Sticky Situations

Now that I have my prettiful layout all settled, I've come to you to today to talk about sticky situations. Can they really be sticky enough?

As writers, we all know that plots are a very important aspect of writing. Without a plot, all you have is characters wandering around aimlessly. One of the worst feelings in the world is to write your first draft and realize: there's just not enough going on here; the situations aren't sticky enough.

Say your heroine gets kidnapped. Well, yeah. That happens -- especially in entertainment media. And yes, in theory, that is a sticky situation, but it's just not sticky enough -- not by a long shot. Mainly, you need to tell your readers why being kidnapped is a sticky situation other than "well, being kidnapped is really, REALLY bad". Frankly, that just won't cut it.

The key to making a sticky situation stickier is to show your readers WHY it's so bad other than saying the previous "it's really bad" shtick. There has to be something else going on in there. There's got to be something physical or psychological that makes the sticky situation VERY VERY BAD.

Lets call our heroine Ruth. Ruth is kidnapped by the (very) bad guys. To add further tension to the situation, we give her REASONS why being kidnapped is so bad. These can be big, like they're taking her out of the country and she'll never see her family again. Or they could be small (depending on how you look at it), like she'll be late picking up her son for school; or when they kidnapped her, she dropped her purse. She has really bad asthma and her inhaler was in that purse. A small little addition like that really adds tension. After all, even though the kidnappers haven't expressed a desire to kill her, she might very well die as the shock of it has caused an asthma attack. Boom! She's in mortal peril and all you had to do was add one little fact; now the reader will wonder what will happen to Ruth and keep turning the page.

And that's the key! You want them to turn the page. You want your reader to keep reading at least until the danger is (for the moment) over (like at the end of the chapter or something).

Now let's look at another character. We'll call him John. In your story, you mentioned that John left his cellphone in his girlfriend's car, but you didn't elaborate further. That's boring story-telling when you casually mention something that's pointless. It makes the reader all like "wtf, mate?". Since you chose to mention he left his cellphone in his girl's car, you're now obligated, as the writer, to tell the reader WHY it's important.

Consider this: John left his cellphone in his girlfriend's car. Reasons that's a significant thing could be because the text inbox is full of incriminating texts linking his brother, Willy the Squid, to horrendous murders or perhaps John's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Without a cellphone, he can't call for help, and he's stuck until finally, at dusk, some strange stranger comes and offers to give him a lift to the nearest payphone for a "price".

When writing a tense part of the story, it's important not to mention things unless they're relevant to that specific part of the story. And that leads back to what I really wanted to talk about: when writing, it's always possible to make sticky situations stickier. It adds to the story and lends depth to the characters. When their bad times are really bad, readers will feel more sympathetic to them. A reader's sympathy is what every writer must strive to attain.