The 3-Point Escalation: What “Heat” Teaches Us About Character Introductions

I’m interested lately in learning how to quickly establish distinct and intriguing or empathetic characters. I’ve been getting feedback that my screenplays dive into plot too quickly without giving the reader a chance to understand the world and care about the people in it. This is an unusual note since usually writers err on the side of taking too long to get to the plot!

My challenge now is to not overcorrect and create the more common problem: stories that are too chatty and lack forward motion (keeping in mind that “forward motion” doesn’t have to mean shootouts and car chases; it just means that something changes, however subtle).

The goal is to get into the plot quickly but to do so while setting up a rich world and introducing distinct, memorable characters. One way to do this is to show what the character is like through their actions that are part of the plot. As I’m watching movies and TV shows lately, I’m paying special attention to how the writers do this.

Heat (1995)

Heat (1995)

This week I watched Michael Mann’s Heat (1995), a movie that’s full of heists, bank robberies, and action-packed shootouts, but is also very long, very slow, very moody, and very character-driven. It’s also a movie that’s widely referenced by film buffs as one of the best crime movies of all time.

There’s a lot that can be said about this film, but what I want to write about today is how Mann introduces characters. Each character has a distinct personality that will bear relevance for the plot later, so it’s important that the audience gets the gist of them quickly. One tool Mann uses to accomplish this is what I’ve decided to refer to as the “three-point escalation.”

Each character has a moment pretty much immediately upon meeting them that gives a subtle indication of their personality. It’s enough to make us, as the audience, sit up and think, “This person seems like they might be <character trait>. I wonder if I’m right.”

Then, either later in the same scene or in that character’s next scene, they have a moment that’s a slightly bigger version of that. Now we’re putting the pieces together and we’re invested in solving the mystery of what this character is like. We now have a second clue that we’re on the right track. We’re paying attention.

Finally, either later in the same scene or in that character’s next scene, there’s a third moment that is much more dramatic and makes it unmistakably clear that we were right. We’re now fully invested in this character (even if we hate them) because we’ve solved the mystery of what makes them tick.

Mann does this to varying degrees with several characters, but I’m going to walk through the clearest example of this escalation with Waingro, the movie’s primary villain.

Step 1: When we first meet Waingro, he’s coming out of the outdoor bathroom of a cheap Mexican fast food place. He’s pulling on a shirt as though he’d changed clothes in the bathroom, or maybe bathed at the bathroom sink. He’s moving quickly, like a bull in a china shop. He shakes the liquid out of a to go cup he’s carrying and pokes his head and arm fully through the takeout window and demands “another” refill.

Waingro wants a refill

“Now he wants a refill,” one employee says to another, implying this guy was already a pain in the ass before we even got here. They take the cup. But instead of waiting for the refill, Waingro notices a semi-truck idling at the corner and he takes off without explanation.

This is a seemingly odd moment to include in the film but despite what a long movie this is, it doesn’t waste space on moments that don’t serve a purpose. Think about how differently this tiny interaction could have gone if Waingro was a different person. He could have come out of the bathroom fastidiously cleaning his hands, disgusted by the facilities. He could have asked for a refill apologetically and then told them to cancel it when he realized he needed to leave. He could spoken fluent Spanish to the cashier or flirted with him.

Instead, based on this very quick interaction, we already get the idea that Waingro is sloppy, impulsive, wired, and inconsiderate. But it’s not enough information for us to be sure we understand him.

Step 2:  Waingro approaches the passenger window of the semi-truck and knocks. He tries to jump in, but the driver stops him and asks his name. The driver looks him up and down, clearly skeptical. Waingro introduces himself enthusiastically, but the driver is standoffish.

On the drive, Waingro chats loudly about the job they’re on their way to, constantly moving in his seat, asking too many questions. Finally the driver says, “Stop talking, ok, Slick?” After being so gregarious, Waingro now whips off his sunglasses and gives the driver a shockingly murderous glare.

