.engagement

Discussing Why We Like Stories #AuthorToolbox (Part 2, The Conscious)

/ Adam / 16 Comments

For Part 1, the unconscious, Click Here.

The conscious mind represents the more complex side of every person. The conscious mind takes the simple desires of the unconscious mind and builds more elaborate goals around them. Where the unconscious mind wants to feel and enjoy, the conscious mind wants to overcome a challenge. The conscious mind is the problem solver; cracking codes, assembling pieces, all in an effort to achieve some kind of new understanding, a moment of insight that can only be called an epiphany. The question is, what does the conscious mind want to understand?

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Surprise 104-06

/ Adam / 2 Comments

One of the most basic forms of engagement is curiosity, what’s going to happen next? Surprises, judiciously used, can keep a story interesting, and prompt audiences to reconsider what they’ve previously read or thought. A surprise can either be a surprise for both audience & character(s), or a surprise for the audience alone.

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Creating Tension 104-03

/ Adam / 2 Comments

Tension is created whenever a conflict prevents a character from achieving a goal. This can be a force of nature, another character, or an internal struggle, such as the character debating what to do. Tension also helps to create a sense of pacing, the rate at which scenes progress. Generally an audience will perceive a low tension scene as longer than a high tension scene.

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Perspective & Motive 104-02

/ Adam / 3 Comments

Part of good storytelling is making the audience believe in the story, believe that the characters really existed, acting out events exactly as the author outlines them. This means everything the character says and does needs to be rooted in who the character is. An author must always be aware of why a character acts and reacts as they do, so that audiences never stop to consider the invisible hand behind the curtain.

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