jpsorrow
09-08-2007, 07:42 AM
Here's the most recent post on my LiveJournal blog, which I decided to post here as well. It's in response to a question left by someone about my previous post on the "form" of the novel, when you focus on the entire novel, rather than just a scene.
Peaks and Lulls
In my previous writing tip post, I discussed the form of the novel by comparing it to a rollercoaster ride, with peaks and lulls in the action, with some twists and loops along the way. There were actually two main points to the post regarding this. First, that in order for the book to "work" for most readers, the rollercoaster ride had to be smooth, in the sense that you can't cue the reader that your heading toward a peak and then at the last moment switch to a lull, or vice versa. Also, you can't have continuous peaks; this exhausts the reader with tension and suspense and whatnot. You need the lulls to make smooth connections between the peaks in the novel. The second point, tied in with this, is that individual scenes in novels typically have a certain "weight" to them, related to whether or not they're peaks or lulls. This weight is typically given to the scenes by the importance of the scene to the overall plot or character arcs. If it's a emotional turning point for the main character, then the scene should weigh heavy; if you're simply moving the main character from one part of the city to the other, with perhaps a minor altercation along the way, it should weigh light.
Since the post, I've spent alot of time thinking about how I do this. My first thought is that part of how you do this depends on how you write. For example, I write everything in the book "in order". This isn't necessarily chronological order, but the order in which the scenes will appear in the book. I do this in part because it's what makes sense to me as a writer. I can't write the last scene, because what I think of as the last scene may change during the course of the novel as I write. I'm an organic writer, not an outliner. Because of this, I can more or less judge how emotionally exhausted a reader is at any point during the novel, based on how emotionally exhausted I am at that stage as a writer. Sometimes, I feel that I'm exhausted, but push harder anyway, and sometimes I take that exhaustion as a sign that I need to back off and let a little of the "lull" creep in.
So, I'm going to approach answering the question from the perspective of the organic writer. Because that's what I know. Also, be warned: explaining how something is done is much more difficult than explaining why you might do it that way. So this post will likely bring up more questions than it answers, just by its nature. Here goes:
I suppose the cop-out, cheesy answer that doesn't help at all is that I feel what's needed as I write. Unfortunately, in every sense, this is true. When I'm writing, I submerge myself in the characters and their world and most importantly their emotions. I'm feeling everything that happens to them along with them, so I know when they're reaching a breaking point, and when they're feeling safe and secure. Hopefully, the reader is doing the same thing when they read the book. So you can use the character emotions to judge whether you can push them a little harder, and little farther, or whether pushing them will break them. The peaks occur when you push and push and push. They crest when you've shoved the characters to the edge of their breaking point, that period of emotional exhaustion, and once you've done that, you should follow it with a lull. In essence, the lulls are where the characters sort out what just happened, pause to take a breath, and then just relax and recuperate for a bit before you start pushing them again. These lulls can happen in the middle of intense action sequences, as well as between intense action sequences. When there's a huge gunfight in a movie and the characters take a moment to spar verbally, the gunfire continuing muted in the background, that's a lull. A minor lull, but still a lull. Everyone's taking a deep breath before diving back in again. Same for books. But lulls can be obvious as well, such as when the gunfight is finally over and someone has won or retreated. Usually once they retreat, the characters find a place to hunker down and regroup. That's a lull as well.
But that's the cop-out answer, and while true, doesn't get you anywhere. So here's less of a cop-out answer: You let the plot and character arcs guide you.
When I sit down to write a novel, I typically have one or two major scenes for the novel in my head. I also have the initial scene. So I sit down and write that initial scene. Usually the initial scene starts out at a minor peak, in the middle of some significant action or event. I push the characters through that minor peak, and then follow it with a lull. Here, the character regroups, and the reader generally is given the chance to "catch-up" with the character and the plot here. They find out why the event happened, or they get the background information I skipped because I started in the middle of the event. In any case, we're in a lull.
As a writer, I then start thinking of what the next big peak is supposed to be--that next big scene if I know what it is; if not, then the next big character change I want to make. I look at where my character currently is (the lull) and I ask myself how I'm going to progress from this lull to that peak. What needs to happen? I can't just skip to that peak because that isn't smooth. And in life, people don't generally just leap from one event to the next. There are things--small things, but important things--that happen between those peaks. This is the connective tissue, the little clues that the character needs to find and/or see to lead them to the next peak.