Waingro glares menacingly at Cerrito

This is an escalation of what we saw in the previous beat. It’s further confirmation that Waingro is sloppy, impulsive, wired, and inconsiderate. Now he also seems dangerous.

Step 3: During the heist, it’s clear to the audience which of the masked robbers is Waingro due to his signature long hair. It’s Waingro’s job to hold the three security guards at gun point while the robbery is completed, but he gets it in his head that one of the guards is looking at him funny, though the guard is clearly just in shock and has lost his hearing from the explosion. Waingro attacks the guard, and Cerrito (the driver from the truck) tells him to “cool it, Slick.”

Waingro kills the guard

Waingro begins breathing heavily, losing his cool, and finally kills the offending guard, turning this heist into a murder charge instead of just armed robbery. This forces the team to kill all three guards so as not to leave witnesses. Not part of the plan.

This third beat is a dramatic escalation that cements our understanding of Waingro: he’s a loose cannon who can’t tolerate any perceived slight and he doesn’t clear the bar of this highly disciplined and talented team.

If this third step (the killing of the guard) had been our first encounter with Waingro, we probably would have gotten the same general idea that he’s a loose cannon, but it would have felt out of nowhere and we might not have been sure how to interpret the scene. Maybe the guard was looking at him funny?

But by having those two previous beats first, we’re actively engaged in understanding his character, rather than passively observing him, and when this final escalation occurs, his character’s identity is now completely distinct to us from the others, which will be important for following the rest of the story.

I suspect that a lot of stories do a similar three-point escalation when introducing important characters. I’m going to be on the lookout for it.

6 Surprising Ways to Make Better Use of Your Villains

It’s a lot of work to craft a compelling, complex, and truly formidable antagonist, so once we’ve put in that time, it makes sense to wring as much value out of those characters as possible. Here are six surprising ways I’ve found to make effective use of an antagonist:

  1. Use delayed gratification of an antagonist’s punishment to increase narrative tension.

    The more your villain wins, and the more he deserves to lose, the more desperately we’ll be turning every page (or hitting that “next episode” button) to see him finally get his comeuppance. This is especially effective if the villain is pretending to be a good guy and some of your protagonists haven’t figured it out yet.

    The first time I realized the power of this dynamic was while watching The Sopranos. In the third season, there’s a character that everyone on the show loves but who the audience knows is terrible. It is enraging to watch this character be coddled and cheered in every episode when you know he’s secretly a villain. I was glued to my screen that entire season, desperate for the satisfaction of seeing this character be found out and brought to justice.

    Similarly, I’m watching Game of Thrones now for the first time and this line in a season 1 episode recap, referring to Joffrey, sums it up perfectly: “I will watch this show even if it goes on for a hundred seasons if they promise me gruesome violence against that little kid.”

    Joffrey is another great example of a character who continually gets what he wants when he doesn’t deserve it while doing increasingly despicable things, building narrative tension in the audience as we froth at the mouth to see him get what’s coming to him.

    Are there ways you can ratchet up the tension in your story by making things easier and easier for your terrible antagonist, delaying our gratification in seeing his eventual punishment?

  2. Use lesser antagonists to take some of the load off your Big Bad.

    Whether you’re writing a TV show or a feature film, you almost certainly have multiple layers of antagonists, not just a single villain. And I don’t just mean a “Big Bad” and his three henchmen, I mean other types of antagonists who are causing problems for our hero on all sides.

    Some of those antagonists are mere nuisances or even well-meaning characters who are nevertheless blocking your heroes from doing what needs to be done, but others are more serious threats that will help the hero train for her eventual climactic fight against the Big Bad.

    You can find examples of this in pretty much any movie or TV show, but one great example you’ve probably seen is Die Hard (1988). Of course Hans Gruber is the Big Bad and John McClane will have to defeat many henchmen before he can fight Hans, but there are several other antagonists to contend with as well: Harry Ellis (John’s wife’s arrogant coworker who reveals John’s identity to Hans), Dick Thorburg (the irresponsible reporter who carelessly exposes the identity of John’s wife and children), and Dwayne Robinson (the police chief who doesn’t believe John that the building is under siege or that John is a cop).

