JULY 2026 Group Read: Conflict, Action, and Suspense! > Likes and Comments
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I've been a bit deadline-overwhelmed so haven't been bugging y'all about nominating a book for next month, but, yeah… nominate a book for next month! I'll put the poll up on Monday, but not if there's only one in the race!
I'll throw one out there I don't think has been nominated before.The Fantasy Fiction Formula by Deborah Chester.
I’ve had the FFF around awhile and never read it so I’ll back Rob’s nomination
I think I have the 1994 edition of that but it's buried deep. Doubt I'll be able to dredge it up and read it in the next two weeks while I slog through the end of two contracts and start up a new one.
Deadline Hell ends today… then I will start reading this. I promise!
Still waiting for mine to show up at the library. Then I’m in.
I didn't disagree with anything he said in the first chapter.This idea of immediacy is interesting… especially if we think about how to add a sense of that in fantasy or far future SF where there are no Apple iPhones or Ford Broncos…?
Interesting point in Chapter 2: Stage-Setting:It’s pretty well acknowledged that readers “hear” as well as see words on the page. That is, word sounds and word images play in the readers’ minds even as their eyes scan the words. Some have referred to this as “the music of words,” others as an appeal to “word-sense,” but the important thing is to understand that the way words “sound” on the page will affect what the reader takes away.
In Chapter 3 (Openings) the advice continues to read as fairly "basic," but we all need to start somewhere. This is solid stuff here:Stories rely on a developing conflict to generate interest and a sense of identification. If the opening is squishy or dull, it doesn’t matter how exciting or eye-grabbing the remainder of the book is, the reader will have already put it aside. We have to start at a point where something is happening, and we have to make it interesting.
Interesting. Attention-getting. Dramatic.
[…]
The opening of a story must form the foundation for what is to follow. It must be a block—sturdy and uncompromising—to build the rest of the story upon.
There's great advice in here, but honestly…? The writing often fails to get that across, which is weird. A poorly written book on the craft of writing?But still, I like this in Chapter 4 (Leave 'Em Hangin):
Story pace, essentially, means two things: smooth, even writing without anticlimaxes, without lengthy static prose; and carefully constructed scenes that blend with one another and build to a satisfying climax. Pacing our story means controlling it, and that, in turn, means taking the long view and measuring each scene against the entire story line. Would we want two action scenes back to back? Are the elements of suspense so unconnected as to destroy the threads of menace?
His concept of "Well/Maybe" dialog is interesting. (Chapter 5: "Building Through Dialogue")The Well/Maybe approach to dialogue has the advantage of avoiding story bog-down. By nature, indirect response injects something new in the interaction between speakers. No question completely answered, no thought fully portrayed, no agreement thoroughly made. There are equivocations and limitations in the dialogue responses with Well/Maybe, and this keeps the story moving because there is never enough to satisfy the reader's questions.
More good advice sort of poorly communicated, but in Chapter 6, "Building Suspense Through Mood and Atmosphere"…We are punishing our readers by making them suffer through our development of circumstances, which causes anticipation and dread. And we shouldn’t apologize for doing this because it’s what they really want: drama, excitement, uncertainty, unsettledness, fear and dread!
Philip wrote: "More good advice sort of poorly communicated, but in Chapter 6, "Building Suspense Through Mood and Atmosphere"…We are punishing our readers by making them suffer through our development of circu..."
A creepy way of putting it, but true enough.
Here's a quote every author should have hung up over their desk:Think of characters at war—either with themselves or with others—and then chronicle that war until there is peace.
I found Chapter 8: Building Through Point of View almost incomprehensible. I've never read this guy's fiction, but he is struggling to make himself understood in this attempt at non-fiction. There's a vague sense that he knows what he's talking about, and I haven't seen anything I would say is patently "wrong," but there's an ongoing impenetrability to the prose that I just can't break through.
In Chapter 9: Subtlety and Misdirection he seems to have put himself in orbit around the concept of Chekhov's Gun, but has coined the term "plot-hypers" instead. Once again, I find myself nodding along, but not finding anything clear enough to be "quotable." He's not wrong, but he's not interesting.
From Chapter 10: Time and Place:When we combine setting or place with time, we have a secure groundwork for our story. Not only does the place where the story occurs have limits, but the time within which the story develops also provides limits. Now we have a concreteness of story line against which we can create action and suspense. We have it double-layered, in effect.
This is true, yes? Thoughts?
Philip wrote: "From Chapter 10: Time and Place:When we combine setting or place with time, we have a secure groundwork for our story. Not only does the place where the story occurs have limits, but the time wit..."
This sounds true if you plan on taking an Aristotelian approach to the setting, I suppose. Both location and time are pretty malleable within the context of a story, and that's before bringing POV into the matter. Time can pass very differently for characters than it does for the audience, for one thing.
It is more accurate to say establishing a setting helps with what the audience will expect, but to my mind, that is different from establishing limits and foundations for a story.
Yeah, I feel as though he's limiting himself to, maybe, contemporary fiction that's set in, say, Chicago. So the reality of the city of Chicago provides you with certain parameters to work within--that's true. Likewise historical fiction set in a particular place in a particular time. But even then, you could set a story in 2020s Chicago or 1820s Russia that still spans over years.
For me the issue remains this author's inability to clearly express himself. I'm rarely "with him" in the way this sort of nonfiction/"how to" demands.
Here (in Chapter 11: It's in the Pacing) I find myself once again… kind of… in agreement with William Noble:Flashbacks, because they deal with the past, even if that past is brought up to the present, don’t ring with the immediacy of the contemporary story; they remain something out of the past, and their natural inclination is to slow things down because they do not offer that sense of immediacy.
I think flashbacks can have an immediacy of their own, especially when that glimpse into the past adds some kind of twist or "holy sh*t" revelation. And flashbacks absolutely can (though they don't have to do that.
I just recently worked with a couple authors whose books suffered from what I call "the Long Goodbye," which William Noble describes well in the final chapter (Endings):Most stories depend upon a ready supply of conflict and tension, and the one thing all endings must have is the culmination of that conflict and tension. Imagine a story that climaxes with the destruction of the bad guys... only we still have fifty pages to read. Where can the conflict and tension go but in a downward spiral? Where can the action and suspense go but into a passive dissolve?
Those final fifty pages become relics to futility and a reminder that endings should come when the interesting part of the story is over. Not before, certainly not afterward.
End with a bang then get the hell outta there.
That wraps up Conflict, Action and Suspense for me. Can I recommend it? Maybe for authors at the absolute beginning of their writing journey. It does cover a lot of the most basic basics. But beyond that, what got in my way was the author's voice, the (forgive me) clunky way he strung sentences together. His entirely valid points tended to be obfuscated by his own inability to clearly express himself.
But now here it's June 1st already so once more into the breach…
Please nominate a book on the art and craft of writing genre fiction or fiction in general. I'm feeling saucy so will risk a book I haven't read yet as my nomination. Going to the stack of unread books on writing, how about…
Conflict, Action and Suspense
… to get us started?
NOMINATE!