Prologues were a key feature of ancient Greek drama. Shakespeare used the technique, as did Chaucer, to walk their audiences through who and what they could expect to meet in the tale that was about to unfold. And yet go down any Reddit or Facebook rabbit hole about favorite/least favorite novels or authors and you’ll quickly find readers foaming at the mouth on the subject of prologues.  

So perhaps the question we should be asking is, what’s disappointing them? And what can we do as writers—and I include myself here as somebody who regularly writes them—to convince reluctant readers that a well-used prologue merits its place? 

Before I get into that, I do think it’s important to acknowledge that constructing a prologue—like any what is essentially short-form writing—is not an easy thing to do. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that my first tip is to read as many examples as possible, deconstructing the factors that either draw you into the main text, or push you away from it.  

4 Prologue Pitfalls 

What is writing based on after all, if not extensive reading? You’ll make your own checklist of what works and what doesn’t, but the following are some of my red flags. 

1. It’s too slow. This could be because the author has used the prologue as a means to throw in a whole pile of backstory about a character the reader doesn’t know and hasn’t yet invested in. Or because it’s building a world in too many complicated stages. Or dumping research about a key event that’s going to matter later in the story but is far too dry to take up time now. Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: The first few pages are so dull, the reader isn’t inspired to tackle the rest. Especially, or so it seems, if they’re reading on Kindle Unlimited and have many other choices at their fingertips to turn to. 

2. It’s too much. In this instance, the reader is thrown at top speed into a piece of dramatic action that roars along at a possibly confusing pace, and then… Everything drops off in chapter one and the novel feels like a different book. 

3. It doesn’t make sense. Admittedly the reader might be a little further in than the first chapter or so before they realize that the prologue is completely disconnected from the main story, but that won’t make them forgive the writer any more than a dull prologue will.  

4. It never ends. It’s not a tempting snack, it’s a whole meal with far too many elements. Somewhere between 1,000 to 2,000 words is the recommended length. I personally aim for the lower end of that. Which leads me nicely into… 

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3 Prologue Opportunities 

If those are the pitfalls, what are the opportunities? Why write one at all? In my case, I do it to give my reader a glimpse into the world that’s coming, usually by establishing a key voice in the story and raising questions about that character and/or the situation they’re caught up in. What I’m trying to achieve is a sense of high stakes which will encourage the reader to quickly invest in the story.  

There might be a sense of danger, or immediacy, or a task whose success/failure could have serious consequences. There could be a moral dilemma, or a hint that the reader has just met somebody they really shouldn’t trust. Whichever I choose, I’m aiming to be sticky and concise in the delivery. That should remain the case however you approach a prologue, but there are, of course, other ways than character to do it. 

1. Use the classic attention-grabbing opener. In many ways, a prologue is a short story that’s going to be picked up in the rest of the narrative, so why not let the opening line sing? Perhaps through an offbeat sentence (e.g., the opening line of Orwell’s 1984 or Ian Banks’s The Crow Road). Or one that poses multiple questions (e.g., Plath’s, The Bell Jar). Or one that instantly establishes a character’s quirks (e.g., Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle). Just remember that whichever way you go, you’ve now set the tone for the rest of the book. 

2. Pull your reader onto the edge of their seat. Create a vivid setting they can’t help but step further into, or a conflict they can’t look away from. Create tension or uncertainty. And then deliver what you’ve signposted. 

3. Drop them into an event which will twist. Put your reader onto a path they don’t want to get off, with a promise that what’s happening is going to lead somewhere they think they can guess. And then push them out of that comfort zone in the main story. 

However you do it, stay precise—again, like a short story, every word has to earn its place—and don’t forget to pick up the thread you’ve dangled in the prologue later on. 

We live in an era where we’re constantly being told people have less and less time and shorter attention spans. Against this backdrop, a prologue that adds value could be one of the sharpest tools in your writing tool kit. I like to think of it as the introduction at a party that stops you looking for someone more interesting to talk to. Hopefully my readers think the same way! 

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(What Your Character’s Body Language Is Saying.)

Writing action sequences is like most parts of writing a book—a harmony of movement, sensations, setting, and plot. But when things get exciting, it’s easy to lose sight of one of these important components and lose a reader along the way. Here are tips for writing compelling, dynamic, and clear action sequences.

Navigate a clear path.

Action almost always has a degree of chaos. And who doesn’t love a little chaos? The more you throw at your character, the more the reader gets to cheer (or at least breathe a sigh of relief) when they overcome it. But whether it’s a sword fight, a rickety rope bridge, a sports competition, or a crumbling luxury starliner days from Mars that stands between them and their goal, characters must observe the obstacles and find a way through without leaving the reader behind.

Readers need to know who they are following and where they are going from the beginning to the end of your action sequence. Like studying a course map before a race, mental mapping or sketching out the sequence can keep you, your character, and, ultimately, the reader on course.

Remember the stakes while navigating the chaos.

No matter what’s on the line: their life, someone they love, horrific embarrassment, life-changing prize money, or maybe even humanity at large, the “goal” or “objective” remains a character’s main focus—even when action rises and things get tense, chaotic, or deadly.

Back on the course, an upbeat ballad plays in time with my pumping arms. My strides are short. The hill is grueling. My leg muscles burn. My heart beats against my ribs. That little voice in the back of my head who tries to keep me alive, begs me to quit. But I push on. The hill crests and I open up my stride, scanning the downward sloped trail ahead as I descend. At the back of my mind, I know this is where I can make up the most time. And that’s my end goal: Finish this race 15 minutes faster than last year.

Click to continue.

Know when to take a breath and when to sprint.

Short sentences equal faster reading. Use the build. Keep them going. Drive the tension. It’s not far. Keep going. Until BOOM! An insurmountable obstacle slams onto their path. Something that could end it all. Their biggest fear or their mortal enemy. Your character has no choice but to pause, assess, reflect, find the will and drive to keep going. After all, the stakes are still there. Waiting. Will the character succeed or accept failure?

The only thing that stands between me and achieving my time goal is… well, a panic attack. I shake out my trembling hands for the fifth time. The camera focuses on the seconds ticking by on my watch. Minutes left before I miss my time. I just have to dunk under this ridiculous inflatable wall, inches from the surface of the icy, murky pool. I’m a strong swimmer, but the fear of getting stuck, being confined, running out of oxygen already has me hyperventilating. I reach a hand underneath to feel for the other side. Less than two feet. I can make it. I suck in a breath and duck under the water’s surface. The score goes silent, replaced by the soft whooshing of moving water. In slow motion, I re-emerge on the other side. Racing out of the freezing water, I sprint for the finish line.

Stay true to your character.

When you’re juggling character, movement, and, potentially, a changing setting, it’s easy to forget the building blocks of your characters, but people are complex—even amid action. If they’re afraid of heights when they’re visiting a friend who lives on the 42nd floor of a high rise in the setup, they’re still afraid of heights at the “height” of action. When will your character hit a breaking point? Can they grab hold of that ledge before the floor drops out from under them or can they not reach? How does this character react to stressful situations?

My love of film has built my cinematic mind. But imaginations are as unique as people. My experiences in obstacle course racing have become a stockpile for action writing. But I keep in mind that it’s a privilege to use my body in this way, and I don’t take that for granted. There are plenty of others who approach these events differently or not at all. We all find what feeds our soul and inspires us. 

Writing action sequences is about more than just movement. It’s specific characters (people) with specific personalities, strengths, and weaknesses navigating a challenging setting or situation with clear stakes on the other side of their own set of obstacles.

All of writing is about using your own personal arsenal of imagination, knowledge, and experiences. And for the rest, there is research.

Check out E.L. Starling’s Bound By Stars here:

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Then, whenever I was watching a show that wasn’t quite to my liking, I’d start thinking of that same word.

Then, whenever I sat down to work on something of my own—yup, here came that word again.

The word was “SHARP,” but it doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Lemme back up.

