Thanks to my friend Vicki Hyatt, I hold in my hand a shooting
script for the first episode of "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer." This treasure, dated
Sept. 4, 1996, was written by Joss
Whedon and carries the title "Welcome to the
Hellmouth."
"Buffy," as many
friends know, is my favorite television series.
I own, and have watched three times now, all seven seasons of
episodes. Whedon
builds his story on a brilliant conceit:
that a Valley Girl is the savior of the human race from all things evil,
demonic and apocalyptic. She's the
chosen one. And damn cute, too.
I was interested to see that the script, which runs 57 pages, divides into four "acts." Each act
ends with a small cliffhanger, a scary or dramatic moment that invites the
audience to hang on through the commercial break, a classic bit of television shtick.
That strategy corresponds to Tool 30 in the book "Writing Tools":
To generate suspense, use internal
cliffhangers.
To propel readers, make
them wait.
It was fun to read through the Buffy script to study the
locations for each of the most suspenseful moments:
At the end of chapter one, for example, three girls in a
locker room gossip about Buffy, the new girl in school. Suddenly:
Something FLIES OUT of the locker at [one of the gossiping girls]! She SCREAMS as the dead body of the
boy from the opening collapses on her, eyes horribly wide. ANGLE: FROM
ABOVE. The body sprawls out on the floor
as the girl steps back, screaming for all she's worth. BLACK OUT.
END OF ACT ONE.
Here's the end of act three, in an abandoned
church. Luke is a vampire:
ANGLE: THE POOL OF BLOOD.
We are low, right about the surface, as Luke prays before it. Suddenly a HEAD shoots up from in the
blood. Luke starts, looks at it. He moves back away from the pool. Something breaks the surface of the
liquid. Something rises. It is THE MASTER, the most powerful of
vampires. Born Heinrich Joseph Nest (some six hundred years ago,) he wears a
vaguely SS-like outfit.
What he does not wear is anything resembling a human
face. He is as much demon as man. As powerful as Luke is, it's clear that this
man is much more so, both from his bearing and from the reverence with which
Luke looks upon him. He steps forward,
holds out his hand. Luke grasps it
reverently. Luke: "Master."
It turns out that this episode is the first of a
two-parter. So instead of a nice
resolution, Whedon must leave us with another
cliffhanger, this one ever more suspenseful, so that we'll return next week. The scene takes place in a mausoleum, with
Luke trying to kill Buffy, knocking her into an open tomb atop a withered
corpse:
She's hurt pretty bad.
She looks up but no Luke. Only the wall of the tomb. He could be anywhere. Slowly, achingly slowly, she lifts her
head. Truly scared. Looks over one side of the tomb --
nothing. Looks over the other. Luke FILLS THE FRAME, roaring, jumping into
the crypt on top of her. She tries to
fight him off but she's well pinned. He
contemplates her for a moment with gleeful animal hunger. Teeth dripping. He bears down. BLACKOUT.
So that's how it's done on
television. But let's not abandon
the cliffhanger in print. At the end of
a chapter or even of a section of a chapter, or right before the jump, place something interesting or
dramatic that forces the reader to turn the page.
