Reader Question: How to manage time and characters in a contained thriller?

From Debbie Moon:

I’m writing a contained thriller that involves a number of people being trapped in a single location (a diner), firstly by a storm and then by, well, the antagonist.

And having seven or eight people trapped in a single location is killing me! I have to find a way to get Person A to go to the bathroom so Persons B & C can speak in private, I have to send people off to check on this and investigate that, or to lose their temper and flounce out… I feel like I’m moving them around like chess pieces in an attempt to create movement, variety and discrete scenes out of the situation.

Any tips on how to manage a story with a compressed timescale and the cast trapped in a few rooms without it turning into theatre?

This is an excellent question and before I say anything else, I’d like to invite the GITS community to respond in Comments because I’m sure regular readers will have some great ideas.

There are plenty of upsides to a contained thriller: Compressed time frame creates pace, restricted geography creates tension, characters forced together in confined space creates visceral conflict, lower budgets due to minimal locations [from a production standpoint], and so on.

However you have identified correctly one of the most vexing aspects in writing a story in this sub-genre: How to avoid it coming off like a stage play, a series of talking head scenes in repetitive space.

Let’s begin the discussion with three pieces of advice: (1) Take complete advantage of the physical elements available to you. (2) Switch the point of narrative attack. (3) Be especially cognizant of the characters’ psychological journey.

Take advantage of the physical elements available to you: If it’s a house, use every room in it. If you can get outside, go. Night. Day. Rain. Sun. Furniture. Tools. Utensils. Every single square inch and everything within that space represents the physical elements of your story universe. Use them. Keep moving from spot to spot. Give characters access to mobile items and see what they do with them. As we all remember from The Dark Knight, even a pencil can become an effective narrative device:

Switch the point of narrative attack: Each of your characters is an asset and worth exploring in terms of their specific experience of the story universe. You can do this by switching the point of narrative attack. Let’s say you have five characters: Adam, Betty, Carl, Deirdre, and Eduardo. In sequence 2, you tell the story through Adam’s perspective. In sequence 3, Betty. Sequence 4, Carl. Sequence 5, Deirdre. Sequence 6, Eduardo. Obviously you don’t have to dedicate the entire sequence to one character, but by shifting the general point of narrative attack, you give the reader a different perspective on each sequence which in turn can generate a unique tone and feel to that set of pages.

Be especially cognizant of the characters’ psychological journey: Whereas a story universe’s physical space may be constrained, its emotional realm is wide-open. A character can go from confidence to terror, passivity to rage, sane to insane, all in a matter of pages. So as key characters — and most especially the Protagonist — go through their journey through the events of the Plotline, they go through a psychological journey within the story’s Internal World. And the concomitant reactions by characters to their psychological changes can transform the space of the physical world. As in that cheery attic filled with happy familial mementos morphs into a place of horror when a character driven batshit crazy starts wielding an axe up there.

For more background on contained thrillers, you can see a couple of my previous posts here and here.

And again GITS readers, please weigh in with your thoughts and suggestions for Debbie Moon in Comments.

UPDATE: I forwarded Debbie’s question to Greg Russo who has sold two contained thriller spec scripts in the last 18 months and the subject of an interview today and tomorrow, and Greg has agreed to provide his thoughts on the matter. Look for that on Wednesday, 9/21.

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