writing – Page 17 – Joshua Roots

In the world of Physics, there are two concepts that I absolutely love: Tension and Torsion.

According to Dictionary.com:

Tension: mental or emotional strain; intense, suppressed suspense, anxiety, or excitement.

Torsion: the act of twisting.

That said, the application of these concepts to writing are stunning. Too many times a plot is either predictable (I’m looking at you, Hollywood RomComs!) or lacks enough punch to make a reader/viewer really care about the outcome. Nothing is worse that getting to the end of a book or movie and going, “meh.”

Enter Physics.

Tension: You know there is something dark/embarrassing/alien in the MC’s past, but the author won’t just come out and tell you, dangit! Instead, he/she drops hints along the way, enticing and teasing you with snippets that reveal iotas of data when you hunger for the whole thing. Or perhaps the MC and romantic interest dance around one another, wanting to say how they feel, but never coming out with a “hey, you know I love you, right?” Cause, come on, where’s the fun in that? Thanks to tension, the plot becomes tighter, more engrossing, and the stakes keep rising.

And you don’t want to put the book down.

Then there’s the torsion. You’re plugging away happily within the plot, enjoying the rising tension and then BOOM! The author drops a bomb on you with no warning. The police station is attacked, the romantic interest is the murderer, the Dread Pirate Roberts is Wesley, etc. Torsion within a story catches you off guard and makes you wonder what else the author has in store.

And you don’t want to put the book down.

There are certainly many other Physics concepts that you can apply to writing (Force, Velocity, Entropy, etc), but the Two T’s may be the most powerful and effective ones out there.*

*You were right, Professor: I WOULD use my knowledge of Physics in the real

Storming the Brain

Shiny new ideas are the bestest, most wonderful things in the world. There are few things that can compare to that “ah ha!” moment when something coalesces in your mind. Inspiration can strike almost anywhere and the excitement over building a new story is intoxicating.

But sometimes it isn’t easy to transition from The Big Shiny Basic Concept to a well-designed outline. Maybe your epiphany was so huge that it included world-building items, ready-made tension, and stakes so enormous that you simply cannot get them onto paper fast enough.

Or, if you’re like me, it was just single a character or scene and everything else is a fuzzy haze. It’s those times when I stare at the page and think, “Crud.”

When that happens, the best thing I can do is simply mull over an idea for a while. It takes time for an idea to take shape and my “time” is either the hour commute to the office or a nice, long jog. Whichever flavor I’m rolling with, I intentionally keep the radio off and just let my mind wander over ideas or characters. I’ll ask questions like, “Why would X do this?”, “What would motivate Y to act that way?”, or “What if Z was a tetrahedron instead?” Sometimes nothing happens, but occasionally this quiet mulling leads to The Other Big Epiphany.

That’s not to say that brainstorming is easy or that you shouldn’t knuckle down and write your story. It takes a lot of effort to transition from a vague idea to 500 or 100k words and nothing beats the actual art of writing. But sometimes silencing the world, closing the door to distractions, and letting the mind fill in the holes is exactly what the doctor ordered.

How about you? How do you brainstorm?

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