It might be helpful to know that, back in those playwriting days, I was specifically a horror playwright. I point this out because the mechanics of a horror play are a little different than your garden variety stage drama or comedy. Sure, the principles are the same—you’re trying to tell a good, satisfying story just like any other playwright—but there are a few additional expectations that make writing a horror play just a little bit harder. After all, you’re also looking to conjure up suspense, dread, and fear in your audience, and those are really challenging emotions to evoke without the benefit of a forced camera perspective or a narrow frame or post-production special effects or one of those soundtracks where everything gets really quiet AND THEN GETS REALLY LOUD.

When writing suspenseful, speculative stories for the stage, where you mostly only have the benefit of some props, a set, and whatever the human body and/or voice can do, you have to learn a few additional tricks. You have to learn how to fashion suspense and instill dread and fear using only your two dramatic fundamentals: characters and circumstances.

That’s where “SHARP” came in. Not only was it a short and pithy descriptor for that feeling a good, dynamic story gives you, it was also a handy acronym for a few key ingredients to keep in mind. Things that were present in the plays I was enjoying. Things that were absent in the ones I was not. Things I wanted to make sure my own work contained.

Lemme back up again, though.

What About the Nonsense Word?

I can hear you asking, “Wait, but the title of this article says it’s a ‘nonsense’ word! WE WERE PROMISED A NONSENSE WORD!”

The thing is, I’ve always been bad at leaving well enough alone; it wasn’t long before I started thinking of other letters to add to my pithy catchall. “SHARP” quickly expanded into the far more unwieldy “SHARPAWIDUS,” which I’ll admit, isn’t quite as snappy and sounds more like either an obscure dinosaur or a dubstep DJ (but perhaps I repeat myself).

Still. It gets the job done for me. “SHARP”—later “SHARPAWIDUS”—became a sort of checklist. Not a prescriptive formula or anything so crass; more like, an Aristotelian collation of elements I’ve observed are particularly satisfying, and which I can consult whenever I feel like I’m stuck in the writing or revising trenches.

I’m not a playwright anymore (at least in any dedicated way; you can’t ever truly leave the theater behind). Now I spend my energy and time writing books, my first and truest love. And despite the fact that every novelist has an unlimited budget when it comes to elaborate set pieces and special effects, as well as an ability to direct the audience’s eye to specific things no matter how small, I find I still constantly refer back to the lessons I learned as a playwright to help craft a style of suspense that’s necessarily rooted in character and circumstance.

In fact, my newest book, When the Wolf Comes Home (wherever books are sold, April 22, 2025), was written in an explicit attempt to marry both approaches. I wanted to embrace the novel’s ability to create elaborate set pieces of action and chaos and external threat, but also ensure that as much of the breathless, seat-gripping, palm-besweattening suspense came as much from the characters and their circumstances as any no-budget play I’ve ever written. (So far, early response seems to indicate that I did my job—Stephen King even called it “a classic”—for which I’m exceedingly grateful and gratified.)

When Writer’s Digest asked me to write a little about creating suspense, then, I figured I could trot out the old classic tricks like “short sentences,” “onomatopoeia,” “escalating action,” “show the bomb under the table” (all of which are classics for a reason; they are definitely effective tricks you should use) . . . or I could introduce you to my friend, SHARPAWIDUS, in the hopes that, at the very least, it’s ridiculous enough to help you unlock your own nonsense word to describe the things you think should be in a good, suspenseful story.

I should probably tell you what the hell this all means, though, so lemme back up a bit more.

SHARPAWIDUS

Stands for:

Stakes
Humor
Anticipation
Resistance
Plots
Animosity
Withholding
Interruptions
Decisions
Unsustainability
Stichomythia

Some of these might need some elaboration, so, you know the drill by now. Lemme back up one more time.

Stakes

This one’s obvious, I know, but it’s amazing how often remembering stakes is the key to everything. Think they’re high enough? Raise ’em. Is it the next chapter? Raise ’em again. But what does it mean to raise the stakes?

It means you’ve gotta give your character(s) something they clearly don’t want to lose, and then make it more and more likely they’ll lose it. Better yet, make them lose it and see what else they stand to lose now. Whether it’s their safety or their innocence or their understanding of the world—or whether it’s an arm or a head or a loved one.

As soon as we really feel what matters to your character(s), the more we’ll begin dreading the idea that we might have to get it taken away. That’s where the suspense comes in . . . and then rises as we watch the character(s) try to deal with / prevent their losses in hopefully unpredictable ways.

Humor

This one might be the hardest to calibrate. Too much humor and your suspense deflates. Not enough humor and the experience becomes a slog. The trick, I find, is to make sure the humor is grounded—or, to put it another way, that it’s coming from the inside, not the outside.

One way I like to think of it is to remember that no character wants to be in tension . . . but you as the author don’t have to give your characters what they want. If the tension is still there after the joke fails to dispel it? Oooh, that can make for some exquisite suspense.

Anticipation

Another obvious one, almost to the point of redundancy, but it can be helpful to remember that when we talk about “suspense,” we really mean a feeling of anticipation. When we know something is going to happen next and we want to know how it plays out.

You can help facilitate this feeling by putting approaching landmarks on the story timeline. Give the characters things to anticipate, whether they’re big events (the prom is next week!) or tiny reactions (she’s going to be so mad at me!). Mix this ingredient with a little bit of Interruptions (see below) and you’ve got some combustible suspense fuel.

Resistance

Not in the Star Wars Rebel Alliance sense, but rather something more internal. In fact, this idea actually comes from acting training. Some of the best notes I’ve ever received as an actor were reminders to resist the story you’re trying to perform.

A few examples: The most compelling way to play drunk is to try to act as sober as possible; the most realistic-looking way to perform a fall is to try to remain standing while your body goes down; the most effective way to elicit sobs from the audience is have your character desperately try not to sob.

Taking the premise of this idea into the writing realm, then: If there’s an emotional state you hope to create, or a payoff you hope to reach, the more your characters can actively resist it—until the absolute breaking point—the more engaged and invested your reader will become. Note that this doesn’t mean avoiding or ignoring the situation; I like the word Resistance because it very much implies an active fight against what may or may not be inevitable.

Plots

Note that it’s “plots,” not “plot” (nor “plotz,” bubbeleh). I don’t mean this in a “Good books have a story” way. You already have a story; why else would you be writing? Rather, to activate that story, make sure your characters are plotting things. It doesn’t have to be George R. R. Martin-level schemery, but it’s often not enough to say every character needs a “want”—try giving them each a private plan they’re actively following, too.

The suspense comes from wondering which plots, if any, will succeed, and watching them ricochet in unexpected ways. To quote William Shakespeare (another playwright of some note): “O, ’tis most sweet, when in one line two crafts directly meet.”

Animosity

It’s great when someone central to your story dislikes something—or someone—so much that it propels them. The thing I like about this word is it implies an activating, animating force. It feels more dynamic than just plain old hate.

Also, hate is hard to hide; animosity can be tucked away for later. It can create false pretenses, betrayals, uncomfortable alliances, etc. All the stuff of good, suspenseful drama—particularly if the reader knows about this animosity but other characters don’t. (I find this is a particularly useful element to keep in mind when juggling an ensemble.)

Withholding

Here’s a technical one. Whether it’s depicting a character’s reaction before revealing what they’re reacting to, or ending a chapter on a cliffhanger, or having someone remember something important but not revealing the memory until a choicer moment, withholding bits of information from the reader is a great way to keep them on the hook for more.

The tricky part is to not overdo it, because then it can start to feel like a cheat. Or worse, we can forget what we were supposed to be waiting for in the first place.

Click to continue.

Interruptions

This is a big one, and it’s kind of like the external version of Resistance. If you want to keep people on their toes, don’t let your scenes end the way they’re supposed to. There’s probably an ending or a button that feels *correct* to you, which means chances are the reader feels that way, too.

That’s a great opportunity to knock people off balance a little. Interrupt that *correct* ending with something that forces the characters to make another, messier decision, big or small (We love Decisions!). I like to use Interruptions as a rule for dialogue, too.

