James Austin McCormick | On Writing Scene Charges

Since I started writing over twenty year ago I’ve always favoured escapist, action driven speculative fiction; sci-fi, horror and dark fantasy. For me the thrill is trying to mix these genres, creating entirely new settings and characters and throwing them into impossible situations. My three Dragon books (DRAGON, DRAGON: SMUGGLER TALES and DRAGON: THE TOWER OF TAMERLANE) are perfect examples of these.

Yet action for action’s sake quickly grows tedious as the reader becomes inured to it. If you don’t have the reader’s empathy you have nothing. The question therefore is how can you keep your audience hooked rather than simply giving them whiplash?

To answer this I’d like to share with you the idea of scene charges, something I learnt from the art of script-writing. The idea is very simple, every extended scene you write must have an emotional reversal of some kind, from positive to negative or from negative to positive. If everything is going well for your protagonist at the beginning of the scene it must turn bad by the end, and if the scene starts badly then it must end on a positive note. These changes are usually not major ones. They focus on incidents within a scene rather than a resolution of the overall story arc and by including charges in your writing you will keep things fresh and hook your reader as you play yo-yo with their emotions.

I use plus and minus signs to denote the charge. Here is an example of the first few scenes from my sci-fi novella SUNFALL.

SUNFALL is a story about a hapless smuggler (Zac Adams) who gains a shot at redemption by helping a young scientist trying to save the lives of millions of Martian colonists. This breakdown covers the first fifteen pages or so. I use the term inciting incident in the last section to denote the event that kick starts the main plotline.

Okay, it’s hardly Shakespeare, I know, nor do I claim to write anything but pulp style speculative fiction, but you get the idea.

I should also point out that scenes charges work in all types of genres as it allows you to analyse what the tensions are in any scenes and how to keep the rhythm and pacing throughout your work.

GIVEAWAY

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About James Austin McCormick

James Austin McCormick is a college lecturer from England and a fan of all types of speculative fiction, most notably science fiction, horror & sword and sorcery fantasy. Where possible he tries to blend these elements together.

McCormick lives in the rainy city of Manchester with his wife and two young daughters, the elder of which is something of a budding writer herself.

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About DRAGON: THE TOWER OF TAMERLANE

After the death of the Tuolon Ambassador Lagua and the failure to bring the non-humanoid worlds into the Alliance, Sillow and Brok’s long partnership is finally at an end. Now a reluctant solo agent, Sillow is called upon to undertake his first mission, investigate the Tower, a high- tech prison complex along with the oligarch who runs it, a mysterious nobleman who calls himself Tamerlane.

Seeking evidence to prove Tamerlane is responsible for a series of terrorist attacks, Sillow quickly uncovers the sheer scale of his plans, a lethal military strike on all four humanoid home worlds.

Caught and imprisoned however, the Sylvan finds himself helpless to warn the Alliance of the coming danger. All the while, something has been evolving, growing stronger inside the Tower, something intangible yet far more dangerous than Tamerlane ever could be, a being implacably opposed to all life in the galaxy.

And only Sillow has any chance of stopping it.