I get it. I get it. Game of Thrones is not for everyone. Yet, even if you refuse to sample a single episode, it doesn’t mean you (writers) can’t get some benefit from understanding what the series did right…and then how the story went so horribly wrong.

On my end, I confess I waited four seasons to even start watching—okay binge-watching. There’s something about me liking a show that seems to spell out its inevitable doom.

To be blunt. If GoT wasn’t going to stick around for the long haul, I didn’t want to get too attached.

***Sorry about ‘Firefly,’ btw…

Also, some spoilers ahead for those who keep reading. For everyone else? Feel free to continue day-drinking…

What Game of Thrones Did RIGHT

Go Big, or Go HOME

The single largest problem I see in new novels is the author thinks too small. Superlative fiction is regular life amplified. The more terrible the odds, the higher the stakes, the more hopeless it all feels, the deeper a story hooks the audience.

All the best stories go BIG (literally or metaphorically). There is so much on the line, we cannot help but keep turning pages/watching episodes because we HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

Humans long for catharsis. The slower and more intense the build up, the better the payoff.

***At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Once hooked, we become so immersed that an intense story experience is the closest we’ll get to astral projection (without years of training or psychotropic drugs).

When it came to going BIG? Game of Thrones set the ‘vastness’ bar so high it made Lord of the Rings seem like a Prius parked next to a Monster Truck.

Suffice to say that, over the past seven seasons, Game of Thrones set our expectations somewhere in the upper stratosphere.

Everything was over the top from the story to set design and film locations, and on and on. The story was boundless, complex, and sometimes infuriatingly detailed.

Also, this last season took over two years to release. Suffice to say we were primed and ready for the promised payoff (more on this later).

Bad Decisions Birth Great Stories

Game of Thrones, Paging Dr. Phil…

Next on the list? Bad decisions. Game of Thrones contained so many bad decisions, it was like seeing what would happen if every supermax prison documentary made babies with all twenty-seven seasons of Jerry Springer.

I think this is what intrigued me so much.

I know many people hated GoT (or refused to watch it) because there’s every sort of debauchery, violence, perversion, and more perversion. Did I mention debauchery?

Trust me, I get it. I finished the series far faster, namely because I used a LOT of the three-arrow feature in my controller.

Okay, yes loads of sex and more sex and weird and weirder sex. Got it. Can we get back to the intrigue and back-stabbing?

Yet, to me, this is what made Game of Thrones biblical in proportions and dimension. I can only speak from my own faith perspective but, seriously.

Game of Thrones was like watching the Old Testament…only with dragons.

Granted there’s honor, family, loyalty, justice and a profound longing for order in a chaotic and cruel world. Humans aren’t all bad all the time.

We mean well.

Alas, Game of Thrones then served these noble intentions alongside heaping portions of power-grabbing, corruption, misogyny, misandry, subversion, false prophets (or not), zealots, revenge, insanity, racism, eunuchs, classism, incest—takes breath—resurrection, false gods, evil generals, prodigal sons, bastards, executions, rebellions, ambushes, demonic creatures, necromancy and….

Meh. Y’all get the point.

Art Revealed in Efficiency

Game of Thrones & Chekov’s Prophecies

Game of Thrones did this incredible job of using…pretty much everything. Before you shout me down, I know they could have done this better but that is for later in the post.

Yet, by and large we (the audience) HAD to pay attention.

Snippets of dialogue, a camera lingering on a book, a glance, the casually mentioned name of a sword, etc. all played a part in the story.

I learned early on to a) take nothing for granted and b) if you think you figured it out? Guess again and c) don’t get too attached to anyone…not even pets.

Prophecy, in my POV, served as the hub for much of the suspense. Everyone had their own idea of HOW the prophecy would be fulfilled, each faction creating their own spoke.

Perhaps this was the wheel that Dany insisted be broken?

There was a tremendous amount of misdirection—which is great—but misdirection can be a double-edged sword.

As a fan, we’ve all tried to figure out how everything would play out.

Some fans wanted this…

The rest of us knew George R.R. Martin and his reputation for dangling a glimmer of hope that our favorite character(s) would live…then tossing them into a literary tree mulcher.

