There are 3 steps in the creative process. The first has to do with keeping your imagination alive. Your imagination is a beast. Feed it, and it will get up and terrorize the neighborhood on its own accord. Starve it, and it will lie there like a gigantic dust mop and gather flies.
Another great podcast from the writing excuses team. This time with Patrick Rothfuss (I did love his book) on writing exposition.
One comment that stood out was Brandon’s conscious choice to leave some explaining to chapter 6 of Mistborn. Not only did it make the beginning more accessible, but it actually created a sense of mystery about Kelsier. I wanted to know more.
Although, I would caution new writers that when Rothfuss talks about withholding, he’s talking about setting. He’s not talking about keeping the story from the reader. You can’t build suspense if you hide what’s going on, the dangers, etc. You can build a bit of curiosity, but that only holds the reader’s attention for a short time. Give information for suspense. Withhold for curiosity. They are two different things.
To get a sense of proportion on exposition or broad brushing a character, I recommend Bernard Cornwell’s writing advice: http://www.bernardcornwell.net/chapters/writingadvice.htm
Take a book you love, get a colored pencil or crayon, then begin reading. When you find a passage of descrition/setting, draw a line along the side. After 30 or so pages of doing this you’ll begin to see how much setting the author puts in and how he goes about doing it. Do this with a few stories you love and you’ll begin to see patterns.
You can do the same thing with character. In fact, I just finished FEAR NOTHING by Dean Koontz. Loved how he did his characters. So I’ve got a used copy and a copy of VELOCITY and am marking them up. I’ve gotten a number of very interesting insights.
I realized I needed to blather a bit more on this topic to warn you against something before I bring the other authors on.
You’re going to be tempted. You’re going to be tempted to seek for some Holy Grail list of magic development questions. Some of you are going to be tempted to compile some big old honking list of “the questions that will produce a killer story every time and all I have to do is ask them.”
That list doesn’t exist. If you seek for it, you’re going to waste a lot of time and end up having to fight killer rabbits and fetch shrubberies for weird knights.
Don’t fall for it.
But, John, didn’t you say there were core questions?
I did. You need answers for those. But you need to also understand that a writer will ask a great number of development questions when writing a specific novel, some of which he might only ask once.
Last year I was out on the forum at CodexWriters.com and one writer asked the rest of us how we approached developing our stories. He was looking for some kind of development map, e.g. I have this piece of the story, now I need to develop the rest–how does one go about that?
That discussion led directly to this series on getting and developing story ideas. My thoughts then were that you need to define and understand the basic elements of story. Knowing the key story principles behind each element leads us to a handful of core development objectives and questions. But–
I DO NOT think there’s a comprehensive must-do list.
Why?
Because it’s been my experience that no two stories are exactly the same, and so no two stories require the exact same questions. And even if stories are similar, questions and techniques don’t always produce the same results each time. One question or technique might prove fruitful one time, but it might be unfruitful the next, or even unnecessary. So the point of this is NOT to get a checklist of a hundred questions that will lead you to generate the whole story in your mind before you write.
The goal is to develop the six parts. Use the questions you need to develop those parts.
Look at the many setting and character profile question lists that float around. As I’ve used those, I always run out of steam because while some of those questions are interesting and helpful, quite a few of them just don’t apply to the project at hand. They bore me. Maybe I felt a spark of life with one question, but instead of following it as the way into the story, the whole checklist format suggests I need to move on to the next one and fill in the blanks.
But my goal isn’t to fill in blanks. My goal is to make the story come alive in my mind, to make the character come alive, to develop someone sympathetic, deserving, and interesting (if he’s the hero).
So while I think looking for productive questions is important, and I DO think there are some core questions that need to be answered every time, I think a person will be more productive if they step back and identify the key things they want in the story, the scene, the particular character. This means we’ll have some standard questions and techniques based on how stories work, but it also means we’ll learn how to do the creative Q&A process on the fly, following the zing for the current project, coming up with questions that we could never predict we’d use.
And we’ll use the objectives for the six core parts as the guide then build upon them.
For example, when finishing up my last draft of Curse of a Dark God, I wrote the opening to a big battle chapter. I know that for things to be clear to the reader, I need to set the stage, have a hook, give the what, why, where, etc. I need to transport them as best I can. Those are my objectives. The questions, while not formally stated, flowed from them–what are some options for a good hook, how do I want to set the scene, etc.
