You make some excellent points here, Simon. I agree, and with Mike Miller too about the 'cliffhanger' not having to be a life-or-death situation; just a line that makes people wonder where this is going to lead them - and want to find out, of course. Pacing is a tricky one, and like everything in writing it depends on your audience. Reading through Lawrence Durrell's descriptions in 'The Alexandria Quartet' was a bit of a drag for me as a teenager, even though I appreciated how well-crafted those descriptions were. Likewise, reading Holly Black's Elfhame novels (YA) as an adult felt a bit like being bludgeoned over the head with action-action-action, although they were very entertaining. I'm writing an NYA novel now, so I'm trying to make sure there is quite a lot of action vs. description, but you are absolutely right: none of the buckets should ever be empty.
You’re right about giving readers variation. I’ve seen movies that are nothing but two hour chase scenes and they become boring in a hurry no matter how many cars are wrecked or property destroyed. A break from the action does improve the experience. Writing a novel that can be revamped many times before release would certainly be an easier medium to accomplish this. I think a serial with a weekly release would be a challenge. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights.
Yeah, it requires a certain level of knowledge of what's coming down the pipe for it to work. I think it'd be very difficult if a writer was 100% making it up week-to-week.
I can totally relate to your point about Terminator 2 and Die Hard. It seems to me in a lot of modern action movies the action goes on way too long. I love a good car chase, but often it gets to the point where I'm bored and just want it to end so the story can progress.
The buckets are a useful visualisation tool, but I find when writing that the structure of story resides within me as something innate, and that all I have to do is sit quietly and listen for a while to the story that wants to be told. What I'm saying is that I can't think about structure at all when I write. It's only after the first draft is written that I can start to try to work out if there are any buckets that have too much or too little.
Absolutely — that makes a lot of sense. I don’t think I could have visualised this for my own work before starting on it. I do think a lot about structure, from a very high level, because I need to if a serial is going to work. But in terms of the precise balance of all the ‘buckets’…that’s an evolving thing.
For your next informative article you can draw a Terminator with the caption "Come with me if you want to write."
I like the way people do things mentally and then come up with really creative explanations. Buckets are a wonderful way to illustrate your inner workings.
Sometimes I think about how Law and Order episodes almost always resolved the plot (very few Batman-lava endings) but they often ended on an emotional down note, which made them completely addictive. I'd start a new episode just to feel better. If I was going to stop hitting "next episode" like a chimp (because it was 4am and I should have been in bed 5 hours ago), I had to stop in the middle of an episode, not the end. Which is just to suggest another kind of cliffhanger.
Also was just rewatching Better Call Saul for a second time, which is so fantastically written and does have stretches that are very slow and contemplative. To your point.
it is strange to read your posts with tips, tricks, and visuals about writing.
I never wrote a story. I am new to it and currently writing the info to set up the world my story takes place in.
I have already written once, and those were 35 nice practice chapters. But I did write cliffhangers from the get-go. But those would vary between high-intensity moments where the MC would be in danger. The next one could be the MC having collapsed, so what now? while the next chapter ends as they walk out of the hospital in search of a guy that could help MC, or that is looking for the MC.
I have no clue if I am doing it right, but I always made the chapter endings feel like there was some force or push into the next chapter. Always giving some sort of hint or guidance to the reader or mc respectively, that something is going to continue in the next chapter.
I am still learning, so if this is a... not so effective way, I would love to know haha.
I will note among my media consumption is a fair amount of Big Finish audio plays - and they do often run into a problem with the cliffhangers. Big Finish is, of course, aping the structure of the original Doctor Who run for the most part, meaning four (roughly) half-hour episodes designed to split across 2 CDs. Which means "the formula" demands a cliffhanger. Oof - sometimes the cliffhanger just stands out as an obvious "Well we need an ending to this episode, here's a random moment of danger." Sometimes it's just the perfect cliffhanger: something organically arising from the story, or a revelation about a character or setting instead of jeopardy.
As a side note my favorite Big Finish cliffhanger is in a musical episode (Big Finish did it decades before RTD)... Well, we go into a song for the Sixth Doctor and, as he hits his first (sustained) note, the electronic "scream" going into the end theme kicks in. Oh, the first time I heard that I laughed so hard. Great joke!