All of this to say that Game of Thrones did an amazing job of keeping us guessing. Short of a tinfoil hat and a wall covered in pictures and red string? I had plenty of guesses myself.

Great stories should use everything. Setting, dialogue, speculation, props all have a job. Nothing should live in our stories rent-free. The trick, however, is to misdirect the audience about how much weight each of these carry.

The greatest compliment an author can ever receive is, “I never saw that coming” followed by “How did I never see that coming?”

What Game of Thrones Did WRONG

Expectations and Reality

Anger is the emotion we experience when our reality fails to meet our expectations. The greater the distance, the hotter the rage.

Ironically, what GoT did right in the beginning is directly responsible for why so many fans are now seeing red.

Early on, GoT held as true to George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire as was possible in the visual medium. I’d only read the first two books, but even I was seriously impressed.

Unfortunately, this grew problematic when the HBO series caught up to the book series far more quickly than George R.R. Martin anticipated. Because Martin hadn’t finished the final books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, HBO had a problem.

There was no way to convey the same level of complexity from the previous seasons that had been based off the published books.

This is why we start seeing deviations around Season 6.

Martin could only offer broad strokes of the various ways he’d intended for every through-line to play out and for the series to end…but that was all.

HBO had to then use the pieces on the board and refashion a satisfactory ending from what they had. #SuckedToBeThem

HBO had already SET the operational tempo for this story. Over time, people either got bored (not fans) or we learned to adapt, enjoy, and even revel in the slow torture (TRUE fans).

Sure, we all moaned and complained, but it didn’t mean we didn’t LOVE to suffer and commiserate about our collective pain.

***Dallas Cowboys fans know this feeling all too well.

Pacing and Plot Puppets

Characters, Like Chess, Have ‘RULES’

Is it possible for a character to do something utterly ‘out of character?’ Sure! Good storytellers create characters who surprise us. If the audience knows exactly what the characters would and would not do, there’s no magic.

This said, having characters shock us is colossally different from a character going completely off the rails and doing a thing because we (the writer) NEED them to.

Plots—notably plots like Game of Thrones—are a giant chess game. There are innumerable variables, outcomes, wins and losses that can be chalked up to strategy (good or bad), fatigue, impatience or even simply not seeing a threat.

A game of chess is only a game of chess because of the pieces on the board. Same in fiction. Plot means nothing without the characters on the field. Story is always made better because each character possesses certain constraints in every scene (move).

In chess, just because we’re losing a match doesn’t mean pieces can suddenly start moving any way we want them to. We can’t move a rook like a knight simply because we want to speed up the game and ‘win.’

That’s cheating.

Storytelling is very similar. When characters start rushing and acting in ways that haven’t been foreshadowed simply because the writers NEED them to do X, Y, and Z…it’s cheating.

There are very good reasons fans are screaming ‘FOUL!’

Red Herrings & White Walkers

Game of Throne…OF LIES!

Game of Thrones was released in 2011. Pretty sure if there is a GLOBAL following EIGHT YEARS LATER, we would have been okay with slowing the hell down.

Yes, as writers we want to mess with the audiences’ minds, step on their expectations. They will hate us, but also love us for it.

But, there’s a line we shouldn’t cross unless we’re ready for some righteous blowback.

As far as I’m concerned, the HBO ending is only mildly better than if Brandon Stark had bolted up in bed, sweaty….realizing it was all a bad dream.

We have been groomed for eight years to BELIEVE the Night King and his White Walkers posed a serious threat.

Part of why I found myself railing at the heavens had to do with all the petty fighting about who was going to be king or queen or duke or earl of whatever when there was definitive PROOF there were ICE ZOMBIES.

Why I gave it a pass? It is SO human nature. Though maddening, it WORKED. Humans have a loooong reputation of sucking at priorities whenever a crown, a throne, money, revenge, or free Animal Fries are on the line and there to distract us from stuff that matters.

I have no doubts that if an asteroid is going to strike Earth, if it happens on Black Friday, Walmart will STILL erupt in fist fights over who scores the last flat-screen.

So the infighting over the World’s Most Uncomfortable Chair, while ludicrous, made sense in a pathetic way.

Humans are masters of idiotic compartmentalization.

