{"id":10387,"date":"2023-04-12T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10387"},"modified":"2023-04-12T07:21:54","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T11:21:54","slug":"do-you-hear-that-thunder-writing-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10387","title":{"rendered":"Hear That Thunder? Writing Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As author Benjamin Percy relates in Thrill Me<\/a><\/em>, his book of essays on the writing craft, his childhood books were portals for escape. \u201cSuck me into the tornado, beam me through an intergalactic transporter, drag me down the rabbit hole,\u201d he says. Although he\u2019s studied the tenets of literary fiction, he strongly believes the \u201cWhat happens next?\u201d engine more typical of genre fiction is what propels readers through most novels. Thrill them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one of those books, like Donald Maass\u2019s The Emotional Craft of Fiction<\/a><\/em>, that you can benefit from rereading at different stages of a writing project. Insights glossed over earlier will suddenly make sense as your new work evolves. Here are just a few of Percy\u2019s thoughts that particularly resonated with me this time around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While a story will have a big goal\u2014solve the puzzle, catch the killer, marry the prince, win the battle\u2014it also needs lower-order goals, at the scene or chapter level, to keep the plot moving. (I\u2019d add here that, sometimes, the protagonist\u2019s goal is subconscious. Maybe Mary believes her goal is to gain the prestige of the job promotion and new title, but what she\u2019s really yearning for is recognition in her father\u2019s eyes.) Working toward a lower-order goal\u2014baking a cake, fixing a carburetor, shopping for a dress, staying out of the path of a hurricane\u2014maintains a story\u2019s momentum and can steer you through what otherwise might be a too-long scene of dialog, the dread BOGSAT: Bunch of Guys Sitting Around Talking. Deadly. Frowned upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another well-used (because it\u2019s effective) device to keep the readers focused on what happens next is the \u201cticking clock.\u201d It needn\u2019t be as literal as a real clock counting down the seconds until the bomb goes off, but it will be some kind of critical deadline (apt word, that). In James Wolff\u2019s new spy novel, The Man in the Corduroy Suit<\/em>, the protagonist has two weeks to find out whether a former MI5 employee was actually a spy. To keep the investigation secret, he can\u2019t make any obvious moves, so it\u2019s slow work. He\u2019s just getting started when the deadline is changed to one week. The metaphorical ticking clock can be an important impending visit, a wedding that shouldn\u2019t come off, the start of the school year, the fate of a kidnapped child\u2014anything with outsized importance in the mind of the protagonist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a long and rocky fictional path to relieving the tension caused by the ticking clock, and at times it may seem like a toss-up whether the protagonist will actually succeed. Once one obstacle along the path is resolved or one question is answered, the writer must keep \u02bcem coming. As Percy says, \u201ca good story is a turnstile of mysteries.\u201d It may seem the protagonist can never\u2014or rarely\u2014catch a break along that rocky path. And there\u2019s that thunder rumbling in the distance, that clock ticking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My next novel is set in Rome and has two principal narrators. Genie Clarke is an American travel writer who has inadvertently made herself the target of a group of gangsters, and Leo Angelini is a Polizia di Stato<\/em> detective trying to protect her. One ticking clock is the ultimatum the head of the gangsters has given his men: \u201cGet her.\u201d Could there be a romance between Genie and Leo? This possibility has its own ticking clock: Genie\u2019s imminent return to the States. Let\u2019s hope this book gets published so you can find out what happens next!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try Thrill Me<\/a><\/em> for yourself and see what insights you can pull out for your WIP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The Amazon links to books above are affiliate links. I receive a small compensation for the recommendation if you click through on them and make a purchase. The product cost is the same to you whether you use an affiliate link or not.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As author Benjamin Percy relates in Thrill Me, his book of essays on the writing craft, his childhood books were portals for escape. \u201cSuck me into the tornado, beam me through an intergalactic transporter, drag me down the rabbit hole,\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The importance of making readers want the answer to one single question: \"What happens next?\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,29],"tags":[2081,771],"class_list":["post-10387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing","tag-benjamin-percy","tag-donald-maass"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Hx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10390,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10387\/revisions\/10390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}