In life, the opportunities to monologue are few and far between. One of the best acting observations I ever got (from director Anne Bogart) is something I’ve carried over into my writing: Almost always, the person you’re talking to knows what you’re saying before you finish your sentence. Choose the moments where a character can speak uninterrupted very, very wisely. (See also “Stichomythia” below.)

Decisions

If I can be grossly reductive for a moment, I think the main reason we love stories is because we’re creatures who learn by example. We’re fundamentally compelled to see how hypothetical situations and/or conundrums might play out. (That’s why stories where the reactions seem arbitrary or ungrounded can feel almost like a betrayal.)

As such, the more Decisions you can force your character(s) to make, the better. As long as those Decisions feel believable, or at least intriguing, we’ll keep leaning in to see what happens next. There’s such delicious suspense to be found in waiting to see what a character will do . . . and also then whether or not they did the right thing.

Unsustainability

The worst things in life are the best things for stories, aren’t they? If there’s a situational element or a relationship or a character trait in your story that we just know is going to fall apart, we’re gonna be watching with glee and/or horror for the moment we’re proven right.

Stichomythia

One more technical one. This is a dramaturgical term describing when two characters trade alternating lines of dialogue in what would otherwise be a single verse speech. What it really means, though, is that great, tennis-match-feeling of characters trading short, snappy reports until the exchange builds to a climax. This is a wonderful technique for dialogue writing (see Interruptions) above, but the concept of stichomythia can carry into the structure of a good suspense scene, as well.

Rather than play a rising event through one character’s POV, try breaking it up into alternating character perspectives, so we get a more panoramic sense of a situation that’s bigger than one person can take in. This helps things move faster and also allows you for all sorts of mini-cliffhangers that ratchet up the tension even further.

(I think, as far as text layout goes, Stichomythia might also be another word for “skimmability,” too. This might be controversial, or even heretical, to say but in a good action scene, skimmability can be an asset. You want your reader to feel a certain rush trying to find out what happens next, and short lines that alternate information make for a great way to build a breathless momentum.)

***

And there you have it! “SHARPAWIDUS.” What do you think? Too unwieldy? Too general? Too obvious? Hopefully I backed up enough to give you enough runway to—

Oh wait! I totally forgot one more letter! One more essential ingredient to suspense. Maybe even the most important one. Namely:

WEREWOLVES

I mean, what is a werewolf but a ticking time bomb? A character who knows a bad thing is going to happen at a predictable, but unstoppable, time—and also a character who can’t always be themselves. A shapeshifter. Every good suspense story needs a shapeshifter, right? 

Take, for instance, When the Wolf Comes Home. It’s a story of a young woman named Jess, who’s a frustrated actress living out in LA, working the graveyard shift at a depressing 24-hour diner. One night, after a particularly dreadful shift, she stumbles home, only to find a scared little boy hiding in the bushes. Before she can figure out what to do with him, a horrifying wolf-like monster attacks her apartment complex, and Jess winds up running for her life with the little boy in tow. She quickly realizes this monster is the boy’s father and, unfortunately for her, he’ll stop at nothing to get his son back. Jess is about to learn that when the wolf comes home . . . no one will be spared . . .

Did I mention it’s available wherever books are sold, April 22, 2025?

Thanks for reading.

Check out Nat Cassidy’s When the Wolf Comes Home here:

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(5 Tips for Writing Action and Fight Scenes.)

This is no coincidence. Courtrooms are where families are put together or torn apart. Where fortunes are won and lost. Where justice is served.[2] They are the places where conflict is resolved—and resolving a core conflict is the goal of most novels. So, it’s only natural you’d want to use that setting to resolve your conflict.

I have been practicing law since 1994 as a prosecutor, a defense attorney, a civil attorney, and a judge. I have a home court[3] advantage in writing courtroom scenes, since I’ve spent most of my adult life inside one. But what if you haven’t? How can you write an effective courtroom scene?

Write What You Know—and If You Don’t Know, Learn It.

The old saw “write what you know” is an old saw for a reason. When you write what you know, you are more likely to write authentically. If you haven’t had a career in a courtroom or experienced litigation yourself, that doesn’t mean you can’t get to know what happens inside a courtroom. In the U.S., courtrooms are generally open to the public. Just show up and watch. Go to your county courthouse and take a peek at what’s going on. Even if you’re not a participant, you can be an eyewitness.

While you’re there, take notes. It won’t take long before you see which lawyers are effective. Make note of their speech patterns and how they move about the courtroom.

Lawyers are regular people[4] and may be more moved by flattery than most. I don’t have data, but anecdotal evidence tells me that a good 75% of us have an unfinished novel in a desk drawer somewhere. Approach someone who has impressed you, fawn over their performance for a few sentences, then explain you’re a writer who is trying to get a courtroom scene correct. Then offer to take them out for coffee. I promise they’ll likely answer your questions.

Likewise, judges may very well be willing to provide insight. It’s lonely being a judge: You have to hide in your chambers and not talk to anyone for fear that you’ll be accused of playing favorites. If someone interesting comes along that wants to tell them what a good job they did and ask questions about how they did it, they’re likely to go along with it, just to have an audience if for no other reason.

If you can’t find a lawyer or a judge to help you, wander into the nearest law school common area and find a law student or professor.

Of course, knowing what questions to ask is another question altogether. Hopefully, this article can help serve as a basic guide.

Learn the Vocabulary

What most writers get wrong is the technical points. Court is one of the most rigid, rule-based places I’ve ever experienced. It’s a place where deadlines are truly do-or-die. Legalese is a language that looks like English, may even use some of the same vocabulary as English does, but it isn’t the same. The definitions of words are all very precise.

Take, for example, the word “guardian.” Most of us use that word to mean any caretaker of someone in need of caretaking. In the law, however, it only refers to a specific person who has been court approved and ordered to be in charge of the legal (not financial) interests of another. A step-parent, then, would not be a guardian. Lay characters may use the word “guardian” as normal humans would; your lawyer characters would not.

“Court” is also an umbrella term. There are Superior Courts, Supreme Courts, Probate Courts, Municipal Courts, Family Courts, Appellate Courts, etc. They all have their own function and jurisdiction, and each state has a variation on what that court is called. For example, if you were fighting about someone’s will in Georgia, you’d do it in Probate Court; in New York, you’d do it in Surrogate’s Court. If you’re going to set a scene in a courtroom, make sure it’s the right one.

Certain otherwise antiquated Latin phrases are in common use. Voir dire, for example, means to question someone to determine their fitness for a particular person. You voir dire a juror. You voir dire an expert. Prosecutors never dismiss charges—they nolle pros them. Nolle pros is short for nolle prosequi, which means to nullify the prosecution.

Check out Lori B. Duff’s Devil’s Defense here:

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Learn the Procedure

Civil procedure is difficult—it was by far my lowest grade in law school. No one expects you to be an expert, but if you’re going to write about civil law,[5] you need to know the basics about courtroom procedure. You need to know who sits where and who goes first. 

Nothing will rip a courtroom scene out of the land of authenticity like surprise witnesses and out of turn testimony. Yet nothing is more common in fiction. Once you’ve written a scene, have one of those lawyers and/or judges and/or law students you’ve met read it over. They’ll point out how to fix what you’ve got wrong.

Rules of evidence are even trickier. If a lawyer is going to stand up and shout “objection,” you need to know what they are objecting to. Which isn’t the same as the testimony being objectionable in a lay sense. 

For example, “hearsay” isn’t just something someone said outside of a courtroom. It has to be offered for “the truth of the matter asserted” and not one of about a billion exceptions. Also, only qualified experts[6] can give opinions.

Edit What You Hear

If you’ve spent any time in a courtroom, you’ll learn that a good 90% of what goes on is boring. Yet the boring part is often the most important. Rather than spell out all that procedural hash, that’s a great opportunity to get into the heads of your characters and see how they are reacting to it. Are they nervous? Bored? Thinking about lunch?