    Hans Gruber

    These “lesser” antagonists can do some of the dirty work of your Big Bad, which helps your main villain retain an aura of mystery while still keeping your heroes under constant threat.

    One of the movies most famous for a mysterious antagonist is Jaws (1975) — so much of what made that shark terrifying is that we rarely actually see it. If every time something bad happened in that movie it had to be the shark eating someone, that would get old very quickly and the shark would lose his power to frighten. By having other, lesser antagonists in the movie, we were able to have continuous conflict and obstacles without getting burned out on shark attacks.

    Is your Big Bad doing dirty work in your story that steals some of her menace? Can you farm out those conflicts to lesser antagonists instead?

  3. Use a lesser antagonist as a more narratively satisfying deus ex machina to save your hero from another, worse villain.

    You’ve probably heard this famous writing advice from Pixar story artist Emma Coats: “Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.”

    But sometimes you really do need a satisfying way to get a hero out of an impossible jam. Even the best stories need an occasional deus ex machina, but we’ve all felt that disappointment when a sidekick just happens to ride up at the exact moment a hero needs help. We wanted them to get out of trouble, but not like that!

    Another benefit of having multiple layers of antagonists is that you can have a lesser antagonist be the deus ex machina that saves our hero from a much deadlier one.

    A movie that does this to great effect is Attack the Block (2011) which has its heroes running scared from cops, a murderous drug dealer, and aliens all at the same time. There is at least one moment when a well-timed attack from one antagonist gives our heroes a means to escape another.

    This is much more narratively satisfying because it’s not completely fixing the hero’s problem — they still have to deal with this new problem, it just saves them from a truly impossible one.

    Do you have an unsatisfying deus ex machina in your story that you could make more satisfying by having an antagonist come to the rescue instead of a helper?

  4. Use an antagonist to make a challenging protagonist more palatable.

    Your protagonists don’t have to be innocent Pollyannas for the audience to care about them, they just have to be not as bad as the antagonistic forces against them.

    On another series, a conceited mean girl would be the antagonist, but because Sansa Stark is the victim of much crueler characters on Game of Thrones, we empathize with her. You can make even the most horrible character empathetic by putting them at odds with someone even worse.

    This is a good opportunity for those smaller antagonists who aren’t quite to the level of Big Bad Villain, but are thorns in the side of your hero.

    In your story, is there an opportunity to make an unlikable character more empathetic by giving them an even more unlikable opponent?

  5. Use your villain to help the hero see her own dark side.

    Someone told me once in a job interview, when I’d failed to find a satisfactory answer to the question “what is your greatest weakness,” that weaknesses are usually the excess of our strengths.

    Often, a great villain is simply the hero run amok; it’s someone with the qualities of the hero taken to their terrible logical extreme. This can create a great opportunity for your hero to look inside herself and see her own flaws and the danger that awaits her if she doesn’t change, as it does in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) and in The Last Jedi (2017).

    Is there a way you can make your Big Bad a better “upside down” reflection of your hero, or make better use of that reflection?

  6. Use a secret antagonist to upend the audience’s expectations.

    I can’t give examples of this without spoiling the stories, but there are several extremely successful movies and TV shows in recent years that involved an antagonist initially posing (to the hero and to the audience) as someone who was on the protagonist’s side.

    This is tricky to pull off without pulling the rug so hard out from under the audience’s feet that they have nothing left to stand on, but when this works for a story, it really, really works. Is there an antagonist in your story who you could initially portray as good? Or a protagonist in your story who you could make secretly bad?