For example (taken from my current book), suppose a character gets beaten up in the intial scene. The peak is the point at which the thugs beating him reach that moment where they have to decide whether they'll stop, or whether they're going to continue beating this character until he's dead. Obviously they stop, unless you want a dead character for the rest of the novel. So the lull is when the thugs decide to retreat, leaving the character lying on the ground. You've just entered lull land. You know that the next peak is when the character gets his revenge on the thugs, but you can't simply have a scene break and then skip to the revenge scene--that makes no sense for many reasons. First, the character hasn't handled the trauma of the beating. There needs to be a recovery stage, and this recovery stage is part of the lull. If he has wounds, they need to hurt and then they need to heal (to what point depends on how "weak" you want the character to be when he seeks revenge). On a more emotional level, you're character probably hasn't mentally reached the revenge stage yet. At this point, he's hurting and he's probably angry and sick and humiliated and a whole score of other things, none of which are at the revenge stage yet. He hasn't reached the mental state for revenge. He's certainly on the road to revenge with the anger and whatnot, but he hasn't made a conscious decision to go there yet.
So the lull in this case is the transition from that humiliated anger at getting beat up, to the point where the character decides to seek revenge. It shouldn't happen in the course of a sentence. That transition needs to take time, and the scenes you write to get through that transition compose the lull. Once the character reaches the point where they've decided to seek revenge, well then you've started your way up the incline toward the next peak. That incline is in essence you, as the writer, pushing the character, and pushing and pushing and pushing, until you reach the peak itself. In this example, I'd transition the anger from "useless, self-abasing" anger toward an outward anger, something targeting the thugs. Instead of feeling angry at himself, the character begins to start hating the thugs. And to make it more personal, he targets a specific thug, the one leading the group (not necessarily the one who beat him the hardest). This anger begins to build, until the main character starts forming a plan of revenge, some situation he sees he can exploit. And then once everything is in place, the revenge can be carried out. And perhaps things go as expected, or perhaps not.
In any case, once you reach the revenge peak, there should be a lull. In my example, revenge is had, and the main character retreats from the scene in triumph. We enter the next lull. And during this lull, he has to deal (emotionally) with what he's done. Because of course I pushed him farther than he wanted to go; things got out of hand, and now he has to face the consequences. So the lull is him emotionally dealing with what happened. Meanwhile, I've already started the incline to the next peak elsewhere, because the way he sought revenge had consequences for other characters, and those consequences are what will lead to that main character's next peak.
So that's how I compose the peaks and lulls in my books, the way I write. Not everyone writes that way. And I didn't even touch on how you give the appropriate weight to the different types of scenes. But I'm sensing I've reached a peak in this post, so will allow everyone to mull that idea of peaks and lulls over during a lull and try to explain how to add weight to the scenes next week.
Peaks and Lulls
In my previous writing tip post, I discussed the form of the novel by comparing it to a rollercoaster ride, with peaks and lulls in the action, with some twists and loops along the way. There were actually two main points to the post regarding this. First, that in order for the book to "work" for most readers, the rollercoaster ride had to be smooth, in the sense that you can't cue the reader that your heading toward a peak and then at the last moment switch to a lull, or vice versa. Also, you can't have continuous peaks; this exhausts the reader with tension and suspense and whatnot. You need the lulls to make smooth connections between the peaks in the novel. The second point, tied in with this, is that individual scenes in novels typically have a certain "weight" to them, related to whether or not they're peaks or lulls. This weight is typically given to the scenes by the importance of the scene to the overall plot or character arcs. If it's a emotional turning point for the main character, then the scene should weigh heavy; if you're simply moving the main character from one part of the city to the other, with perhaps a minor altercation along the way, it should weigh light.
Since the post, I've spent alot of time thinking about how I do this. My first thought is that part of how you do this depends on how you write. For example, I write everything in the book "in order". This isn't necessarily chronological order, but the order in which the scenes will appear in the book. I do this in part because it's what makes sense to me as a writer. I can't write the last scene, because what I think of as the last scene may change during the course of the novel as I write. I'm an organic writer, not an outliner. Because of this, I can more or less judge how emotionally exhausted a reader is at any point during the novel, based on how emotionally exhausted I am at that stage as a writer. Sometimes, I feel that I'm exhausted, but push harder anyway, and sometimes I take that exhaustion as a sign that I need to back off and let a little of the "lull" creep in.
