In the penultimate scene of Because I Said So, for example– And by the way… SPOILER ALERT! In an overwhelming display of passion that I can only call “heart-wrenching,” Johnny interrupts Milly’s seniors cooking class, in order to profess his love. In the middle of this impassioned speech, with Milly on the verge of tears, one of the seniors in the class interrupts with, “Could you hurry it up, because we have to pee!” Cue cymbal crash. Then again, during the big kiss, the seniors begin pairing off for their own big kisses.

When I was watching this, I didn’t think it was funny. I thought it was awkward. I didn’t know how to feel. It broke the mood. My wife, who came in only during the last 20 minutes of the film, did think it was funny. If you caught the full impact of the scene, you probably got thrown by how the writers tried to spice up a poignant moment with a couple of cheap laughs. If you thought it was funny, you probably didn’t feel the poignancy. It’s one or the other, not both.

This problem, mixing the ridiculous with the sublime, is actually one case of a more general rule: Kill only one bird per stone. For example, you can have a plot-based thread and a character-based thread both in the same story. But make sure you treat them as separate threads, because you don’t want to confuse your audience. Or in copywriting, make sure each ad supports one and only one action. If you’re trying to get the reader to send away for your free promotional DVD, don’t also try to sell them your latest product in the same ad, because your prospects won’t know how to respond to your ad. And if a scene is supposed to be serious, don’t try to make it silly as well, because your audience can only feel one thing at a time.

On the other hand, I have seen writers successfully mix the ridiculous and and the sublime… kind of.

In the same movie Because I Said So, earlier in the film– By the way, a pretty good story, if you haven’t seen it. Yes, a pop-film, but t’ain’t nothin’ wrong with pop film. And this one is way better than most others I’ve seen. I’ve watched it 3 times so far. Another SPOILER ALERT! In an earlier scene, Milly is furious at her mother Daphne. She storms up to the house, calls her mother’s name, hears Daphne call, “Yes!” and then charges into her mother’s room just in time to catch her in the act. That was funny.

Why was it funny? On the one hand Daphne was angry at her mother because of something she had done. That’s serious. And because she was angry, she misunderstood her mother’s call. All this time, we the audience could see it coming, step by step, until the punchline. In this case, what I felt, I acutely appreciated Milly’s hurt and anger. At the same time, this joke uses a classic humorous gambit–the funny misunderstanding–and about one of the world’s oldest awkward subjects. How can it help but be funny? In fact, Milly’s story thread served as a motivation for the funny encounter, making it more real, more immersive, and therefore more funny.

Another case that comes to mind is M*A*S*H (the classic TV series). Hawkeye Pierce is always cracking jokes, usually jokes about the death and destruction of the war. How can you make fun of a subject so grave? This is something I personally have great trouble with. In fact, I’ve said I so miss Bill Clinton, because G.W.’s presidency has been marked by conflict and terror. Yes, Slick Willie had his share of conflict and terror, even more than King George. But there were so many other more entertaining things that took center stage, thanks to Congress. Politics was never so fun, and may never be again. But now… Despite my conflicted feelings, I still find M*A*S*H both poignant and funny.

Because Hawkeye’s jokes do not just make fun of the war. They make fun at the expense of the war. Hawkeye’s humour is sarcastic, if not sardonic. For someone who roots for this protagonist, his antics are a breath of fresh air in a suffocating situation… Which is exactly what Hawkeye was caught in. That’s why, I think, I can find M*A*S*H both ridiculous and sublime.

What do you think? In what other situations may a writer mix the ridiculous and the sublime without getting into trouble?

¹ This story, called The Conscience of Abe’s Turn, is actually an online drama serial.

In a story, starting a fight is an easy way to make the mood tense. But conflict can do more than just make a story feel tense, suspenseful. Conflict engages the audience. It makes us sympathize with the characters and root for them. And it heightens other emotions in the story.

Conflict draws us in

Frequently, when the conflict makes the story tense, it’s actually heightening some other tension in the story. For example, C.J. West’s Sin and Vengeance is a true, page-turning suspense novel. The suspense comes not just from the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist, but also what we expect the antagonist to be capable of. He terrifies us.

This happens because conflict draws us in: Conflict enables us to feel sympathy for the underdog. In a Romance, the romantic parts are about love unrequited or passion unfulfilled.

Conflict enables sympathy

Tom Sawyer is a sympathetic character. Even though he’s always doing naughty things, getting into trouble, we don’t like to see him punished. And then when he develops a crush on Becky Thatcher, our sympathy increases. And when he witnesses a murder and Injun Joe is out to get him, our sympathy increases again. Our sympathy lets us feel for him, even feel the same way he does.

I also talked about conflict in the season-six finale of Gilmore Girls in another post. The reason for the strong reaction fans have to the finale is the sympathy they have for the characters. And this sympathy would not happen were it not for the conflict. The sympathy is so strong, in fact, that fans get upset because the conflict. (Is it possible to make a story too immersive?)