 

Your Story Has Two Stories Inside It: Complicating Your Plot

About a year and a half ago, I started writing a blog post called “Your Story Has Two Stories Inside It.” In that post, I looked at three popular and acclaimed movies that I chose basically at random from IMDB and examined how in each movie the protagonist’s goal at the beginning of the story is actually achieved fairly early in the film, at which point a complication sends the protagonist on a new mission which they pursue for the rest of the movie.

This is interesting because often when we’re plotting a story, we pick a goal for the hero and then assume they’ll spend three acts pursuing that goal and that they’ll achieve it (or in some cases emphatically fail to achieve it) at the denouement. But that actually isn’t how most successful stories work.

I never finished writing that post.

Flash forward to this week. I’m working on a new feature and I’m head over heels in heart-eyes-emoji love with it but I have this nagging feeling that something is off about the structure. It feels a little… thin. Like, it’s a cool idea, it has a meaningful theme, I love the characters, and I found a powerful resolution to the plot, but there’s some part of me that keeps thinking… is that really it?

That’s the whole movie?

And then this morning, Monica Beletsky (a writer/producer of many beloved TV shows such as Fargo and The Leftovers, and someone you should follow on Twitter because she posts awesome tweet threads like this) posted this tweet thread:

And oh man, it sucks how right she is, because it means that the kick ass Act 3 climax I just wrote? Is probably actually my midpoint. Or even the end of Act 1! Crap.

What’s funny is this is probably the most common feedback I give people when I read their scripts — this awesome ending you just wrote? I hate to tell you this, but it’s your midpoint. It’s your end of Act 1. Sometimes it’s even your inciting incident! (Sorry.)

Let’s think about Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), which is a movie I use a lot as an example because it’s so satisfying and well-structured and it was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed.

(Some spoilers will follow if you somehow still haven’t seen that movie. I will also talk about Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) with some spoilers for the first half of the film. I later reference Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Annihilation (2018) but don’t reveal any big spoilers for either.)

In Guardians, Peter Quill’s initial goal is to sell the stolen Orb (aka the Infinity Stone) for money. He already has this goal when the story starts (after the quick childhood flashback) and he pursues it relentlessly through the first half of the movie.

But that is not the goal he achieves at the end of the movie.

He actually achieves this initial goal (with the help of his new friends) at the midpoint, but it turns out this was the wrong goal for him to pursue because the Infinity Stone is incredibly destructive (he and his friends learn this the hard way when it blows up The Collector’s lab). They learn that Ronan plans to use the Orb to destroy the planet Xandar, so now their goal is to get the Orb back from Ronan and save Xandar.

This becomes their true goal and the one they pursue for the rest of the film.

Imagine if the entire movie had just been about Peter trying to sell the Orb. That’s an interesting enough problem for the first half of the movie, but having that goal turn out to be the wrong goal is a huge complication that makes the story more interesting and creates an opportunity for each of the main characters to grow as they learn from their mistakes.

Alternately, imagine if Peter’s goal the entire movie had been to stop Ronan from blowing up Xandar. A worthy goal and one that could probably string together enough action set pieces to fill two hours, but it would be very one-note. And where’s the growth then for Peter? In this version, he would have already been pursuing a noble goal from page 1.

This isn’t only true for commercial blockbusters like Guardians of the Galaxy. Another movie I analyzed that follows this pattern is Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963). The protagonist’s goal at the beginning of the movie is to assemble enough money to buy majority control of his company to save it from ruin. This could be a whole movie in itself (maybe not a terribly interesting one), but then his son is kidnapped and he must use the money he’s accumulated as ransom instead of using it to buy stock. New goal: get his son back.

But the real twist comes when he finds out that the kidnappers took the wrong boy — it’s not his son they have, it’s his chauffeur’s. So now he has to decide whether to use the money he needs for his company to pay the ransom for a son that isn’t even his. The protagonist’s goal was originally control of his company, but now it’s about something much more primal and forces him to confront and reveal the person he really is.

This is definitely more interesting than 140 minutes of a guy trying to raise funds to take control of his shoe company!