Closing Argument

Law school is three years for a reason. There’s a lot of stuff to learn. After you get out of law school and pass the bar, it usually takes about two years before you gain competence at being a lawyer. So, if you don’t find yourself an expert after watching courtroom procedures for a few afternoons, don’t worry about it. No one is expecting you to write a transcript, and transcripts are generally dull. You can paint in broad strokes here. Just make sure you’re using the proper pallet.

_______________________

[1] Please don’t throw rocks in bookstores. Books—and bookstores—are precious things.
[2] Or not.
[3] No pun intended.
[4] Despite their unironic use of words like “whereunto”.
[5] Civil law is everything that isn’t criminal law. If it isn’t a crime, and it is in a courtroom, it’s civil law.
[6] Like Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny—one of the few lawyer movies that gets it right.

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(Things Writers Should Know)

A character instantly dropping dead from an insulin overdose sounds dramatic, but it’s also very wrong. And many readers today are savvier about drugs than ever before. They may be recovering from addiction, struggling with diabetes, or a healthcare worker. Or they may have been personally impacted by the growing fentanyl overdose epidemic. 

For these readers, a blatantly inaccurate drug-related scene can ruin an otherwise great story, leading to negative reviews. It also robs them of an emotional-roller coaster while the character struggles, as the drug slowly begins to create trouble.

So, how can you avoid these pitfalls? By simply using the power of real drug facts. These facts not only offer authentic scenes, but enough peril to draw readers from page to page. Prefer a light-hearted scene? A few real facts can have your readers laughing, as they watch a mom hallucinating in the fruit aisle of the grocery store, after taking far too much cough syrup. Real drug facts can also help writers develop characters with complex backstories: the parent whose teen overdosed on left-over pain pills or the recovering heroin addict.

Thankfully, writers don’t need in-depth drug knowledge to successfully develop these realistic scenes. Following these simple, but key, tips will help assure accuracy:

1. Check the Historical Timeline

While it may seem obvious, it’s important to check that the drug or medical device used in your plot had been discovered by the historical time period of your story. Paying attention to details, such as which kind of drugs were available and in what form (pills, injection, etc.) is important. 

A 1630s pilgrim shouldn’t be using a modern-day drug patch for his pain. Instead, swapping that patch for a mustard poultice would suit the historical context. Likewise, a midwife shouldn’t give a shot to ease the labor pain of that pilgrim’s wife. A tea infused with herbal pain remedies would be more realistic. 

This doesn’t mean an historical story can’t lend itself to peril for your character. That mustard plaster may sound boring, but, as a writer, you can take your readers through the emotions of hope, as the healer applies it to the moaning townsman, relief as the man begins to rest, and finally plunging into worry, as the bandages are pulled back to reveal angry, blistering skin from a plaster left on too long. And what about that midwife? She’s young and inexperienced. What if she mixes too strong of a tea, sending the laboring mom into an overdose, even as the baby is born. Now what?

Historical accuracy is also impacted by a number of other variables, including changes in prescribing trends, as new treatments are discovered. These trends impact the products diverted to street drug supplies or available in home medicine cabinets. In addition, drug abuse trends are impacted by the influx of illegal drugs across borders. The recent upsurge of overdose deaths from fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills, such as oxycodone, is a prime example. A scene set in the mid-1990s could realistically involve stolen oxycodone from a medicine cabinet, whereas in a modern scene that oxycodone is more likely illicit and laced with deadly fentanyl. These sad realities readily lend themselves to believable trouble for your character.

2. Learn the Language

Many of us are familiar with the drug-related terminology we heard from friends or in movies while growing up: terms like weed or bong or phrases like chasing the dragon. But like all colloquial phrases, the slang associated with illicit and recreational drug use has greatly changed over the decades. 

For example, getting stoned has morphed into being baked or faded. Having a contemporary character ask a friend for a doobie would be outdated, while asking for a blunt or vape would be more modern. 

Even the language associated with obtaining drugs has evolved. Instead of a whispered exchange on a street corner, your contemporary character could simply send coded emojis via a social media app to order illicit drugs and schedule their delivery. When your character gets a text of a school bus and a chocolate bar, he’ll understand his ecstasy will be delivered to him at the school playground.

3. Verify the Legal Accuracy

Drug-related laws are rapidly changing, offering a wide array of creative scene options. Laws can vary from state to state and even between individual states and the federal level, creating confusion for people, not to mention the risk of potentially inaccurate stories for writers. 

For example, recent changes in some states have led to the legalization of hallucinogenic mushrooms. These mushrooms are under tight control, however, so your character shouldn’t just walk into a drug store to buy them off of the shelves (well, not yet, anyway). In most other states, hallucinogenic mushrooms remain illegal. 

If you want to have some legal fun, your character can buy a large supply of hallucinogenic mushrooms while on vacation, only to be arrested when she flies to her home state, where they are illegal. It’s much like the trouble Brittany Griner found herself in, when cannabis vape cartridges were confiscated from her luggage in Russia, sending her to prison and creating an international drama.

4. Rewrite Instant Death Scenes

This is a Hollywood favorite: A drug is swallowed, followed by the character instantly dropping to the ground in a seizure, foam dripping from his mouth. And while the foam part may be accurate, the instant effect is not. Nor is having his distraught co-character immediately announce his death. Yes, it’s visually entertaining. And completely wrong.

Most of your readers know it takes a bit of time for drugs to work. After all, most of us have suffered headaches, while waiting for a pain pill to work. At the very least, a drug first must be absorbed. Then, it takes a little time for an effect, good or bad. Why risk alienating audiences, when you can take advantage of this knowledge, allowing your screenplay to take readers on a rewarding journey, tensing as their favorite character begins to slur, then stumble, then… fade to black?

Now, that’s a page-turner.

5. Choose the Right Symptoms

Giving your character the wrong drug symptoms (or making up your own) can hurt your credibility. A melatonin overdose won’t cause an adult character to stop breathing. A few extra vitamin capsules won’t cause hallucinations. But there are plenty of interesting real symptoms that will fit your plot, provided you choose the right drug.

If you really want those vitamins to cause hallucinations, instead of creating fake symptoms, a pill mix-up can be your answer. If you’ve sprinkled the bread crumbs well, your character, who stores bottles of vitamins and hallucinogenic mushroom capsules next to each other, can end up in an adventure she wasn’t planning. 

As she makes her coffee, blurry-eyed, and grabs the wrong bottle—downing a few mushroom capsules instead of her vitamins—your readers will be anticipating what will happen during her upcoming morning interview.

6. Verify Overdose Potential

A drug overdose can be woven into your story. With some drugs, your character can even be brought back from the brink of death. Opioids, such as fentanyl, can shut down the ability to breathe, leading to rapid death. The antidote naloxone, if given in time, can undo that breathing effect, allowing your character to survive. 

Some drugs, though, have little or no ability to cause an overdose death. A desperately depressed character that swallows too many melatonin tablets is likely to get very drowsy, but it’s not realistic to open the next scene with the family weeping by her coffin. Melatonin overdoses in children, however, is another story entirely. 

If your character’s child mistakes Mom’s melatonin gummies for candy, the next scene could believably open with the family holding hands bedside, the child on a ventilator in the hospital, the doctor looking somber.

7. Use Reliable Resources

Online resources have made researching drug effects simpler over the decades, although not all information is factual. From newspaper articles to websites, wrong drug information abounds. 

For example, gross inaccuracies were perpetuated online regarding the risk of death from merely touching fentanyl pills. The increased use of artificial intelligence for information searches can amplify this kind of inaccurate information. However, there are numerous reputable drug information sources. 

Drug Package Inserts (also called Prescribing Information) reliably offer insight into possible symptoms and can be searched online by the drug name. Poison Control Centers and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are great resources for overdose trends. And the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) periodically posts comprehensive updates that detail illicit drug abuse and trafficking trends.

As writers, we’re accustomed to researching pertinent facts and information. Accurately portraying real drug facts should be no different. Applying these seven key tips can help you avoid blatantly unrealistic scenes, while offering a better reader journey. But synthesizing these ideas into authentic scenarios can be a little more difficult. 

