Don't believe me? Think of your favorite book of all time and ask what did Atticus Finch most want in the story, even more important, what did Scout want most? Father wants...daughter wants. In any given scene, a conflict may exist between Atticus and Scout or Jem. What did the narrator as child want from her father? To understand her father, to "get" human nature, to make sense of people? Who stood in her way? Her own innocence and lack of years on the planet, her own innocence to the evil that men do. Take the tense plot about Ahab and the White Whale -- Moby Dick. What did Ahab want? What caused the tension in this fish tale? What was Ahab's most passionate obsession, and what force of nature kept him from it? The whale is a force of nature that fights for itself against Ahab and Ahab wants it dead for having taken his leg and having destroyed his last ship (and crew but they're expendable! as is the new crew and ship). The tension is the highwire, the plot upon which all this is played out. The plot is the thread upon which conflict and tension are balanced. Think of Huck Finn having to fight for his freedom from his pap, the Widow Watson, Hannibal, Missouri, society, civilization. He has to fight his way out of each episodic problem or conflict keeping him from being free, his obsession--mirrored in Negro Jim's obsession to "get free" along with getting his family free.
Then there are the serial killers who are obsessed, the vampires who are obsessed, the bad guys who are obsessed coming face to face with the good guys whose obsessions are "positive" obsessions, like Bat Man or Superman whose strength comes from being equally obsessed at capturing and putting an end to the villain and or his activities. The tension is in the chase, the conflict is in the goals, and the violence, if it comes to that comes at the clash--as when Ahab catches up to the White Whale, or as when another obsessed character battles the sea, the mountains, the planet Mars, or a werewolf, or a vampire, or a twisted religious fanatic.
I love Jerome Stern's Making Shapely Fiction. Great out of print little book filled with great complete well thought out answers. Told me how I do what I do and why I do it the way I do it. Felt like Stern got into my head where even I had not gone (scary place, really).
Hope this "defines" the difference between tension, conflict, and violence. You can toss out the violence in a fictional work, but you MUST have conflict and tension.
But with many new writers it’s not even about conflict or tension but just getting past putting down pages, especially pages past the first chapter or opening page. So here as a final addendum I offer up ADVICE from on high about starting and stopping…or rather the Abbott of Writing offers up advice on said subject:
Advice Column: Dear Abbot of Writing at Acme Abbey
by Abbot Robert W. Walker
Query #1:
Dear Father Rob aka Abbot Author at Acme Authors -- “I've written so many versions and revisions of my opening chapters (one and two) that horror of horrors, I just don't know which versions now to go with, and it's driving me nuts. Help! What can I do to get clear?” – Confused in Connecticut
Quick and Dirty Answer from the Abbot:
Burn the thing as possibly Satanic, my child. Belay that! Just kidding, of course. Monk humor…not for everyone. This may sound outrageous but it is a choice: Submit each version on a rotating basis to as many agents and editors as you like, my child…and when one version gets a positive rejection as to a really nasty one—a rejection that does not hate it—go with that version. You can do this with friends and co-authors as well. You need a cold eye to come down hard.
Contemplative Monk Reply:
My advice if you are writing and rewriting those first 2 chapters and have got yourself into a confusing bind or conundrum....couple of things you can do: Put these chapters away. (All that work?) Yes, sit down and rewrite from page one from your head....from your memory, which is more active and powerful than you give it credit. That memory is as good as any computer's memory when it comes to the broad strokes. It is like recapturing a dream and retelling it to someone. Think chapter one is organic and out of it grows chapter two, from which sprouts chapter three. (Yes, you can write as you go). Imagine if your computer drowned or was fried or was blown up by your kids in a strange, weird experiment. Rewrite from the beginning to recapture the story you had always meant to tell. Start fresh. It’s a helluva challenge but your mind is capable of it.
If this LEAP of faith solution terrifies you to the degree you simply can't attempt the exercise, then go back to the chapter you have, do rewrites that POUNCE on any of the LY words. If you cut out most or many of the Adverbs and Adjectives, you will streamline the story; it will move more clearly and quickly. Or maybe I should have simply said FAST. Also examine every prepositional phrase, phrases beginning with in, out, up, down, over, under, back, to, with, etc and make sure the sentence can/cannot stand with/without these -- especially ending a sentence with one of these like the phrase "TO ME.” Often it can be said without adding “to me” or whatever tacked on. Prepositions are like takced on more info and often it is UNDERSTOOD but invisible to you the author.
OK....having done this, you may find that there are also scenes you've TOLD--sometimes in flashback, sometimes in the NO'W story that could easily be rewritten as a DIALOGUE scene, and any time you can get your characters TALKING and interacting with one anther (as in a film or play script, see?), the main characters are defining one another and character is being illuminated, and the plot may well be pushed along by said dialogue as well. More and more I rely on dialoguing that scene. Don't TELL me, show me, and you can do that far more often than you realize in taking said block paragraphs of description of a person, place, or thing (which can become static if you stop your story to carve out a block of descript) and instead turning them into give-and-take dialogue lines. Speaking parts while your characters are digging up a body or planting one. Action does not have to stop to illuminate character or push the plot along or describe a setting.