These are fairly standard objectives/questions. They’re story fundamentals. And there weren’t a lot of them. You can get overwhelmed with too many niggling objectives and criteria. I’ve found it’s best to focus on KEY things. To ask myself–what are the Pareto factors, the handful of things that really have the biggest effect in story with character, plot, scene? Once I identify those factors I can easily turn them into questions.
So I had those handful of objectives. But I had some others that were very specific to that scene that I probably won’t use in any other scene ever. And I couldn’t have really even known about them until I got to the point where I was writing the scene.
For example, one was how to introduce the Dogman of Toth and his pack of maulers in a way that makes the reader say “ho-lee crap those guys are screwed!” Another one was how to introduce the kitemen in a cool way. Another was based on a feeling I was getting from my Spidey-sense that the scene I was writing was going to undercut a later one if I made the hero’s objective to kill one certain character. So I had to ask, what is the right progression of these scenes? Who should the hero attack here so it feels right, like a progression? Another objective was to make this whole battle scene awesome, thrilling. That’s certainly something I’ll want to do with other battle scenes. But not on all scenes.
With the very next scene I was asking–how can I make this scene tender and heart-breaking? These ad hoc questions about the Dogman and kitemen and the story progression are all great questions flowing from objectives, but they were for that one particular scene.
So I think there are some core objectives or principles of how character, setting, problem, plot, and text work. These are based on key story factors. I listed those out in the last post and in my series on suspense. You can make a “standard” list of objectives and questions out of these. For example, one of those key objectives is for the reader to care about the hero. Another is to find him interesting. I can indeed translate these core objectives into some standard POWER QUESTIONS that might be put on a list. Along with some core questions, there are favorite techniques (tools) we each use to help us work up what we need and get into a story, scene, character, problem, etc.
But I think a lot of writing is using the creative Q&A on the fly because it’s just impossible to think up all the objectives and questions you’ll encounter before you get into it.
Have I said that about twenty times now in this post?
Let me suggest you not try to develop everything up front before you begin to draft. Some development questions occur when you’re sketching or outlining. Others when you’re in details of draft mode. It’s a mistake to try to get it all up front in some list.
The key, I think, is to have our handful of CORE development objectives/questions and ALSO expect to use the QA process along the way. This allows us to move forward in the creation without needing to develop everything up front, which is impossible (no, it really is impossible), and then step back and formulate questions when the need arises, based on our objectives of the moment, and use any number of methods to generate the answers until we have something that rocks.
But John, how do you know when you’re ready to move forward?
For me I need to have generated the story concept–the basics of the character, setting, and problem. When I have that, I’m usually beginning to “see” things, although certainly not everything. Often I’ve envisioned a couple of moments or scenes. Maybe some dialogue, etc. When I get to this point, I’m able to write a Story Setup statement. And then I generate a sketch of the plot with a working outline. I DON’T have all the details, but the story’s alive enough in my mind to proceed.
Sometimes I begin to draft what I sketched and find out it doesn’t work. And sometimes I have to draft to get my story concept. Eloise McGraw (I love her book The Moorchild) usually found she had to draft seven chapters before she really knew what the story was about. That’s fine. The key isn’t to use a certain set of tools in a specific sequence. The key is to get to the point where you understand the story you’re telling. If I can do that with a bit of sketching and a little drafting, great. If I need to do a bit more exploratory drafting to have the story come to life in my mind, that’s fine too. The key is to know what I need to know about the story and work until I know it. This is writing that’s based on objectives, on principles, not on procedures.
So there ARE core questions you’ll need to answer for every story. But it’s also true that you will be hunting mythical rabbits if you look for a secret magic question procedure that lists all the questions you need to ask, EVAR! Having said that, I’ll now let these other authors finally get a few words in edgewise.
For more in this series, see How to Get and Develop Story Ideas
The recording of the session with Larry Correia at LTUE is up on YouTube. I really enjoyed this session, and it’s always fun to work with Larry. A few additonal points.
First, you might think, well, heck, they didn’t finish a story idea. No, we didn’t. The purpose wasn’t to wow the audience. It was to show them the process of generating ideas. But . . . that doesn’t mean we weren’t close.