Once your scene is complete, consider including beta readers with backgrounds in drug-related fields, such as pharmacy, emergency medicine, addiction, or even forensics, as a valuable step to validate your interpretation, assuring your readers will love every page. 

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Most of us, whether we like it or not, have an erotic life. It’s a part of the human arrangement. Our sexual drive is primal, often overpowering. It causes us to think things we’d rather not think, to behave in ways we know to be destructive, to harbor wants that will remain unrequited. It’s a source of tremendous vitality, occasional transgression, and consistent imbalance. For this reason, humans have devised various systems of thought that seek to stigmatize and even criminalize our sexual impulses. (I’m looking at you, organized religion.) These efforts are, let’s face it, a testament to the power of our libidinal urges.

(How to Write a Sex Scene Like Nobody Is Watching.)

Given all this—how much sex matters to us, how much joy and risk it awakens, how much it reveals about us—the question I wish to pose to my fellow writers is this: Why the hell aren’t you writing more sex scenes? Aren’t you curious about such a fundamental aspect of the people you’re writing about? Can you really know them entirely if you don’t know their kinks?

Alas, writers are subject to the same hang-ups as the rest of the population. We, too, have been told—by our parents, our teachers, our pastors, and our government—that sex is dangerous, profane, and, above all, private. We know that our characters fantasize about sex and worry about sex and have sex, but all this thinking and feeling remains governed by a collective code of silence.

In publishing, this silencing used to be enforced through blue laws. These days, the means of suppression are subtler. If we dare to write about sex explicitly, our stories will be deemed “erotica” and relegated to the red-light district of literature. I say this as someone whose stories have regularly appeared in the Best American Erotica anthology. Frankly, I should wear that as a badge of honor. But the very fact that there is a Best American Erotica—as differentiated from Best American Short Stories— underscores my point: A story can be about sex, or it can be about the inner life, but it can’t be about both.

I myself fall victim to this mindset. In my essay about building round characters, it did not occur to me, until just now, that I failed to pose the following questions: What is your protagonist’s relationship to sex? What was she taught about sex, and by whom? What are the formative moments in her sexual history? How much does she think about sex? What sort of partners, if any, does she seek out? What sort of sex turns her on, or frightens her, or both? How much does sex represent pleasure? How much does it represent power? How much punishment?

I could go on and on here. Answering every single one of these questions would help us better understand our protagonists.

So let’s just say it: The biggest problem when it comes to sex scenes is that they never get written. They never get written because of our own inhibitions and because, to one degree or another, we suffer from performance anxiety. This is why writers so often skip from the part where the lovers are fumbling out of their clothes to the part in the morning, where the lovers are sipping some symbolic fluid—bitter coffee or sweet pulpy orange juice—their rude parts (and their hearts) safely tucked away.

This pressure obtains even when we do muster the courage to write sex scenes, and it leads to all the mistakes associated with pressure: unnecessary similes and metaphors, needless obfuscation, genital euphemisms, histrionics that wind up feeling imposed by the author instead of experienced by the characters.

Check out Steve Almond’s Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow here:

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But what if we removed the pressure for our sex scenes to be sexy? What if we freed ourselves to write about sex as we actually experience it, which is, yes, sometimes sexy, but also: doubt-choked, distracted, guilt-ridden, angry, sorrowful.

This is why I write stories with graphic sexual content. Not because I’m a pervert, or wish to embarrass my relatives, but because I want to place my characters in emotionally dangerous situations. The point isn’t to undress them, or gawk at their gyrations, but to explore what they’re thinking and feeling in the midst of such a vulnerable activity.

It feels especially important to break the silence around sex because that silence has helped preserve, and even promote, a patriarchal and heteronormative power structure that essentially erases the erotic experience of women, gay people, trans people, old people—anyone who isn’t a straight dude.

This includes the profound risks that such groups incur. For most of human history, gay and trans people have had to suppress their identities and sexual urges or risk their lives. Women were considered marital property. In the world of pornography, they still exist largely as carnal chattel, slaves to male domination and gratification.

And for all the lip service paid to gender equality, a stark asymmetry still prevails. Women who engage in sexual relations still run the risk of reputational harm, exploitation and abuse, pregnancy and the loss of bodily autonomy. We’ve put a few celebrity abusers in jail, but 74 million Americans, many of them women, voted for an avowed sexual predator in 2020.

There are literary voices who offer a more candid, inclusive, nuanced portrayal of sex—all hail Melissa Febos, Alan Hollinghurst, and Mary Gaitskill, among others—but it’s still hard to imagine them being afforded the literary respect that John Updike and Philip Roth have long enjoyed. As Michael Cunningham observed, after publishing his novel, The Hours: “I can’t help but notice that when I finally write a book in which there are no men sucking each other’s dicks, I suddenly win the Pulitzer Prize.”

The story “Cat Person” became a viral sensation a few years ago precisely because Kristen Roupenian dared to write an explicit scene that captured what practically every straight woman has experienced multiple times: sex that is technically consensual but deeply upsetting. The story chronicles the one-night stand of Margot, a twenty-year-old undergrad, and Robert, a man fourteen years her senior. They wind up back at his place, where the sweet nothings sour:

Looking at him like that, so awkwardly bent, his belly thick and soft and covered with hair, Margot recoiled. But the thought of what it would take to stop what she had set in motion was overwhelming; it would require an amount of tact and gentleness that she felt was impossible to summon. It wasn’t that she was scared he would try to force her to do something against her will but that insisting that they stop now, after everything she’d done to push this forward, would make her seem spoiled and capricious, as if she’d ordered something at a restaurant and then, once the food arrived, had changed her mind and sent it back.

Margot’s complicity isn’t the product of intimidation, but expedience, and a certain capitulation to her vanity. She gets herself turned on by imagining his arousal and they stumble on to a consummation governed by the desolate, disembodied mechanics of pornography. Margot feels like “a doll made of rubber, flexible and resilient, a prop for the movie that was playing in his head,” Roupenian writes. “At the end, when he was on top of her in missionary, he kept losing his erection, and every time he did he would say, aggressively, ‘You make my dick so hard,’ as though lying about it could make it true. At last, after a frantic rabbity burst, he shuddered, came, and collapsed on her like a falling tree, and crushed beneath him, she thought, brightly, This is the worst life decision I have ever made! And she marveled at herself for a while, at the mystery of this person who’d just done this bizarre, inexplicable thing.”

How many millions of young women, and men, have typed some flirty words into their phones, downed a few drinks, and cast their bodies before their hearts, only to arrive at the same mystification? Roupenian refuses to reduce hook-up culture to a set of disposable experiences. Even when the participants mimic the glandular detachment of porn, sex remains profound and revealing.

As writers, we should be brave and curious enough to explore the many contexts of sexuality in the lives of our characters (hook-up sex, break-up sex, courtship sex, marital sex, IVF sex, pregnancy sex, postpartum sex, postmenopausal sex) as well as the emotional functions of sex (revenge sex, healing sex, rebellion sex, ego-boost sex, dutiful sex). We should consider what forms sexuality takes for people who are differently oriented, differently abled, victims of sexual abuse, the aged, the mentally ill, the morbidly obese, for those bound by religious or moral prohibitions. We should approach sexuality as a path to illumination. Which means that the most powerful sex scenes are those that lead characters toward revelations they might otherwise dodge.

I’m thinking here about a piece of advice that Elizabeth Gilbert passed along to me years ago. Actually, the advice came from a romance novelist Gilbert consulted as she was writing The Signature of All Things. Gilbert was struggling to figure out how to write about the sexual life of Alma Whittaker, the novel’s heroine.