That said, I’m not sure that every movie follows this pattern, even though all the thrillers Monica Beletsky analyzed did. For example, I recently watched Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) in theaters, which I (in perhaps slight exaggeration) called last year’s “best movie of the year.” I’d have to rewatch it to be sure, but I think the goal in that movie is the same from the inciting incident (when they get sucked into the game) as it is at the climax, though there is a major complication introduced at the midpoint which shifts their approach.

Another counter example is Annihilation (2018), which I also just watched in theaters. The goal in that movie is introduced in Act 1 (enter the Shimmer and make it to the lighthouse) and though there are several complications along the way that change our understanding of the problem, that goal remains the same for the entire movie through Act 3.

I’ll have to think more about this to decide if it’s true, but my hypothesis is that movies like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Annihilation are actually a different kind of story with their own separate structure.

Something those two movies have in common is that they both have an ultra-clear goal from pretty much the start of Act 2 (if not a bit earlier) with a literal map to get there. Like, an actual, literal map! In both cases, if the story is working well, we’re so oriented to the journey that we understand at any given moment exactly where we are on our path to the final goal.

Annihilation goes so far as to have actual title cards delineating each story beat. We get an “Area X” title card at the inciting incident, a title card that says “The Shimmer” at the start of Act 2, and a title card labeled “The Lighthouse” at the start of Act 3.

In Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the characters continually refer back to the map of the game world so that we always understand how far we’ve come and how much of the journey is left.

So maybe these movies have a different structure because they’re almost their own separate type of story.

So, like most writing tips, this is less of a Rule and more of a Tool. If your story feels a little thin, like it would be a better episode of a TV show than a full movie people pay $16 to watch in a theater, maybe the answer is taking your Act 3 climax and making it your midpoint, or even the end of Act 1.

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How to Avoid Plot Twist Fatigue

Plot twists in a movie are great. There are few greater joys in a film than that moment when you are truly, satisfyingly surprised by a twist you never saw coming, but in retrospect realize was inevitable.

But sometimes… there’s too much of a good thing.

We’ve all seen a movie like this. There are so many plot twists and reversals that after awhile, you’re not so much surprised as you are confused, and not so much on-the-edge-of-your-seat as you are put at a distance. The spy wasn’t just a spy, she was a double agent! Actually, she was a triple agent! Actually, she’s been dead the whole time! Actually, the whole movie was a dream! It’s not fun, it’s annoying.

I don’t ever like to name and shame movies on this blog, but I will say that I saw a movie in theaters recently that had so many never-saw-’em-coming twists and turns that by the end of the film, there was nothing left in the story to believe in or care about. Nothing could be trusted, nothing was real. Every aspect of that story I’d invested in had been a lie, from the big, important themes down to the smallest, stupidest facts. It made me feel cheated and like I’d wasted my time.

Here are two ways to avoid that:

  1. Keep your big reversals to the ends of acts. End of Act 1, midpoint (end of Act 2a), end of Act 2, and probably one more at the end of the movie, depending on what kind of movie it is. That’s it. If you have giant twists happening in every scene, the audience will get confused and exhausted. (If you’re writing for TV, then it’s even more straightforward because it is probably unmistakable where your acts end.)

    If you must do the thing where there’s a twist at the end of the movie and then there’s a second twist the audience didn’t see coming because they were still reeling from the first, I would not deprive you of that. Those can be fun. BUT YOU CAN ONLY HAVE ONE EXTRA TWIST. Don’t then have a third twist and a fourth, unless you’re writing a parody because that might actually be really funny.

    This is not one of those things where one twist is great so fourteen must be amazing. More is not better. Better is better.

    Also, when I say a reversal at the end of each act, I don’t mean that each of those reversals is an M. Night Shyamalan style shocker. They can’t all have been dead the whole time. When I say a reversal or a twist, I just mean something that changes the audience’s understanding of the situation and spins the story in a new direction.

