So yeah, where was I… oh yeah, escalating. I’ve since finished Winslow’s book, City on Fire. I really liked it. Sure there were some mob tropes (how do you write a mob book without them? Fuggetaboutit.) But what it really got me thinking about was escalation.
Thanks for those who commented on the last post. I’m still thinking on the difference between suspense and escalation. In a novel-length manuscript, I think constant suspense feels like melodrama. But escalation is something that grows within the telling of a story. It’s something as simple as taking a character and applying pressure, a lot of pressure. And if the character has been drawn well, we feel worried for them, and turn those pages so we can find out that he/she is going to be okay. But not right away. A bit more pressure keeps us involved. We’ve got skin in the game.
Last time I posted my story Broomstick Limbo as an example of escalation—but also a wondering on my part whether I thought of this concept in some of my early work.
I’m going to post it here again, and offer some observations. Notes are in italic.
Broomstick Limbo
It's the colour I remember -- an egg-yolk yellow broomstick, a bright orange t-shirt that said "Crush"; poplar leaves in the July sun; and blood that ran along a pale leg and disappeared into emerald grass.
I’ve talked about the importance of openings before, and here right in that long, slightly convoluted sentence, we have some foreshadowing. I name the colours, yellow, and orange, and then the blood (note I don’t say it’s red), and then I finish in the green.
On re-thinking this, I think the emerald colour is overkill.
There were three of us, all nine years old, walking back from the pool. Paul had a big bag of salt and vinegar chips, the kind that made your mouth go numb; Brian had a bag of those damn strawberry marshmallows that stained your lips like some cheap lipstick from the Met store. My tongue, a deep purple from the giant Sweet-heart, buzzed as we passed the R.C.M.P. headquarters and took the last hill before my street.
I’m scene setting here, creating the world, being specific. I’m using the senses, taste and see, and continuing the motif of colour: strawberry, deep purple.
In my back yard, we rested against the tall poplar, the one that stood sentinel-like and looked out to the barren prairie behind my yard. I don't remember what we talked about, or what got us onto the subject of limbo -- who knows why kids say what they say.
Just to say I was way to much influenced by Richard Ford when I wrote this - who knows why kids say what they say is a total “Fordism.” My son used to make fun of my stories, parodying me reading them. “I don’t know why Craig wrote this, it was just something Craig wrote.”
Yeah, yeah, you’re hilarious Eli.
"We should do it," Paul said.
"You got a long stick? It's got to be pretty long," Brian said with his red-stained lips.
I don't know if they talked like that (it's hard to recall the exact conversation), but the sounds come back. The lawn had its own hum that drifted up and around us; it got louder as we became quieter. A car or a half-ton would whip by on the gravel road that separated me from the prairie -- it would drown out the other sounds and then they would wash back in. I used to sit in the back yard and just listen to the thrum. Wind rustling through shafts of fireweed came across the road and mingled with crickets and dragonflies and bullfrogs that skittered through the grass as they tried to escape the mower.
The parenthetical bit is another suggestion that this is an adult looking back on a time in his life - rather than staying in the voice and timeline of the kid.
On the senses, this paragraph is a lot about sound. Hums, cars on gravel, wind, and bugs skittering.
”We should do it.” Is the first form of escalation, as the reader wonders, do what?
That is the sound that comes back the most: the mower. My dad had fired it up just when we got back outside with the broom handle. "Fired" was a good word for it -- it belched thick black smoke as it chugged along, my father in faded cut-offs urging it through the thick grass.
The use of fire here is to suggest danger, as is the thick black smoke. I think more could have been done here. In a short story, every sentence counts. I think it would have been better to suggest something even more dangerous. Something that made the father more vulnerable (or at least his skin.)
Also - I’ve really gotten away from double modifiers. Is is thick smoke or black smoke? Which one is more important? Cut the other.
I didn't really want to do the limbo. Maybe it was too hot, or it bugged me how Brian started to do this "boom-de-boom-deboom" noise (even at nine, he thought he was an expert on things).
"You gotta have a drum."
He had to say it loud to be heard over the mower.
"You go first." Paul pointed at me. Brian, with those damn lips, grinned.
"Why me?"
With those damn lips is a voice thing - but also could be a suggestion of danger. Damn=damned. It’s too subtle here, and could be pushed more.
Brian's drum sound joined with the mower sound and this sinister feeling sort of swelled up in me. The two of them held the yellow broom handle; Paul swayed his head back and forth to Brian's beat. Limbo, there was something else about that word, something darker than just dancing; something other than just trying to bend your body close to the ground.