The romance novelist urged Gilbert to think about the character in question and to simply imagine—given her temperament and circumstances—how she would have sex. Gilbert knew that Alma had a strong sexual drive, but also that this drive would have been difficult to express in the nineteenth century, particularly for a woman of her social standing and intellectual aims. And so Gilbert—bless her—granted Alma an outlet. Throughout the book, she retreats to the privacy of a small closet where certain thoughts make “wild demands upon her body.” She lifts her skirts, opens her legs, and begins “frantically exploring her spongy petals, trying to find the devil who hid in there, eager to erase that devil with her hand.” It, uh, works:

She felt an unraveling. The hurt in her quim turned to something else—an up-fire, a vortex of pleasure, a chimney-effect of heat. She followed the pleasure where it led. She had no weight, no name, no thoughts, no history. Then came a burst of phosphorescence, as though a firework had discharged behind her eyes, and it was over. For the first conscious moment of her life, her mind was free from wonder, free from worry, free from work or puzzlement. Then, from the middle of that marvelous furred stillness, a thought took shape, took hold, took over:

I shall have to do this again.

Please note how faithfully Gilbert followed the counsel she was given. Alma desperately needs to experience erotic pleasure, to quiet her busy mind, to relax. She wishes to explore that part of herself. But she has no conventional romantic outlet. It’s important to recognize the great variety of our sexuality expression, which resides in our fantasies and our solo explorations, as well as our congress with other bodies.

It’s important, also, to acknowledge that we’re often terribly ambivalent when it comes to experiencing sexual delight. Alma Whittaker returns to this closet time and again. But she never shakes loose from the shame of these episodes.

At the other end of the spectrum is Smilla Jaspersen, the heroine of Peter Høeg’s Danish novel Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Smilla is a biracial woman who operates with a fierce defiance and mistrust of the authorities, an attitude reflected in the nature of her coupling with her lover, Peter. “He has a light, fumbling brutality, which several times makes me think that this time it’ll cost me my sanity,” Smilla tells us. “In our dawning, mutual intimacy, I induce him to open the little slit in the head of his penis so I can put my clitoris inside and fuck him.”

Well then.

This is why I urge my students to write sex scenes—because they inevitably reveal secret aspects of your characters. Not just their peccadillos, but motives that remain hidden from public view. In Sula, Toni Morrison’s restless heroine returns to her hometown. While others scorn the destructive power of her promiscuity, Sula herself uses sex to express the grief she bears for accidentally killing a younger child years earlier. “It was the only place where she could find what she was looking for,” Morrison writes. “Misery and the ability to feel deep sorrow.” Her one steady lover, Ajax, likes for Sula to mount him “so he could see her towering above him and call soft obscenities up into her face.” What others might see as the claiming of power is inextricably linked to punishment.

Consider this passage, from the novel Spending, by Mary Gordon, in which a divorced woman takes a new lover for the first time in many months.

He put his head between my legs, nuzzling at first. His beard was a little rough on the insides of my thighs. Then with his lips, then his tongue, he struck fire. I had to cry out in astonishment, in gratitude at being touched in that right place. Somehow, it always makes me grateful when a man finds the right place, maybe because when I was young so many of them kept finding the wrong place, or a series of wrong places, or no place at all. That strange feeling: gratitude and hunger. My hunger was being teased. It also felt like a punishment. I kept thinking of the word “thrum,” a cross between a throb and a hum. I saw a flame trying to catch; I heard it, there was something I was after, something I was trying to achieve, and there was always the danger that I’d miss it, I wouldn’t find it, or get hold of it. The terrible moment when you’re afraid you won’t, you’ll lose it, it won’t work, you won’t work, it is unworkable and you are very, very desperate. At the same time, you want to stay in this place of desperation . . . at the same time, you’re saying to yourself, you’re almost there, you’re almost there, you can’t possibly lose it now, keep on, keep on a bit longer, you are nearly there, I know it, don’t give up, you cannot lose it. Then suddenly you’re there.

How much of this passage is devoted to the physical act? Three brief, declarative sentences. So let’s dispense with Foolish Creed Number One of writing sex scenes: Thou shalt be explicit and name all the parts and note where they are going, and how the lubrication is progressing and so forth. Nonsense.

The central event during any sexual interaction is thought. That’s what Gordon conveys here: the ticker tape of cogitation that runs parallel to the happy hum of our bliss centers. She uses those great underutilized tools of the trade, syntax and sentence shape, to convey the upheaval within her heroine, how anxiety keeps breaking the rhythm of her ascent toward climax. This is primarily what we’re witnessing: the heroine’s struggle to allow herself pleasure, the anxiety that “it won’t work” and therefore she won’t work. Consider the words associated with sex: punishment, danger, hunger, afraid, terrible, desperate. As with Alma, the goal isn’t just physical ecstasy, but the annihilation of thought.

I’m not suggesting that every story you write should include sex scenes. In fact, if you don’t feel comfortable writing about sex, please don’t.

By this, I mean writing about sex as an emotional experience, not a form of titillation. Sex scenes are compelling only to the extent that they convey how vulnerable we all are when it comes time to get naked, how eager and frightened and ashamed and hopeful. You mustn’t abandon your characters in their time of need. You mustn’t make of them naked playthings with rubbery parts. You must love them, wholly and without shame, as they go about their human business. 

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(50 Reasons for Your Characters to Be Stuck Together.)

The romance should start with a strong emotion—attraction, desire, or even dislike. That, along with a villain with a strongly motivated and intelligent plan, will get the ball rolling. The fact that the hero and heroine need each other to solve the mystery is what will drive the story as they get to know each other. At each stage in the chase, the hero and heroine get closer to each other, they learn about each other, and discover how to leverage the other’s strengths to stop the bag guy. They start with affection which will grow into love and happily ever after in a stand-alone book. (Or at least happily for now.)

In a series that features the same two main characters, like Kit and Sam in my San Diego series, the end of each book needs to see them growing closer. They hold each other after a near-death showdown with the villain. They share their first kiss or a first date. They meet each other’s parents. Their commitment to the other person and to the growth of the relationship is progressed with every story. When they’re finally together as a couple, they’ll need to learn new things about each other in every book. They’ll need to lean on each other in different ways.

They need to grow individually and as a couple.

Romantic tension itself is escalated through increasingly intimate touches, through dialogue and shared history (or secrets) and their growing yearning for each other. But in a romantic thriller, including the element of danger is critical and that danger needs to be personal to the MCs. The romantic tension is ratcheted up as the villain gets closer and closer. The MCs want to protect each other, to keep the other alive. Even if it means being willing to sacrifice themselves for the other.

The danger they face must be personal. The bad guy is either targeting one of our main characters or someone they care about. The risk of injury or death is high, but the stakes are even higher—too high for our moral-high-ground MCs to even consider walking away.

Now, the “someone they care about” doesn’t have to be a family member or even someone they know personally. In Cold Blooded Liar (San Diego #1), Kit cares about each teenage victim of a serial killer. Her sister had been the same age as the victims when she was murdered. This is personal for Kit.

That Sam cares as well draws Kit to him. He’s earnest and compassionate. He’s a good man who shares her values. That starts softening her heart, prepping her for romantic feelings. Then she learns that Sam has suffered loss as well. It’s a moment where they grow closer, where their stories begin to braid together.

This is an example of a quiet moment. Every thriller, romantic or not, needs the quiet moments. They can be pockets of time where the characters share secrets or where they share physical intimacy. (I’ll get to sex in a bit.) The quiet moments can be scenes where the characters’ families and/or friends get together for simple family dialogue, maybe some light-hearted humor. These moments are important because they give the reader a chance to breathe, to process all the murder and tension that’s come before.

And then you immediately hit the reader with something harsher and even more dangerous. The lull makes the ensuing danger even more tense because they’ve had a chance to relax and because now the hero and heroine have even more to lose.

Check out Karen Rose’s Cheater here:

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A few words about the villain. He or she needs to be real to the reader—a three-dimensional character the reader will fear and come to understand, even as they hate him/her and wish that they’ll be caught and punished. I want my readers to think, “Yes. If I were evil, that’s exactly what I’d do.”