The big thing we’re missing from the story at the end is the situation, the problem. So if you want to extend this, ask yourself a question to help you identify that story core. For example, you might say, let’s narrow this down by genre. What genres could we use? Romance, political thriller, crime, horror, humor, scifi, western, paranormal, etc. If we select paranormal thriller, we limit our options (a good thing), and can start to generate ideas around a question like, what’s going on, what’s the problem? Potential answers:
Do you see? If we had more time, we’d have delved more into the situation with creative Q&A. Sooner or later as we generated ideas around character, setting, and problem a story idea would have come to life.
And (thank you, Mike Barker) here’s a transcript.
Last week I spent a lovely day with the League of Utah Writers at their annual writing conference. I presented “The Secret to Getting Great Story Ideas” which was about how to stop generating great story ideas by accident and start generating them on purpose, whenever you need them. I promised the folks I’d post my PowerPoint and notes. You’ll find them below.
The Secret To Getting Great Story Ideas 2015 LUW – Presenter Notes
The Secret To Getting Story Ideas 2015 LUW – Slides
For those wanting more details, you’ll find the same idea in my series on getting ideas. Here’s the first post: “Can You Create a Redneck Crapper”.
At the UAA conference in Springville, Utah this Saturday, I’m going to be sharing two tools I use that help me figure out where to start my stories and what comes next.
The first is simply a quick and dirty method for figuring out a ballpark estimate of how long my story will be. But the length is not stated in words or pages for the simple reason that stories aren’t made up of words or pages.
The second is what I call The Story Cycle.
Everyone always wants a copy of the presentation. So here’s the PDF of “What Comes Next?”: WhatComesNextbyJohnDBrown_Print
Enjoy!
Sometimes it feels like there are a thousand things to remember when writing a story. New writers who make lists of these things soon begin to drown in them. But I’ve come to realize that many of these “rules” don’t matter.
They don’t matter because many ignore the function of story. This makes it impossible to know how and when to apply them, or if they’re even something you should apply in the first place. Furthermore, a good number that do tie back to function often have little impact.
In fact, the more I write, the more I believe the Pareto Principle applies to writing–a few vital factors make up most of the effect. The key is to focus on a limited number of fundamentals. To focus on these things that matter most. The things that produce the biggest bang for the buck.
So what really matters when you’re writing a story?
That all depends on what you’re trying to do. Form follows function.
So what is the function, the objective?
First of all, it’s something that happens in the reader. Readers buy stories because they provide a service, they do something to the reader, guide them into an experience. In this series, I take a look at what I think is one of the core elements of the story experience and identify the Pareto factors for delivering it to the reader.
That story core, or at least a huge part of it, is suspense.
Man goes out and turns on his sprinklers. They hiss to life. He scratches his bum, looks at the rising sun, goes back inside, and nothing more happens.
You want to pay me money for that one? Want to make it into a movie? It’s a story.
Yeah, it’s a story alright, you may say, but who cares?
Okay, so maybe while he’s scratching his bum, a guy with a gun slips in the back. The intruder points the gun at the man’s daughter who is standing by the toaster buttering her bread. She’s a teenager, dressed in cutoffs and hiking boots. The intruder says, “Your father is going to be coming back through that door any time now. You’re going to call him into the kitchen. We’re going to have a chat. You two didn’t finish the business we talked about.”
The girl only has a butter knife, but she grips it tighter, considers that only 13% of shots fired by cops in gunfights hit home. This was drilled into her by her firearms instructor. The guys who are trained only hit 13% of the time. It’s that low even though most gunfights start with the opponents standing only six feet away from each other–the distance between her and Gideon with his gun. That’s what happens when the adrenaline takes over. But Gideon doesn’t look like he’s full of adrenaline. He looks like a man going to a BBQ. So maybe he has a 40% chance with each bullet. That still gives her 60.
The front door opens. It distracts Gideon for just a moment. The barrel of his gun moves slightly to the left.
It’s not a story yet, but it’s more interesting. And it’s more interesting because that second version generated something the first one never could. What it generated, dear Reader, was a little rise of hope, fear, and curiosity–a little suspense.
After finishing draft 3 of CURSE OF A DARK GOD, I needed a break. So I reviewed my notes of DARK GOD’S GLORY, debriefed the many things I learned this last year about novels and story (and, oh boy, was it a year for learning), wrote up my “Ideal Novel” document, and then began to study structure and suspense. It’s been a wonderful and fruitful month.
