Danger! (My Anti-Peril List)

One of the many jobs of the author is to imagine perilous situations for the protagonist, and then to imagine ingenious solutions.
I've long-since wondered if there is some form of peril/anti-peril chart that authors work from. Gosh, that would sure be a useful tool!

A lot of interesting observations have presented themselves as I've compiled this list. I'd like to address them first.

1) Vary the emotional topography.
I've found that some films (and I've mainly been analyzing films) work on the flawed premise that the audience will be hooked provided that there is continuous, or near-continuous, danger.
Not so. A flat topography is a turn off; the audience becomes desensitized, and the lack of contrast makes for a predictable and tedious experience.
2) Control and reversal.
Peril is, in part, derived from control and lack of it. Protag is out of control and antag is in control. One of the most powerful techniques for building tension is to swap control. Deathtrap demonstrates this brilliantly!
Looking at my list, it occurred to me that each peril could be applied to either protag or antag, and that some of the best twists I've seen have been the result of one single peril being turned about, often multiple times. When the hunter becomes the hunted, an irony is created.
3) Pressure and stakes (MAGNITUDE).
Let us not forget Robert McKee's advice: Character is revealed through choices made under pressure. We can observe, too, that the audience's fear of the peril (anticipation/expectation) is directly related to its perceived effect. We should also bear in mind Sunset Bickham's advice: Exaggerate your characters! In this way, our villains are very clearly villainous. Our reader needs to know that the danger exists, and that it will accomplish all manner of horrendous things unless it is thwarted or averted (or undone, as we'll see in a moment).
4) Pace and anticipation.
Again, so many films rush through the perils. We know darned well that there is immense power in creating anticipation; if we carefully build up a peril, we also build the opportunity for an intense and fulfilling pay-off.
5) Failure.
Sometimes the protag fails to remove or avert the peril. This is a great technique for adding colour to the emotional topography.
And there is always a set of reset buttons at our disposal should we need them.
Timing is important in the failure: suspense is generated if the protag gets very close to success before failing.
6) Combinations and permutations.
Some of the best perilous situations ever created have been forged from clever, well-ordered permutations and reversals. Furthermore, Robert McKee recommends that we build up the perils and the pressure, creating increasingly high stakes as the story builds to its climax.
7) Layers.
I think it might have been Peter Cox who revealed that he advises his fiction authors to layer the perils. In this way, when one peril is resolved, one or more remain; the novel never stops to set-up a new peril.

So here it is, my anti-peril list.
You can come up with your own perils. Anything goes. I have a few peril classifications that I'm working on, but I'm not overly confident.
However, there appear to be classic solutions to perils, and that's where my interest is focused at the moment.
Please note that I'm using the words protagonist, antagonist, and threat/peril as catch-alls; I hope that this list still finds a cosy home in the cockles of your heart.
(Btw, please feel free to suggest anti-perils that I have missed. I'll keep this list updated.)

---Solvejg's anti-peril list ---

1) REMOVE THREAT; AVERT THREAT. (Threat does not come to pass.)

*Foreshadowed artefact to the rescue.
---Protag carries key around; protag finds a door!

---Bond is about to meet his maker in the centrifugal chamber, when he suddenly recalls that he is wearing a dart-firing wristwatch. [Moonraker]

*Broken artefact is mended/returned.
---Barbarella crash-lands on a planet and her ship is damaged, leaving her stranded - until she has help getting it fixed. [Barbarella]
---On top of the Empire State building, Doctor Who drops his sonic screwdriver. And then Martha returns it. [Evolution of the Daleks]

*To the rescue (aid arrives).
---Pursued and cornered by the King's men, a tiny clan of Scotsmen seem doomed, until Wallace appears with hundreds of warriors. [Braveheart]

*Bribe, blackmail, befriend, persuade.
---With a laser beam millimetres from his crotch, Bond persuades Goldfinger to let him live. [Goldfinger]
---The German soldier is captured and set to digging his own grave. When he is approached by Miller and his men, he begs for clemency. His pleas would fail, but for Miller siding with him. [Saving Private Ryan]

*Antagonist changes mind; antagonist loses power or control.
---Superman drains enemies' powers. [Superman II]

*Destroy/defeat antagonist.
---Indiana shoots swordsmen. [Raiders of the Lost Ark]

*Nature intervenes.
---Sun rises to kill vampire. [Misc vampire flicks]
---Martian invaders' immune system cannot cope with Earth's bacteria. [War of the Worlds]

*New knowledge or power.
---Having tried to shoot it and electrocute it and burn it, Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) eventually discovers that the Blob doesn't like the cold (Achilles heel). [The Blob]
---Rose looks into the heart of the TARDIS and absorbs unlimited power. [Parting of the Ways]

*Deus ex machina (no foreshadowing).
---Brian plummets from the tower and lands in a passing spaceship. [Life of Brian]


*False alarm; not a threat after all; mistaken identity; harmless.
---The Grim is not bad after all! [Prisoner of Azkaban]
---The Ood approach the Doctor and Rose, chanting 'We must feed!' However, having fixed their translators, it transpires that they were offering food to the Doctor and Rose. [The Impossible Planet]

*Hide; escape; trick/deceive.
---Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) covers himself with mud to hide from the Predator's heat-vision. [Predator]
---Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) tunnels to freedom from Shawshank. [The Shawshank Redemption]