But building up this terrifying enemy just to…and then the waiting TWO years for…..

*weeps* WHYYYYY?

Winter is Coming…JUST KIDDING!

How many memes, t-shirts, mugs all sported the famous saying, ‘Winter is Coming’? If you even read the first few chapters of the books, you get the impression that winter in this ‘world’ is a threat alone (White Walkers or not).

The entire push to secure the Iron Throne and thus stabilize the seven realms (at least early) largely had to do with the fact that winter lasts a LONG FRIGGIN’ TIME.

So the seven-year winter (possibly longer) was declared and thus presumed imminent.

***Vaguely recalling snowflakes dropping in Season 3? Or maybe that was last night.

#CalmDown #GenXJokes

But winter NEVER COMES. Well, sort of. More like a Texas winter. All smoke, ashes and fire one day, snow the next, but PICNIC weather by the weekend.

One might have even intimated the ‘Winter is Coming’ to be metaphorical. But again, the Night King and his armies melted faster than an Amarillo blizzard.

Here’s a tip. DON’T make a HUGE deal out of something to simply drop it. This ticks us OFF. Conversely, don’t almost completely IGNORE something then POOF!

Here’s your ENDING!

There WERE Simple Fixes

Game of Thrones & Resting Bran Face

I can appreciate that HBO was in between a rock and an Iron Throne, but slowing down and adding a couple more episodes likely could have at least tempered our outrage.

In the span of a couple more episodes, the writers could have:

a) Made the battle against the White Walkers more than the single largest disappointment since New Coke.

b) Ratcheted the ‘end of the world’ feeling that WOULD entice characters make utterly STUPID decisions.

I’m looking at you, Jaime Lannister.

c) With heightened doom—losses against the Walkers and weather, Cersei refusing to render aid, and the sheer emotional stress that Dany was failing those she’d promised to save—Dany’s final acts of madness would have felt far more organic.

Her zealotry could have grown from subtle (which they already HAD) but then her fanaticism would’ve had a bit more time to bloom in proportion with the threat.

If she believes she’s the ‘messiah,’ the more people die, the more irrational she’d become (contrary to a resounding and relatively easy victory).

With a growing power of White Walkers heading south, along with really bad winter weather that would have limited any advantage the dragons offered, that is a LOT of pressure.

Combine this with losing all her dragons but one…only to have Jon Snow friend-zone her?

I could see someone finally snapping.

She wouldn’t be the first female to set things on fire after a nasty breakup.

#JustSaying

We wouldn’t have LIKED her mad rampage, but we would’ve understood/accepted it more easily than the writers turning Dany into Ani Skywalker on a dragon.

d) Finally, with more TIME, the writers could have reintroduced the all-but-forgotten Brandon Stark into the main storyline…as opposed to leaving him some Fur-Lined Macguffin Recliner in the background (to help hide the Starbuck’s cup and water bottle).

Face it, we already had SO many theories of how this would end that adding in Brandon Stark as another contender likely wouldn’t have swayed us much from our own deeply entrenched pet theories.

In the End

Humans are Never Happy

George R.R. Martin is and will always be a genius in my book (as if he cares, but I said it). This post has nothing to do with his writing or storytelling abilities or any lack thereof.

*prostrates shamelessly*

Once HBO did its job a tad too well—Game of Thrones catching up to the published books—they had a real problem. Noted.

***HBO you did a brilliant, brilliant job…mostly.

But, I believe the biggest mistake HBO made—in truth—was they seriously underestimated their fans.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I would’ve rather had a couple more episodes or an unexpected additional season than the rush job that made me want to rend my Mother of Dragons tees and replace them with sackcloth better for rolling in ashes.

Fans Can Be Forgiving if We TRUST Them

We as authors must remember that audiences can be very forgiving if we permit room for them to readjust.

Want to speed up the pacing? Slowly accelerate. Need to floor it? Then give us a Night King or an incoming Ice Age or at least a solid reason for sudden madness, weird left turns, irrational choices and ridiculously bad judgement.

Stuff just happening because it HAS to? It pisses us (audience) off and stories—whether this is fair or unfair—are almost always remembered by how they END.

Keep that in mind .