Now here we do have some escalation - some danger. It’s implied in mood. But saying a “sinister feeling” feels like a cheat. Too many feels. Better is the swaying to the beat, and the phrase “something darker than dancing.” Someone (Ken L. I think) suggested more of a set -up here, like the kids having watched a scary movie or read something about limbo. I think that would have been better, as their fear comes out of the blue.
Hopefully the beats, and the general mood has guided us to this point in the story. We know the characters, we know the setting, now something bad should happen. Or at least just something.
"Uh, guys, maybe--" I started to say we shouldn't do this, we were messing with something I didn't understand, some weird religion thing, something that made me think of demons and fire.
"C'mon. Do it," Brian said between drumbeats.
He was the one with the Crush shirt. I stared at those white letters against a background that looked like it was already on fire. Brian boomed louder.
There was a clack and a grind and then nothing but Brian booming, soft, under his breath.
Here we are back to fire, and demons have been added. This is where the story really catches fire (sorry). Again, more reason for their fear would have been better - but I like that it returns to colour. The Crush letters, orange on white (added points for the word “Crush”, more foreshadowing.)
Here the sound is what’s most important. Clack. Grind. Boom. I want the readers to hear those sounds. Not just read them.
I knew the mower threw stones once in a while. I'd heard my father swear when one bounced off his jeans. Before I turned my head, I had an image of these rusty blades catapulting rocks at barelegged people.
If I rewrote this today, I’d cut the above sentences. They say something about the age of the character, and the catapult is a funny kid-like image. But it really gets in the way… like the writer saying “hey, I just thought of something funny.” Fictional dream broken and John Gardner does yet another spin in his grave. (He does that a lot.)
Paul dropped his end of the stick.
"Roy," my father called to me. "Go get Winnie."
I just stared at the silent mower, and my father in his jean cut-offs. I watched the line of blood thicken and then drip and then gush onto the ground. I wondered how a stone could do that, or even if it was a stone. What lay hidden in our grass that could rip open flesh like that?
Again - having Paul drop the stick after the click and the grind would have been way better. Also to say, this is looking a lot like a discussion on suspense - so I am aware of the overlap.
Not sure about the boy’s response. It is a bit like time stopped as the blood seemingly just gushed onto the ground. But would he at this moment think about the stone, and the suggestion of a monster/creature/demon in the grass? Perhaps, too much.
Nope, I don’t like it. Cut.
I barely remember how I got next door, or how, out of breath, I told my neighbour she had to come next door real fast, or how the ambulance came and drowned out all the other noises.
My father lost a lot of blood in a short time and he limped for a few weeks. But that was about it.
Another great observation (Ken again? Man, what you been eating, you’re on fire!) was that I let the father off too easy. This kid still remembers this event, and still feels guilty about it. “But that was about it” robs the reader of that resonance. Why tell this story then? That dad should have limped for the rest of his life! Ken’s a hardass, but he’s right. Phone your dad, Ken.
I do remember that afternoon going into the back yard and slamming that yellow broomstick against the tree until it snapped. Even as a kid, I felt some faraway connection to people that danced around orange fires that shot sparks into indigo skies. It's the colour that comes back again. We shouldn't do things that we don't know anything about. I thought that then, I think it now.
Orange fires, indigo skies - I dig it, more colour. Oh, I even say that (It’s the colour that comes back again… Ha, I’d forgot that line.)
The last line here is also pure Ford (Sorry Ricky.) But I am searching for resonance.
And I remember how the stone that the mower threw sat on our mantle for a lot of years; its jagged edge reminded me of the thick black stitches that laced up my dad's leg; it reminded me of things I shouldn't do; and it reminded me of a guilt, that though unwarranted, after all these years, I still can't shake.
Guilt, resonance, things we shouldn’t do (kinda pointing at the human condition here). I don’t mind it, though it feels a bit heavy-handed as I analyze it. I was definitely thinking a lot about resonance in the story, and how a story should end with a door and a window. The door is the closure, and the window is the resonance.
To finish up, I’ll say this story was based on a true event. Me and the neighbourhood kids were playing limbo in the back yard when my dad his a rock with the mower and ended up going to the hospital for a lot of stitches. It is a story that has stuck with me, as these kind of things often do with kids. And no, he didn’t limp for the rest of his life, Ken!
Is it escalation or suspense? I’m not sure. You tell me.
Hey Craig, this post was supposed to be about how to escalate! Yeah, well, wait until next time… then things are gonna get really hairy.
Thanks for reading!
I am looking for part 3! Your comments, especially about the lack of drama at the end, were on point. It's a good story, it could have more bite. You would certainly write it differently today, with a little more oomph about why it stuck in the narrator's head.
This is terrific! Love the way you dissect your story with cold eye of time and experience. When I get time, I'm going to dig out one of my old lit fiction stories (written before I took up crime) and go through it like this. Your post is a great model for doing that.