Hatrack River Writers Workshop: How do you portend disaster?

This is topic How do you portend disaster? in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

I find myself in the position of writing my first major tragedy. It's a Deusey, with death, destruction, and endless sorrow. This disaster will change one of my main characters forever. Naturally, the character does not see it coming.

You see this lots of times in fiction. Something awful happens suddenly to a POV character. But I've noticed that when some of my favorite authors do this, I as a reader can sense that something bad is going to happen before the POV character does. It cushons the blow for the reader.

How do these writers accomplish this?

I don't want to start a chapter with: "And later that afternoon, disaster struck." The good writers don't do that.

The best example I can think of is the death of Tom in the middle of Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth. Tom has been through many close calls before, but somehow about two pages before his death I could tell that he was going to die. I don't know how I could tell. Something subtle was between the lines in the text. Something I wish I could emulate.

Any ideas?

Posted by Chronicles_of_Empire (Member # 1431) on :

I'm not sure how applicable it would be to your own work, but my own feeling is that disasters are rarely without some form of preceding tensions.

These need not necessarily implicate the POV in any later specific event, but the fact the the POV character is present in an arena of tension suggests it's own dangers.

Sub-plots are a very simple way of tying together into a disastrous event, though without any form of clarification of what's involved I'm probably way off the mark!

Posted by JOHN (Member # 1343) on :

Why would you want to soften the blow to the readers? Screw that! When the disaster happens it should seem like a seamless part of the story, and seem like it was the authors intention the whole time, but drop hints here and there maybe. (By hints I mean, like in the movie Fight Club. You watch it for the second time and you're like, "Damn, it was so obvious.") You can also use the tone assort of forshadowing, but that's as far as I'd take it. It's also a pretty subjective thing. The same book you read that gave you a impending sense of doom, could have took the reader by total surprise. I'm sure there's people out there who saw Fight Club and were like, "Duh, it was so obvious."

My opinion---hit the readers over the head get a emotional repsonse. Don't soften shit, man!

JOHN!

[This message has been edited by JOHN (edited July 16, 2002).]

Posted by DragynGide (Member # 1448) on :

Oftentimes I find that authors portend disaster in one of two ways. Either they use symbolism (and use it well, or don't use it at all!) that fits in with the flow of the scenery, which alerts readers to the fact that something is coming; or they refer to the characters (never the main character) who are going to be hit by the disaster in specific ways. For example, one book I read recently had a situation where a group of police officers were going into a life-threatening confrontation. One of the characters was a rookie who was given the choice multiple times to go out and stay with the cars. I knew well before the rookie died that he was destined to do so, because the main character noticed how innocent and young he seemed. It was the fact that she noticed this, in the middle of the "stalking" part of the scene, that I knew he was going to die. You'll notice that it happens alot that a main character will look at another a certain way, or think of them a certain way, or even have a whole scene devoted to an encounter that they regret and intend to resolve-- just before the proverbial pile hits the fan.

I also notice that in books where this foreshadowing works, the author doesn't seem to be deliberately thinking about said foreshadowing. It just kind of flows into what they're writing because they, themselves, already know about the disaster looming on the horizon. Deliberate foreshadowing often fails because it /looks/ deliberate.

My best suggestion would be to concentrate on important events and scenes between the characters that lead up to the disaster, and just write things as they are. Your own anticipation will probably make evident to your readers that impending doom is on its way.

-Shasta

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Doc, go to those few pages before Tom's death and analyze them to pieces.

Start by typing them into your computer (do the whole chapter if that works) and then print out a few copies of what you've typed.

On one copy, go through and use a different colored highlighter to highlight the verbs, nouns, modifiers, and so on.

On another copy, go through with those highlighters and use a different color to highlight things the different characters do or say.

Use the highlighters and other copies to mark out other patterns that may be evident in that chapter.

If you have to diagram the sentences; look for alliteration; use one color highlighter for short, choppy sentences, and another for long, complicated sentences; use one color for single syllable words, and another for multisyllabic words. Use them to highlight whatever you can think of.

You about bound to notice all kinds of interesting things, especially what the author did to signal to you Tom's impending death.

I recommend this kind of thing any time you want to figure out how an author did something that worked for you. You may hate the story afterwards, but you will very likely know more about what the author did than the author.

Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :

Thanks, everyone.

Kathleen: Unfortunately, I loaned that book to my father, and it isn't easily available to me! I have only my memory, and my memory only knows I could feel the death coming. It doesn't remember how I felt it!

I wrote the scene tonight, and I'm thinking of posting it to the Fragments forum. Unfortunately, anyone who has read this thread will not be a good judge of my efforts, which kinda ruins the intent.

I think I'll just spring it on my group and see what they say.

Thanks, everyone! If anyone has any more comments or hints I'm still interested in them.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

One of the best methods for increasing the level of dramatic tension is through the use of dramatic irony, where the audience knows something that the character does not know. For instance, you can have a character that (to be obvious) believes that a longbow cannot punch through plate armor. Since the audience for books involving heroes with plate armor is likely to know that this is not the case, they are set up to wonder "how and when will our hero find out that this belief is mistaken?"

Of course, you will rarely want to be so heavy handed with a protagonist, since if they appear really stupid, your reader will tend to mock rather than sympathize. But if you felt that Tom was in terrible danger, it is probably because you became aware at some level that he was terribly mistaken about something important to his survival.

I add two related points. The first is that it is not always necessary to kill a character when you use this trick. This is fortunate because you have to accustom your audience to realize that the hero is not omniscient, particularly where you are writing from a fixed POV. This means that you should have several instances in which the hero's ignorance or mistaken beliefs lead variously to embarrassment, material loss, near disaster, and other such scenes upon "revelation" of the truth. This habituates the readers to examine the character's beliefs critically, just as they would (or should, at any rate) examine their own assumptions about important factors. Thus, when they see him making a mistake about something that might endanger more than his poise or wallet, they feel tension.

In multiple POV works, of course, you can easily demonstrate the mistaken assumptions of the protagonist by switching to the POV of another character that knows something the hero does not (particularly the villian). But the payoff is less, partly because the method is easier.