Today on the Go Teen Writers Book Club, we’re discussing Chapter Eleven: Promises.
Chapter Recap:
The whole point of this chapter is to understand that the way you write makes promises to your readers, and it’s very important that you don’t break the promises you make.
Mr. James says that stories are built on promises. Your readers will only trust you because you keep your promises. Did you know you were making promises to your reader from page one? You are. The beginning of your story should set up the overarching promises of your book. Does your hero, who has what she most desires, lose it and set out to get it back? Or, will she see what she wants and go after it? Or, will she be forced to try and escape what she most dreads in life? One of these three options is the promise that Mr. James says will launch your story.
A List of No Nos
Here are six things Mr. James warns writers NOT to do to their readers:
1) Do not indicate that something will be important, then fail to give it any significance. This is something I notice often in movies. Too many Hollywood screenwriters are not careful with this—or it could be the directors and producers who come in and muck a perfectly good screenplay. Regardless, when a story spends a lot of time on a character or plot line only to have it go nowhere, it’s maddening to audiences. So be careful not to do this.
2) Don’t develop conflict, then neglect to resolve it in a satisfactory way. Imagine spending a bunch of time creating a problem that is driving your hero (and readers) crazy. Both cannot wait to be free of this situation. And then the problem simply fizzles. Or the story ends and the hero doesn’t get a chance to overcome that particular situation. This leaves readers feeling frustrated. If you torture your hero, be sure to at the very least give him a chance to get in one good punch.
3) Avoid having your character act in unbelievable ways. Oh, yes. This annoys me so much. I notice this kind of problem a lot in television shows. Random episodes where characters do things they would never do—things completely against their character. This is a pet peeve of mine, and it drives me batty!
4) Don’t grow your character to the point where they should be transforming, then leave them unchanged. Readers say, “Boo!” to this move.
5) Don’t resolve too much tension too early. You don’t want your reader relaxing early on, then putting the book down and picking up another. Space out that tension in just the right places.
6) Do not bring out interesting side characters that readers really like then allow them to disappear from the story. Keep interesting characters around!
Secrets to Developing Suspense
Mr. James gave several tips for developing suspense in your writing. The most important one is to put your hero(es) in some kind of jeopardy. You do this to evoke in your reader one of four emotions:
1) Reader empathy- If your reader is empathizing with your hero, things are good. Be sure that readers know what your hero wants and is working towards. That will increase their empathy for him when trouble comes.
2) Reader concern- If readers care about your character, put your character in some kind of peril. It doesn’t have to be life-or-death danger. It could be humiliation, stress, injustice… Anything that makes the reader worry about your character and root for him.
3) Impending danger- This relates to item two. The reader is concerned when your hero is in danger, but they also worry about the mere possibility that he might get into danger. If you can hint at narrow misses and brushes with danger, this keeps the suspense high.
4) Escalating tension- Whenever you set up that something bad is about to happen, slow things down. This increases tension and your readers scoot to the edge of their seats. Suspense is about making your readers worry for your hero.
What Stood Out:
Mr. James said, “When stories falter, it’s often because the writers (1) didn’t make big enough promises, (2) didn’t fulfill them when readers wanted them to be fulfilled, or (3) broke their promises by never fulfilling them at all.” This is a nice recap of the chapter. When you rewrite, it’s important to look carefully at the promises you’ve made (or haven’t made). Do you need to change some things to make bigger or better promises? Do you need to fix how you’ve fulfilled your promises? Or did you totally forget to fulfill the promises you made? All three are important to be watching for as you write and rewrite.
Tip of the week:
“Foreshadowing is the process of dropping clues in the background to remove coincidences later on.” ~Steven James
Go Teen Writers Archived Articles to Help You Go Deeper:
Five Promises You Make to the Reader
Using Circularity
Genre Conventions and Reader Expectations
Dealing with Genre Expectations
Answer at least one of the following (or as many as you’d like):
• What “No No” do you hate most of all when you’re reading books or watching movies?
• How do you develop suspense in your writing? Any tips to share?
• How are the promises in your story? Are you keeping them? Do you need to work on making better promises or fulfilling your promises better?
• Any questions?
I found two quotes that I really liked from this chapter.
“The more perfectly happy you make someone appear, the more readers will look for cracks beneath that surface happiness.” (pg 148)
This quote really applies to everything, not just writing. Anything that seems perfect, we will look for ‘cracks’ in their armor.
“Creating anxiety is like inflating a balloon – you can’t let the air out of your story.” (pg 152)
Those are both great quotes, and the first is so true. I notice that whenever I read or watch anything, and the end is near and the characters think they won, my brain screams “It can’t be THAT easy!” Thankfully, more often than not it isn’t.
Or if a character is too nice, we don’t trust them and suspect them of being evil later. When my English class read Pride and Prejudice, a girl said she didn’t like Wickham right off the bat, because he just seemed too nice.
Wickham WAS too nice…
Those are great, Macey. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
A broken promise from an author that comes to mind is when I read this series, and throughout it, the protagonist has a magic amulet that changes color, but the author never explained why it did that. She made it seem really important, and even had another character be just about to explain it before saying “No, that’s just a myth…” or something like that, and then never mentioning it again after that. Part of me thinks the color change was just for the sake of the cover art. I really enjoyed everything else about the series, but that one thing left unaddressed was annoying. However, I recently discovered that the author wrote more books set in the same universe, so we’ll see if she ties that loose end up there.
Mr. James advice on suspense is definitely a big help, since my book’s genre is “paranormal suspense” (or at least I think that’s the best way to define it). I will definitely keep it, along with his points about keeping promises, in mind as I complete and edit my books. Right now I feel like I have a million dangling threads and plot points that went unforshadowed, and I look forward to cleaning those up.
Ah, that amulet thing is so annoying. I hate that kind of thing.
Ooh. Paranormal suspense sounds like a fun read! You’ll get to all those dangling threads. A little here, a little there. You can do it!
Thanks! 🙂
The worst “no-no” for me is when the “good guys” survive a bazillion impossibly dangerous situations and the “bad guy” get’s thrown into one or two and dies. The. Worst. It’s just not realistic.
I probably need to work on making stronger promises. I’m only a little way through my first draft so I have time to implement this on try one! And then go back in fix it all for draft two 😉 I’m going to try to plot my promises (the biggest ones,) by landmark. (In a similar way to the Plotting by Landmark post from a couple months ago.) We’ll see if that works.
You are so right about that, Camille. Sounds like you have a good plan for your novel! 🙂