A lot of writing centres on thrills: excitement, adventure, and really wild things. How do you make your story exciting?

Do you…

• …create a tense atmosphere by overreacting to weather phenomena?

Was that lightning? Yes – an awful, vivid, terrifying flash – then a roaring peal of thunder, as if a thousand mountains were rolling one over the other in the blue vault of Heaven! Who sleeps now in that ancient city? Not one living soul. The dread trumpet of eternity could not more effectually have awakened any one.

James Malcolm Rymer, Varney the Vampire

This is the approach favoured by the Weather Channel.

• …think of the worst thing that could happen, and then make it so?

…till he found in a flash the forested hill

hanging over the hoary rock,

a woeful wood: the waves below

were dyed in blood. The Danish men

had sorrow of soul, and for Scyldings all,

for many a hero, 'twas hard to bear,

ill for earls, when Aeschere’s head

they found by the flood on the foreland there.
Beowulf

This is the sort of surprise favoured by scriptwriters for Schwarzenegger, Norris, or the immortal Jason Statham. Hit 'em hard and fast with the gore. Exciting enough for you?

• …keep up the action at a breakneck pace? Then don't write like this. On the other hand, having the villain only appear to be dead, and surge back up at the last minute, is a tried-and-true horror story technique. Just look at Sweeney Todd.

'You have – have –' cried Ingestrie.

'Yes, at last, Mr. ingestrie,' said Sir Richard. 'I had some information that he was hovering about the coast, and came here to see you all. I am sorry to defraud the gallows of its due: but there lies Todd.'

A couple of the officers now dismounted, while the others held their horses, and they dragged the wretched man to the side of the road.

'Is he dead?' said Ingestrie.

'No,' said Todd, opening his eyes. 'He still lives to curse you all! I…'

It was evident that he wished to say more; but he was bleeding internally, and he began to struggle with the volumes of blood that rose to his throat. With a horrible shriek, he rolled over on to his face, and then, after one sharp convulsion of his limbs, he lay perfectly still¹.

One of the officers turned him round again, One glance at the face was sufficient. The guilty spirit of Sweeney Todd had fled at last to its account!

James Malcolm Rymer (who else?), The String of Pearls, or the Barber of Fleet street: a domestic romance², Chapter 172.

So what will it be, in the era of non-stop action? Will you rush your reader along, providing one spine-tingling surprise after another? Will you strategically position severed heads on cliffs and chase snarly demon barbers around on horseback?

It seems as if this sort of thing never goes out of style, right?

On the other hand, I'm in the middle of reading a Stephen King novel from 2011. It's called 11/22/63, and it's well over a thousand pages long in the paperback edition. It's supposedly about the Kennedy assassination, but it's well over 400 pages before you get a glimpse of Lee Harvey Oswald. Personally, I find this time travel tale riveting, and I'll give you a complete review when I've managed to finish it. (Update: I did, in last week's issue.) By this point, I don't really care whether they stop Oswald, or even break the universe with their portal in the back of the diner: I'm just hoping the supporting characters achieve happiness. The descriptions of life in 1958 were really well done. And this from the world's premier living horror writer. So maybe there's room for the more leisurely paced form of fiction, after all?

Non-stop action or stop and smell the roses? You pick. Pace accordingly.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

06.06.16 Front Page

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