Discovering Dread

So far I have found “Something to Dread” the most work, but also the most informative. I write a lot, but I wanted to do the course because I thought that it would help me at writing a plot centered book. Generally my books tend to center around characters.

It has done just that. “Something to Dread” was a lot of work but also very good because it actually made me THINK about the villain and about the suspense and the raising of the stakes that is needed to keep a story moving. Usually I find my villains far from as frightening as they should be. I think this tends to be because I loose sight of just how scary they should be. Also, I'm afraid that previous to this I have not tied them into the plot enough... And I think I've never raised the stakes quite enough.

Raising the stakes is the practice of having thing after thing go wrong—and then, ultimately, the one thing that you do not want to happen happening. It's the pins and needles, and the upping of the stakes that makes the person not able to put the book down. See...if the hero has to kill the villain, that's one thing. But if the hero is trying to kill the villain while being pursued by the whole army—that's another thing. But when the stakes are highest are when the hero is trying to kill the villain, who is trying to kill the person that the hero cares about most, AND the entire army is chasing the hero trying to kill him... The reader is not going to be able to put the book down because he wants to know how it ends. Does the hero win? Does the villain win? Does the army catch up with him? What is the villain has captured the very person that the hero cares about most and is ready to kill them, but the hero is being pursued by the army, so cannot go and rescue said person...and then the army catches up to the hero? (actually...I think that's a good idea. I might use that. :D )

And the other thing he talks about is the “Bad Thing Around The Corner”...or just BTATC. It's the hinting, the foreshadowing that something bad is going to happen. SOOOO... if you say that the hero really does not want to have the person he cares about most be captured...then we know that that person will be captured, because why else bring it up? So now the readers know that that person is going to be captured, but we really don't want it to happen. And THEN we show the villain killing someone else, and then the reader really doesn't want to have the person the hero cares about captured, PARTLY because they just don't want it and PARTLY because we're afraid that the villain is going to kill them—and well, if I've done my job well, the hero isn't going to be the ONLY person who cares about said other person. But THEN, when the villain DOES capture the person that the hero cares about, he DOESN'T kill them. He TORTURES them. And then it's worse than the BTATC that we were EXPECTING. Because if the author gives us only the BATATC that we were expecting, we'll be disappointed. (human psychology...I don't understand it either)

But neither of those things are things I have EVER done in my stories before. Which might just be why my villains are never quite satisfying—even to me! Heh...