Quick reminder: We are having an ART*hub event this Saturday (17/03/2012)
From 9:30am-12p: We have our writers group authorSPHERE on.
From 12:30pm-3pm: We have our artists group openCANVAS on.
From 3:30pm-6pm: We have our musicians/composers group artBEAT on.
Address: 4 West Promenade, MVC, Manly
It’s good to get back to authorSPHERE this year with the Ivars leading the way with his creative insights. Hopefully this year, things will be a bit different. Here’s why:
We are having an ART*hub event this Saturday.
From 9:30am-12p: We have our writers group authorSPHERE on.
From 12:30pm-3pm: We have our artists group openCANVAS on.
From 3:30pm-6pm: We have our musicians/composers group artBEAT on.
Address: 4 West Promenade, MVC, Manly
“What is written without effort is read without pleasure.” – Samuel Johnson
The Art of Creating and Maintaining Suspense in Writing
The generous application of palpable suspense in a novel, a screenplay, or any other form of writing, is an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of the skilled author.
The word suspense has its roots in the Latin suspendere, meaning to hang up or put on the shelf, the Medieval Latin suspensum, meaning to delay, and in the Late Middle English word, deriving from the Anglo-French, suspendre, meaning to suspend. The word is pregnant with shades of meaning, evoking such strong concepts as anxiety, uncertainty, expectation, excitement, and beyond. Utilizing these concepts with great skill, the author makes us wait, progressively orchestrates a feeling of anxiety within us, and, then, takes us right to the edge where nerves are literally frayed from the unrelenting pressure of the tension evoked.
Suspense can just as easily ride along waves of hatred, fear, love, or hope. It works equally well whether we already know the outcome of a particular work or film, such as the Last of the Mohicans, or, if we don’t know how everything will turn out, such as the enigmatic novel, Ulysses.
Extraordinary situations have the power to elicit an enormous amount of suspense, yet, life ordinary situations also have the ability to pluck at our heartstrings and emotions in ways that resonate with the very depths of our soul.
One such amazingly tension-ridden image has been etched deeply into my consciousness. In it, Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford in The Empire Strikes Back, finds himself encased in an ugly, bronze colored, shiny chamber of Carbonite, his life now in a tenuous state of suspended animation. Having seen the transformation from living, breathing human being to wall mounted trophy happen before my eyes, there was a literal craving within me to know what would happen to him! I absolutely had to see the sequel! The power of not knowing, exemplified!
Few of us would be old enough to remember the Saturday afternoon matinee in which beautiful damsels would often be tied to railroad tracks with a steam locomotive headed full speed towards them, but those of us who do will also vividly recall the unbearable tension created by the horrible image.
Here, the suspense draws its power from the creation of an impossible situation from which the hero or heroine cannot possibly escape unaided. The classic line by Auric Goldfinger epitomizes such tension-filled scenes: “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” And, that is the reason we keep turning the pages, one after the other, because we simply have to know how it all ends! Will James Bond become a soprano, or worse?
As a prerequisite to powerful tension, the effective author must create a deep sympathy for the character or characters he or she has created. Once upon a time, the men wearing the white hats would win and those with black hats would lose, so our natural connection would be with the hero or heroine.
However, there has been a surprising trend in many books and films where the author has us experience an outstanding connection with someone we would ordinarily consider to be a bad guy, thief or thug. Because the writer has so powerfully endeared these characters to our hearts, we actually want them to win, to escape, or to get away with whatever they’re trying to get away with! Who among us didn’t want the Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones characters in Entrapment to outsmart the authorities? Who was actually wishing Bonnie and Clyde would be killed in the end? And, admit it to yourself, weren’t you secretly hoping that our on screen friend, Robert Redford, in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, would make it out alive?
Suspense, however, is not limited to action adventure scenarios. Romance and unrequited love possess great power to evoke unmitigating, compelling emotional tension. Will he win over the girl? Will she endear her man?
These have been heart-rending themes for countless works of poetry, plays, novels, and film scripts for centuries, and, rightly so, as they are the undeniable essence of so much of what makes us human. In the perennially popular Back to the Future film series, we witness the power of love motivating the characters to go to the most extraordinary lengths to secure a future together. The Doc, superbly played by Christopher Lloyd, is smitten in the late 1800’s with a beautiful woman, Clara, and does everything in his power to secure her love. Clara, delightfully portrayed by Mary Steenburgen, is equally smitten and abandons all logical thinking and risks potential death in order to be with the one she loves. And all along the way we feel the tension. Even though it is a romantic comedy, we watch with bated breath, hoping for a positive outcome.