When you start dipping into retro aesthetics it can get a bit muddy. I used the 1960s Batman series as an example of ridiculous cliffhangers, yet that show obviously knew what it was doing and gets away with it (as I recall — haven’t seen it since I was a kid) by committing to the style.
That's true, but that particular show was 1) camp, 2) structured as 2-part episodes, so, of course that was the formula. Everyone knew part one would end with a death trap. Of course, it also "only" ran 120 episodes, so 60 cliffhangers.
With the aforementioned Big Finish Doctor Who's, those are four-partners, so you have a lot more cliffhangers to deal with, plus, just the Doctor Who "Main Range" ran to 300 stories - so 900 cliffhangers. Plus the rest of their lines. At one point formula becomes quite hard (a formula-breaking story is welcome every 10-20 or so.
(Side note on formula - we'll hit a problematic B5 episode this week. B5 was sold as an "Action-Adventure" show and, this week, we'll see a weak action plot shoehorned into a story of contemplation.)
Even in my silly TTRPG narratives I'd sometimes cheat and hold back events from a session to the following week's narrative if something a scene or two (or three) was just a better dramatic/narrative stopping point. Oh, we've learned Diaz - one of the original PCs is now an NPC villain... But after that fight we did some "travel" events. Nah, I'm gonna do the fight with Diaz and then have my viewpoint character agonizing over the betrayal for a page. I'll pick up with the traveling next week.
It makes perfect sense to me! In fact, I was just evaluating my current and previous chapters in a similar way, (without drawing the buckets 😉), but heading towards the same point. Too much of anything is, well, too much. Right?
Oh... "The Skiens of Pacing," was right there. All the different colors of thread to weave into your story tapestry.
Nah, it's more fun to mix metaphors. After all, when the going gets tough, the early bird catches the worm! As the blind man said to his deaf friend, "You smell that?"
You make some excellent points here, Simon. I agree, and with Mike Miller too about the 'cliffhanger' not having to be a life-or-death situation; just a line that makes people wonder where this is going to lead them - and want to find out, of course. Pacing is a tricky one, and like everything in writing it depends on your audience. Reading through Lawrence Durrell's descriptions in 'The Alexandria Quartet' was a bit of a drag for me as a teenager, even though I appreciated how well-crafted those descriptions were. Likewise, reading Holly Black's Elfhame novels (YA) as an adult felt a bit like being bludgeoned over the head with action-action-action, although they were very entertaining. I'm writing an NYA novel now, so I'm trying to make sure there is quite a lot of action vs. description, but you are absolutely right: none of the buckets should ever be empty.
You’re right about giving readers variation. I’ve seen movies that are nothing but two hour chase scenes and they become boring in a hurry no matter how many cars are wrecked or property destroyed. A break from the action does improve the experience. Writing a novel that can be revamped many times before release would certainly be an easier medium to accomplish this. I think a serial with a weekly release would be a challenge. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights.
Yeah, it requires a certain level of knowledge of what's coming down the pipe for it to work. I think it'd be very difficult if a writer was 100% making it up week-to-week.
Great piece Simon.
I can totally relate to your point about Terminator 2 and Die Hard. It seems to me in a lot of modern action movies the action goes on way too long. I love a good car chase, but often it gets to the point where I'm bored and just want it to end so the story can progress.
Thanks man u did perfect im new so im still need to learn alot but that was just amazing! Can't wait to start myself! See ya
The buckets are a useful visualisation tool, but I find when writing that the structure of story resides within me as something innate, and that all I have to do is sit quietly and listen for a while to the story that wants to be told. What I'm saying is that I can't think about structure at all when I write. It's only after the first draft is written that I can start to try to work out if there are any buckets that have too much or too little.
Absolutely — that makes a lot of sense. I don’t think I could have visualised this for my own work before starting on it. I do think a lot about structure, from a very high level, because I need to if a serial is going to work. But in terms of the precise balance of all the ‘buckets’…that’s an evolving thing.
For your next informative article you can draw a Terminator with the caption "Come with me if you want to write."
I like the way people do things mentally and then come up with really creative explanations. Buckets are a wonderful way to illustrate your inner workings.
