How not to foreshadow

So, I've still been watching Heroes, and episode 3 led to some students having a party some 30 miles from home in the middle of nowhere, where we see them having a bonfire, drinking kegs and enjoying themselves.

Now then, we've been building up to Claire Bennet (the cheerleader) and her boyfriend's (Footballer Jock) relationship, with Claire's father advising he'd rather she dated a nerd. Boyfriend has a heart to heart about wanting to cheer Claire up, and the two go off to a secluded area to talk.

Now then, I personally had some sense that what was coming wasn't going to be pleasant - suspecting him trying to have his wicked way with our little protagonist (she's already been set up as popular, but with her new responsibilities she's trying to keep her head down and just survive the school day; meanwhile another cheerleader keeps trying to get Claire's boyfriend's attention, so... hmm). As far as the boyfriend goes, we have no concrete evidence that he might try to push the limits, just that he's a guy.

That's all fine and good, except for the fact that as soon as Claire and boyfriend walk out of shot, a lonely, distressed-looking girl steps into shot and watches them leaving, her expression pained and troubled.

What the?

Even before we see further events unfold between Claire and her boyfriend, we have suspicion of the worst kind. Why? Because it is blatantly obvious that the writers are setting up something untoward to happen. Making it this obvious ruins suspension of disbelief and really makes the mechanics of story visible.

SPOILER ALERT

The outcome is that the boyfriend tries to rape Claire - other things happen, but that would be over egging the spoiler - next day, the lonely girl reappears and has a brief talk with Claire that the same thing happened to her. Later the boyfriend admits the other girl was a "slut" and he's called her that to other people, just as he will about Claire.

This could have been done far better, by showing the lonely girl from the beginning of the episode, being outcast by the other students, name calling, and the such like (not necessarily by the boyfriend, as this would take away any audience identification from him too soon), perhaps Claire could have raised the point - 'Is it true that you two... did it?' 'Yeah, I didn't want to, but she forced herself on me. I don't want to talk about it, because so-and-so said she's been putting herself round a bit.'

Etc, etc, not quite like that, but you get the idea. The audience doesn't need such clear markers.

Doubling Up

I'm going through on the second pass... of the first 13 pages... of my screenplay for the screenplay module of NAW, and I'm beginning to see the wonder of doubling up my dialogue and action (not action-action but what is actually happening-action, like visual exposition or plot).

I'm seeing now that a script needs to run quickly with its dialogue and plot. Scenes are usually about a minute or so in length, rarely running any longer than 5 minutes (in extreme circumstances), without breaking to other scenes, external movement to other areas (for example, a car chase, or movement from location to location). In my own screenplay we focus solely upon the protagonist. We follow him waking, in distress, waking from distress (still with me?), being dressed and working on a project, arguing and conciliating with his wife, him and wife driving to work... and having spent all that time with just the two of them, I then spend a further 5 minutes in the car with them, dealing with little more than character exposition that doesn't serve much other purpose.

How to get round this? Doubling-up.

The actress on my NAW course pointed out that screenplays eat up plots and subplots, exposition, and storylines like nothing else. You can fill a screenplay with plot after plot after plot and still it will be hungry with more slants, angles and questions. If that's the case then I need to reduce the travel in the car from five minutes down to, I guess, roughly two - three at a stretch.

The first step is to give them actions that occur whilst the dialogue happens. For example, they are discussing everything from karma to christening to him pre-empting what she has to say... then, after they're in a near-miss, I have a text message come through for him that she picks up and is from a mysterious J. The wife doesn't admit that she's read the message (Can't work the phone, she claims), and she drops the phone in her bag to follow it up later, without his knowledge.

That text must come earlier - during the conversation on karma and his pre-empting - doubled-up. The christening conversation could wait till later. Or maybe, it isn't right for this episode. I will consider pulling it to build up speed for the next scene.

The benefit Heroes has is that it covers several main characters, and intercuts between scenes involving each of their disparate stories, able to come back to where it left off a previous scene. So, realistically their scenes are longer, they're just able to cut to maintain audience interest (cutting at the anticipatory moment of course)... but I don't have that luxury with only one main character who I am stuck to because of the rules I have set for my world. At least for this episode.