I think I’ve found some clarity and solidified a number of Pareto factors for suspense. Let me share my current thoughts on the subject. (Interestingly enough, the Writing Excuses guys just did a podcast on this subject: 5.4: Creating Suspense. You might want to check it out.)
Because form follows function, let’s start with the end in mind.
In the stories we love, the stories we stay up late at night for, the ones for which we pay $25.99 in hardback, the ones we willingly spend hours of our life on, those stories very frequently put the reader into a state of hoping and fearing for a character. This starts as curiosity and quickly moves to sympathy. Very often it builds to an edge-of-your-seat worry that continues up to the end of the novel. At that point the reader experiences a cathartic release.
When we talk about suspense, this is what I believe we’re talking about. And a key thing to remember is that the tension we’re after is not something that’s in the text. It’s something the text builds IN the reader. So you may have massive explosions, deaths, chases, escapes, villains, and all the hordes of hell combine in your story, in the text, but that does not mean the story has dramatic tension. Because dramatic tension is a READER concept. You may have a relatively quite scene where a child is doing nothing more than swinging at a park, but because the reader knows the child molester has just arrived and the park is empty, the scene creates dramatic tension. The girl feels no tension. She’s just swinging away. But the reader’s tension goes through the roof. It’s all about what happens in the READER.
So the question is what key factors of a story guide the reader into this dramatic tension?
Well, we first need to understand what’s involved with this tension. What’s it made of? I came across a lovely *discussion of this last month in David Howard’s How to Build a Great Screenplay and have adapted it to my use. In emotional terms, we HOPE and FEAR for a character. “We don’t know what WILL happen, but we know [or suspect] what MIGHT happen, and therefore feel tension about those possibilities” (p52).
Notice the key ideas:
So what makes us hope or fear for someone? What makes us uncertain of an outcome?
I see vital ingredients, key conditions in three of the four parts of story—problem, character, and plot. In this blog I’ll discuss the Pareto factors for suspense I see working in problem. In following posts, I’ll identify those I see in character and plot.
Form follows function, so what types of problems lead to us hoping and fearing for a character?
When I look back at the stories I love that produce this effect in me, I see three main types of problems. I’ve talked about these before.
In this type of problem, there’s a danger or threat to some aspect of the character’s happiness that is significant enough that the READER can sympathize.
With these problems we HOPE the character avoids or eliminates the danger, but we FEAR they may not. There are many aspects of happiness that might be threatened or in danger. I’ve listed below those that raise my FEAR and would raise my fear for someone else. I’ve stated them in first person, but you can think about them in third.
In these situations my life is in danger or threatened. People are out to kill me (HUNGER GAMES); I’m going to starve or freeze to death (“TO BUILD A FIRE”); there’s a shark in the water who would like a taste (JAWS).
My security and physical well-being is in danger or threatened. These include all sorts of situations where bullies threaten me with violence or where I might be maimed in some way. Or I begin to lose some vital function—sight, hearing, speech, my ability to think, etc.
In these situations my inclusion in a group is threatened. My love, friendship, relationship, feeling of belonging or of being valued are endangered. For example, I’m ostracized by a group, shunned, discriminated against. Or maybe my girlfriend begins to look at other men and I fear losing her, or my son and I become estranged and I fear losing him. This can even be a physical separation like in TAKEN (daughter kidnapped for the slave trade) or NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER (daughter kidnapped by husband).
In these situations my sense of fulfillment of doing something worthwhile is in danger. I’m threatened with a life of drudgery. You can see this at work in the beginning of THE INCREDIBLES where Bob, Mr. Incredible, has to work in a deadening insurance office. But it might be someone whose future or ability to do things that are meaningful to them is being threatened. For example, a boy who desperately wants to play the piano has his piano and is forced to do something else.
Anything threatening our freedom. It might be slavery or blackmail or government control or a number of other things.
In these situations my ability to retain and use my possessions is threatened. Any time something precious is stolen from me, my happiness is affected.
These are the main aspects of happiness I’ve identified that seem significant enough to raise fears. If you think you know another, please post a comment.
In this type of problem, a character has a lack of and opportunity for some aspect of happiness that is significant enough that the READER can sympathize. These are often about characters in some kind of hardship. The lacks, hardships, and opportunities all have to do with the same aspects of happiness as listed above. In these situations we HOPE the character is able to fill the lack; we HOPE they will be able to grasp this opportunity for happiness. But we also FEAR they will fail.
