I was reminded today of a writing technique I like, sometimes referred to as ‘locking the door.’ The idea is to take a straightforward conflict and liven things up by throwing a spanner in the works, usually something simpler than the overall conflict that nevertheless adds a lot of suspense. For example …

A man comes barreling around the corner, trampling over his garden towards the front door. He’s terrified, too scared to even look over his shoulder at the monstrous bear tumbling after him. With only seconds to spare, he pushes through the front door and slams it behind him. The bear crashes into the frame just as he gets it shut and nearly takes the whole thing off its hinges. He watches the bear shuffle away through the keyhole and breathes a sigh of relief.

It’s the most basic story I can come up with. Characters are introduced, there’s a clear conflict, the stakes rise a little, and then it’s resolved. But it feels really shallow, almost too easy, right? Blink, and you’ll miss the whole thing. Generally in fiction (and often in life) problems aren’t so easily solved, even simple things. It can be endlessly frustrating when you know something should be pretty straightforward only to encounter one confounding issue after the next. Anybody who has worked on a car or done some DIY knows the pain of a stuck bolt, especially when that’s the one bolt between you and the finish line. The flip side to this is that watching someone overcome adversity is gratifying. We tend to love seeing emotional moments after huge problems are resolved, but the issue with these big problems is that they can only be so big on paper. They’re chock full of little obstacles that compound together, but nobody wants to read a dissertation about every little thing that goes wrong just to feel something when a character achieves their goals. As ever, the best way to make something feel massive is to imply its size with a pertinent issue. A locked door, in this case.

A man comes barreling around the corner, trampling over his garden towards the front door. He’s terrified, too scared to even look over his shoulder at the monstrous bear tumbling after him. With only seconds to spare, he crashes into the front door and turns the handle, but it doesn’t budge! He curses and pulls the key ring from his pocket. There must be a hundred of them! He flips through the keys with trembling hands as fast as he can, but he can hear the bear’s thunderous footsteps closer than ever. Finally, he finds the right key, forces it into the lock, and falls through the door. The bear crashes into the frame just as he gets it shut and nearly takes the whole thing off its hinges. He watches the bear shuffle away through the keyhole and breathes a sigh of relief.

This has a little more tension to it. By drawing the conflict out it seems to escalate, even though one might imagine the bear as equally close in the first and second versions. I don’t cover every beat of the man’s heart, or the slipperiness of the grass, or the rusty lock, but you get the picture. One pertinent complication is often enough to make the conflict a lot more suspenseful. It can be taken further if you want though. I don’t think the solution is to give the man another issue since he has his own already, but there are two characters here. What if the bear has its own stumbling block to overcome?

A man comes barreling around the corner, trampling over his garden towards the front door. He’s terrified, too scared to even look over his shoulder at the monstrous bear tumbling after him. With only seconds to spare, he crashes into the front door and turns the handle, but it doesn’t budge! He curses and pulls the key ring from his pocket. There must be a hundred of them! He flips through the keys with trembling hands as fast as he can, but he can hear the bear’s thunderous footsteps behind him. He hears a deep growl of pain and spares a terrified glance over his shoulder. The bear has been caught up in the rose bushes in his garden, tangled as if by barbed wire. Finally, he finds the right key, forces it into the lock, and … it still won’t open! The bear pulls itself out of the thorny bramble and comes roaring forward again, angrier than ever. The man steps back, braces himself, and kicks the door in with a defiant shout. He falls inside and throws himself against the ruined door to brace it. The bear crashes into the frame just as he gets it shut and nearly takes the whole thing off its hinges. After holding it off for what feels like forever, the bear gets bored. A biker passes by on the road beyond and it gets distracted. The man watches the bear shuffle away through the keyhole and breathes a sigh of relief.

Notice that the two locked doors have compounded. This version is much longer than the others. Every additional problem adds more complexity than the last, more baggage for the writer to handle in the end. Now the man has to solve his locked door, and the bear has to extract itself from the brambles. It also gives me free reign to give the man a harder time too. The story might feel a little sparse without it. The conflict has to keep escalating until it doesn’t, and I can’t have the protagonist being outdone, so I had him put in some extra effort for more payoff. Kicking down the door is a lot more dramatic than just opening the door, and it paints the man as ultimately more powerful than than the bear. Is that a little ridiculous? Sure. But hey, it’s fiction.

I couldn’t just wind up with one sentence of the bear shuffling off either. I had to give a little breathing room for the resolution to settle in. The higher the tension, the longer it takes to fall. This story really ought to have some paragraph breaks too. It looks a little bloated, but it’s probably fine. I hope it gets my point across about locking the door.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley