Broken Frontier

Last week, I told you about how to make your scenes more dramatic. And while making your scenes more dramatic is certainly a positive thing, it isn’t the only thing you need to drive your story forward.

The element I want to talk about this week is called the “reversal.” It is also known, in certain screenwriting circles, as the “surprise twist.” I find, however, that the latter term tends to make me think of movies such as the original Planet of the Apes or The Sixth Sense, which relied on so-called twist endings. So although “twists” and “reversals” share some common ground, they’re not exactly the same thing, so let’s avoid the confusion altogether and stick with “reversal” as the label for this tool.

In short, the reversal is a complete and hopefully unexpected turn of events in the flow of your story. Reversals are an important dramatic writing tool because they keep the reader in the dark about where the story is going.

Imagine for a moment that the story you are writing is a roller coaster. If I can see far ahead on the tracks, I’ll be less surprised by the dips and turns because I can see them coming. One way to avoid this is to throw as many twists and turns into the track as possible. That way, readers can’t see what’s coming and surprising story elements will be, well, surprising.

Let’s go back and take a look again at Zombie Tales #1. As I said last week, the opening of the story “Severance,” by Michael Nelson, is a good example of a dramatic scene. You’ll recall the scientists fighting over who is going to shoot Nathan. Now if Nathan had emerged from the holding cell and Carl had successfully shot him with the hypo, the scene essentially comes to an end. Mission accomplished, right? The scientists wanted to shoot Nathan and they did. Nelson, however, knows how to use the reversal and that’s just what he employs. Instead of Carl achieving his goal (which we expect), Nathan attacks him and bites him creating an unexpected turn in the story -- the reversal. The story now must move in a new direction. The goal the characters originally had has changed. Yes, the big goal -- that of shooting Nathan with the hypo -- is still the same. But the immediate goal -- of getting Carl to pull the trigger -- has altered. The situation is now more complicated.

What this does is create something called “rising tension.” What should have been an easy task just got more difficult. And as we, the readers, become more worried about whether or not the characters will achieve their goal, our excitement level (and our involvement with the story) increases.

So, what does happen? Svetlana steps in and shoots Nathan with the hypo. But, since Carl has been bitten, he must now be destroyed. Svetlana freezes his head, then smashes it to pieces with a hammer in a neat and gruesome variation on the good ol’ zombie kill method.

The side benefit of making every scene end with a reversal is that you get what is called “progression.” Progression, in simple terms, is story movement. More than that, however, it’s making sure that relationships between characters change so that each time we see them, the situation is different.

Let’s write a story about a guy named Bob. Bob has a room-mate named Tony. In the first scene between Bob and Tony, we find out that Bob wants to go out with a co-worker of Tony’s named Ellen. Tony, however, wants to prevent Bob from going out with Ellen (probably because he wants to go out with her himself). Let’s say that in the next scene, Bob goes to the store and buys flowers, then goes home. When Bob sees Tony again and nothing has changed, this third scene will be very close to the first scene and should likely be combined with the first one or eliminated.

Now what if instead, after the first scene, Bob goes to the store to buy flowers and finds out from his friend that Tony has already called Ellen and told her not to go out with Bob because he has served time for stalking. Imagine the scene between Bob and Tony now. As you can see, the reversal has created progression. The story must move forward. Hopefully, your readers will be wondering what could happen next and they will want to continue reading.

This is not the only example and/or meaning for “reversal,” but it’s a good place to start. I’ve always found that global understanding is easier to master. The difficult work comes in the details -- in the individual scenes. But if you can hone your skills at this level, your global skills will be that much better.

As an exercise, I suggest you take the scenes you wrote last week and figure out how to put a reversal on them, and then write the next scene. As always, let us know how it goes in the Forum. And don’t forget, as you read this week’s comics, see if you can pick out the reversals and identify how (or if) they lead to progression.

Until next time, keep writing.