Anyway, playing armchair editor/writer is always an easy thing to do. But I hope this blog—whether you watched Game of Thrones or not—can offer valuable lessons to make your own writing better.

Study what HBO did brilliantly, but also be willing to dissect what backfired and why and how to get around those pitfalls.

Your fans will thank you.

***Oh and HBO. If this happens again? Call me. Seriously.

Playing Game of Groans…

What are your thoughts?

Other than the folks who never watched it. I get it and appreciate why. Maybe you have other series that made similar mistakes you could share?

Also, I know I don’t have a PhD in GoT like many of you, but what are your thoughts on the storytelling? I want to hear your opinions!

What did you love? Hate? Miss? Can you think of other ways HBO could have avoided rushing our series off a cliff?

Thanks for playing, and now a mention of what funds the time for me to tear apart all the stories you love to use for Gross Anatomy Fiction Edition.

On Demand Classes: LAST CHANCE!

Ready for summer school? Come on! You can even go buy a NEW notebook.

*wiggles new pencils in front of your noses*

A final note these ON DEMAND classes on CRAFT and BRANDING are about to be removed from the server (and possibly not offered again).

All these classes ran long (closer to three hours) so they’re all a bargain…delivered right to you to enjoy at your leisure.

***NOTE: Classes are designed to play on computers (laptops or desktop) and our technology plays nicest with Chrome or Firefox. Many times the recordings are compatible with other devices like tablets or smartphones, but those devices aren’t always able to access the class because of the changes with HTML5. Use mobile devices at your own risk.

On Demand Fiction Addiction: Write the Books Readers CRAVE!

On Demand for a limited time. Watch all you like from comfort of home. $55

On Demand Story Master: From Dream to Done (A.K.A. Fast-Drafting 101) 

Yes, you can write a book in two weeks. I’ve done it using what I teach in here. On Demand for a limited time. $55 for basic/$349 for GOLD

On Demand: Harnessing Our Writing Power with THE BLOG!

On Demand for a limited time. $55 Basic/$165 for GOLD

The post Game of Thrones: A Song of ‘I Literally Can’t Even’ appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Kristen without makeup, LOL….

Many of us have been there. It’s late. We know we have “adulting” to do in the morning (which is in two hours). Our sensible self has been nagging us to get our @$$ to bed so long we smothered it with a pillow around midnight. Whether it’s a book, or Netflix or HBO or FX…we tell ourselves just one more episode. One more chapter. We can stop binging any time we want.

Suuuuuure…

Uh huh.

What is it that makes us lose all sense of responsibility and common sense when gut-hooked by these stories? By and large…VILLAINS.

But what goes into creating a truly terrifying villain? Or a villain who steals the show? Perhaps a villain who gains more fans than the HERO?

Excellent question.

To be blunt, villains are the soufflé of the character world. Preparation must be handled with utmost precision and care or it all goes FLAT.

Villains are among the most popular and memorable characters in all of storytelling history from Grendel to Darth Vader to Ramsay Bolton.

Yet, though these characters are extremely powerful, they’re (strangely) ridiculously tough to write. Villains can too easily become one-dimensional mustache-twirlers, too dumb to live, too boring to care, or just plain silly and unsympathetic.

I.e. Kylo-Ren, or as I like to call him, “Darth Emo”.

But, when writers do things right? It is the glorious Villain Soufflé writers are proud serve and readers/audiences cannot wait to devour….and then flat out stuff themselves half to death.

Face it, the hero is only as good as his/her opposition. The better the villain, the better the story. The better the story, the deeper the GUT HOOK. Want an audience who binges on your stories? There are many ways to do this, but nothing works quite like…

VILLAINS.

All righty, so today? Three critical ingredients for the perfect villain. Even though the villain character has limitless variations, we can at least address some NECESSARY ingredients that cover most every memorable villain.

Sort of like if you wanna make banana pudding, bananas are kind of a big deal. Yes, there are infinite variations of banana pudding but some ingredients have to be there or we don’t have banana pudding, we have something else entirely.

Villains are much the same.

Ingredient One—“Noble” Qualities

No blog worth its salt can discuss legendary villains without at least a nod to Game of Thrones. In fact, I could blog on villains for the next year using GoT and barely scratch the surface (of course it helps that George R.R. Martin has a cast of 2,312 characters).

