Gradually Increasing Tension and Moments to Breathe

4theWords, one of the writing resources I use, had a scavenger hunt this October, where they sent their members to people's blogs so they could be introduced to writing resources.  I found it pretty interesting.  Also I was one of the stops, so maybe I'm biased.

But on one of the stops, there was a woman who made videos about craft, and the one I watched was something like "Common mistakes amateur writers make during character arcs."  And I want to talk about it.

First, I don't think there are really "mistakes" you can make in story telling.  There are grammar rules you can violate and you could switch point of view in confusing ways or jump time periods or have continuity issues in a way that makes the story hard to follow, and I think those could be called mistakes.  But in my opinion issues that deal with the shape of a story should be approached like, "This is a place where you have an opportunity you're not using to its fullest," or "You could do more with this," instead of "this is an error."

So with that in mind, let me tell you about the structure of a character arc.  Since junior high, you've probably seen the diagram that makes a story look like a mountain.  There's rising action, a climax at the peak, and then falling action.

The y-axis on this graph is not labeled, and I want to burn it to the ground.

What this video said was that everything during your rising action--so everything from your inciting incident to your climax--should get harder, and one of the common mistakes she sees with new writers is that one event will be very hard and the next event will be less hard and the next event will be a little hard, and it won't escalate.

And I have some issues with this.  Mainly, I think that if things just escalate and escalate and escalate without breathing room, the narrative becomes overwhelming.  Moments of quiet are necessary for the characters to reflect on why the last horrible event was horrible.  They're also necessary in novels to give the reader a break. If we look at the hero's journey, there's always a point where the hero faces death and usually has a revelatory moment or a second wind.  Think of "Die Hard" when John McClane is in the air duct with his feet all cut up, talking to Carl the cop, thinking he might not make it.  It's a lull in the action, a breath before the climax.  There's still tension, but it's a different flavor, and I'm not gripping my seat waiting for someone to get thrown out a window. 

So already, our neat triangular shape has some divots in it, or some moments between events.

I didn't add a y-axis label

Also, I think phrasing it like each episode or event should get harder is a simplification, which is fine when your audience is new writers.  You want to lay out rules and then later talk about how and when they can be broken.  Let's say I have a story where the kickball team has to play against a neighbor school who is also not very good, and then they play against the good team in town, and then they go to state.  That gets harder with every new challenge.  It would be a little weird for the games to happen in a different order.  But why's this team only playing three games in their combined season and post season?  Surely the teams they play in the regular season will be a mix of difficulties.  Maybe they'll even lose a few!  The thing that maybe would make each challenge progressively more difficult is that after winning against an easy team, maybe now there's an expectation set up, and they're fighting not just the other team but their own hopes and fears and the expectations of their coaches and parents.  Maybe after the game they lose, they're fighting against their fear of losing, maybe they super have to prove themselves.  Maybe they have to impress one kid's dad who finally shows up!  So it's not just that each team they play is more skilled and therefore more difficult to beat, but each game they play is harder because of baggage the characters have.

So if there's a story like a character is trying to get the band back together and has to visit the rhythm guitar player and the bassist and the drummer, it could be that the drummer is harder to convince than the bass player, who's harder to convince than the rhythm guitar player.  Or it could be that our main character has bigger drama with the drummer than the bassist than the rhythm guitar player, and each encounter is emotionally more fraught if not more difficult.   OR!  It could be that our main character brings all the drama from meeting the guitar player into their visit with the bassist, so they're going into the conversation with level 2 anxiety rather than level 0 anxiety, so already it's a harder meeting.  They go into the meeting with the drummer all wound up from meeting the guitarist and the bassist and they're starting from anxiety level 5. As long as they consistently carry that with them, each new situation builds.

So instead of the problem that each new episode doesn't provide a greater challenge, the real issue with the story telling might be that the character isn't carrying previous challenges with them or that the writer is letting the tension drop in unhelpful and unrealistic ways.