Query #2:
Dear Father Rob aka Abbot at Acme – “You know what kills me, Father Rob? I'm great about editing and/or giving feedback on someone else's manuscript, but when it comes to my own, I'm completely lost. Guess I cannot see it objectively. So how can I become a better editor of my own work?” –Clueless in the Forests of Verbiage
Quick Dirty Reply from Abbot Rob:
If you are having pain in the joints, stay outta them joints. In other words, don’t read your own work. Just kidding, of course. Read it aloud!! Also read the reply above as much of it applies here…
Thoughtful Monk Answer:
Put the pages away for a goodly time, my child…at least a couple of weeks, maybe more. Go do anything else. Pay your bills. Go on a shopping spree. Go fishing or on a vacation. Get out of town. You may even want to literally “freeze” your manuscript; that is place it into your freezer as if hiding it from a thief—YOU. You need to get away from it for awhile. Return from that vacation and “thaw it out” and look at the manuscript with a COLD EYE. This you can do because time has made you a better writer already these couple of weeks or this month, and you can look far more objectively at your “product” as belonging to that guy or young lady who created it some time ago, and now you are far more equipped to see and HEAR the problems. Any sentence can be written any number of ways. Sentences you stopped with a period will scream to be attached, compound sentence will scream loudly to be rewritten so as to use a fragment at one end, or to be reversed so that the end phrase becomes the intro phrase. Complex sentence may demand to be redone as simple sentences. Simple ones may morph into complex ones. This is where you polish, spit, shine, re-think which all equals rewriting and in my book Writing is ReWriting. You get your best work done in post-production….in the rewrites.
A final word on rewrites – this is where you can identify all the scenes that slow the book to a dull murmur instead of having “heat” on every page. Here you can and will find whole sections that are telling instead of showing in such lines as: She knew she wanted to let him down easily, but she also knew she didn’t
love him, and if she didn’t love him, she couldn’t go through with the marriage. That’s not only static but filled with constructions of the sort where pronouns proliferate. If it’s first person it’s such constructs as: I knew I….or I felt I….or I sensed that I….and if second person it’d read, You knew you…you felt you…you sensed that you….and if set in third person it’d read just about as badly as: He felt he…she thought she…John knew he or Sarah thought she is an improvement….but another major sin authors fall into is too much reliance on the pronouns in first person – I, me, my, mine, myself until we get a “whiney tone” going. Pronouns overused in third person: He, his, him, himself can fall into the same sort of problem. Oh and a word from Dean Koontz as advice from him to me, the now Abbott. He said, “Kiddo, calm down and stop worrying because you don’t do your best work until you turn fifty anyhow.”
But don’t wait until you are fifty to begin work on good working habits. Begin now to make a checklist of items to seek out and destroy and the checklist should begin with overuse of pronouns, prepositions, adverbs (let the verb do the work), and adjectives (let the noun do the work). A common exercise to see how badly writers can write is to take any paragraph of Hemmingway and attach LY words to all his sparse language, to add to the verbs and to the nouns. Instead of – He rolled over and into the filthy ditch…He quickly and efficiently rolled over in the manner of a log and into the muddy, weedy infested smelly ditch filled with awful vermin.
It was Mark Twain, speaking of “additive” words who said, “When in doubt, strike it out.” My final word: Read Jereome Stern’s Making Shapely Fiction and books by bestselling authors on writing such as that of David Morrell, Tom Sawyer (yes, Tom has written a book on writing!), Dean R. Koontz (yes, Koontz has a how-to on writing popular fiction and while it is out of print, it can be found in a good decent library), and don’t overlook the many excellent books and blogs now available to writers done by people working in the field of forensics and law enforcement, and finally, get your hands on DEAD ON WRITING and DEAD ON. As you read my fiction, check out my how-to and see how I put into practice all I preach.
