Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict and Suspense by James Scott Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

the war effort again.
    Dirty Harry, on the other hand, rejects his law enforcement community. At the end of the film, having caught the bad guy by going outside the book, Harry takes his badge and throws it into San Francisco Bay, symbolically resigning from the community. (However, a studio executive ran down and recovered it and gave it back, because the film made too much money for Harry to resign permanently.)
    The antihero is popular with American readers and audiences. He appeals to their frontier spirit and rugged individualism.
Creating the Give-a-Hoot Factor
    What makes a character worth following? How is the reader calculating the benefits of reading the whole book?
    Since the novel is an emotional experience, it follows that the Lead character must create emotion in the reader. Your ultimate task as a novelist is to play on that emotional investment—keep the reader hooked by heart.
    Without that emotional investment, nothing you do with conflict, action, or suspense is going to matter. The reader simply won’t care.
    Some call this the give-a-hoot factor.
    From whence comes the hoot?
    The approach to creating a Lead character varies widely from writer to writer. Some advocate the filling out of dossiers that ask numerous questions about background, social life, beliefs, physical characteristics, family, and so on.
    Others prefer to create characters on the fly and get to know them only as the writing progresses. In this way characters grow organically to fit the needs of the story.
    Most writers, I suspect, are somewhere in between. They like to do some initial work on character background, then get to the writing and fill in as needed.
    Whatever your preferred method, I am going to suggest that you begin to use the element of conflict at each stage. In this way you’ll create that trouble factor that will make your Lead worth following. (Note: This approach can be tweaked and used for all your main characters.)
A Feeling
    Begin by asking yourself what sort of feeling you want your character to engender in the reader.
    Do you want the reader cheering? Feeling sorry? Getting angry along with the Lead? Loving the Lead? Or looking at her like she’s a train wreck waiting to happen?
    Who are some of your favorite Lead characters in fiction or film?
    Make a list, then mine that list for a clue to what you want the reader to feel.
    My own list would include: Philip Marlowe, Harry Bosch, Aram Garoghlanian, Shane, Kinsey Millhone, Martin Riggs, Roger Thornhill, and Spartacus.
    Each of those names creates a certain feeling in me. Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson’s character in
Lethal Weapon
) evokes sympathy and fascination with his suicide wish. That mixes with his extreme competence at his work. He’s a man who wants to die in action but is so good at that action he keeps winning.
    Therein lies your first clue to using conflict to create an unforgettable character: Find two feelings that don’t generally go together and fit them into your Lead. This initial conflict immediately makes the character more compelling.
    Even if you did nothing else before you started writing, this exercise will be a huge step in your writing.
    Let’s try one from scratch.
    We’ll be writing a suspense novel about an ordinary man who is mistaken for a long-idle serial killer. That’s your “What if …” concept.
    So what sort of feeling do you want? I’d say we want to feel sorry for this guy. He will be like that Hitchcock hero Roger Thornhill in
North by Northwest
. Perfectly innocent, successful, enjoying life. Until a mistake makes the bad guys think he’s an agent for the U.S. Government. He’s kidnapped, almost killed. And then he goes to the U.N. looking for answers from a diplomat who gets a knife in the back.
    We choose feeling sorry and scared for our hero, and then we’ll add to that a certain sympathy factor because he’s got attitude in the face of danger, even a little humor.
    In homage to Hitchcock, I’ll call him