The Art of Writing: How to Write Bestselling Novels

Setting Up for Impact (Promises & Payoffs)

(NOTE: I cannot take reading requests since I run a small business that leaves me little time to do even my own writing.)

Have you ever read a story or watched a movie where you reached a pivotal scene with some big reveal but it falls flat? Or have you ever written a story and put it out, but people don't connect with your big reveal or twist toward the end?

The cause of this has everything to do with how you set up the tension before you reach that scene. Writing to create impact for the readers is one of the more important parts of story creation. You can have a beautifully written story that ends up disappointing the readers strictly because it doesn't properly prepare the readers for the climax and ending.

Here's an example. Let's say you're going to kill off a character and you want it to really raise the tension for the reader. If the character who dies doesn't have much of a relationship built with the main character first, there's no real impact for the reader. Or let's say the main character really cares about the person who dies, but you didn't show the relationship between the two characters very well before the character died. That's going to destroy the impact of that character dying.

The way to correct that is to have a few scenes throughout the book where the main character bonds with the character who will eventually die. Show that the character means a lot to the main character. Don't tell that--show it. Write scenes that truly craft a picture for the reader of a strong, meaningful relationship between the two characters. Also, show what's at stake if the main character loses the other character.

Also, what really builds the tension for a solid payoff is making the person's death pivotal to the story. In other words, if the character dies, it's most likely going to cause the main character not to get what he or she wants. And that's the whole point of every story--the main character(s) getting what he or she wants.

If you want to build impact early in a story, you need to craft your scenes around the object you want to have impact later when it's lost. Let's take the TV show Smallville for example. Let's say a billionaire like Lex Luthor entrusts a key to a safe with millions of dollars and priceless artifacts to hist best friend Clark Kent. The key now has meaning. It's important. So when Clark somehow loses it, that creates impact by jacking up the tension several notches. He'll feel horrible and need to do everything in his power to get it back.

And let's say the safe has something in it that Clark Kent needs--maybe a crystal with special markings on it from his home planet, Krypton. That's going to build even more tension, because now two people--Lex and Clark--will be incredibly disappointed if the safe key is lost.

Now let's say the important item in the safe is something that Clark told Lana he'd give her, and if she didn't get it, it would cause a huge problem in her life and she'd be very upset with Clark. That's even more tension, because Clark is in love with Lana and the last thing he wants to do is upset her. Yet constantly in that series, events seem to end up hurting Lana in some way.

Let's now execute the scene where the key is lost to see what the impact is. However, we don't just want Clark to lose the key. Sure, that would create a lot of tension...but there's a better way to create a lot more tension. Instead of Clark simply losing it, let's have Lionel Luther steal it from Clark, because Lionel wants to get his hands on the artifact Clark wants from the safe, and he wants the money, as well, to help him crash Lex's company, Lex Corp. So we don't just have the tension of a lost safe, we have the tension of an evil person having possession of the safe key and everything that's in it. But let's not stop there...

We'll take it even further. If Lionel gets his hands on what's in the safe, he'll have an artifact that can steal Clark's powers from him, sink Lex's company completely, destroy Clark and Lana's friendship, and throw the town of Smallville into disarray. So now there isn't just disappointment, there's fear of what Lionel will do with everything that's in the safe.