Cont'd. - WHO NEEDS HEADLIGHTS?

Why the suspense?

PART TWO.

            In Part One of this tale, the reader was left stranded in the night with three young campers in the cab of an old, broken-down pickup truck, which is stalled precariously on the edge of a deep mountain ravine.  Sniffing around outside the truck is a large creature of some kind that cannot be determined in the thick darkness of the moonless night.  While the campers have firearms back in the open bed of the pickup, they have no guns with them in the cab where they cower, hiding from the dark creature.

            Of course, the tale doesn’t end there.  The story is just getting started.  The scene has been set and hopefully the reader’s expectations have been prepared for a journey with these young campers into the unknown.  The reader knows the best part of the story is yet to come.  The campers must conquer or be conquered.  It is the expectation that the campers will find a way to conquer that keeps the reader reading.  The reader should now be gladly on board and excited for the ride--hungry for the rest of the story.  Oh, the beauty of suspense!

            Suspense is like an unsatisfied hunger that keeps the reader reading until the end of the story, where the hunger will be satisfied.  In the best stories, where the reader identifies with the main character, the reader relishes both the hunger, while it lasts, as well as the eventual satisfaction of that hunger at the end of the story.  And, sweet is the satisfaction of a hard-fought winning battle and a tale well ended.  After carefully building suspense, be sure to resolve it thoroughly.  A cardinal rule of storytelling is:  Do not gloss over the ending!

            Especially in young-adult literature, when the reader has bonded with the protagonist, the young reader will expect that no matter how great the odds against success, the protagonist will find a way to succeed.  Of course, the protagonist must win by pluck, not luck, and even a twist ending must not be a random win.

            A decision to resolve the suspense of the central plot with the protagonist’s ultimate failure is not satisfying to younger readers, and it is a sure strategy for permanently driving such readers away.  While frustration and failure are an important part of act two, the reader is looking for success by the end of act three.  A young reader wants to be immersed in a world of new beginnings and exciting transitions, a world where anything is possible and hope is a guiding star.  A world of despair, overwhelmed by failed dreams and missed opportunities, is for an older, more jaded audience—and it has few fans even there.

            Literary suspense is the result of proper plot development, and a writer has many tools to use in developing a storyline that will capture the reader’s imagination and carry her along towards an anticipated salvation or destruction.  Tools like point of view can put the reader in a character’s mind, building an empathetic bond.  Repetition of seemingly innocent facts can build tension.  Foreshadowing creates curiosity, and the list goes on.  Make the reader hungry for more information, and then slowly, carefully feed and starve the reader as the tale unfolds.

            In our current tale of three hapless campers, facing a live predator, we want to know literally who will feed and who will starve?

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            “Man, that thing is big!”  Jay pointed out in a hoarse whisper.

            All three of us were now peeking carefully over the dashboard at the big, black shadow in the night, sniffing around the dying red embers of our bonfire.

            “Hugh, do you still have some firecrackers in your pocket?” I asked quietly.

            “Yes,” he said, nodding his head in the dark.

            “Open your side-vent window and drop a lighted firecracker out there.”

View of Panamint Mountains
as seen from the Slate Range

            Without a word, Jay fished out his box of matches.  He and Hugh had been lighting firecrackers all day and had the process down to a science.  Hugh held a firecracker down close to the floor, trying to minimize the glow of the burning match that would be seen from outside.  When Jay had lit the fuse, Hugh slipped it through the window vent, dropping it to the ground.

            All the while, I was watching the prowling, black pillar of darkness in front of the truck.  As soon as Jay had struck the match, the thing turned to stare back at the truck, seeming to stare directly at me in the cab.  A couple seconds later, the firecracker sounded with a bright flash and a satisfyingly loud bang that echoed off the mountain.

            Instantly, the black shadow sprang away from the truck and disappeared into the night, bounding up the trail into the mountains.  After listening to silence for a minute, I said, “Throw a few more firecrackers out there to make sure that thing is not sneaking back towards the truck.”

            Immediately, Hugh and Jay went to work tossing a series of lighted firecrackers out the side-vent window.  Again, the bright flashes and loud bangs were satisfying.

            Bravely rolling down my window about a foot, I stuck my hand out with the flashlight.  Clicking it on, I shined the light up the trail in the direction the shadow had run, and then down along both sides as far as my light would reach in each direction, looking for any movement or for a pair of light-reflecting eyes watching my flashlight.