Ah, Cersei though.

How we love to hate her. Yet, why does she resonate? Why does her character strike such a visceral chord? What makes her dimensional and real instead of a paper doll mustache twirling caricature?

First, she has “noble” qualities. She LOVES her family (her brother perhaps a bit too much for our comfort, but whatever). She’s a mother and will do anything for her kids to help, assist, promote, protect or even AVENGE them.

Literally.

She is fiercely devoted to her children (even a child as terrifying as Joffrey) and heaven help anyone who messes with her cubs. She’ll melt you with wildfire…then drop a city on you.

For reals. She did it

*Cersei drops mic then half of Westeros*

Most of us have kids, family, friends, loved ones, or even pets who we’d turn insta-psycho to protect…which is why we connect with Cersei. We share this powerful emotional vector which makes us hate her then root for her then hate ourselves for rooting for her.

Ingredient Two—A Sympathetic Viewpoint

Believe it nor not, Cersie possesses a highly sympathetic viewpoint. She’s a woman in a man’s world. Of all the Lannister children, SHE was the only one who paid attention, and who outpaced her brothers by a million miles regarding Rule with an Iron Fist/Throne 101.

SHE was the Lannister most qualified to rule, but instead, her father hands her off like chattel to marry a fat, sloppy, philandering joke of a leader, King Robert Baratheon (which explains a lot of why she chose Jaime *shivers*).

And it is this ever-pervasive powerlessness generated by the world she had no choice being born into that pisses her off more than a little (and rightfully so).

Her one brother Jaime has more interest in prancing around the country playing knight when he’s not in bed with her (*twitches a tad*) and the other brother Tyrion–in the beginning at least–is a drunken, womanizing, hard-partying dwarf she blames for her mother’s death.

She’s surrounded by men more “qualified” to rule from the Iron Throne and by “qualified” I mean they have man parts. The lion’s share of Cersei’s insane desire to gain the throne for one of her sons can be largely attributed to the fact that she believes she can rule vicariously through them and the requisite “man part.”

Of course after Season Six she’s there to blow $#!& up and she’s all out of children. High Sparrow is now a smoking crater glowing hotter than a Cherynobyl Ferris Wheel.

And that “Rule by Man Part Mandate”? She melted that, too…

The simple lesson is if Cersei had been born a man instead of a woman in a man’s world, a villain never would have manifested to begin with.

Remember this when crafting your villain.

In fact, though often we loathe Cersei, a lot of us gals can kinda sorta sympathize. Some of us wouldn’t have minded a few caskets of wildfire to unload on the last sales meeting.

You know the one.

That meeting where the boss’s drinking/golfing buddy who’s never had an original thought in his life stole your idea then landed your promotion solely because he possessed Mystical Man Part Powers.

Yeah.

And for the guys? Despite the Mystical Man Part Power, you have your own version of this “powerless and %$#ed over” scenario, which brings us to…

Ingredient Three—The Villain is the Hero of His Own Story

Moving away from Game of Thrones…. *pries fingers loose*

Why do we SO love Loki? Because Loki kind of has a good point and is the hero of his own story. In ways he is the male version of Cersei.

Bear with me.

For those who’ve slept since Thor released in 2011, Thor is the movie where we first met the Tom Hiddleston Loki we all know and love and hate…but mostly love.

In Thor, we’re tossed into a tale as old as time—sibling rivalry.

In the movie, Odin has created a fragile truce between Asgard and the Ice Giants. When the Ice Giants make a sudden play to retrieve the Casket, Thor (about to ascend as the new king) directly disobeys his father’s orders and runs off full of himself, all half-cocked and ready to do some damage.

Thor has zero concept of this little thing called “consequences.” Loki, however, does appreciate consequences both for Thor and the realm and his family, and is actually a far better choice to rule Asgard.

Loki, ever loyal, genuinely loves and cares about Thor (and the kingdom), and goes along with Thor’s raid on the enemy…all the while trying to talk Thor out of being a dip$#!t.

Alas, Thor’s asshattery creates a mass mayhem and places the kingdom in peril. Thor makes enough of a mess that Odin essentially puts Thor in the Asgardian version of TIME OUT—which apparently involves New Mexico.