Romance unfulfilled

This Gilmore Girls episode also includes romantic elements that make us want to cry. This happens when romance is unfulfilled.

Casablanca is another example of a movie that makes some people cry. It’s because Rick is in love with Ilsa, but their love can’t be, then will be, then will never be.

Casablanca actually didn’t make me cry, though The Notebook did, as I mentioned in the last spotlight. Movie critics have described The Notebook as being a sappy romance story. But such a story works, for a simple reason, romantic tension. We have conflict; it draws us in, makes us feel what the characters are feeling.

How to do it

If you want to use conflict to create or enhance the feeling a story brings:

1. Decide which feeling the story should portray.
2. Choose a conflict that would make the protagonist feel that way.
3. Make the protagonist face that conflict.

An example

Last September, I wrote a short story called “Pine.” It was actually a project I did for a writing prompt. I had to write something inspired by a certain photo of a house. But I knew I didn’t want to write about just a house. Because no matter how much I dressed it up, that would be boring. I knew I needed a conflict. So I chose a romance story revolving around a first love.

Here’s the beginning of the story:

Each morning Jace walked by her house on his way to school. Each afternoon he passed it on his way home. Sometimes, he would also pass at other times. Occasionally he would catch a glimpse of the bright-faced girl with wavy blonde locks. She sat under the two conifers that towered overhead. But as far as he knew, she never noticed him.

The house itself, a grey Stick Victorian with brown trim, spoke of a happy family. Its expansive porch took a jaunt through the sweet-scented yellows and reds of the flower garden. Little gabled alcoves jutted into the world, embraced by the overall form of the structure, as if its gables were parents looking after their offspring. A squat wall of white stone stood before this all, making up in intensity what it lacked in stature, a formidable protector to all within.

But the trees were even more special, for under these Jennifer would read. Or sometimes she would just be sitting quietly or humming softly a tune Jace didn’t recognize. Jace paid her no heed, or else she might see his admiration. But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her shapely form, and he fought to keep breathing. And in his imagination, he felt the softness of her pink cashmere sweater in his delicate hands. He felt her fingers running through his thick, dark hair. Her chocolate eyes and his ordinary brown ones got lost in each other. Perhaps his finger stroked the line of her eyebrow, following her face around softly-curved cheek and jaw, finally resting under her chin.

But Jace said nothing, made no motion out of the ordinary. He merely continued walking, as nonchalantly as possible for a big-footed, lanky teen in a grey tee and worn khakis.

You can read the whole story at my “stories” blog.

-TimK

This is the second part of a series, after Setting the Mood With Expectations.

Another mood-generating device authors use is milieu.

What is milieu

What I mean by millieu is the same thing Orson Scott Card means, when he talks about the 4 different types of stories. Briefly, Orson Scott Card talks about the millieu story, idea story, character story, and event story, depending on what story element is at the root of the story idea.

The milieu is the world surrounding the characters, not only the setting but also culture and society, governement and religion, family and traditions, everything.

Moody milieus

I’m not necessarily talking about using a milieu story to generate a mood. But I am saying that some milieus have their own mood associated with them. For example, cultural milieus frequently generate a strong feeling. The movie Moonstruck has a strong feeling about it, because it is about an Italian family in New York City. Similarly, Smilla’s Sense of Snow is set in Denmark, and Smilla grew up in Greenland. Someone recently told me the novel was the coldest story he’d ever read.

Your mileage may vary. Each of us is likely to react slightly differently to a given milieu, depending on our own histories and taste. Still, milieu is an important element. That’s why authors instinctively feel the need to build layers of complexity into their fictional universes.

In The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, on the island of Santorini, in Greece, especially in the novel, Lena always the artist is overwhelmed by the visuals of the island, the colors. (You get a sense of this in the film as well.) How the sympathetic characters react to the milieu will affect how the audience reacts.

In Robert Heinlein’s novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the characters live on the moon, and the society there is normal for them. When they visit Earth, you get a feeling of oppression, even though their Earth is very similar to ours. Humans tend toward neatly whitewashed evil. It’s all a matter of perspective. We get to see our society through their eyes.

By the way, calling on sympathy to manipulate the audience’s feelings is something well known to politicians.

How to do it

You can use the following steps to write mood into a story:

1. Identify the emotion you want the audience to feel.
2. Ask what elements of the milieu would invoke these feelings in the audience.
3. Write these elements into the story.

Sometimes, you don’t need to identify a specific feeling. Sometimes, you only care that it’s a strong feeling. Cultural milieus are great for this.

If you do have a specific feeling you want to encourage, consider using character sympathy to drive audience reaction:

1. Identify the emotion you want the audience to feel.
2. Ask what elements of the milieu would invoke these feelings in the character.
3. Write these elements into the story.