            Seeing nothing and feeling bolder, I quickly stepped out my door, and reaching into the back of the truck, I handed rifles and ammo into the cab to Jay and Hugh before jumping back in to shut my door and roll up my window.  Once we had all loaded our guns, I had Hugh reach out his window, shining his light up the trail again and from side to side.

            Finally, I stepped out my door and began shooting up the trail into the darkness.  I wanted that black shadow to know we were not toothless, and as I listened to the ping of the bullets that ricocheted off the rocks up the mountainside, I hoped the creature was getting the message.

            It wasn’t long before we heard the coyotes start up yelping and howling again.  Apparently, they were no longer nervous, but we were.  We decided to stay close to the truck during the night.  Jay chose to sleep in the cab with the windows rolled down just a crack.  Hugh and I spread out our sleeping bags in the back bed of the truck, but we did more tossing and turning than sleeping.  Thinking it couldn’t hurt; we periodically tossed out a lighted firecracker.  If we heard a noise nearby, one of us would sit up to shoot into the darkness.

            During the night, Hugh and I decided that the big black shadow must have been a mountain lion, but it was the biggest mountain lion we had ever seen.

            It was a long, miserable night, but it gave me time to think.  With the first light of dawn, I gathered up the random tools that Jay’s dad had left lying around in the back of the truck.  Before long, I had the dashboard off so I could look down behind the cab’s console panel.  There it was—a foot-long piece of melted wire that had shorted out against the truck’s interior frame.

            Next, I went to work removing one of the rear taillights, where I cut out a length of heavy-duty wire long enough to replace the fried piece of wire behind the console.  After twisting the replacement wire into place, I turned the ignition key.  With the first try, the truck started right up!  Everything worked now, except the rear taillight of course.

Available Housing
A Fixer-Upper

            Just an hour earlier, we had been racking our brains trying to figure out how to get home, or at least how to signal for help, but suddenly none of that mattered any more.  We had survived the first night.  The danger had passed, and we were only the second day into our weeklong camping trip.  Nobody was interested in going home at this point—there were still too many unexplored canyons ahead of us.  Who knew what we might yet discover.

           We were ready for the adventure to continue, and it did.  We didn’t see any more large shadow creatures, and the truck didn’t break down again, but we had great adventures throughout the week with all kinds of interesting findings and happenings, but that’s a longer story for another day.

WHO NEEDS HEADLIGHTS

BUILDING SUSPENSE
(Find the original post on Adrienne Monson's blog.)

CC Stan Shebs /Wikimedia

Kingston Range Excelsior Mine Road 1

 