This “punishment” only further demonstrates Odin isn’t truly punishing Thor, because everyone knows Lubbock, Texas is the far superior location for an Asgardian TIME OUT if Odin was serious about making Thor miserable.

Odin also decides to take a nap instead of putting Loki in charge, even though Loki’s still left to clean up the giant mess Thor made.

Giant mess, get it? I kill myself. Moving on…

In the midst of all this, Loki discovers his whole life is a lie, including his identity, and he experiences betrayal coupled with personal extinction.

He resents Odin for a vast number of legit reasons, but mostly he hates Odin for ever considering a selfish buffoon like Thor to rule Asgard. Thus, Loki sets out to prove his worthiness to his real father and place the realm under New Management.

With all Loki has endured, how he’s been betrayed, and his goal that the realm be ruled by “cooler” heads—pardon the pun—we the audience find it tough not to see Loki has some seriously valid gripes.

We see he really IS the hero in his own story.

In the End

I’ve given y’all three basic, but critical ingredients for a villain readers will love to hate or maybe even love. Villains are incredibly fun to write, but since they’re by nature unstable, volatile and often combustable, they need to be handled with care.

I’m teaching a brand new class Villains and Anti-Heroes TOMORROW and that’s where we get time to deep dive the really cool stuff, so I hope you will join me! I have been STOKED to teach this more advanced class and had to move it due to losing my voice last week, so y’all got another shot at signing up (recording is free with the class if you can’t make it in person).

I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU! And I am NOT above BRIBERY!

What are your thoughts? Does this help you understand how to give depth to your villains? Who are some of your favorite villains from the page or even the screen, small or big?

Which villains resonated with you and WHY? Which villains do you remember years later? You never get tired of re-watching the show or movie or rereading the book? What villains make you binge watch? Trade gas money for Netflix?

What do you WIN? For the month of September, for everyone who leaves a comment, I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

We are in the process of moving classes around due to the two MONSTER hurricanes so a fresh class list will be available next post. You can also dash over to W.A.N.A. International to check out what’s coming up and get your spot!

The post Bring on the BINGE! Creating Villains Audiences Can’t Get Enough Of appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Just finished watching Season 7 of Game of Thrones and, of course, now I’m in the post-GoT depression. I will have to wait who knows how long to GET ANSWERS! I NEED JUSTICE! WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN?

AAAHHHHHH!

Though I do feel slightly robbed that any television season would be legally permitted to only have seven episodes, I must take the good with the bad. Thus, today I want to talk about what writers like George R.R. Martin do so freaking well and why the rest of us would be wise to pay attention and learn.

Even if you’ve never read or watched GoT, odds are you’ve probably read a book or watched a TV series that had your nerves wound so tightly you physically couldn’t stand the tension. I know there were times watching GoT that I literally had to get Hubby to pause so I could breathe, take Pippa outside for a moment and gather myself. Brace for more.

These are the kinds of stories that drive us mad, the times when Prudent Self will tiptoe up and whisper in our ear, “Hey, um it’s almost three in the morning and you need to be up for work in a couple hours.” And, though we know she’s wise, we will then threaten to water-board Prudent Self if she doesn’t go away and leave us alone.

We’ve all done it. We promised we’d go to bed at the end of the chapter, end of the episode, whatever. But, deep down, we knew we were a dirty rotten liar who had zero intention of stopping until we had some semblance of peace.

Problem is, if a writer is great? Peace will not come without a price. It will not come easily. Great writers will never give the audience what they want…until it is time to.

Think of Christmas

Yes, I know I will probably be the only blogger ever to slot Christmas in same post as GoT but work with me.

For those who celebrate Christmas or some version of the holiday, think back to when you were a kid. Why was Christmas such a big deal? Because it was ONE day out of 365.

ONE.

***And frankly this is why we get pissy with Christmas stuff out in July because retailers are wrecking the “specialness” of it.

Oh there was a whole holiday season and we sang songs and nagged Mom to hurry with the grocery shopping because Frosty the Snowman was going to be on NBC at 7 and if we missed it? We had to wait a WHOLE year to see it again.