So, I'm going to approach answering the question from the perspective of the organic writer. Because that's what I know. Also, be warned: explaining how something is done is much more difficult than explaining why you might do it that way. So this post will likely bring up more questions than it answers, just by its nature. Here goes:
I suppose the cop-out, cheesy answer that doesn't help at all is that I feel what's needed as I write. Unfortunately, in every sense, this is true. When I'm writing, I submerge myself in the characters and their world and most importantly their emotions. I'm feeling everything that happens to them along with them, so I know when they're reaching a breaking point, and when they're feeling safe and secure. Hopefully, the reader is doing the same thing when they read the book. So you can use the character emotions to judge whether you can push them a little harder, and little farther, or whether pushing them will break them. The peaks occur when you push and push and push. They crest when you've shoved the characters to the edge of their breaking point, that period of emotional exhaustion, and once you've done that, you should follow it with a lull. In essence, the lulls are where the characters sort out what just happened, pause to take a breath, and then just relax and recuperate for a bit before you start pushing them again. These lulls can happen in the middle of intense action sequences, as well as between intense action sequences. When there's a huge gunfight in a movie and the characters take a moment to spar verbally, the gunfire continuing muted in the background, that's a lull. A minor lull, but still a lull. Everyone's taking a deep breath before diving back in again. Same for books. But lulls can be obvious as well, such as when the gunfight is finally over and someone has won or retreated. Usually once they retreat, the characters find a place to hunker down and regroup. That's a lull as well.
But that's the cop-out answer, and while true, doesn't get you anywhere. So here's less of a cop-out answer: You let the plot and character arcs guide you.
When I sit down to write a novel, I typically have one or two major scenes for the novel in my head. I also have the initial scene. So I sit down and write that initial scene. Usually the initial scene starts out at a minor peak, in the middle of some significant action or event. I push the characters through that minor peak, and then follow it with a lull. Here, the character regroups, and the reader generally is given the chance to "catch-up" with the character and the plot here. They find out why the event happened, or they get the background information I skipped because I started in the middle of the event. In any case, we're in a lull.
As a writer, I then start thinking of what the next big peak is supposed to be--that next big scene if I know what it is; if not, then the next big character change I want to make. I look at where my character currently is (the lull) and I ask myself how I'm going to progress from this lull to that peak. What needs to happen? I can't just skip to that peak because that isn't smooth. And in life, people don't generally just leap from one event to the next. There are things--small things, but important things--that happen between those peaks. This is the connective tissue, the little clues that the character needs to find and/or see to lead them to the next peak.
For example (taken from my current book), suppose a character gets beaten up in the intial scene. The peak is the point at which the thugs beating him reach that moment where they have to decide whether they'll stop, or whether they're going to continue beating this character until he's dead. Obviously they stop, unless you want a dead character for the rest of the novel. So the lull is when the thugs decide to retreat, leaving the character lying on the ground. You've just entered lull land. You know that the next peak is when the character gets his revenge on the thugs, but you can't simply have a scene break and then skip to the revenge scene--that makes no sense for many reasons. First, the character hasn't handled the trauma of the beating. There needs to be a recovery stage, and this recovery stage is part of the lull. If he has wounds, they need to hurt and then they need to heal (to what point depends on how "weak" you want the character to be when he seeks revenge). On a more emotional level, you're character probably hasn't mentally reached the revenge stage yet. At this point, he's hurting and he's probably angry and sick and humiliated and a whole score of other things, none of which are at the revenge stage yet. He hasn't reached the mental state for revenge. He's certainly on the road to revenge with the anger and whatnot, but he hasn't made a conscious decision to go there yet.
So the lull in this case is the transition from that humiliated anger at getting beat up, to the point where the character decides to seek revenge. It shouldn't happen in the course of a sentence. That transition needs to take time, and the scenes you write to get through that transition compose the lull. Once the character reaches the point where they've decided to seek revenge, well then you've started your way up the incline toward the next peak. That incline is in essence you, as the writer, pushing the character, and pushing and pushing and pushing, until you reach the peak itself. In this example, I'd transition the anger from "useless, self-abasing" anger toward an outward anger, something targeting the thugs. Instead of feeling angry at himself, the character begins to start hating the thugs. And to make it more personal, he targets a specific thug, the one leading the group (not necessarily the one who beat him the hardest). This anger begins to build, until the main character starts forming a plan of revenge, some situation he sees he can exploit. And then once everything is in place, the revenge can be carried out. And perhaps things go as expected, or perhaps not.
In any case, once you reach the revenge peak, there should be a lull. In my example, revenge is had, and the main character retreats from the scene in triumph. We enter the next lull. And during this lull, he has to deal (emotionally) with what he's done. Because of course I pushed him farther than he wanted to go; things got out of hand, and now he has to face the consequences. So the lull is him emotionally dealing with what happened. Meanwhile, I've already started the incline to the next peak elsewhere, because the way he sought revenge had consequences for other characters, and those consequences are what will lead to that main character's next peak.
So that's how I compose the peaks and lulls in my books, the way I write. Not everyone writes that way. And I didn't even touch on how you give the appropriate weight to the different types of scenes. But I'm sensing I've reached a peak in this post, so will allow everyone to mull that idea of peaks and lulls over during a lull and try to explain how to add weight to the scenes next week.