The villain has to be smart, perhaps even smarter than either the hero or heroine alone. But together, the MCs have the arsenal to win. The villain has to be a few steps ahead of the MCs until towards the end of the book when the MCs gain ground—because they are working together, using what they’ve learned about each other. This is what makes a tight romantic thriller.

And as they work together, the MCs feel their bond strengthen. Again, as their relationship grows, they know they have even more to lose if the villain is successful. One or the other (or both) will be willing to do whatever it takes to stop the bad guy, even if that means self-sacrifice. And knowing that, knowing that their romantic partner might not survive the take-down of the villain ratchets up the romantic stakes. “I’ve just found you, I can’t lose you now.”

And now, the sex scene. You don’t have to have one, but I like to read them, and I like to write them. No two couples will have the same physical dynamic, so the sex will be different in each book. When they have it and where they have it will also be different in each book. 

Be careful with the when and where. If bullets are flying all around them, doing the deed seems frivolous and downright dangerous. Use one of those quiet moments to introduce sexual intimacy. Find a lull when they’re waiting for lab results or maybe even believe they’ve caught the bad guy, only to find later (after they’re done) that there’s a new victim. Then they must work even harder to take down the bad guy and, again, the stakes are higher as the bond is now deeper.

Ratcheting up the romantic tension and the suspense should happen in concert, like a dance. The stakes must be personal and the MCs must grow together to defeat the villain and make their corner of the world safe again. And at the end, they have their happily ever after.

The post How to Build Romantic Tension in a Romantic Thriller Scene appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(7 Dos & Don’ts for Embarking on a Solo Write.)

But recently I came across one of the best lessons I’ve ever seen for crafting an opening to a novel. And ironically, I found it while I was procrastinating with my own writing!

That’s right—I was channel surfing on my sofa when I landed on the pilot for the popular early-2000s TV series Gilmore Girls. And soon exactly knew what I needed to do to make my Chapter One sing.

In a nutshell, the pilot episode of Gilmore Girls opens on a fall morning when 30-something Lorelai Gilmore walks into the local diner to get coffee. She engages in some casual banter with the owner, Luke, whom she clearly knows well; fends off the overtures of a sleazy but harmless patron sitting nearby; banters with Luke again; and then snaps into action when that same sleazy patron tries to hit on her dining companion—who just happens to be her 16-year-old daughter.

I’d never watched the series before, but suddenly, thanks to this three-minutes-and-change opener, I was hooked. This scene had given me all the information I needed to connect with the show’s characters, become engaged and intrigued, and decide I wanted to watch more.

How did it do that? By concisely serving up:

• Time and Place. As Lorelei heads into Luke’s, the camera pans across a bustling village center, complete with a kid on a skateboard and a couple walking their dogs. The song “There She Goes,” by The La’s, plays as the cameras hovers for a moment in front of a sign that reads “Stars Hollow, Founded in 1779.” In seconds—thanks to the music, the fashions, and the setting, we know exactly where we are: Small-town New England circa 2000. I immediately felt grounded in a time and place that felt very appealing to me.
• Principal Characters and Relationships. Lorelai is smart, quirky, funny, and addicted to coffee, while Luke is gruff, sarcastic, but nevertheless kind of charming. (And because the camera pauses for a second to show us that the diner is named “Luke’s,” we know he’s the owner and is likely well-established in the community.) There’s some tantalizing attraction and sexual energy between the two, which is fun to watch. But Lorelai’s first priority is clearly her daughter, Rory, who commands her attention as the scene continues.
• Tone/Mood. Yes, there’s a creepy fellow who tries to pick up both mother and daughter—but this is a diner, the action takes place in daylight, and witty Lorelai instantly makes mincemeat of the guy. We can tell right away that this series is a rom-com, maybe with some more serious elements thrown in. So if I were the kind of person looking for danger, graphic scenes, or edgy content, I’d know to keep flipping the channels.
• Inciting Incident and a Hint at the Future. It’s a short scene, but the inciting incident seems to come when the sleazy patron sets his sights on Rory and Lorelai springs into action to protect her daughter. It’s clear that this will be the simmering—and sometimes boiling—tension in Lorelai’s life and through the course of the series: her wants as a young, evidently single woman and her responsibility as the mother of a teenage girl.

Check out Barbara Josselsohn’s The Lost Gift to the Italian Island here:

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In this way, Gilmore Girls tells its audience exactly what it needs to know and prepares them for what the enduring themes and relationships will be, even as plots twist and turn, and secondary characters enter and leave the series. We get such a clear idea of what to expect in terms of the narrative mood. This is a safe and relatively clean fictional world for sure, but with thoughtful, meaningful situations.

Of course, you can do this analysis with the opening of any series you like. For example, think of the opening of a very different type of show, the popular HBO series Succession, which just ended its run last spring. It starts with a raw nighttime depiction of a confused and apparently ill elderly man, then switches to a chauffeured car driving though New York City in daylight, inside of which is a well-dressed man clearly pumping himself up for something big, as “An Open Letter to NYC,” by the Beastie Boys, plays. Again, we have time and place; key characters; a strong mood—gritty, and intense; and an inciting incident—the potential health crisis of the elderly man, who turns out to be the family patriarch. This setup skillfully introduces an ongoing story of power, greed, and family dynamics.

Of course, this isn’t to say that everything you see on screen is immediately transferrable to the written page. No, you can’t show a sign that says “Stars Hollow” or play background music in a novel. But both mainstream novels and television series are formats that require essential information to be delivered clearly, interestingly, and quickly from the very moment the story begins. And a look at a favorite series opener can be a great way to help you diagnose what’s going right—or wrong—in your own early pages.

So if you’re struggling with your opening, go ahead and watch the beginning of a TV series or two. Hopefully it will turn out to be not a means of procrastination, but a path back to the story you want to write. 

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(Balancing Humor and Trauma in Middle-Grade Fiction)

I mean, thinking about having a character in your book abduct someone. Here’s my first tip: Climb a mountain instead. It’d be less difficult!

I’m joking, of course, but I’ve discovered that writing a kidnapping event can be quite a challenge. There is no way around the fact that this is high drama. Even with no injury to the victim during the event, the sudden violence is traumatic.

When I hear the word “abduction,” I visualize the kidnapped wife in the movie Fargo who tries to run away. With her hands bound, her head covered by a hood, she falls in the snow. Her body language conveys frantic terror. To this day I’m distressed by this scene.

In writing my techno-thriller, The Child Riddler, I stayed with my kidnapping plot despite my feelings. I liked the story: An elite operative is sent to abduct 9-year-old Leah. This child is the only one who knows the riddle holding the code to unleash a cloaking spider bot—the first ever “invisibility” nanoweapon and the most lethal weapon on earth.

But I was concerned. With a child as the kidnapping victim, the emotional impact escalates tenfold. Also, the book contains several more action-packed scenes involving the main character, a globe-trotter on the chase. The dramatic event in Leah’s life could easily overshadow the other action sequences, nullifying the story’s suspense.

To craft an abduction scene that serves as a central plot point—but doesn’t overpower the story—I focused on three concepts.

1. Know your readers.

Readers have expectations when they pick a novel category or genre. In a techno-thriller, fast-paced action and technology are the dominant elements. My readers did not select immersion in gut-wrenching scenes of a kidnapped victim’s family suffering in fear and anxiety. I could lose them with this emotional content.

I had to stay true to my genre, which meant toning down the fervor. I eliminated the dramatic element of a grief-stricken family. This is what felt like climbing a mountain. Removing a child’s family from the story took a lot of creative thinking. Also, including the abduction planning and discussion up front in the story reduced the surprise element, thus lessening the drama. More on this later.

On the other hand, if you’re writing in a genre where readers expect emotion, do the opposite. Dive into personal dynamics. Build emotional bonds between the family and victim. Include touching scenes describing strong relationships. Then, when the abduction occurs, it tears the readers’ hearts out too.

For the shock element, first construct a world where the victim lives in a secure cocoon with a happy routine and trust in their surroundings. In The Child Riddler, Leah lives in a world she doesn’t trust. Since her “safe” world isn’t all that secure, her abduction isn’t as traumatic. This helps take down the emotion a notch.