As kids we helped bake cookies and were allowed to maybe even eat some. We watched specials (that really were special because if we missed them, tough luck and see you next year, Kid). Though there was all this other revelry (parties, candy canes, pies) there….over there in the corner was a tree with shiny boxes of glorious mystery beneath it.

For those reading this post who are mere mortals like me, you likely had a year that you got the bright idea to peek. Maybe you eased open tape with the skill of Little Finger. Or perhaps you unearthed the stash of gifts hidden in the master closet before your parent(s) could wrap them.

In the beginning, for me, it seemed like the precise thing I wanted but in the end? All I did was spoil the singular day of surprise and joy. I got what I thought I wanted and, frankly? It sucked. Christmas morning wasn’t nearly as bright.

Back to Fiction

There is a lot to be said for delayed gratification. When we allow the audience so, so close they can almost taste what they want…then we snatch it away and say, “Uh uh *wags finger* you need to wait.” THAT is being a master storyteller. And the audience will hate and love us all in the same expanse of time.

Too often we are too easy on our readers. They beg to see what’s under the tree so instead of standing firm, we relent and give them A gift and let them unwrap it and reveal the mystery. Problem is, with every mystery we reveal, we diminish the KAPOW at the end.

What are some common ways we diminish the mystery and inadvertently wreck our own story?

Misused Flashbacks

No. No we don’t.

Flashbacks are a literary device and are excellent when used properly. Problem is? More often than not, they’re simply there to explain. Perhaps we are writing a scene and feel ourselves tense up. Well, it is human nature to alleviate tension.

We feel tense, so we insert a flashback to explain why Such-and-Such is a certain way or is making a certain decision and we feel better. But, if you press your ear to your computer and listen closely? You can hear all the gut-wrenching tension leave your story like air from a balloon (and yes it is making a farting sound ).

Resist the Urge to Explain

Mr. Darcy has left generations of women swooning because Jane Austen just let Darcy be Darcy. She resisted the urge to unseal his therapy files for us to see. Oh there were hints and dribbles here and there but she left lots and lots of blank space for us to fill in the missing slices and that made Darcy all the more desirable.

When we explain with characters or story we wreck tension.

I have a saying:

The Force was better before it was explained.

Metachlorians? FRIGGING REALLY? The Force didn’t need explaining. We (audiences) accepted The Force. It was *sputters*…THE FORCE. It was mystical and magical and then…. *farting sound*. More on that here in What Went Wrong with the Star Wars Prequels?

Metachlorians.

The same thing happened to one of the greatest villains (or anti-heroes) of the 20th century—Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal was already fascinating. We honestly didn’t need to go back in time and witness his childhood how and why he started snacking on people. The prequel movie Hannibal Rising bombed because it never needed to exist in the first place. We didn’t need to know WHY.

We wanted to, but just because we want something doesn’t mean it’s good for us. Telling us HOW Hannibal came to be a psychopath did nothing to make him a stronger character.

In fact, it did precisely the opposite. #YouveBeenMetachlorianed

Showing Your Hand Too Soon

Tonight I am teaching a class More than Gore for those who desire to write horror, though what I will teach in this class is actually highly useful for all genres.

Horror, in my POV, is one of the most challenging genres to write simply because we have a jaded audience that is tough to rattle. We no longer have access to the low hanging fruit (blood, guts, two-headed monsters) because they are tedious tropes that don’t even faze a modern six-year-old.

In horror, the fastest way to ruin the story is to reveal the monster too soon. Stephen King in Danse Macabre talks about this phenomenon, and why so often the ending of horror stories are such a letdown.

It is because of HOW the human mind works. When our imagination is left to run amok, we are terrified because what we are facing is UNKNOWN.

Once it the UNKNOWN becomes KNOWN, the audience lets out a collective scream of terror…and relief. See, if we are creeping up the stairs and something is bashing against a giant door with such force the hinges are loosening, our imaginations run wild. It’s terrifying.

The second we open the door and see the fifty-foot bug? We yell out, but our brains instantly go, “Whew! Okay a fifty-foot bug. I can deal with that. Thank GOD it wasn’t a hundred foot bug.”

