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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38065
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38065
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In any life, there are moments when you can turn one way or another. With fictional characters, largely untrammeled by the cares of real people about where they are going to sleep or what they are going to eat or when they will run out of money, there are more and bigger moments at which they can turn one way or another.

The ability of the writer's mind to generate ideas for such turning points is essential. But it is too easy to get caught up in the mere act of invention, to start merely recording an imaginary history based on all the possible twists and turns you can invent.

But the facility of inventing twists and turns is not given to the novelist for the sake of inventing complex imaginary histories. It is given to them as a necessary tool for forcing a character into a box canyon where they are forced to make the difficult choice of values that they are trying to avoid making.

Chess programs apply a tree-pruning algorithm to the list of potential moves that the program generates, cutting off investigation of the possibilities that don't seem to be leading towards checkmate. A writer needs a similar tree pruning algorithm for their powers of invention. The writer is trying to get the character to checkmate -- the point where they can no longer avoid the choice that they don't want to make. The filter to be applied to possibilities, therefore, is, quite simply, is this twist of events getting my character neared to checkmate? As soon as it becomes clear that a possibility is releasing tension on the character rather than increasing it, that it is leading the character towards a different crisis from the one intended, cut it off.

Original score: 7