If you missed earlier parts of the series, here they are:
Genre: Leaning into genre, discovering your genre by accident, and watching TV/movies to dissect genre differences.
Character: “Auditioning” characters, what makes characters feel real.
Voice: What it means, how to develop it.
Setting: One of the easiest ways to add more interest and meaning to a novel—make the right choice and your job as a writer is partway done.
Coming later: Tension, Theme, Twists.
Can we ask you a favor? Please share, re-stack, and/or mention this series in Notes if you’re so inclined. We’d love to reach more readers!
Week 5: Containment
Okay, this summer school is getting a little too easy. Let’s add some science to our lit study.
Anyone out there remember Boyle’s Law? (I knew the concept but had forgotten the name. Thanks, Wikipedia!)
Boyle's law is a gas law stating that the pressure and volume of a gas have an inverse relationship. If volume increases, then pressure decreases and vice versa, when the temperature is held constant.
When it comes to fiction, I suggest that we think in advance about both space (geography of our story) and time (duration of our story). By decreasing either or both, we can increase pressure—and pressure is good.
In last year’s post, “Keep Your Monsters Close,” I talk about the mistakes I made when first drafting my forthcoming suspense novel, What Boys Learn. In a wildly different iteration of the story, I sent my teen boy character fleeing instead of keeping him home for the main part of the story, and that was a big mistake. If there’s a villain or potential villain in your story, you’d do best by putting him as close to your protagonists as possible.
Horror novels excel at containment, often by trapping people in houses or other buildings, and classic mysteries often rely on circumscribed settings as well. (Yes, we talked about setting last week, but here we are talking about just one aspect of a setting—its physical limits.)
As we all know, some of Agatha Christie’s most famous mysteries took place on trains or on ships or in manor houses. More containment! As an aside, many of Christie’s works became long-running plays, which is easier to do when there aren’t too many scene changes and nearly everything takes place inside.
And of course, locked room mysteries and closed circle mysteries are still popular today. (What’s the difference? Read this post to drill down!)
More realistic mysteries and suspense novels usually involve a bit more space—and often time—to allow for more characters, everyday situations, subplots, realistic investigation procedures, cultural commentary, and the rest. But just because the action moves around and involves more people and places doesn’t mean we should let the antagonist get too far away from the people he or she needs to antagonize.
When you think about a suspense novel that works really well, you’ll usually see some type of containment (and protag-antag proximity!) at work. And you’ll also see the multiple ways in which we might misunderstand containment if we’re not careful.
Think about Patricia Highsmith’s classic The Talented Mr. Ripley.
In one sense, the book sprawls, because Tom Ripley starts out in New York and only later goes to Italy. Even abroad, he tours several different Italian locations.
On the other hand, Ripley immediately worms his way into the lives of Dickie Greenleaf, the character he has been sent to check on, and Dickie’s girlfriend, Marge. He even moves in with them for a while and follows along on their daily outings and longer getaways. Now, these three characters are very much in each other’s space, which creates some wonderfully uncomfortable situations.
Because the novel takes place abroad, and Ripley isn’t sophisticated, much of Italy is closed off to him, emotionally speaking. He is a fish out of water. He can’t speak Italian or manage even basic tourism scenarios easily. He’s basically stuck seeing and understanding with the help of the only two people he knows well. That adds another level to the psychological containment of the novel. It might also prompt a bit of sympathy for him, even though it is clear from the start he’s up to no good.
Your Turn:
Think about a recent suspense novel in which either place, time, or both were restricted, to positive effect.
If you’re writing a novel, consider the possibility of containment of some kind—chronological, physical, or psychological. How would your story or themes change?
Can you think of other types of containment? Favorite horror or suspense novels in which a character was limited in terms of ability to walk or move, see or hear, remember or communicate? Can you borrow any of these limitations and use them to turn up the pressure in your work?
As with the Ripley example, can you think of other instances where containment or some other kind of limitation increases useful sympathy for a protagonist OR antagonist?
Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of seven novels, including The Deepest Lake, a Barnes & Noble Monthly Pick and Amazon Editor’s Choice, and the forthcoming What Boys Learn, available for pre-order and on NetGalley. Andromeda and Caitlin Wahrer co-created this newsletter in order to share their love of the craft and community aspects of suspense writing.