Happy Writing and Reading everyone, and to check out my long work, see DEAD ON, a suspense novel set in Atlanta up at Kindle and for sale hardcover at Amazon.com and Five Star Press. For more information on all my books, both suspense and horror as well as YA and historical suspense, visit my website!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert W. Walker is the author of more than forty published novels, beginning with SUB-ZERO in 1979. He has millions of books in print. You can visit him at www.robertwalkerbooks.com.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE INSTINCT THRILLERS featuring FBI forensic pathologist Dr. Jessica Coran
Killer Instinct
Fatal Instinct
Primal Instinct
Pure Instinct
Darkest Instinct
Extreme Instinct
Blind Instinct
Bitter Instinct
Unnatural Instinct
Grave Instinct
Absolute Instinct
THE EDGE THRILLERS featuring Detective Lucas Stonecoat
Cold Edge
Double Edge
Cutting Edge
Final Edge
THE GRANT THRILLERS featuring Medical Examiner Dean Grant
Floaters
Scalpers
Front Burners
Dying Breath
THE RANSOM MYSTERIES featuring 19th century detective Alastair Ransom
City for Ransom
Shadows in the White City
City of the Absent
THE DECOY THRILLERS featuring Chicago cop Ryne Lanarck
Hunting Lure
Blood Seers
Wind Slayers
Hand-to-Hand
THE BLOODSCREAMS SERIES featuring archeologist Abraham Stroud
Vampire Dreams
Werewolf’s Grief
Zombie Eyes
HORROR NOVELS
Dr. O
Disembodied
Aftershock
Brain Stem
Abaddon
The Serpent Fire
Flesh Wars (the sequel to The Serpent Fire)
Children of Salem
THRILLER NOVELS
Sub-Zero
PSI: Blue
Deja Blue
Cuba Blue (with Lyn Polkabla)
Dead On
Thrice Told Tales (short stories)
YOUNG ADULT
Daniel Webster Jackson & the Wrong Way Railroad
Gideon Tell & the Siege of Vicksburg
NON FICTION
Dead On Writing – Thirty Years of Writerly Advice
Excerpt from CUBA BLUE by Robert W. Walker and Lynn Polkabla
ONE
Friday, Late Afternoon Aboard the Sanabela II
Flowing across the sea-green coastal waters of Canal del Entrada, the mechanical cry of screeching gears aboard the shrimper, Sanabela II, trawling a few miles north of Havana, formed an oddly musical counterpoint to the shrieks of hungry seagulls hunting food along the shore. When the ship’s gears shuddered to a sudden standstill, the absence of that sound shocked the gulls into momentary stillness. Aboard the shrimper, all activity stopped. The men froze in place, afraid to breathe, afraid to hope. They stared first at the choked-off wench and then at one another. Fishing had been wretchedly poor all season; not once had the nets filled with so heavy a prize as the one promised by the old equipment groaning as the ship rocked in the waves. In the pilothouse, bearded and white-haired Captain Luis Estrada gasped. As another enormous groan choked from the wooden moorings and metal hoist, he rushed down to the main deck.
Everyone aboard knew what the subsequent silence meant.
Still, Estrada, like his crew, feared giving a moment’s vent to any jubilation. Not until a man stood knee-deep in the catch did he dare celebrate—an unwritten rule that all seamen knew only too well.
Pearls of small Christmas lights, strung from the tops of masts and the crow’s nest, created a colorful necklace for the busted-up old tub, Estrada’ cheap, efficient answer to the lighting problem whenever they worked into the night, or like today, under a dark sky threatening rain. The crew joked mercilessly about Estrada’s low-tech solutions.
The captain watched the net being slowly pulled up. Too slowly for his or anyone’s liking. He exploded, ordering, “Crank it up!”
The pulley operator shouted back, “She’s at full-throttle now!”
“It’s a full net!” shouted Adondo, his young eyes expectant.
Big Giraldo added, “Net’s heavier than my wife’s ass!”
“That’s damn heavy!” replied Adondo, laughing and adding, “but such a sweet one, that Miranda. You don’t deserve her, Giraldo!”
The jest made them all laugh, touching off their pent-up jubilation. Shouting, dancing, and singing erupted, with Adondo happily beating on oil drums with a knife in one hand and a huge tenterhook in the other.
With a burst of black oily smoke belching from the old machinery, the net lurched upward. Inside the rough-hewn many times mended net, hung a tangled web of bodies. Bloated skin mottled with dark bruises stretched over a grotesque catalogue of swollen body parts: eyes, ears, noses, limbs, torsos pressed tightly against the net, as if searching escape. The appalling package wore a ribbon of heavy chains with decorations of sea life.
The noisy celebration instantly turned into stunned silence.
Estrada exclaimed, “Madre de Dios!” Shaking his head, he muttered, “God just doesn’t like me, does he?”
TWO
Police Headquarters, Old Havana
“There is no cause for angry words, Mr. Zayas! After all, we’re a small police department.”
“I understand that but—”
“We’re doing everything in our power as quickly as we can.”
Lieutenant Detective Quiana Magdalena Aguilera looked up from a file she’d been poring over, both curious and annoyed at t
he sound of raised voices here in the Old Capitol Police Force building. Detective Jorge Peña was escorting a tall dark-haired man out of Colonel Gutierrez’s office. “These things take time.”
As the two men passed her desk, the stranger glanced her way, seeing a slim, dark eyed, black haired woman beneath the poor lighting of the old stationhouse. Her café au lait skin had the sheen of faint perspiration, ever present in this tropical climate. She noticed his blue-green eyes widen at her as if in greeting, and she smiled in reply.
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