    I think sometimes writers are afraid to put reversals at the end of an act because that’s where the audience expects it. But it’s actually satisfying when a story delivers what you expect! The key is to deliver it in a way that’s unexpected. So, yes, do put a big twist at the end of the act (or a small reversal if it’s a quiet, contemplative story), just don’t make it the first, most obvious idea that popped in your head.

  2. Have a few things in your script that you keep sacred and do not let any reversals undo those things. A classic example of this would be a primary relationship if your story has one (and it almost certainly does). It could be your protagonist’s love for her daughter, or it could be a romantic relationship you want to hold sacred in your story. You may want to make that bond untouchable by plot twists so the audience has something to hold onto throughout all the twists and turns of the story.

    Or, if you do want your primary relationship to be undone by a twist because that’s what your whole movie is about (you lovable cynic), then have something else be your Untouchable Truth — maybe it’s your protagonist’s loyalty to his country. Maybe it’s your mentor’s inherent goodness. Maybe it’s the way your magic system works. Whatever it is, have a few important things in your film that are core to what the movie is about and make sure those things are never upended in a twist.

    In fact, if anything, any twists should cement those things. Underline, not strikethrough.

What else am I missing? What makes for an especially good or bad twist? How much is too much?

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How to Build Suspense: 5 Lessons from The Walking Dead

how to build suspense

How to Build Suspense: 5 Lessons from The Walking Dead

Whether it’s the mounting dread that any second now a zombie is going to jump out at you, or the pit in your stomach as tension builds between two characters and you know one of them is not making it out of this episode alive, if there’s one thing The Walking Dead does well, it’s build and maintain suspense.

But how do they do it?

Here are five effective tactics they use a lot that work really well.

NOTE: This post only contains spoilers through Season 3.

The Bomb Under the Table

In a now famous conversation with François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock said the difference between “surprise” and “suspense” is that surprise is when a bomb unexpectedly blows up from under a table, and suspense is when you see the bomber put it there.

A great example of this from The Walking Dead is in Season 3, Episode 13 when Rick and the Governor meet to discuss a possible truce. The Governor makes a big show of putting away his weapons and convinces Rick to do the same, but after sitting down, we see that the Governor has a gun taped under the table. This makes the scene much more suspenseful because as tensions rise in the room, we know that the Governor has a gun, and we know that Rick doesn’t know.

gun under the table S03E13

Several times during the scene, the Governor’s hand moves near where we know the gun to be and suspense builds – will he go for it? Similarly, there’s a moment when Rick lowers his guard and takes his eyes off the Governor for a moment. We want to shout at the screen, “Keep your eyes on him, Rick! He has a gun!”

The writers could instead have not shown us the gun but had the Governor suddenly pull it on Rick at an unexpected moment. This would have been surprising, but not suspenseful. We’d have spent the whole scene thinking the two were having a pleasant chat over whiskey and might have gotten bored.

On the other hand, they could have not shown the gun and not had the Governor pull the gun, but then shown after the scene was over that the gun had been there all along. That’s an interesting approach, but it would not have been as effective in this particular scene.

The Takeaway: Surprises can be great, but it doesn’t always have to be the audience that’s surprised. Sometimes the most suspenseful thing of all is when the audience knows something a character doesn’t.

The Silent Treatment

In several episodes through the series, the episode’s cold open (the part before the title credits) has no or almost no dialogue. Two examples are Season 3, Episode 1 (“Seed”) and Season 3, Episode 13 (“Arrow on the Doorpost”).

These scenes are incredibly suspenseful, even without the context of knowing where the characters are or what exactly they’re doing, and part of what makes it so tense is the lack of dialogue. We wonder why everyone is being so quiet – are they hiding from something?

S03E01 silent cold open

Also, the extreme quiet makes us think something very loud is about to happen. It’s not a bad guess.

The Takeaway: Not every scene needs dialogue. If you want to ratchet up the tension, try taking out the talking.

