Space To Breathe

Space to Breathe

So I've been thinking a lot about pacing and structure in my own stories, and one thing that's become increasingly clear is the importance--the necessity, really--of giving your story space to breathe.

Particularly for novels* with a lot of tension, there's a tendency to think the whole story should be tense: if you drop the tension, all of the air goes out of the story.

But in fact, the opposite tends to be true. As is true with so many things, if you spend an extended time in a feeling of suspense or anxiety, it all tends to flatten out into something less meaningful. The moments that are supposed to feel very impactful end up feeling the same as the less impactful moments.

What you can--and should--do instead is give your story space to breathe. Deliberately lower the tension for a scene or even a chapter and let everything settle. Here are a few ways to do that:

Have your character process a traumatic or impactful event. One of the easiest ways to cheapen a character injury, death, near-death, or massive reveal is to not give any time to process it. So give your character a chance to cry, talk about it, or otherwise process what happened. It doesn't need to be immediately after the event, because often you will want to keep that tension high for a while, but if you are giving the reader a traumatic event, give them the emotional payoff of having the characters deal with it.

Have your characters feel safe. This can be a real safety or a false safety, but if your characters feel/are in danger for much of the story, giving them that sense of safety can ease the tension for a little bit. It can also increase the impact of an event immediately after it--being attacked or injured when they feel safe has a very different emotional payoff for the reader than being attacked or injured when they already feel like they're in danger.

Have your characters take advantage of a lull in tension. Along with the previous instance, this can take place when there's an in-story lull--the prom isn't for another week, the ritual can't happen until the full moon, the enemy is still a hundred miles away--where the characters themselves deliberately decide to put the tension aside and take some times for themselves.

In all of these instances, you give yourself an opportunity for an even higher emotional payoff later while also providing the characters with an opportunity for more normal interaction. How do they interact when the stakes aren't so high? What do their relationships look like?

*short stories have an entire different structure and different sense of pacing and tension, and this advice doesn't apply nearly as well to them.

tonight’s twitter discourse:

this thread (all their takes after the initial tweet are bad too)

https://twitter.com/benedict_rs/status/1349954211358924800

i don’t know if they wanted to become a more popular writer or podcaster but they’re getting ratioed by the minute. 

i’ve been finding new authors to follow by digging in the quote-retweets

Slytherins when they’re mildly inconvenienced: THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME

When they’re legitimately hurt/distressed: no no it’s fine i’ve had worse

:/

Good morning to all of you because you all are doing your best. No exceptions.

And if you don't feel like your doing your best, please remember you can change in a second. It takes one second of kindness, of understanding, one moment of listening and open your heart, to change.

Seek the small changes. Learn to see the details. The stars are tiny from the distance and so are our steps, but a tiny million steps make a bright sky worth looking at.

And please remember that if there's something you should never give up, it's yourself. Protect yourself, love yourself, support yourself, correct yourself, improve yourself.

You are worth fighting for.

Idk why but villains with standards will always be the funniest thing to me. like you'll get someone who will take absolute pleasure in doing the most vile things but paying their minions less than minimum wage? how dare you insult their honor. there'll be a guy who just loves terrorizing people but if you say something sexist about his sidekick he'll punch you in the throat and step aside with glee to let her pummel you. villains who are like "murder is fine generally but if you're a homophobe then I'll tie you to a boulder and catapult you into the ocean". Idk there's just something innately hilarious about a villain who is very definitively bad, like extremely morally reprehensible, but like there are just certain things that even they won't stoop to, thereby implying that those who do are worse