Part I: I have this scene where my character is locked up and nobody knows he’s there. Im struggling to get the tension and pacing right. He has no one to talk to and few if any actions he can take. (In fact, the hardest part is that if possible I would like the tension to come from the fact he can’t take action.) He does have a lot to think about/realize in the scene – but if I lean to much on that, it loses the feeling of panic. Any tips at all? Or even scenes from other books I could go to as a case study?
Part II: Im tempted to submit this scene to the next workshop to get more specific feedback, but I was wondering if you could lay out the expected workshop etiquette for me. Is it okay to ask for feedback on a specific area like tension, when the draft overall is in such a rough state?
Hey Jessie. That’s a really cool question. You gave me a lot to think about.
Why write a scene in which nothing happens? If all he is is stuck, and that’s the only thing the scene needs to communicate, my instinct would be to describe that feeling and that panic with a few really well written paragraphs, and then close the scene.
A few other thoughts:
Does your POV allow us to leave the main character? Could we follow a secondary character, while knowing that the main character is still stuck? That would help the reader to understand the passage of a longer period of time.
What sensations can you focus on? Depending on the kind of confinement, how long until your feet go numb? Until you start seeing things in the darkness? Until you feel imaginary things crawling on your body? There’s probably a story arc available in his own senses if you can suss that out.
I understand what you mean when you say that you’ll lose the sense of panic if he’s coming to too many realizations. That’s not what we do when we panic! However, you may just have to walk out that tension. A loss of the panic emotion may be the cost you have to pay if the scene needs to accomplish more than that.
I hope those questions help to break something free. But to return to my original advice, don’t be afraid to make the scene as short as it needs to be! Capture the emotional energy, and then time jump to whatever point in the story things happen again.
(As for the second part of your question, yes, you could bring this to the workshop. You can also ask specific questions of the readers. Be prepared that not everyone is going to follow your request/instructions though, so you’ll probably get general feedback as well.)