          Summer vacation was here at last. Jay Bell along with my brother Hugh and I were ready for an adventure. Jay borrowed his dad’s old pickup truck, and we told our parents we were going camping for a week. When we said camping, we meant exploring. We could drive hundreds of miles in just about any direction from Trona, California, and not meet another human being or even cross a paved road.
           From Searles Valley to Panamint Valley to Death Valley, the terrain was rugged with mountain trails climbing thousands of feet above sea level into regions of permanent snow and valley trails dropping hundreds of feet below sea level into arid country that rarely saw rain or moisture of any kind. Many trails were washed out, overgrown with sage brush and barely usable, but they were the only way to get to old mining sites and ghost towns. Some sites didn’t show up on any maps, and we were always excited to stumble across a new find.
           That morning, packing was easy–we threw everything in the back of the truck. We were careful to bring lots of extra batteries for our flashlights. Sometimes we spent days exploring old, abandoned mines that we found along the way. In addition to topping off the gas tank, we also brought along a backup can of gasoline. We would need to make our gas last all week. Of course, this was B.C. (before cellular phones), so it wasn’t unusual for us to be out of touch for days at a time. It didn’t dawn on us to tell our parents where we were going, or even which direction we might be going in–and they didn’t ask. We were always going camping.
           The first day out, we drove into the mountains, getting as far away from civilization as possible. Though the desert seems desolate on the surface, we saw lots of wildlife. Vultures, hawks and eagles filled the sky. Besides the ever present scorpions, tarantulas and snakes, jackrabbits bolted from the scrub as we passed and, in the distance, a scraggly coyote appeared at times, watching us warily. We knew mountain lions prowled the high country, but they were usually too smart to show themselves. The sky was clear, life was good, and we didn’t have a care in the world. This was our kingdom, and we were the unchallenged rulers.
           Finally realizing the sun had long disappeared over the mountain tops, we knew that darkness was imminent. It was time to pick a campsite safe from wildlife and weather while we still had daylight. We were driving up a deep mountain ravine, just coming out onto an embankment along the wash, when suddenly loud popping noises rang out from behind the dashboard. All the dashboard lights blinked out and the engine died. I turned the key off, put the truck in park, and tried to restart the engine, but nothing happened–nothing at all. The truck’s electrical systems were totally dead.
          We sat silently in the deepening gloom, surrounded by smoke and the smell of an electrical fire, before the acrid smoke forced us to wind down the windows to air out the cab.
          After a long silence, Hugh leaned out the window and said, “I don’t think this is a very good place to park.” The truck was perched perilously on the edge of the ravine and straddled what seemed to be a well used wildlife trail.
           After another long silence, Jay asked, “Did anyone think to tell our parents where we were going?”
          When no one answered, I said, “No, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because we told them we were going camping for a week. No one is going to think to worry about us until the week has passed.”
          Hugh leaned back and closed his eyes. “It will take a week to hike back to that last paved road we crossed.” He let out a long, weary sigh.
           Jay nodded. “And another week, if we’re lucky, before anyone drives by.”
           “And,” I added, “Unless we can figure out how to carry one of those heavy jugs of water, all our water will be back here with the truck.”
          Daylight was fading fast, so we decided to get out and look around while we could still see. Things didn’t look good. Numerous smaller gullies fed from above into the large ravine, on the edge of which our truck was precariously stalled. If it rained higher up in the mountains, we could lose our truck in a flash flood. Also, all the wildlife trails coming down the mountain merged together in a wide path going under our truck and down the deep ravine.
           Our truck was now a road block for any local critters passing through the area in the night. The mountain grade was too steep for us to push the truck up the hill away from the ravine and the trail, and there was no way we were going to roll the truck back down the hill where it would be deeper in the ravine and in even greater danger from flashflood. Like it or not, our truck was stuck right where it was.
           Once the deep blackness of a moonless night was upon us, we hauled out the flashlights. While we continued scouting the surrounding area, we gathered sticks and brush into a pile on the trail up the slope from the truck. As Hugh got a fire burning, we heard the yelping and howling of a coyote pack not far away in one of the higher gullies. Our bon-fire wouldn’t last long–there wasn’t much wood in the area, and we hadn’t brought any fire wood with us. Without a fire, the coyotes would soon be down to see who was trespassing in their territory.
           Suddenly, we heard the sound of rocks cascading down the side of the ravine not far downhill from us. Something big was coming up the wildlife trail toward the truck. Without a word, we all quickly climbed back into the cab, rolling up windows, locking doors, turning out flashlights, and slumping down in our seats–as if it couldn’t see us, if we couldn’t see it.
           Outside, everything had gone quiet–even the coyotes had stopped howling. After holding my breath for an eternity, I slowly lifted my head to peek out the driver’s side window, just in time to see a dark shadow glide around to the front of the truck, out of sight. Lifting my head slightly higher to look through the windshield, I saw our little bon-fire had died down to a few glowing embers, blowing in the gentle wind.

lawren / 123RF Stock Photo

           As I watched, the dark shadow raised up slowly in front of the truck, blocking my view of the embers, but still not revealing any detail of what it was. If only I could turn on the headlights and see what was out there! But all the truck’s electrical systems were dead, and I knew if I turned on my flashlight, the window would reflect back as much light as it let through. Whatever was out there would see us in the cab.
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          Suspense is the result of proper plot development, and a writer has many tools to use in developing a storyline that will capture the reader’s imagination and carry her/him along towards an anticipated destruction or salvation. Tools like point of view can put the reader in a character’s mind, building an empathetic bond. Repetition of seemingly innocent facts can build tension. Foreshadowing creates curiosity, and the list goes on. Make the reader hungry and then slowly, carefully feed and starve the reader as the tale unfolds.
          Suffice it to say, in my story above, after a very long night, the truck’s headlights become the eventual means of our salvation, but that’s for another day.
          Of course, the story doesn’t end here, but the scene has been set and hopefully your expectations have been prepared for a journey through the unknown. The best part of the story is yet to come and the reader should now be voluntarily on board and excited for the ride–hungry for the rest of the story. Suspense is like an unsatisfied hunger that keeps the reader reading until the end of the story, where the hunger will be satisfied. In the best stories, the reader relishes both the hunger, while it lasts, as well as the eventual satisfaction of that hunger.
           What about the story?  Want to know more?