If you think about love stories, these are all stories of lack/opportunity. She’s alone, without a lover, or a satisfying and loving relationship, and she meets someone. Suddenly, she has an opportunity for happiness. As readers we immediately began to hope she will find that relationship wonderfulness and fear she might not.
In the movie OCTOBER SKY a young boy lives in a coal mining community. But it’s not his thing. He suddenly gets an opportunity at school to do something with science. This is his ticket to doing something meaningful. We HOPE he doesn’t miss it, but we FEAR he might.
A character encounters a mystery that is significant enough that the READER can sympathize or feel curiosity about it.
The first two types of problems center on happiness. They raise suspense and sympathy and worry in the reader. This last type of problem centers more on raising curiosity in the reader. We HOPE the character solves the mystery because we want to know the answer as well, but we FEAR they might not.
Very often these types of problem are paired with some aspect of happiness. The vast majority of murder mysteries, cop stories, and courtroom dramas do this. In fact, many happiness problems are paired with mysteries and puzzles.
Let’s go back up to the objective. We want to HOPE and FEAR for the character. We don’t know what WILL happen but suspect or know what MIGHT and we worry and feel tension about the possibilities. We want to worry, and we want that worry to build to a pitch. We then want to experience a cathartic release.
How will we FEAR if the problem is so easy anybody could fix it? How will we WORRY if the lead has all the odds stacked in his or her favor? How will we feel UNCERTAIN if we know exactly what’s going to occur?
I can’t worry for Frodo, for example, if all he has to do is cast the naughty ring into the pit of doom that lies on the other side of his street. I can’t worry about a guy finding a girl to love and who will love him, and have that worry build to a sharp edge-of-your-seat point, if all he has to do is proclaim his feelings and the girl immediately rushes to him forever.
The facts are that we won’t feel fear, worry, or uncertainty unless the problem is HARD to solve. I’ll discuss the Pareto factors for making problems hard when I talk about plot.
Besides being hard, problems need to be urgent. I’ve identified four factors that seem to intensify the nature of the problem: probability, immediacy, significance, and specificity.
It’s one thing to face the one-in-a-gazillion chance that I might be trampled by a herd of elephants when I walk out of the door. It’s quite another to know that the last seven people who walked out of the door were killed by the madman with the AK-47 sitting at the end of the hall.
The higher the probability of the threat or loss of opportunity, the more intense the problem becomes because it’s more likely I’ll lose. No probability and I have nothing to FEAR.
It’s one thing to know an asteroid will hit the earth and kill us all in 7,000 years. It’s quite another to know it will hit in three days.
The more immediate the problem, the less likely I’ll be able to solve it. The less likely my chances are, the more I’ll WORRY. Give us 2,000 years, and I’m sure we’ll figure out the asteroid thing. Give us three days, and that’s probably cutting it too close. This is why setting up a time limit, a ticking clock or ticking time-bomb, can ratchet up the audience’s tension. Of course, it has to be a short time limit. You can’t start the bomb ticking, and give the lead 45 years to disarm it.
We talked about this before. It’s one thing to face the kidnapping of my pet spider. It’s quite another to face the kidnapping of my child. Significance increases when more is put at risk.
The more significant the threat or opportunity, the more invested I become. The more I FEAR to lose.
It’s one thing to say that something bad is going to happen. It’s quite another to know that kidnappers are going to cut your finger off with a pair of wire dikes. It’s one thing to have someone say something good will happen (Chinese fortune cookie) and quite another to say your uncle just died and left you a million dollars, but you have to fight your three cousins for it.
The more specific the problem, the easier it is for us to see the specific possibilities and react to them with HOPE and FEAR. Generalities don’t trigger emotions. Striking snakes do, though. As do garbage disposals that are turned on just when you reach in to get the baby’s pacifier.
Another part of this is to make the threat specific to the hero. It’s one thing to say a lot of people in the United States or Russia or India are going to die. It’s another to say the hero will lose his own child or wife in the event. In fact, the loss of one child can make the problem more intense that the loss of thousands.
This is not to say you can’t write about threats to large groups of people. That’s one of the ways to broaden the scope of the problem and make it more significant. It’s just that problems become more intense the closer they comes to home. Things that threaten us personally, or those we love, raise more fears than those that threaten people we don’t know. A flood raging in the next county is different than the one coming down our street. So in story, the more personal you make the threat to the person we’ve invested in, the more intense the threat will be.
