How to Keep Your Readers up at Night
Dear writer,
I would love to write to you about one of the most enthralling techniques you can apply to your own story that will make your reader stay up until 3am reading. And that is to always visit the worst-case scenario.
Imagine you’ve set the scene so right. The characters goals, wants and needs are all on the line. The stakes are incredibly high and your characters are so desperate to avoid the worst-case scenario, otherwise everything they worked towards would be ruined. And what do you do? Ruin everything.
Make the characters slip up, have them get caught, drag them through the dark bottom of the nine circles of hell to scare the heck out of them. You might be wondering, how does this benefit the plot? Doesn’t this just manipulate the readers for no reason?
Not quite. You see, when writing, your characters must constantly prove to themselves that they’re stronger than they believe. They have to unlock new potentials within themselves to continuously grow in order to learn the lesson of the story. By the characters unlocking their new potential, this benefits the plot by allowing it to move forward. Otherwise, if the characters are caught and they can’t escape, the story is over.
It is not a tactic to manipulate the readers into feeling something, although it does make them feel, but it is a technique to convey the characters’ real strength. It also conveys how they overcome adversity, an opportunity to show what they learnt on the journey so far that will help them get out of this one.
As you can already understand, the importance of tension and conflict. They are the bread and butter to your story, they keep your readers captivated and questioning what will happen next.
How you decide to solve the ‘worst-case' scenario’ problem also plays a big role in keeping your readers captivated. Because if you were to put your characters through their absolute worst yet make their escape from it so simple, it undermines the severity of their deepest fears and turns the threat into a joke, ultimately ruining the stakes, tension and conflict all together.
Usually when in this scenario, the characters are given two options on how to move forward. Both options have their own impacting consequences that the characters don’t want. In my opinion and research, the most satisfying way through this scenario is to pick the invisible third option. That is for the character to use everything they learnt from the journey in order to come up with a new solution that makes sense for the story.
However, be weary of creating a deus ex machina when selecting the invisible third option. This means the ‘worst-case scenario’ problem is solved unexpectedly and easily. As stated earlier, it undermines the severity of the threat, turning it into a joke.
So look at your own story and question what your characters’ worst-case scenarios are. Maybe think about applying them to your story and see where it takes you.
Much love,
Elena
