Best writing on how to keep readers engaged?
January 19, 2021 9:40 AM Subscribe
I'm working on designing a unit for high school students on how to write suspenseful narratives and scenes (not just in the genre of suspense). Can anyone recommend a good article which describes methods of creating suspense in writing? I'm looking for something in list format, most likely. Thanks!
Screenwriters seem a little more willing to say methods have a place in their storytelling (Blake Snyder, Christopher Vogler, etc.), and one that high school students could probably absorb and emulate in short forms is the Dan Harmon story circle. I suspect you could illustrate it to the class with some episode of Community. The downside would be that Harmon has a #MeToo history, and if your students know him from Rick and Morty, they might start discussing that as well.
Another option is A.E. van Vogt's formula, described in this interview and this blog post: 800-word scenes, organized into five steps (something like: orientation, goal, attempt, outcome, complication), with each sentence supposedly constructed to invite some imaginative/emotional effort from the reader. He wrote plenty of short fiction you could draw on, but the only thing I definitely recall achieving a propulsive kind of suspense is his novel Slan. A downside might be that van Vogt's work can be kind of cheesy, and he was also involved with Dianetics.
A more academic option might be to explain the linguist William Labov's observations on "Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience" / "Oral Narratives of Personal Experience" / "Some Further Steps in Narrative Analysis." Basically, Labov went around asking tons of people to tell brief stories about, for example, a time when they almost died, and it's easy to find class handouts on the web explaining his findings.
One key result from the standpoint of suspense / reader engagement is that Labov thinks the little stories we tell all the time usually feature an emotional / evaluative moment that highlights the point of the story, and he thinks that moment is more "effective" the more that the evaluation is embedded in the story. So a 1st person evaluation is fine, but setting it up so the narrator is recounting what reaction someone else had is more compelling. Some downsides: how Labov tags each element of a story (e.g. what counts as the evaluative moment) sometimes seems subjective; and narratives prompted around critical incidents might not reflect other kinds of narrative structures and practices well. But I know of at least one freshman composition textbook that covered Labov (at least in its first edition), so his stuff can probably be made to work for your class.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:43 AM on January 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
Another option is A.E. van Vogt's formula, described in this interview and this blog post: 800-word scenes, organized into five steps (something like: orientation, goal, attempt, outcome, complication), with each sentence supposedly constructed to invite some imaginative/emotional effort from the reader. He wrote plenty of short fiction you could draw on, but the only thing I definitely recall achieving a propulsive kind of suspense is his novel Slan. A downside might be that van Vogt's work can be kind of cheesy, and he was also involved with Dianetics.
A more academic option might be to explain the linguist William Labov's observations on "Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience" / "Oral Narratives of Personal Experience" / "Some Further Steps in Narrative Analysis." Basically, Labov went around asking tons of people to tell brief stories about, for example, a time when they almost died, and it's easy to find class handouts on the web explaining his findings.
One key result from the standpoint of suspense / reader engagement is that Labov thinks the little stories we tell all the time usually feature an emotional / evaluative moment that highlights the point of the story, and he thinks that moment is more "effective" the more that the evaluation is embedded in the story. So a 1st person evaluation is fine, but setting it up so the narrator is recounting what reaction someone else had is more compelling. Some downsides: how Labov tags each element of a story (e.g. what counts as the evaluative moment) sometimes seems subjective; and narratives prompted around critical incidents might not reflect other kinds of narrative structures and practices well. But I know of at least one freshman composition textbook that covered Labov (at least in its first edition), so his stuff can probably be made to work for your class.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:43 AM on January 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
A second thought... suspense sometimes relies on asymmetrical knowledge, i.e. audience knows more than the characters in the drama, and sometimes on the stakes (what the characters in the drama have to lose).
If you show a scene of family dining, then cut to a bomb under their table, that's suspense. The stakes is everybody's lives... and the asymmetrical info is you know there's a bomb... They don't. Will someone look under? Is someone else looking for the bomb? Is someone who should be there but isn't? Is s/he innocent or responsible?
posted by kschang at 12:42 PM on January 19, 2021
If you show a scene of family dining, then cut to a bomb under their table, that's suspense. The stakes is everybody's lives... and the asymmetrical info is you know there's a bomb... They don't. Will someone look under? Is someone else looking for the bomb? Is someone who should be there but isn't? Is s/he innocent or responsible?
posted by kschang at 12:42 PM on January 19, 2021
This is a book and not a listicle, but you might like Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence.
posted by pinochiette at 1:11 PM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by pinochiette at 1:11 PM on January 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Benjamin Percy's book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction has a good collection essays that address what you're looking for.
posted by ShooBoo at 2:23 PM on January 19, 2021
posted by ShooBoo at 2:23 PM on January 19, 2021
Lester Dent's pulp story master plot might be of interest!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 5:25 PM on January 19, 2021
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 5:25 PM on January 19, 2021
This short video of Matt Stone and Trey Parker has the simplest tip I’ve ever heard for creating stories, which is that if your story beats are joined by ‘and then’, you have a problem, they need to be joined by ‘but’ or ‘therefore’. i.e. everything should be connected and not just a sequence of one thing after another.
There are various places online where the advice is regurgitated in text, like this and this, although honestly if a bit of beeped swearing is OK, the video is better.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:22 AM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
There are various places online where the advice is regurgitated in text, like this and this, although honestly if a bit of beeped swearing is OK, the video is better.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 1:22 AM on January 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
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posted by kschang at 10:03 AM on January 19, 2021