Supporting all of this hope, fear, and worry is the fact that the reader is uncertain of the outcome. The character must have a chance to solve the problem up until the end, but for no extended period of time can it look like winning or losing is assured, because the moment the reader can predict the ending and the major turns along the way, that’s the moment they will lose interest.
Think about this. It’s the first quarter of a football game, and the score is 64 to 0. Anybody sticking around for that one to play out?
No, you can predict the ending. Why watch? Predictability kills hope, fear, and worry. It kills interest.
So how do we make sure the reader is uncertain of the outcome?
First, as stated before, we make the problem hard to solve. We’ll get into more specifics during the post on plot, but we make the problem harder to solve by giving our characters limitations, putting them into ongoing and continuing troubles, and making them face conflict with their own competing desires, other people in the story, and the setting.
But there’s another ingredient. The second thing we do is introduce surprise. Surprise is one of the vital elements in story making precisely because it makes things unpredictable. It makes hope, fear, worry, and curiosity possible.
There are two forms the surprise takes. The first is surprising or new limitations, troubles, and conflicts. New twists to the problem.
Maybe we’ve seen lots of stories about assassins who need to go behind enemy lines. But what if we add a surprising conflict. What if our character is asked to sneak in and kill his sister? Or his mother? Or his best friend? Or the teacher he loves?
What if our lead is not a highly-skilled CIA operative, but a child who has been trained for this, and not as a suicide bomber? Or a grandmother with no training at all who is forced into the situation? What if the person she is supposed to kill isn’t in enemy territory but a religious leader or someone in our own government?
Do you see? You simply twist the elements of the problem in new ways. While the situation may be similar, it’s not the exact same thing they’ve seen before, and so it prevents them from predicting how things will unfold. While they suspect what MIGHT happen, then don’t know what WILL happen.
The next type of surprise is to simply introduce a turn into the story the reader cannot foresee. Again, this relies on reader expectation. So the sidekick we’ve lead the reader to trust turns out to be a traitor. The tactic that the reader has seen work so many times in other stories fails right off the bat in your book. In fact, maybe the whole plan fails. The villain finds out about the child assassin in the beginning and when he shows up, they’re waiting.
Surprises give the story vital jolts of life. Set up a problem that has a new twist to it and give us some unexpected twists along the way during the plot.
Story problems are the engines that make stories go. They define where a story starts and when it ends. They do so because they generate hope, fear, worry, and curiosity. You might have great characters and a fabulous setting, but if your characters don’t face gnarly problems, readers will be unable to hope and fear for them. They will not worry. And they’ll soon tire of waiting for something to happen.
When I’m developing the central problem of my stories, I find the most exciting possibilities when I think of possible threats/dangers, lacks/opportunities, and mysteries. My ideas start to really crackle when I think of ways to make those problems harder, more urgent, and the outcome more uncertain. When I do this, I find I never have to worry about knowing what to write next. The problems beg for scenes.
It’s true that some delightful stories do not promise or deliver suspense and curiosity as their major delights. For example, in many mysteries, readers are not hoping and fearing as much as they are enjoying the character interactions or the humor. But even in those stories, hope, fear, and curiosity play a significant role. They often structure the novel.
The bottom line is that suspense over a character’s fate (hope, fear, and worry) or the answer to an involving question (curiosity) is one of the key things readers come to our stories for. And all that suspense starts with problem. However, it can’t end there because readers won’t worry for just anybody. You have to have characters they can get behind. In the next post in the series, I’ll write about a number of Pareto factors that naturally invest a reader in a character’s fate.
*These notes might expand. For right now I just want to share the full Howard quote.
“As we’ve seen, what the audience hopes for and what the characters hope for need not be the same thing. The same is true of our fears versus their fears. But how do hope and fear fit into the scheme of storytelling? Hope and fear are about the future. They derive from uncertaintly about future events in the story, future decisions the characters might make, future discoveries or revelations that might be unearthed, future outside forces and how they will influence the journey of the characters. When we discuss hope verusus fear in dramaturgical terms, this uncertainty is a function solely of the audience and its experience [my emphasis]. This is dramatic tension. We hope the man with the cobra in the shoe box won’t open the box; we fear he might and get himself or someone else bitten. We don’t know what will happen, but we know what might happen and therefore feel tension about those possibilities” (How to Build a Great Screenplay, 52).
