine the tension arch in bold relief.  

The writing has to be good or there would be no audience.  In matter of fact they have a huge audience, one any writer would envy.  They have to be able to pull in a new viewer in just a few seconds in the middle of the story, with no recap because they never know when a new viewer will come in.  That alone I find fascinating, that the writing can bring in a viewer into the story even though that viewer has no idea (initially) what's going on.

I bet you think I'm joking but I'm not.  Give it a try.  Just remember, they are addicting.  Whole magazines and forums are devoted to them.  There was even a paranormal one I came very close to becoming addicted to when I last had the flu.  It's worth the risk for a quick, dirty and efficient lesson in effective writing techniques.  

Openers

I've spent a huge number of hours reading openings, and critiquing some of them, at the now infamous Nathan Bransford's Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge.  (The contest is closed to submissions and they're sorting through the entries now.)  I've read various rules and suggestions for how to open a novel, but I have to say at this point that reading about it and/or thinking about it is no substitute for reading about a gizillion openings and picking apart as many as you can stand to critique.  

Go forth and read the entries.  Find the flaws in the best ones.  May your eyes be opened.  And then read Shock and Awe.   Although we always hear that a novel should open with a hook, in the middle of it all, preferably with action, that doesn't mean that the action has to be physical.  Suddenly I'm okay with how Masks opens again.  Yay!

Don't get a massage; be tense!

I have been working, really, on Masks. I'm coming up on a big scene, and I'm a little nervous about it so I'm trying to be careful. Not careful careful, where I'm trying to control everything. Ew, that's no fun, not for the writer, or the reader. Just trying not to rush. Trying to let this scene unfold without rushing into things.

It's got me thinking about tension again. Tension can come from all kinds of sources. The ticking clock is one. Time's running out! Don't dilly dally, because here it comes! Then there's the 'the other group is in trouble while you guys are farting around here' method. About the time when this group hits an oh no moment, the author goes back to the first group. You want to know what's happening with both groups simultaneously and you're biting your nails, but you only can know about one at a time, and that tension can effectively carry you through what would otherwise be somewhat mundane set ups for various scenes. Yet another form of tension comes from exploring the unknown. Another is setting up a dire consequence--the last person to attempt this died horribly--and putting the character through the anticipation of awfulness about to happen. The list of how to develop tension is really long. Despite the almost infinite opportunities to create tension, though, it's easy to lose. Why?

My theory is that, at least in my case, the tension is counteracted by the various characters constantly trying to relieve their own stress. They want to take time for tea. They want to sleep dreamlessly. They want to escape, even for a moment, their circumstances. Well, too bad. If they want it, it'll have to happen off screen, or briefly and in a way that leads them to even more badness.

Tension aids in movement. If everyone, or even just most of the people in a scene are totally comfortable, there will be little or no tension and the scene won't move. It'll just sit there, sit there and smoke and drink beer and watch the game with maybe an occasionally leap off the stinky couch to toss potato chips in the air and curse at a referee that can't hear it. It'll be a lazy scene without tension.

So why not rush to get to the 'good part'? Glad you asked. Because it's all the good part. If I rush through now, I'll miss an opportunity to create more tension. By not rushing, by giving this scene the attention it deserves, I've stressed the dynamic between two of the characters in numerous and hopefully entertaining ways. This should pay off big time later. And, I'll get to have another cliffhanger chapter ending if I time this right, just as the scene I am definitely not going to rush toward hops out of the closet dressed in lace panties and a clown hat.

It may be that all this attention to detail may not pay off, and I'll end up cutting the scene anyway. But I think it's okay. I think I'll let it live, for now. And while it's alive, it's going to be tense, tense as a adolescent boy asking a girl out for his very first date. How will she answer? We'll find out later, in chapter X.