Or, how about young Dustin Hoffman naïvely making his way through life in the Graduate, until he finds himself lured into Mrs. Robinson’s bedroom? Will he or won’t he, we ask ourselves, perhaps reliving some childhood angst emanating from deep within us. The tension created is palpable and ever so effective!
What about that typical Hollywood invention, the chase scene? My favorite would have to be Steve McQueen driving that excellent, customized 1968 Max Balchowsky Mustang 390GT 2+2 Fastback in the film, Bullitt. The streets of San Francisco have never been bouncier! I must have seen hundreds of chase scenes in my life or read them in books, and yet I must confess, I never tire of them and they never disappoint me. A well crafted chase scene has the singular ability to create an excellent sense of excitement coupled with a tangible feeling of danger within me!
Speaking of excitement and danger, how about Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, with movies like Rear Window and Psycho. Albeit now dated, their power to keep us on the edge of our literal seats continues unabated. After all, Norman Bates is a household word. The Master truly knew how to build suspense upon tension upon anxiety in an unrelenting, unmerciful manner that was simply exquisite.
I generally do not watch horror as a genre, but what happens when horror meets science fiction? When the former Governator played the Terminator, chased by an even more advanced, liquid metal Terminator from the future, I’m sure your stomach was in as much of a knot as mine. The taking down of Cyberdyne Systems was an amazing cliffhanger, culminating in the lead scientist there finally releasing the deadman’s switch as he, himself, died. Or how about the Alien series with those pesky, all pervasive, massive bug-like creatures that could come out of anywhere at any time and did? Is it really true that in space no one can hear you scream? The level of tension in the first film of the franchise is nothing less than stellar, pardon the pun! Suspense here in the not knowing as much as it is in seeing it coming at us!
And, then, of course, there is that incredibly effective, once nearly ubiquitous, tension building devise that revolves around the simple words, “To Be Continued!” Kate Mulgrew’s plight as Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek Voyager is interrupted by those very words when she is forced to participate in a bizarre sequence of war games in an alien version of Nazi times. Again, the driving force created by the tension of not knowing how things would turn out created an incredible hunger for the next episode! The number of novels that have cascaded into two, three, or more sequels is amazing, but, more rare is the novel that ends in a cliffhanger, relying on the next one in the series to bring our rapidly beating, anxious hearts some form of relief.
In writing we achieve incredible tension when one of the characters we have so lovingly created is left in the hands of an evil nemesis, hanging, as it were, by a thread. The ever popular Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 4 is left literally hanging from a rope around his hands, bare chested, soaking wet and about to be the proud owner of some very serious electrical scars on his body courtesy of a very evil-looking bad guy. Our anxiety running high, we are left with our heart in our throat as the director decides to take us to another plot thread to see what is happening there! Fortunately, when we return, we find Martin Riggs does an amazing job of kicking the daylights out of his assailant, just in time for another dose of sweet suspense!
Perhaps the most enduring memory I have is from the film, Cliffhanger, in which the inimitable Sylvester Stallone, playing mountain man Gabe Walker, is forced to dive into a fierce, icy stream running under thick, semi-transparent ice by some incredibly bad guys. To see his face looking through the frosty crust, freezing to death, certainly had me screaming inside, How in the world will he ever get out of this?!!! He does, making it through an incredible maze of further suspenseful scenarios, but, what a ride! A true cliff hanger!
In terms of tension, it seems, the more drawn out you can make it, the better! Increasing the suspense amplitude by continually dialing up the number of possible sources of tension also seems to be the go. Apparently, it’s not so important what happens in between suspenseful scenes as it is to ensure that the audience or the reader is left hanging, begging for more!
Your assignment is to write the end of a chapter, a poem or a script that makes your readers do just that, beg for more!
Of course, the perennial favorite is a notecard with the words — How do you keep a turkey in suspense? — Written on both sides of the card.
Leonie shares her poetry with us on open night.