An example

Here’s a short piece that I intended to feel reminiscent. (By the way, this is based on my own memories of Longwood Gardens, in case you’ve been there yourself.)

A little dark-haired girl, perhaps 6 years old, ran by and almost knocked Jenna over. And Jenna smiled. A man called out after, but the girl wasn’t listening.

“Sorry,” he said to Jenna.

“That’s okay.” She smiled even more broadly. “I was a little dark-haired girl once, too.”

When she was little, Jenna’s family every summer visited this same tourist trap. But to her it was not just a tourist trap. It was a memory. As a girl, she romped down the same red-brick path. She smelled the same flowers, all red and purple and gold. The same hot sun radiated on her long, black hair. The same sweat beaded on her face, waiting for a gentle scented garden breeze to cool it. In the distance, Jenna could just make out the chimes tower signalling the hour.

She stopped a moment, letting the sun beat down on her. Then she sighed and continued on.

How do you write moody stories? How do you imbue your prose with overwhelming emotion? It’s all about manipulating the feelings of the audience. Over the next couple of weeks, I want to look at different ways to set the mood. This week, using expectations to set the mood.

Breeding fear

What I mean by expectations is that which the audience thinks could happen. It’s not necessarily what will happen, but it is what is being hinted at.

For example, in C.J. West’s thriller Sin and Vengeance, he establishes early on what one of the characters, Randy, is capable of. I was on the edge of my seat in terror of his shenanigans. And as the character further develops, I grew to fear him increasingly more. I felt helpless in the face of this character, and terrified for the protagonist, the sympathetic character, who must go up against him. This sets the tone of the whole novel.

Sin and Vengeance manipulates our emotions in order to give us a memory of a feeling. This, I think, is what “mood” really is, a memory of a feeling.

So one way to generate mood is to set expectations about what’s going to happen, or at least what could happen.

H.P. Lovecraft also did this well in his story “The Shunned House”. He builds up an image of this house as having something terrible: Anyone who lives there meets an untimely death. Lovecraft was a master of building up an horrific element and wrapping it up in the plight of the characters. In this story, we just know our characters are destined for something terrible, and we fear for them and with them.

The X-Files also did this well. We loved Mark Snow’s moody soundtrack. But music is an abstract art form. Alone it can’t set the mood. It can only enhance the mood. What set the mood was the fact that any moment, Mulder and Scully might encounter a horrifying and deadly foe. This especially bugged me when they split up to work on two different branches of a case. Even though being together never decreased the danger, I felt better not having to go into a terrifying situation alone.

Other emotions

We can also apply the same technique to other feelings. If we had a sympathetic character who was trying to accomplish something, for example, as he overcame a tiny obstacle the audience would share his feelings of accomplishment and hope.

Consider Laura Whitcomb’s excellent novel A Certain Slant of Light (about which I cannot rave enthusiastically enough). The main character is dead, a ghost, and as a ghost she can hear and see what happens in the world, but she can’t feel objects or smell or taste, and no one else can hear or see her. Then someone does see her and hear her, because he is another ghost living inside a human body. And so we have hope that our protagonist can find a fuller existence. She falls in love with this other person, and when she then finds a human body to inhabit, we experience with her all the great feelings of love and passion and fulfillment. And we also fear the day they will have to leave these bodies, even though she avoids thinking about that eventuality. And we hope they can find some existence together, either as humans or in some other afterlife. (If you don’t understand, read the novel; then you will.)

How to do it

You can use the following three steps to write mood into a story:

1. Identify the emotion you want the audience to feel.
2. Ask what expectations in a sympathetic character’s story would evoke these feelings in the character.
3. Give the character reason to expect these things.

Alternatively, you can make the audience feel for the character, because they know something the character does not or has a perspective he doesn’t have:

1. Identify the emotion you want the audience to feel.
2. Ask what future events in a sympathetic character’s story would evoke these feelings in the audience.
3. Give the audience reason to expect these things.

An example

(Note: I know I said in the podcast I’d write a couple stories to demonstrate. As it turned out, just the beginnings seemed to make the point.)

Here’s the beginning to a story that illustrates using the character’s reaction to set the mood. The feeling I want to evoke is fear. Establish a character who is afraid of something. Then make him face the thing he fears. Note that he can face it with bravery— Bravery is being afraid and doing it anyway. Still, the audience will experience the same tension they know is under the character’s tough exterior.

Logic did not matter. Ever since he was a young boy, ever since his black cat playfully reached out an grabbed him, as cats do, John had been terrified of dark passages and black cats. This was a deep-seated phobia.

Sometimes, people asked him why he became a zookeeper and why he loved the panthers. He wasn’t sure himself. Maybe it was a twist of fate. Or maybe it was his subconscious facing his fears.

Whatever the reason, just after the zoo had closed for the night, the panther had escaped, and now John was in charge…

-TimK