Everybody’s Right

If you break down the average episode of The Walking Dead, you’ll see that a large portion of the story is groups of characters in various combinations debating what to do about something. In a single episode you might have three separate debates raging between three different collections of characters. We rotate between these debates with episodes of zombie hunting (and other “fun” scenes) sprinkled in like seasoning.

What makes these debates interesting to watch is that in most cases, all of the characters are right. Or at least they’re partly right. Or they’re wrong, but you understand why they feel how they do and you wonder if you would feel the same in their shoes.

everybody's right S03E13

There are no easy answers and we can’t predict with certainty how things will end. The opposing sides of the debate set up two or more possible directions for the episode to take, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book you read as a kid.

We follow the debate like a tennis match as each side volleys its argument over the net, and the suspense comes from wondering who will finally win. Hint: sometimes when you win, you really lose.

The Takeaway: Show your audience two or more ways the story could go and have different characters lobby for each option. Make all the options equally bad, but give the characters good reasons for wanting what they do. Keep the audience on the edge of their seat wondering who will win, and what price they will pay for winning.

Somebody Screws Up

This is a situation where things are already tense, but then someone does something stupid – they make a noise when they were supposed to be quiet, they go outside without a weapon to check out a strange sound, etc. It adds suspense because it creates that classic horror movie trope where you scream at the TV: “DON’T GO IN THERE!”

This is a dangerous one because it’s wildly overused and can be frustrating for the audience when it isn’t earned. It works best in my opinion when two qualifications are met:

(1) the stupid thing the person does is surprising, and yet

(2) the stupid thing the person does is exactly what they would really do.

It doesn’t work, for example, for a kid whose constantly whining to start whining at the exact moment that the family is silently hiding from the killer. That’s annoying because it’s not surprising (the kid is always whining) and it’s also not super believable (they’re hiding from a killer). What does work is for the bratty kid’s toy he stole earlier and stuffed hurriedly in his pocket (but that you forgot he had) to suddenly roll out of his pocket in front of the killer’s feet. That’s surprising, but is also exactly the kind of stupid thing that kid would do.

A good example from The Walking Dead is from Season 3, Episode 14 (“Prey”). Andrea and Milton are talking about the Governor while standing in an open catwalk above his torture chamber when the Governor unexpectedly walks into the room below. Milton immediately hides, which is smart, but Andrea continues standing in the open, watching the Governor, where she’s in grave danger of being seen by him (which would likely result in him killing her and Milton).

S03E14 somebody screws up

This is incredibly stupid since the Governor could look up and see her at any moment, and it’s surprising because it’s so phenomenally stupid, but it’s exactly what Andrea would really do in that moment – she’s much braver than most people, is not afraid of confrontation, and is incredibly curious, especially about the Governor, so it makes sense that she would stay in the open where she can see what he is doing, even though that means she’s also in danger of being seen by him. That scene is incredibly suspenseful and would have been much less so if Andrea had ducked out of sight like Milton did.

The Takeaway: If a scene needs more tension, maybe somebody needs to screw up – just make sure they’re screwing up in a way that is both surprising and yet also in character.

I’m Ready for My Close Up

Next time you watch this show (or any scary movie), notice how often the camera crops close on a character’s face during a tense scene. This serves two purposes:

(1) it zooms in on the character’s facial expression (usually fear or tension), which heightens our emotional response as we naturally empathize with the character, and

(2) it restricts our view of the character’s surroundings.

This second part is important. All we can see is the character’s face and maybe a sliver of out of focus background, but what we want to see is the place the character is in – is there something behind them? Is there something around the corner ahead of them? Look out, look out, look out!

S03E13 suspenseful close up

This is a directorial choice but it’s something we can do as writers as well. It’s basically a tactic of withholding information when we know the audience is very anxious to get that information as soon as possible. Maybe more on that in a future post.

The Takeaway: Withholding information can make an already tense scene even more suspenseful. Think about how you can do this with your writing (and look forward to a future post on the topic).

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