Thankyou to all those who contributed from authorSPHERE to the exhibition ‘Art By Association’, part of Manly Arts Festival. We definitely helped put on a great show! ‘Art By Association’ open night was a HUGE success. We had about 80+ people turn up for the open night.
Poets included Leonie, Warren Eggleton and Frank Farvis. On the night, Leonie braved the microphone and shared with the audiences her poetry. Chris Mumford from authorSPHERE also performed some of his music on open night.
The poems from people from authorSPHERE were situated in the middle of the exhibition space. The element of poetry helped expand the variety of artistic expression in the exhibition and were well received.
Open night was a huge success. It was a night of art, poetry, song, speeches and great cheer. It was also good to see Kerry Montgomery enjoy the night as well.
Thanks everyone for contributing to a wonderful exhibition! The exhibition ‘Art By Association’, part of the Manly Arts Festival, was a huge success. It’s up to ALL you guys to make the art scene happen. We ALL need your support to see art, music, drama, dance, writing and other freedom’s of human expression take place in Manly. After all – this is what artists make: community.
Can’t wait to see you next authorSPHERE! See you there!
Few of us are old enough to remember the RCA Victor record labels. Pictured on the label was a lovely little dog sitting up with his ears perked listening to the sound of his master coming through a rather ancient gramophone, wind up type record player. The look on his face was one of ecstasy. The slogan read: His Master’s Voice.
There has always been tremendous power associated with the spoken word. It is in the listening that the power resides. There are numerous examples that come to mind, but today we focus on that which has been written being read aloud and the impact that it can have on the reader cum listener.
One such an unforgettable example, which ended up touching the entire planet with a great degree of profundity, was the reading on the radio of Orson Welles’ work of science fiction called, The War of the Worlds. Such was the power and sheer terror evoked that listeners throughout the world were convinced that Martians had landed and the fate of the Earth was no longer in their hands. Wells began his broadcast with a disclaimer, saying it was a work of fiction, but apparently, at least to that small part, no one was listening.
On a humorous note, one of my favorite Bill Cosby stories is titled, The Chicken Heart That Ate Chicago. In this story the nostalgic appeal of massive radios the size of human beings as the main source of family entertainment is underscored. The mother and father leave their children at home for a night on the town (something you’d never get away with nowadays) and the children, contrary to specific instructions from their parents NOT to, turn on this massive box of a radio and listen to the Friday night horror stories. Replete with sound effects and a totally fantastic, but, for children, ever so believable, narrative, the young Cosby ends up believing that this massive chicken heart is outside his door ready to eat him. Needless to say, after having spread Jell-O (jelly) all over the floor and having turned out the lights so that the monster would slip and fall, the return of his parents to a darkened room and a slippery floor does not bode well for him.
With the advent of television and again of the Internet, rumors of the death of radio abounded, yet radio is still strong and has found its way into cyberspace. Radio theater has largely been replaced by first, silent films, then, talkies as they were called (remember the words of the famous movie producer, Who wants movies that talk, anyway?), and then television dramas, or, as the weaker ones have been affectionately called, soap operas. Of course, these were and continue to be the go.
Yet, for writers, the power of their work being read aloud and listened to in a plethora of venues and environments and for an equally wide variety of reasons, continues unabated.
The task of filling up endless hours while driving vast distances in Canada and Australia with small children in the car was delightfully fulfilled through the use of books on tape, as they once were know, and now audio books on various media from the CD to the MP3 on a variety of platforms, be they in the car, on your iPod, or played back through your home entertainment system. For writers there is always a gap to be filled, a need to be met, and ears to be tickled by the reading of their works aloud for the entertainment or instruction of a ready and willing audience.
And lest we forget, there are those among our readership who can only read with their ears. The service that audio books provides to those who are sight impaired or totally blind cannot be overestimated. For a large percentage of your readership, this will be the only way they can read your books.
As an integral part of preparing yourself for publishing, you need to ask yourself who will read your books aloud to these most precious readers. If you have a golden voice and do not tire of the sound of it, you may consider narrating the work into audio format yourself. On the other hand, those of us who reserve their voice for special occasions would do well to pick a friend,a movie star, or someone with an equally appealing voice to read their work aloud for them.