*Threat goes elsewhere.
---The werewolf goes for Hermione, and then Harry attracts its attention. [Prisoner of Azkaban]

*Sidestep; ignore.
---Harry tries to rescue Gabrielle from the merfolk, but they intervene pressing tridents to his neck. Harry is next seen swimming to the surface with Gabrielle. [Goblet of Fire]


*Two negatives cancel each other out or make a positive.
---Dinosaur one attacks, and dinosaur two attacks, and dinosaurs then forget about protag and battle each other instead. [Jurassic Park]

*One positive affects multiple negatives.
---The Doctor opens a portal to the void, and millions of Daleks and Cybermen are sucked to their doom. [Doomsday]
---Billions of Toclafane are erased when Captain Jack destroys the paradox machine. [The Last of the Time Lords]


2) UNDO. (Threat comes to pass and is then undone.)

*Back in time.
---Superman turns back time so that Lois never died. [Superman]

*Cure/antidote.
---Van Helsing turns into werewolf, and is then injected with antidote. [Van Helsing]

*Resurrect/regenerate.
---Doctor Who cheats death.

*Never really happened: dream, illusion, prophecy, coma, etc.
---Death on Mars dream. [Total Recall]

*Repair.
---Superman mends the broken dam, train lines, etc. [Superman]


3) LIVE WITH IT. (Threat comes to pass.)

William Wallace's wife has her throat slit and dies. This feeds his anger and he leads his countrymen into battle against the English. [Braveheart]

Max Ernst's Oiseaux en péril.

Scarecrow

Here's a scarecrow from the Doctor Who episodes Human Nature and The Family of Blood.

Ghost Girl

Nope, not another Torey Hayden experience.

When I awoke this morning, I could hear a young girl's voice.
Strange, I thought.
I listened harder, and my brain decided that my neighbour's daughter must be playing in my drive again.
I would've thought no more about it, except that the voice seemed to be repeating the same phrase over and over, every fifteen seconds or so.
Strange, I thought.
So I listened hard, and my brain decided that the voice was saying 'Ec-to-pla,' as though it were unable to complete the word ectoplasm. And I realized that the voice was coming from inside the house.
What would a young girl be doing in my front room at 6.15am, repeating the word 'Ec-to-pla'?
A reasonable question, my brain decided.
As I shuffled along the hallway, I could see a flashing red light, blinking on the wall in the front room.
Perhaps I left my computer on? my brain thought.
But I could see that the plug was removed from the wall-socket.
And I listened hard, and still the voice repeated the same sounds: Ec-to-pla.

Well, inside the lounge, I discovered that my son's age-old activity centre toy-game thing had been switched on: it was under a book, and presumably I had leaned on the book thereby switching the activity centre toy-game thing on (although how I didn't notice is another mystery).
When I lifted the book up, I realized that the voice was saying 'Let's play an activity,' which really is hard to equate to 'ec-to-pla,' and yet still my foolish brain had concocted this image of a ghostly girl haunting my front room, seeking absolution or revenge for unresolved issues of her tortured corporeal existence.
Brains are pretty cool the way they are so easily coerced into believing the most outlandish things.
Which reminds me: I really must send off that fifty quid registration fee to claim that million pounds I've won in some new lottery that I've never heard of before.

The Front-Line

Sometimes it's difficult making sense of what can seem like conflicting information.
I guess I'm like so many hopefuls: my philosophy is that, if I can imagine an inventive and compelling story and subsequently write it well, everything else will take care of itself. I don't much care for the other stuff. You may be surprised to learn that I'm no business guru (yes, well you might gasp).
However, submission time is fast approaching and I'm starting the preparations: Who do I send to? What are their submission requirements? How do I know when I'm ready to submit? What constitutes a good synopsis, or a good covering letter?
Yuk. Why can't I pay someone to sort all this stuff for me? It takes up so much of my very precious writing time!
Sunset Bickham is a nice man. He understands.
There is a theory that we need to thoroughly understand our market and study the trends and aim to fill the requirements of any given publisher. It's a business after all, right?
Sunset offers a ray of hope (see what I did there ;o)
Three years at least from concept to publication, he says. You don't really want or need to attempt to predict where the market will be going in three years, he says. You do need to be aware of your market, he adds, but you focus your energies on creating a cracking, irresistable manuscript.
Yay!
So I'm being aware. I've found some good YA fantasy lists on Amazon, and am being aware of them and of which of them are current. I'll order a few of the ones I've not heard of and check out the language and content, and compare them to my work (for Pullman is considered atypical and not a useful yardstick).
Beyond that, I really can't concern myself. If I don't fill a niche, then so be it. I see no sense in worrying about things that are beyond my control when there are so many things that I can control and improve. I'm told that no manuscript was turned down because it had a few minor things wrong with it: manuscripts are turned down because they are poorly written or because the agent/publisher can't see a place for them, or can't get excited by them.
Head in the sand or efficient distribution of time and resources?
Stubbornness or focus?
I don't know, but until I decide otherwise, I'm going to keep honing the writing and studying the art of story-telling.
(I'm compiling a list, and categorising, obstacles and means/solutions at the mo and will post here when I'm done. Heck, it's what I do for fun, and if this ever stops being fun, I'll find something else to do and that, my maggoty friends, is the point :o)