Other uses of Anticipatory Suspense

There's more to this anticipation thread...

Episode 2 of Heroes: Mohinder is explaining his dead father's thesis on the human genome to his father's neighbour, showing the map of the world upon which coloured pins and coloured string has been attached. Mohinder is developing some exposition when... the phone goes, the answerphone picks up. The caller leaves no message but the neighbour sees that there are saved messages.

She plays them - the first regards Mohinder's father's lizard - which was due to be taken somewhere, for something - probably back to a lab... They're about to discuss it when the next message plays - it's from Sylar (we've already heard about him through another plot strand involving a murdered couple - one skewered by lots of household implements, the other frozen with his head sawn off... his brain missing. Sylar is blamed). On the message, Mohinder's father picks up and they have a short conversation developing the serial killer element. It finishes and Mohinder begins to talk about Sylar, and his father's "Patient Zero". Now then, patient zero is the key to understanding the subplot of Heroes regarding certain humans becoming special in some way. But, as he's about to go into more detail, there's a loud crash and both Mohinder and the neighbour spin around... to find the lizard has made an appearance.

So, we change tack. We'll have to learn about Patient Zero later... meanwhile the neighbour puts the lizard back in his aquarium thing and discovers a USB memory stick hidden there.

The lizard has served two purposes... to stop the conversation on Sylar and Patient Zero, and to help uncover the memory stick - which yields Mohinder's father's genome detection utility (which tracks special humans), and is purportedly the reason why the sinister people are after him and probably killed the father. Actually, there's three reasons... the third being that as Mohinder and the neighbour search for the lizard on the floor, they bump into one another, and regard each other for a moment - possibly foreshadowing of a burgeoning relationship... maybe not, but you get the idea.

Anticipation

One of these many tomes I've read over the past year talked about the most important kind of suspense being anticipatory suspense (I think it's a few posts back on here actually). I thought, having read that point, that it was good to bear in mind, but like the adage: 'Write what you know', I didn't really apply it generally, but rather I applied it to those moments when I would want to squeeze tension into my works, raise questions, consider plotting, etc...

But, just as 'Write what you know', actually refers to writing about scenarios, descriptions, genres, etc that you know - as in, not just a topic that you know, but try to meld every part of your experiences into a book, because you will be better informed over your choices and topics; Anticipation as a suspense tool doesn't just relate to end of chapter moments, cliffhangers, and the such like. It relates also to use as a distraction, an almost had, almost understood - to keep the info from the character or audience that little while longer.

Anticipation can be used to keep the audience/reader involved by holding off on providing information through the use of distracting characters - taking tangent to what is being discussed through use of new characters introduced to a scene, an outburst, ramping up action, increased tension through sudden developments, one character's agenda over-riding another, etc.

I was watching episode one of Heroes with my wife this morning and I noticed for the first time the use of Anticipation to hold the audience, whether it was opening, ad break, midscene, end.

The use of timing in these matters is crucial, and it goes hand in hand with beats - the use of changing a character or situation's objective. This is also cleverly used to get the writer out of a tight spot, lull in dialogue or action. When the Japanese character, Hiro, stops time and then goes to tell his friend. They play off of each other - Hiro explaining what and how, and his friend disregarding it. Their conversation comes to its end, there isn't really anything left to say, but rather than end the scene there, the writer gets Hiro's boss to intervene and drag Hiro back to his desk - it's kind of Deus ex Machina, but helps to show the environment they're in as well as give the scene a natural end.

Take this example from midway through episode one of Hereoes: where Niki and her son Micah have fled their house. Niki takes Micah to a friends house. He moans about how he hates the place, Niki calms him and rings the bell (key point in the scene regarding setup), she kneels beside her son, waiting for the door to be answered and answers his questions briefly on being in trouble. But then he asks his key question: 'Why'd you break that mirror, mom?' (Sorry, this is from the original script - the scene on tv is slightly different).

Anyhoo - If Niki were to tell Micah the truth, then the cat would be out of the bag. We'd have no more setup, or moments of audience questioning. At the moment Niki knows more than us, and whilst she holds off telling us, we still want to know.

So, how does the writer get out of answering the question? The door is answered - character distraction.

Simple but effective.