If it was a hundred foot bug, brain would scream then go, “Thank goodness it wasn’t a thousand foot bug.” Y’all get the gist. Once we have the reveal? The tension instantly bleeds away. Thus, knowing this, we need to become excellent secret-keepers. Delay the gratification.

While some of y’all might believe this only holds for horror? Untrue. One word for the older folks… Moonlighting.

Audiences were riveted, dying for Dave and Maddie to get together. The show won all kinds of Emmys, broke records, and audiences were riveted until Episode 14 of Season 3 when their relationship finally was consummated. Though the show continued for a total of five seasons, that singular episode toward the end of Season 3 marked the decline in viewership.

Of course it did!

The audience had unwrapped the “gifts” and all that remained were leftovers and turkey sandwiches.

Beware of Low-Hanging Fruit

I’ve read romances where, by chapter four we know through POV that both guy and gal are mad for each other and the only thing keeping them from making out like teenagers on prom night are bad situations and inconvenient interruptions.

I’ve read other genres where the MC has more divine intervention than the Book of Acts. Journals, dreams, visions, letters, and plot puppets who conveniently appear and who have zero purpose for existing beyond babysitting the MC out of a mess.

Readers want the easy way, but they really don’t. It’s why I love Game of Thrones. I just about think the story is going to go one way then WHAMMO….George kills a character I love or tosses them under a pile of ice zombies, or throws them in prison or whatever. George R.R. Martin is a horrible sadistic, cruel, emotionless, psychopathic—sigh—genius storyteller.

In the end, remember the heart of fiction is the struggle. Build the anticipation and crush the urge to give over your mysteries too soon or too easily. The harder it is for audiences to get that satisfaction they so desire? THE BETTER.

What are your thoughts? What other shows can you think of that were awesome until the writer(s) made it too easy or gave up the mystery too soon? What shows make you CRAZY because you just can’t seem to get what you want? What books kept you up all night? What characters resonate with you because there is STILL mystery to them? They weren’t ever fully “explained.”

And yes this is likely the first blog to use GoT, Christmas, Moonlighting, Hannibal Lecter AND Star Wars . But I really hope it helps up your storytelling skills.

I love hearing from you!

For the month of September, for everyone who leaves a comment, I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

Still time to sign up for tonight, and remember a FREE recording is included with purchase!

Instructor: Kristen Lamb
Price: $35.00 USD
Where: W.A.N.A. Digital Classroom
When: TUESDAY, September 5, 2017. 7:00-9:00 p.m. EST

Humans have always been fascinated with what scares them which is why horror fiction is a staple genre. It is also, quite possibly, the most challenging genre to write. Giant bugs and chainsaws just don’t get the screams they used to.

Blood, guts, gore and shock factor are low-hanging fruit (and always have been) and worse than that? They simply don’t have the impact they used to.

Audiences are too desensitized. This means we need to work harder to dig in and poke at what REALLY frightens/disturbs people.

Though this genre is extremely challenging to write well, there is an upside. The horror genre lends itself well to the short form (novellas and short stories).

Believe it or not, some of our staple horror movies–and the BEST horror movies—were actually adaptations of short stories and novellas (1408 by Stephen King and Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker being two examples).

Meaning, if you want to go Hollywood? Hollywood loooooves horror.

In this class we will cover:

• The science behind fear and why people crave it. Why fear is even healthy!
• Psychology of fear, thus how to locate the pain points.
• Why audiences are craving MORE horror (Yes, this actually does go in cycles).
• The different types of horror fiction.
• The importance of character in horror.
• How horror can actually resonate much like literary fiction.
• How to generate page-turning tension that will leave readers with a story they can’t stop thinking about…and that might even give them nightmares.

NEW CLASSES FOR SEPTEMBER AND MORE!

All classes come with a FREE recording!

We’ve added in classes on erotica/high heat romance, fantasy, how to write strong female characters and MORE! Classes with me, with USA Today Best-Selling Author Cait Reynolds, award-winning author and journalist Lisa-Hall Wilson, and Kim Alexander, former host of Sirius XM’s Book Radio. So click on a tile and sign up!

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The post Stop Killing Your Story! Why Suffering is Essential for Great Fiction appeared first on Kristen Lamb.