Sometimes I think about how Law and Order episodes almost always resolved the plot (very few Batman-lava endings) but they often ended on an emotional down note, which made them completely addictive. I'd start a new episode just to feel better. If I was going to stop hitting "next episode" like a chimp (because it was 4am and I should have been in bed 5 hours ago), I had to stop in the middle of an episode, not the end. Which is just to suggest another kind of cliffhanger.
Also was just rewatching Better Call Saul for a second time, which is so fantastically written and does have stretches that are very slow and contemplative. To your point.
it is strange to read your posts with tips, tricks, and visuals about writing.
I never wrote a story. I am new to it and currently writing the info to set up the world my story takes place in.
I have already written once, and those were 35 nice practice chapters. But I did write cliffhangers from the get-go. But those would vary between high-intensity moments where the MC would be in danger. The next one could be the MC having collapsed, so what now? while the next chapter ends as they walk out of the hospital in search of a guy that could help MC, or that is looking for the MC.
I have no clue if I am doing it right, but I always made the chapter endings feel like there was some force or push into the next chapter. Always giving some sort of hint or guidance to the reader or mc respectively, that something is going to continue in the next chapter.
I am still learning, so if this is a... not so effective way, I would love to know haha.
But thanks for the post. Really enjoyed
Um. Yeah. Pretty much all of this.
I will note among my media consumption is a fair amount of Big Finish audio plays - and they do often run into a problem with the cliffhangers. Big Finish is, of course, aping the structure of the original Doctor Who run for the most part, meaning four (roughly) half-hour episodes designed to split across 2 CDs. Which means "the formula" demands a cliffhanger. Oof - sometimes the cliffhanger just stands out as an obvious "Well we need an ending to this episode, here's a random moment of danger." Sometimes it's just the perfect cliffhanger: something organically arising from the story, or a revelation about a character or setting instead of jeopardy.
As a side note my favorite Big Finish cliffhanger is in a musical episode (Big Finish did it decades before RTD)... Well, we go into a song for the Sixth Doctor and, as he hits his first (sustained) note, the electronic "scream" going into the end theme kicks in. Oh, the first time I heard that I laughed so hard. Great joke!
The song is pretty funny, too:
https://youtu.be/00T_ft5RCdc?si=51k4SD0r1tAgKcpq
When you start dipping into retro aesthetics it can get a bit muddy. I used the 1960s Batman series as an example of ridiculous cliffhangers, yet that show obviously knew what it was doing and gets away with it (as I recall — haven’t seen it since I was a kid) by committing to the style.
That's true, but that particular show was 1) camp, 2) structured as 2-part episodes, so, of course that was the formula. Everyone knew part one would end with a death trap. Of course, it also "only" ran 120 episodes, so 60 cliffhangers.
With the aforementioned Big Finish Doctor Who's, those are four-partners, so you have a lot more cliffhangers to deal with, plus, just the Doctor Who "Main Range" ran to 300 stories - so 900 cliffhangers. Plus the rest of their lines. At one point formula becomes quite hard (a formula-breaking story is welcome every 10-20 or so.
(Side note on formula - we'll hit a problematic B5 episode this week. B5 was sold as an "Action-Adventure" show and, this week, we'll see a weak action plot shoehorned into a story of contemplation.)
Even in my silly TTRPG narratives I'd sometimes cheat and hold back events from a session to the following week's narrative if something a scene or two (or three) was just a better dramatic/narrative stopping point. Oh, we've learned Diaz - one of the original PCs is now an NPC villain... But after that fight we did some "travel" events. Nah, I'm gonna do the fight with Diaz and then have my viewpoint character agonizing over the betrayal for a page. I'll pick up with the traveling next week.
Even poems as short as haikus or sonnets often have sharp turns in them to contain more than one thing.
It makes perfect sense to me! In fact, I was just evaluating my current and previous chapters in a similar way, (without drawing the buckets 😉), but heading towards the same point. Too much of anything is, well, too much. Right?
Oh... "The Skiens of Pacing," was right there. All the different colors of thread to weave into your story tapestry.
Nah, it's more fun to mix metaphors. After all, when the going gets tough, the early bird catches the worm! As the blind man said to his deaf friend, "You smell that?"