Jack's Place

A Dash of Salt

"A perfect judge will read each word of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ." ~ ALEXANDER POPE

         Now, we all know this isn't a cooking site, notwithstanding the fabulous recipes that can be found on our pages, but if it were, it seems reasonable to assume that our "dishes" would be our stories. And when you look at a recipe and say, "that sounds tasty," what is it that you're actually looking at? I mean, spaghetti is spaghetti, cornbread is cornbread, a pork roast is a pork roast, right? Why do you like Wendy's better than McDonalds? They're both hamburgers aren't they?
         So, what makes one plate of the same food by the same name better than another? My contention is that it must be the spices used in the recipe, and what is the one spice that's used over all the thousands of ground this, chopped that, and blended stuff in every dish? Salt. The most common spice, the wise pharaoh of spices sitting at the front of the spice rack, the one common denominator among them; it appears to some degree in every dish.
         Okay, I can feel your fingers tapping on those mouse buttons, so I'm going to get to the point:
         Every story needs its basic spice, salt, to some degree. And that spice is Suspense.
         But wait, you say, I'm not writing a thriller. This is a meet-cute romance. That doesn't matter. Every reader of prose fiction wants a problem, a villain, some sand in the gears. She isn't reading to see what color shirt the gentleman chose for their date, she wants to see how the soon-to-be happy couple deal with what life throws at them. Does that mean they have to be stalked by a serial killer while they're on their first date? Of course not! There are different types and levels of suspense appropriate to any style and genre, and I'm going to take a look at them here.

         THE TICKING CLOCK: This is the most obvious of all of suspense's flavors, and the most obvious of the obvious is when it's attached to a bomb. Think Goldfinger, when James Bond is chained to a nuclear device and manages to stop the countdown with, what else, 007 left on the timer. But one needn't be this ham-fisted about it. Perhaps one of your romantic leads has to return to the big city and their highfalutin' job on Sunday evening, and the potential partner has to win their heart by then. That's the ticking clock, and there's your suspense; page-turning guaranteed.

         OBSTACLES IN THE HERO'S PATH: Indiana Jones made a career of this, but every obstacle doesn't have to be a giant, rolling boulder. Maybe your young heroine wants to make a special cake for what is sure to be her grandfather's last birthday... but she's out of baking powder... and there's a blizzard raging outside. What will she do? Move Heaven and Earth to overcome this obstacle, that's what!

         A DARK SECRET: I think it was Dean Koontz I heard in a radio interview who said, "Everyone has a secret that they would kill or die to protect, and once you know what the secret is, the character will jump off the page." That isn't exactly what I mean, but you can see how it works. Once someone else holds your secret, your whole focus becomes who has it, what will they do with it, how can I minimize the damage if they reveal it? By coincidence (and maybe what inspired this), I was watching a British crime drama last night. The lead detective took her messenger bag to lunch and sat reviewing case files on suspects as she ate. When she got up to leave, she had left one in the booth. She ran back to recover it, but it was gone. Who has it, what will they do with it? The suspense is nearly painful.

         MAKE FAILURE HURT: In a word, consequences. If any of the dozen characters in Lord of the Rings failed, Sauron would have taken over the world. There were devastating consequences of losing that file in the show last night. They don't have to be that drastic, but if your character can fail and shrug it off with an "Oh, well," you're doing it wrong.

         BRING A RIVAL TO THE DANCE: This plays right into romance. The MCs have met, things look to be going well, and then another suiter arrives with eyes for nothing but the ingenue. He's wealthier, better looking, charming, intelligent, but the reader knows he's also a bastard, and all wrong for our heroine. How will the guy who's right for her win her hand? But this isn't just a romance ploy. One of my favorite games is XCOM, which depicts Earth's fight for survival against an alien invasion. You need to respond to the aliens' incursions, reverse-engineer their technology as you collect bits and pieces, and win the fight for Earth. But a couple of game-months into it, you discover there is another organization opposing the aliens. But their mission is very different. They want to secure the aliens' technology and use it to subjugate humanity. That rivalry ramps up the tension exponentially, as any good rivalry will.

         DESIRES AND NEEDS: Everyone wants something, and that goes for characters in books as well, at least it should. A person may be a cop, a driver for a car parts store, or a shelf-stocker at Target, but that's his job. There are things he wants to do, to be, to experience, and if he has a chance to come closer to attaining one of those desires, what effect will it have on his job or the plot of your story? There should be a conflict there, and keeping it in play keeps the reader turning pages.

         KEEP A SUBPLOT RUNNING: This is an example I call the "rats in the basement." Your main character is a young prosecutor with some experience, but he's not a grizzled veteran of the trial wars. He's been handed an important case against a mob figure, and if he screws it up, this guy will walk to continue his life of crime. The lawyer has what he needs to win, but he has also been through a bitter divorce with a vindictive wife who has custody of the daughter he adores. She has just informed him that she intends to remarry and accompany her new husband to his home... in Australia. Meaning he may not see his daughter again for a very long time. How will he deal with this ticking clock of a subplot, and what consequences will it have for his case if he becomes too distracted? Most of us are good at dealing with the wolf at the door, but it's never just a wolf, is it? There's always these rats gnawing at your ankles...

         Well, this is getting pretty long, but these are my thoughts on suspense, the "salt" of every good story. I hope you've picked up something you can use to "spice up" your own stories, and that it leads you to more success on your writing journey. I'm pretty sure everyone knows these things at some instinctive level, but seeing them written out may bring something you can run with into sharp focus. I hope so, and it's my pleasure to do it. You guys are the best!

Stay inspired,
Taylor...