Even the task of editing what you have written is greatly facilitated by having someone else read your work out loud, slowly, so that those troublesome passages that we tend to skip over in order to reach the sections we are content with become apparent to our ears. The thought immediately jumps to the front of our mind: That just doesn’t sound right! And surprisingly, often the solution of how to rework, reword or reorder the passage instantly springs to mind, all this simply because we are one step removed from the process by hearing instead of letting our eyes run over the words and fill in whatever gaps or awkwardness may exist.
Should you decide to have someone read your work out loud for you, it is essential that you ensure that person is someone you can trust not to trample on your precious creation and destroy any last vestige of confidence you may have engendered from its writing.
The alternative to a live human being to assist you, especially if you are new to writing and still quite unsure of yourself, is the use of the text to speech engine available on many modern word processors. Even the slightly robotic sounding voices employed by such sub programs have the amazing power of bringing clarity to your writing and will be genuinely invaluable.
Your assignment today is twofold. First, take something you have written and either have someone read it aloud for you, slowly, and identify those areas that need correcting and/or editing, or use the cleverly hidden text-to-speech facility in your word processor to bring your story to life and make the appropriate changes.
Secondly, take the time to think about who you would like to read your writing aloud for that important segment of your readership who will only encounter it in audio format.
Since you are the world’s best writers, completely capable and incredibly creative, this will be a powerful weapon in your arsenal towards creating the best works you possibly can. After all, nothing less will do!
The question could be raised, what is worse than a poorly written book? The sounds of silence.
(Should you have had the sad misfortune to have missed the last exciting meeting, here is an overview of what we experienced.)
The fabric of a book is what gives it its character, its texture, its unique approach to putting pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, voice to microphone in order to record words to be read. Whether the fabric is smooth as silk, rough as denim and equally dark, woven with delicious highlights of gold as in a fine brocade, or woolly and undulating in its thickness and depth, one is immediately aware of what that fabric may be the instant a book is begun.
The texture of a book’s fabric is about many things.
It is about the number of words it takes to get to the same point, to describe an action, a person, or thing. For some, more is best. The more completely they can describe the occurrence of a personage, an environment or whatever it might be, the better. For others, less is more in their search for a minimalist depiction of events and people that leads the author and the reader down a narrow, restricted path, often leading to greater elegance in the work’s execution.
The same holds true for the depth of character development employed by various authors. For some, a cardboard cutout of certain characters in their writing will suffice, as it is the action within the story that will carry the reader along. For others, the depth and three-dimensional portrayal of the characters within their writing is often more important than the storyline.
In a similar vein, the description of objects, foods, weapons, vehicles, venues, cities and the like will be equally robust or just as Spartan, given the predilection of the author. For some, the details of street names, weapon types, and various culinary delights are essential in order to transport the reader in his or her mind to the exact place the author is attempting to describe. For others, the mere mention of words like Paris, a Walther PPK, or roast beef with Yorkshire pudding is enough to trigger the reader’s own imagination and/or his or her memories, conjuring up the requisite images, sensations, tastes, and smells.
Then there are those who like to take the reader for a stroll through the mind of each and every character the author creates, to feel what they’re feeling, experience the pressures life brings to bear, and sense with great amplification the realization and/or dashing of their hopes and fears. Others simply describe outward actions of the protagonists involved, never penetrating beneath the surface in order to keep the action going at full throttle.
All these and more contribute to the fabric of the story and, by definition, identify and differentiate one author from another with great clarity and a certain comfortable predictability. There is a reason why people flock to bookstores following the announcement of their favorite author’s latest release!
You know when you are reading Ruth Rendell when the kettle dark English skies and the verdant gardens of London’s parks close in upon one, when frail English spinsters, deprived of love and afraid to seek it reveal their hearts to us.
In the stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle there is that constant and famous bantering back and forth between Watson and Holmes, going into the most minute detail in order to explain the stunningly acute deductive powers of the great detective.
The latest super sleuth on the international horizon, created by the Norwegian author Jo Nesbo, is a detective with the unlikely name of Harry Hole. He proves to be an incredibly observant and tenacious criminal investigator who suffers massive bouts of depression, fights with his alcoholic demons and other addictions, witnesses his family destroyed, his middle finger chopped off at the hand of a serial killer and still keeps going incredibly well.
