Try/Fail Cycles

A new author asked a couple of days ago if I would explain what a "Try/Fail" cycle is, and so I will oblige with a short lesson.

A Try/Fail cycle is a term that we use when plotting or outlining novels to describe a character's attempt to do something.

For example, let's take the movie The Terminator. In it, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character the Terminator materializes on a lonely street in a cloud of lightning. He soon goes to look for a woman named Sarah Conner. Opening a phone book, he rips out a page that has several Sarah Conners on them.

The Terminator then goes to the home of the first woman on his list and kills her. Now, Arnold is looking for a specific Sarah Conner. Though he kills a woman, it's not the right woman. So this is a classic try/fail cycle. The death scenes accomplish several things. As Arnold goes about murdering people, we begin to learn a little about how ruthless and determined he is. The mystery of who the Terminator is, what his motives are, and just how powerful he is all begin to be revealed. At the same time, the scenes create a tremendous amount of suspense as we begin to see the real Sarah Conner marshaled off to a police station for her own protection--knowing that mere humans are no match for this monster.

Of course, heroes have their try/fail cycles too. Sarah's story is one of "escape." In each instance, as she comes up against the Terminator, she has to try to flee, and she escapes in the nick of time. But we soon learn that her adversary is relentless. In the climax of the story, her try/succeed cycles come to an end. The Terminator catches her, and a battle ensues.

You can have a try/fail cycle with any type of conflict. If you're writing a romance, you'll have characters who will meet, flirt, and try to fall in love. But something will block the romance from coming to full fruition. Perhaps the male protagonist feels that he is too poor, or the woman's parents hate him because he's from the wrong family, or the woman hears a bit of nasty gossip that turns her off, or the love interest makes a joke that she thinks is in poor taste.

Similarly, if you're dealing with a detective story, you'll have your protagonist making attempts to catch his killer. He might unravel part of the mystery only to discover that it goes deeper than imagined. He might get a clue as to why the victim was killed, but not know who of twenty people did it. Thus, he unravels the mystery bit by bit.

A try/fail cycle can be as simple as getting from point A to point B. For example, in Lord of the Rings, Frodo tries to go from Rivendell to Mordor. He first tries to go over a mountain range, but is forced to turn back when Saruman calls down a storm upon the party. So Frodo and his companions go under the mountains through the dwarven tunnels, and even that goes awry.

There is a rule about try/fail cycles, and it is this: With the main problem in a story, your character must try to resolve the problem at least three times in order for the conflict to have enough weight to carry the story. If you try to do it less, the story will fail. Often when I was a judge of the Writers of the Future Contest, I'd get stories from new writers that were perfectly good. The writing was gorgeous, the settings impressive, the characterization immaculate--but the story would fall apart because the hero resolved his problem on the first attempt.

Beyond that, I have come to the conclusion that a good try/fail cycle must not be just a mere attempt to resolve a problem, it must be an "interesting" attempt to resolve the problem.

Let me explain. Suppose that you have a woman who has a boss who is flirting with her. So you think, "How would she try to resolve this?" Well, maybe she decides to write him an email and complain. That might sound fine to you. It might even be the way that you would handle it. But it's rather weak. A good conflict needs to have a chance to grow, to blow up, to move in directions that the audience doesn't imagine. An email just doesn't cut it.

So you decide that your heroine is going to confront her boss in his office. She goes to demand that he stop the harassment. That's good. It takes a little extra internal fortitude on her part, and it has the potential of blowing up. So maybe he acts sheepish and begs her forgiveness--but when she turns to leave he grabs her and tries to rape her. Now you have a conflict that expands. It can become much more than that little non-combative email scene.

If you're smart, you'll turn this try/fail cycle into a major movement in the story. Perhaps the girl goes to a lawyer after this, and the lawyer slaps her boss with a lawsuit. We might then have the boss hit the woman with his own lawsuit, accusing her of lying.

The boss might present evidence that he wasn't even in town that day. He can produce security photos showing him checking into a cabin in the mountains with his wife a few hours earlier. The wife is willing to swear that he was with her all night. Suddenly the heroine discovers that her boss has turned the tables on her. He's going to sue her for all she's got. He might even present her with his terms of surrender: "Be my sex toy, or I'll destroy you."

As the story progresses, our heroine might discover that her boss has mob connections--and that he has bought off the judge in her case. She might find that he is better connected, more powerful, and more cunning than she believed. There might be rumors of murder and past coverups. The wife might be willing to lie in court to protect her husband--fearing retribution if she doesn't.

So all of the subsequent actions, you see, are tied into this first try/fail cycle.

And as we move through each try/fail cycle, the problem escalates in some way. The conflict might become deeper, more personal to the heroine. Perhaps we learn that she has been raped before, and so this brings up horrific memories. Or the conflict will broaden, engulfing more and more people--the wife, past secretaries, or threatening our heroine's children.

Thus, through each try/fail cycle your story should grow and evolve so that it becomes more and more engrossing, more and more powerful.

Writing Quote of the Day:

F. Scott Fitzgerald (on creating characters):