2. Be realistic.

An abduction is action. To me, structuring an action scene is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Just as a puzzle’s many irregular pieces must be assembled, there are a myriad of motives as to why someone would be kidnapped, and a thousand possible scenarios.

But there is only one way it will work. The motives that drive the abduction, and the action sequences themselves, must be realistic. If readers don’t believe the reasoning behind the kidnapping, the scene deflates with no reader engagement.

I find the key to realism is logic. Just as you methodically match puzzle pieces by color, size, or shape, a series of questions must be answered before you can interlock action sequences. Fitted together, the story flows because it makes sense. If it makes sense, the readers will accept and believe it.

In The Child Riddler, there’s clear motivation for the kidnapping of Leah. She had the code for the “invisibility” nanobot weapon. My challenge was to stay within the dramatic boundaries of the book’s genre. Leah had to have parents, right? They’d be in agony if she were kidnapped. There would also be other family members like siblings, wouldn’t there? They’d be traumatized. Friends might also be involved. Wouldn’t they help the parents search for the child? The emotional barometer spiked upward as I realized everyone who’d be impacted by the poor child’s abduction.

I had to come up with logical scenarios to eliminate the involvement of parents, siblings, and friends. This wasn’t easy. Happily, I didn’t have to work on tempering the shock effect of Leah’s abduction, since readers knew it was happening.

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3. Bring in personal dynamics early.

As William Shakespeare shared in his brilliant writing more than 400 years ago, emotions—want, love, hate, jealousy, fear, joy—cause people to take extreme actions. Emotion is part of our personal dynamics, the reactive forces that drive us to respond to a situation in a certain way.

I suggest bringing in the kidnap victim’s personal dynamics with family members and friends as soon as possible. This way, when the abduction occurs, the reader is emotionally invested and will be gripped by the fear and anxiety of the event.

With personal dynamics, you control the story’s emotional thermostat. Like starting a fire with kindling, you first engage the characters. Once the story smolders, you add more fuel with conflicts, so the flames rise higher and higher. Or, you let it smolder as I did, so that the abduction just adds heat to the story and doesn’t engulf the other novel plot points.

To smolder or burn, that is the question we writers face on almost every page. Whether to smolder or burn drives our plot pacing down to each tiny scene beat. The craft of storytelling is not an easy one. It becomes even harder when we’re faced with developing a high-impact event such as an abduction. In times like these I often turn to the sage advice Friar Laurence gave Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “Wisely, and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

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(How to Get Back to Your Abandoned Book in 3 Easy (Kinda Hard) Steps)

I was shocked when my undergraduate professor said this. Seriously? How? I wasn’t the only one surprised. The other writers in the senior class at our Christian college snickered and exchanged glances.

“No, really,” she insisted, taking in our unconvinced faces. “Because Christians understand one important thing when it comes to writing about sex. Restraint.”

She went on to explain that writing about sex is also not writing about sex. Meaning, we need to write about the ache, the desire, the struggle to control one’s impulses.

I remembered this piece of advice many years later. Because when it came time to add some scenes to my novel Atomic Family that were a little … well, spicy … restraint was the magic word.

Writing about sex can be challenging for so many reasons. How much do we need to describe? How technical do we need to be? How do we forget, while writing, that our parents and friends will likely read this?

You get the picture.

What I’ve discovered in my writing is that there’s an important distinction between spice and smut—and that spice is often more interesting and character-driven for fiction than the latter.

1. Know the difference between spice and smut.

In fiction writing, smut means sexually explicit or even pornographic material. Think Fifty Shades of Grey. Erotic novels are their own genre with their own devoted reader—but as with anything, they’re not for everyone.

What I’ve discovered as a historical fiction author is that you can have spice in a scene that doesn’t even have physical contact. All you need is desire. If we know a character’s desire and attraction, then we can feel the longing and passion along with them—and all of that can be fully, emotionally, and even physically realized without having content that is overtly graphic and descriptive.

Think about how much was accomplished in the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy accidentally touch hands. Hot. If the setting is clear and the tension is established, the smallest moments can be imbued with burning desire.

2. Use syntax to show passion.

By varying your sentence structure, you can accomplish a lot in terms of showing desire. Ian McEwan is a master of using literary devices to show sexual desire and intimacy. Take his landmark novel Atonement. We’re going to look at the library scene. (Yep, that scene.)

“He tilted her face up, and trapping her against his ribs, kissed her eyes and parted her lips with his tongue … At last they were strangers, their pasts were forgotten. They were also strangers to themselves who had forgotten who or where they were. The library door was thick and none of the ordinary sounds that might have reminded them, might have held them back, could reach them. They were beyond the present, outside time, with no memories and no future. There was nothing but obliterating sensation, thrilling and swelling, and the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on fabric as their limbs slid across each other in this restless, sensuous wrestling.”

There’s such lyrical beauty in this paragraph. Notice the short phrases, the breathiness to the prose. As their passion is heating up, the sentences become both longer and choppier. The syntax itself shows not only desire but escalation. This is a great tool to have in your back pocket when it comes to writing scenes with sexual tension.

3. Create an out-of-body experience.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but sometimes distancing a character from his or her body has a heightening effect when writing about sex. Lauren Groff often includes innovative sex scenes in her work—innovative in that they are distinctly character-driven. Usually, the scenes are meant to show what’s happening internally in a character’s psyche, as well as what’s obviously happening with the body. Take this scene from Groff’s early novel Arcadia.

“She pressed down again, her body against his chest, and at last her mouth found his. He imagined the quiet street outside shining in the lights, the millions of souls warm and listening to the rain in their beds. He couldn’t stop looking at the side of her face, her eyes closed, the small shell of her ear, the scar in her nostril where the stud had been, her thin pale lower lip in her teeth. He was close but held off, until at last she whispered, Go.”

Notice how the narrative starts with the physical: We’re clearly tuned in to what’s happening. Then, we pan back out. He is imagining the quiet street, the lights, the people around them in the beautiful world. And then he’s back, but his focus is on all the bodily details that seem, honestly, very un-sexual. The side of her face. The shell of her ear. A scar on her nostril. I find that this “zoom-out and zoom-in” technique heightens the intimacy in the scene, especially as he’s noticing delicate and easily overlooked physical details of his partner. But doesn’t that feel so human?

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4. Crank up the tension.

Sometimes all you need is a little more conflict to help raise the heat.

In my novel Atomic Family, Dean wrestles with whether or not to cheat on his wife with a young woman named April, who works with him at the nuclear plant. His desire comes to a fever pitch at a very inopportune time … at work. During a smoke break. When a colleague could find them at any moment. After struggling to restrain himself, Dean can’t resist kissing April. I used interjectory thoughts from Dean to escalate his desire, showing his intense and urgent need to find privacy—now.

“With one hand, he cups her breast outside the sweater. He can feel the boned bra and the whirlpool lace through cashmere. My office, he thinks. My car. They could slip away for an hour—no one would miss them. A storage closet. The locker room. He would be fast, so fast! It’s been so long! A sampling trailer. The stairwell.”

Notice how he’s negotiating with himself. This is the character-driven restraint as he’s battling with his own desire. Of course, the text doesn’t need to specify exactly what would happen in the office or his car. The reader knows. It’s pretty obvious what he wants.

Note, too, that desire feels more urgent when the setting is awkward or uncomfortable or there is some circumstantial reason why the lovers don’t want to be caught. Ian McEwan accomplishes something similar in Atonement with the note that the two lovers block out the sounds that might have drawn them back to reality—because, as we know, someone could find them. And does.

If you have a strong sense of your character, then writing about desire should naturally flow from the character’s internal struggles and desires. We don’t have to get technical to know what’s going on. We just have to know what it means to the person on the page … and by using things like syntax and setting and tension, you can turn up the heat in your fiction while still maintaining a sense of mystery.

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The post 4 Ways To Add Spice but Not Smut in Fiction appeared first on Writer's Digest.