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Do things get worse in your story? Then you are using some sort of progression: good, worse, worst. That’s excellent, because you want the story characters to increasingly feel the conflict and tension of the story.
But are you using the BEST progression possible?
Close up of Street Vendor in Urumqi, China
- MC sees the same thing as other characters: this establishes the base line of experience and serves as the basis for comparison. We’ll know how bad the curse is by comparing what MC and other characters see.
- MC observes an object flipping back and forth from reality to a vision.
- MC sees the path she walks upon as jumpy, never quite sure where to put her foot next.
- MC sees her companion as a monster.
- MC sees a squirrel as a monster.
- MC sees a chasm, but doesn’t trust what she sees; it is indeed a chasm.
- MC sees worthless pebbles instead of jewels and then everything is totally reversed after a landslide.
CLOSER
- MC sees a squirrel as a monster. Seeing a squirrel as a monster should come before seeing her companion as a master. The character should retain his reality as long as possible. Swapped this with the next one.
- MC sees her companion as a monster.
- MC sees a chasm, but doesn’t trust what she sees; it is indeed a chasm.
Hmmm. This one bothered me. We had a progression of worsening vision, inability to distinguish real from false. Yet here, MC suddenly sees things correctly–but just doesn’t trust her vision. Well, that does work, but it doesn’t make her VISION progressively worse. It switches the question to one of trust, a question that is certainly valid. But here, I want it to really focus on her deteriorating senses. So, I’ll probably change this to make her see things that aren’t there, a form of hallucination, which is definitely worse. Now, she sees a chasm, but also sees a bridge crossing that chasm–obvious to the reader is the fact that the bridge isn’t really there, it’s a hallucination.
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