Quantum Storytelling

Why do some stories have suspense, and others don’t?

In her book How To Write KILLER Fiction, Carolyn Wheat explains what she calls The Four Outcomes:

A character wants something, something concrete in the here-and-now. Will he get it? There are four possible outcomes: “Yes,” “No,” “No, and furthermore,” and “Yes, but.” The first two outcomes do absolutely nothing to move the plot.

The “no, and furthermore” answer is one of the two outcomes that will move the story and fill the middle of your suspense novel with every-deepening complications. Whatever your characters do in the middle of the book should not only fail, it should fail in such a way that it makes their situations actively worse than they were before.

The most interesting use of the “yes, but” outcome is the “yes” with a hidden “but.” Our hero gladly accepts the “yes” part of the answer, and settles down in the comfortable belief that he’s being helped. And then, when he least expects it, the hidden “but” pops up–and the hero is plunged into distrust and danger once again.

I found this explanation satisfying as it explains why simple yes-no answers to conflict are never very dramatic or moving within a work. The protagonist should never get exactly what they want, or if they do there should be a serious catch to complicate matters. The writer is very much the designer of an obstacle course that the hero must get through.

My entry into the game industry was as a level designer, so I very much understand this kind of ‘design’ in writing. But it’s also the hardest part. Coming up with puzzles, tricks and traps, “but”s and “furthermore”s is a lot of hard work.

If your hero is accomplishing things too easily, then at least you know you’ve got a problem. Make it more challenging!

Some also frame this technique by asking the question; “What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to the main characters at this point in the story?” Keep in mind, however, that it’s not just about beating your characters down. Half of the technique is in developing the response your characters will have. For every action there is reaction, and thus conflict. And where there is conflict, lay the seeds of suspense.

“What happens next?”

In my experiences writing, this is one of the hardest questions to answer. But it’s really not so hard. I’ve often found that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill when I get stuck on this problem. It’s not hard to think of Worst Case Scenarios to put your characters in. You can always go back and change them at a later date, the point is to shut the internal critic up and just establish a baseline of plot points so you have something to work with.

When in doubt, create conflict.

The Midnight Disease offers up yet even more fascinating tidbits:

Writer’s block that is linked to anxiety is often also tied to procrastination–the process that leads you to suddenly clean out your basement the week before a writing deadline. Procrastination of a different sort can accompany depression. For at the most fundamental (or simplistic) level, there are perhaps only two types of writer’s block, high energy and low energy. Unlike low-energy block, high-energy block may worsen as your deadline approaches; it makes you sweat, makes you sit down only to jump up again. When your work is part of who you are, and you fear that it is bad, you become more and more frantic. Perhaps you have ideas, but you quickly reject them as worthless. Perhaps you do not even let them into your consciousness, but feel them swelling, purulent–an abscess where your brain used to be. In low-energy block, the desire that makes you sit down to write is a dull sense of guilt. Instead of ideas, you only have sterile ruminations on how things used to be when you could write, when the world had color.

Before this I hadn’t even considered that there could be different types of block. To me, block was block. My block is totally high-energy. I can’t sit still, I get distracted easily. The more energy I have, the harder it is for me to focus.

Although self-diagnosis is often completely inaccurate, I consider myself to be somewhat hypomanic. A brief time spent in therapy during 2001 seems to have confirmed this. My ‘depressions’ are not so much depression in the classical sense, but slumps caused by anxiety or negatively spent excess energy. I can be a little obsessive/compulsive at times, and so most of my writer’s block is the high energy variety.

Fascinating enough, writer’s block is also linked to the frontal lobe of the brain, which, not-so-coincidentally is also responsible for higher order logic and planning. Those with low-energy block (depression) have lessened activity in the frontal lobe. Those with high-energy block, such as myself, are reigned under control by structure, routine and planning.

This perfectly explains my love for structure. It makes me feel safe and calm from my own irrational energies. I know that if I have a good plot, for example, all I need to do is sit back and write. It also highlights the most frustrating part of writing and writer’s block for me–when the ideas and excitement are so high that I’m almost fundamentally incapable of sitting down and getting anything done. This happens a lot actually… and while some might call that a blessing, at times I think it is a curse.

I am more of a hypergraphia kind of person. I can write lengthy blog posts such as this one, rambling forum posts, emails, etc. But when I sit down and stare at my novel, the energy begins to boil in a fury that threatens to choke me.

Solution to a low-energy writer’s block involves getting yourself excited. Arouse yourself–find more energy. Solution to a high-energy block is, ironically, to be less aroused. Lessen the excitement and energy somehow. Maybe I need to take up meditation? Whatever helps me focus I guess…

I’ve learned a lot about myself from The Midnight Disease. Perhaps you could too.

Is your creative block high-energy or low-energy?

“It’s a perfect day for doing the Unstuck, for dancing like you can’t hear the beat, and you don’t give a further thought to things like feet block.”

For those in the U.S. or with access to a Barnes & Noble, it’s on clearance right now for $4.98 - an awfully cheap price to end your writer’s block.

This one has a lot of juicy advice. I don’t so much have a problem writing as I do coming up with the right ideas for the right scenes. It doesn’t matter, as the book so far is solving both for me.

At the very least, do yourself a favor and flip through it at the bookstore to see if it might help you. My guess is it can.

“It’s a perfect day for getting wild, forgetting all your worries, life and everything that makes you cry.”

Ok, now that we know one of Eric’s favorite bands in high school… get out and get yourself Unstuck.