Satisfaction Through Frustration: Part of the
Satisfied Reading Experience
Victoria
Grossack
Earlier this year (2007) we introduced the concept of the
satisfied reading experience. In other columns we have looked at the
“reader” and the “experience.” In this column we will start examining the
concept of “satisfaction.”
What gives your readers a sense of satisfaction? Well, much of this is
genre-dependent. If you are writing a romance, by the end, the couple should
be happily planning their future together. If you are writing a mystery, by
the end, questions of who- and how-done-it should all be resolved and in
most cases the criminals have been punished. If you are writing almost
anything, by the end, the loose plot threads should be tied up neatly, for
the bit characters as well as for the protagonists. Readers shouldn’t be
able to scratch their heads and wonder, hey, what happened to Mary Jane?
But this is when your readers reach the end. Obviously, the rest of the
book has to come before the end, and what do you do then? How do you give
the readers satisfaction while they’re turning pages? Perversely, much of
this comes through frustrating them – or at least frustrating the
protagonists – throughout much of the rest of the book.
Frustration Fundamentals
Frustration is vital to your story. Imagine a novel that goes:
Scott and Isabel met when they were in college. They fell in love with
each other at once, married, and then had two children.
If this is the entire novel, with some dialogue and description to round
it out, few readers will be satisfied. Or imagine a story like the
following:
The murderer was caught by the store’s cameras. When Detective
Marshall showed him the videotape, he confessed at once and was sent to jail
for life.
Again, if that is all there is to the story – even if it’s fleshed out
with lots of talk – I doubt it will give your readers the satisfied
reading experience that they want to have. So frustration is necessary,
at least in fiction.
Your characters will be better situated to experience frustration if
there is something that they want in the first place. They could want love
or money, to discover the murderer or to save the planet. This is very
important, so if your characters don’t want anything, take a second look at
what you’ve written. (For more on giving your characters wants, see the
two-part series, “What Do They Want?” from
July and
August 2005, in the
Fiction Fix archives.)
After that, it’s up to you, the author, to come up with new and
imaginative ways to thwart the fulfillment of your characters’ desires. It
is the frequent and unusual frustration of your characters’ wants that makes
your story entertaining. But let’s look at some broad categories of
frustration, in no particular order.
Character Thwarted by External Event
Perhaps your protagonist, Isabel, wants to communicate important
information to another character, Scott. As she tries to do so, many
external events could intervene:
Weather and weather-related events: hurricanes, and after the
hurricane, trees across the road; floods, and the bridge being out;
earthquakes (not exactly weather); snow; ice; tornados – you get the
picture.
Mechanical failures: flat tires (I had one recently, and am rather
proud how I managed to change it); airplane problems; no juice left in the
cell phone battery; or else something appropriate to the setting of your
story. If you are writing high-tech science fiction, the mechanical failure
might have something to do with a space rocket; if you are writing about
pioneer days, your characters can have problems with a wagon wheel. In fact,
this is a great way to work in the setting – to make it come alive.
Large group events: perhaps there is a parade, and Isabel can’t
get across the street; perhaps there is a union strike, and Isabel can’t
take the subway.
Character Thwarted by Another Character
This is where it helps to have characters with differing wants and
desires. You can have a very traditional approach, in which there are both
heroes and villains, so the hero’s attempts are frustrated by someone with
evil intent.
Or, perhaps Scott and Isabel are would-be lovers, but Scott wants to
build a highway and Isabel wants to keep her cottage intact. Neither
character is evil, but they have opposing wants.
Or, you can have characters who both want what we consider the “right”
thing, but they disagree on how to attain it. Perhaps both Scott and Isabel
want to reach the castle. Scott believes they should go through the woods
while Isabel believes they should take a boat down the river.
You don’t have to limit yourself to only two characters with only two
sets of wants. You can have many, with multiple viewpoints on what should
happen next, and the combination of these conflicting wants can lead to a
frustrating situation which only you, the author, foresee!
Character Does the Wrong Thing
Perhaps your character, despite good intentions, does the wrong thing.
Perhaps the right thing costs a lot of money and he doesn’t have the money.
Or perhaps to get the money he does another wrong thing – like embezzling
from his employer – which leads to other problems.
Or perhaps he decides to take a course of action because he doesn’t have
the right information. He doesn’t know that the bridge is out and so drives
that way.
Perhaps your main character has prejudices or flaws which prevent him
from doing the right thing (often known as the “fatal flaw”). I recently
read James Michener’s Journey in which the hero receives excellent advice,
but because he’s a nobleman and the others are not, he persists in foolhardy
actions, and people die.
Foreshadowing Frustration
Frustrating events, even though they may take your characters by
surprise, should not always take the readers by surprise. This is where you,
as the story’s creator, must make artistic choices.
Characters should not act out of character. If John is going to
make a bad decision because of his pride, the reader needs to see this pride
before John makes the bad decision. Perhaps John’s pride has served him well
in the past. We should not see John making a bad decision that is out of
character.
Little clues. If some external event is going to thwart the
character, for example, a hurricane washing out a bridge, you may want to
show the reader the bad condition of the bridge beforehand. You don’t need
to emphasize the condition of the bridge; you can hide it in plain view
among similar items – for example:
Kelly noticed that everything needed repair: the gravel road was full
of ruts; the old bridge shook as her car crossed it; and the sign that was
supposed to tell her where she needed to go was so faded that she had to
squint to read it.
Notice how the bridge’s condition is mentioned – but Kelly is focused on
reading the sign, and so probably is the reader, at least on the first
reading. But the clue has been given, and so when the bridge is washed away,
it has been planned for.
Big clues. I once read – and unfortunately I have forgotten where
– that if there’s a theater piece with a shotgun hung prominently over the
mantelpiece in Act One, something better happen with that shotgun by Act
Three. If you set up major sources of frustration, you need to use them, or
be prepared to explain why. Note that you don’t have to use them
conventionally – in fact it might be more interesting if the shotgun is
actually the hiding place for the pearls – but major sources of frustration
can’t go unused.
Rest Stops of Hope
I believe that there should be some hope along the way. Every now and
then your characters should get a break – be permitted to rest and even to
wash and to eat. Now, not every author has this attitude – in Dan Brown’s
The Da Vinci Code, I’m not sure that the protagonist ever has a pit-stop
– but even Frodo, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, was allowed to
recover at Rivendell.
These rest stops don’t have to be limited to the physical. They can be
emotional, or there can be progress toward a goal. At some point your hero
can be satisfied, thinking, Aha! Mission accomplished! – only to have
his contentment cracked by something unexpected (although not
un-foreshadowed) in the subsequent scene.
There are at least three reasons for these bits of hope. The first is
because it makes the book more interesting. Unmitigated frustration is
almost as dull as unmitigated satisfaction.
The second reason is because, if you are aiming at a happy ending, it
will seem more realistic if there are some episodes of happiness within the
story.
The third reason is because it keeps the reader guessing. If there are
rest stops of hope as well as pits of despair, then the reader doesn’t know
what is going to happen next. Will it be good, or will it be bad? Not
knowing makes the experience much more exciting.
Conclusion
I hope that this article helps you to appreciate frustration – at least
in fiction, if not in real life! If you want to express your frustration
with this article – or better yet your satisfaction – you can contact me at
grossackva at yahoo dot com.
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