JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #56
June 17, 2021
This week I’d like to talk about drama in a story. When novice writers try to insert dramatic tension or suspense into a story, they sometimes hide a revelation or show us a character’s reaction to something before showing what the character is reacting to. The character might open the door and then stare in shock at--we have no idea what. One problem with this kind of thing is that there is usually very little drama in a sudden reveal, but quite a lot of drama in how what is revealed impacts a character, in what a character is forced to confront or consider. So, drawing out the reveal rather than the aftermath is to focus on the wrong thing.
Drama, I would argue, comes from the interaction of human intentions. Someone wants something and someone else wants to deny that thing to them. This is also where story comes from, a character with intentions whose actions propel events with the hope that they will fulfill their intentions despite the intentions of other characters. Considered from this point of view, a revelation can be rife with drama, but only in the way it impacts a character’s intentions.
I think the writer’s instinct to hide information and draw out a revelation, to give us several sentences of reaction before telling us what actually happened, stems from the entirely appropriate feeling that a story gains a lot of power when we linger in drama. The problem of course is that there is very little drama in the mystery of what suddenly appeared, so drawing out that moment is like trying to spread too little butter on your toast. On the other hand, if we sufficiently understand a character that we know the sudden appearance of some specific person or item will have a tremendous impact on them, then the appearance itself invigorates a host of dramatic questions, not least of which is What is she going to do now?--how will this impact her intentions that have been driving the story and drama? We need two things for that impact to land: first, we need to know the character well enough to anticipate the magnitude of the impact, if not the concrete specifics; and second, we need to know specifically what the character is going to react to. When these two things come together, the drama is immediately heightened, and the reader grips the book a bit tighter, reads a bit faster, eager to see how the story is going to play out.
Next: On "Method" Writing