Linda Fairstein’s audacious, sometimes naive and eminently pleasant character, Alexandra Cooper, investigates the crimes against and fights for the rights and safety of sexual crime victims. She comes replete with a cast of amicable colleagues who give a feeling of family and camaraderie like few others.
The characters created by Sydney author, Matthew Reilly, such as Scarecrow and Book, have a fierce loyalty one to another, but the emphasis is on non-stop action portrayed in intricate detail. It makes the books sing along!
Each of these authors and countless others have found their groove, their modus operandi, the way that writing works for them. And we are the glad recipients of that very fact every time we pick up one of their books.
Your Assignment today is to examine your own writing style and then identify it using the analogy of a piece of cloth. Knowing the fabric that gives substance to your writing will give you greater focus and new freedom to be who you already are, a great writer!
A great opportunity has arisen! The ART*hub is looking at including the works of poets in the upcoming Manly Arts Festival exhibition!
Poets or authors like Leonie, Warren or Jeremy may wish to present works of poetry within the art space that the ART*hub is putting on in the Manly Arts Festival.
Please contact Jake Elliot if you would like to get involved. People from artBEAT, openCANVAS, showCASE and thinkSPEAK will also be involved for this creative event.
The ART*beat would love to see your work out in the community!
(In case you were unable to attend today’s session of authorSphere, here is the overview of plotting which I handed out. The assignment will help focus your thoughts and ideas. IO, Manly)
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The plot is what a book is about, what happens therein, what interactions there are between characters, and, the beginning and end of the journey that takes the reader for a wild and exciting ride. Of course, the incorporation of sub plots, of what is happening in the background to or by protagonists other than the main character or characters, makes for an even more interesting read. The delicate interweaving of the subplots with the main plot makes for a book where the pages seem to turn themselves.
A book can be written where all the developments happen along a definite forward moving timeline, often seen through the eyes of a narrator or of the main characters themselves, or, there can be the omniscient God’s eye view unfolding of the story, flipping from one thread of action and developments to another, seamlessly taking the reader from one protagonist’s world or sphere of influence to another and back again.
The plot can be aptly compared to a literal plot of ground in which the author has complete control over what happens and what doesn’t happen, over the fate or destiny of each and every character, over the very future and the occasional past that he or she creates. There are no limits; the only factor that can possibly hold the author back is the height, length, breadth and width of his or her imagination.
The plot defines the boundaries of the world created, its physical locale, be it somewhere on earth, in outer space, on an alien world, or within the cerebral confines of the human mind. It shows us the path the characters have chosen to take, or that which the author has dictated for them, sometimes leading to pleasant experiences, sometimes exactly in the opposite direction with the most ubiquitous emotion felt by the characters and the reader being one of overweening frustration.
It is often said that unless you the writer can describe the plot of your book in such simple terms as would fit on the back of a business card, you have yet to reach clarity regarding the wide expanse of writing you have undertaken. Of course, subplots deserve their own business card. It’s only right, inasmuch as they make the book far more interesting and powerful, not to mention unforgettable.
For some writers, the plot only unfolds one chapter at a time, the clarity they desire always one step away, just around the next corner, just a few more meters into that impenetrable fog up ahead. For others, they know the end from the beginning and everything in between. For them, it is simply a matter of writing it out.
I have concentrated on the art of writing a book. However, the rules apply equally to screenplays, graphic novels, poetry and any other similar endeavors. The question we need to ask ourselves as authors is, why should anyone want to read what I have written? If the answer is, because we have written something that will shake and rock the world of the reader, leaving them radically changed, nevermore the same, then, we have accomplished our task very well.
Whether we have set out to entertain, to enlighten, to provide levity in an otherwise dull world, or whether we have set out to change the world itself and the world of our readers in a radical fashion, we know we have done our job properly when both we and our readers can say, that was amazing!
Your assignment today is to pick a topic that fits whatever form of writing you prefer and excel in and work out what the plot will be. Then, draw a rough, small rectangle the size of a business card on the white space below, confidently distilling the plot into its essential elements. You may use additional rectangles for each sub plot you envision. You may only have the beginning of what you’re going to do, or, you may see the end from the beginning. In either case, you have begun a great work.
Now, take this seed and let it grow into something amazing! You can do it! You are the best!
“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison
authorSPHERE 