Sweet Delay

Heighten the climax by putting it off

Sex Model

It has been claimed by many that the proper arc of conflict in a tale should rise and fall like the arc of intensity of experience in the orgasmic cycle. That is a slow start, rising to a peak, and a rapid descent back toward baseline. In tales this baseline is never struck twice: that is to say, the tale ends before it grows as dull as the opening lines; thus we could say that the arc of conflict only follows the orgasmic cycle until a little after peak, when the heart is still beating somewhat faster than it was before arousal began. The ‘rising action’ as the arc to peak is sometimes described, is also a jagged one, and not a smooth, steady incline.

If we play with the orgasmic cycle, we can soon find out that the best way to increase the intensity of the peak is to delay its onset. In general this means that a longer orgasmic cycle is more satisfying, and so is a longer tale (provided there is enough matter to sustain a longer tale). But looking at it more closely, it also means that there come in the orgasmic cycle moments that can leap directly to peak climax which, if we can but delay and settle back a bit, will mean the peak when it comes will vault higher than it would if we advanced to it straight away.

Tale Climacterics

The ‘climacteric’ was first used in ancient Greek philosophy and astrology to describes the years that marked turning points in a man’s life when he was closest to death, rising to the ‘grand climacteric’ of the 63rd year when death was closest of all. These pivotal years also were said to mark changes in a man’s life, for example from boyhood to youth, youth to adulthood, bachelorhood to married life, and so on. Thus it serves as a model for tales, that when they are long are broken into smaller chapters or sequences each with its own arc.

These lesser arcs lead us naturally to build a tale whose rising action will not be smooth, but allow us small rests along the way, as minor obstacles are overcome on the way to the final victory or defeat of our heroes. The rule of ‘sweet delay’ applies to each and all of these arcs, lesser as well as greater.

Sweet Delay

Here then is the rule of ‘sweet delay’:

When the talesman has wrought his audience into its highest tension, just before the climactic peak, if he can delay resolving the tension, he will work his audience into an even-higher frenzy, and the resolution when it comes will please them more.

There is a secondary rule that also applies:

The length of the ‘sweet delay’ should be proportionate to the length of the climacteric arc to which it belongs.

Too much delay is fatal. We the audience have been well and truly worked up; the answer seems to be on hand; then it is snatched from us. Aaarrghhh! We want to scream and curse; the delay annoys us because (unlike the delay in sex that we embrace ourselves) we have not chosen it — it has been forced upon us by the talesman. We experience considerable frustration (not unlike the delay in sex that our partner puts us to). If an arc is long, then we can tolerate a longer delay: ‘Well, so long as I’ve waited this long, I guess I can stand to wait a little bit longer.’ But if the arc is short, then the delay threatens to overwhelm it, and we the audience will feel something like, ‘This story is never going to end.’

We must remember that all delays must lessen the fever-pitch the audience finds itself in; if we sink too far, we lose interest in the resolution itself.

Another secondary rule applies:

What we hear in the ‘sweet delay’ should in itself hold our interest.

The talesman ought not just start describing the clock on the wall, its inner workings and history, and the tale of the man who made it. When he delays the peak climax, the talesman has two basic ploys he can use:

1. Bring on a reversal in the conflict that offers the contestant closest to victory a temporary setback
2. Switch to another storyline or an aside from the narrator

The reversal of fortune in the main battle is the least frustrating of ‘sweet delays’ because it holds us the audience within the central battle. The fight simply lasts longer (and a battle must not last too long either, lest the audience accuse the talesman yet again of refusing to end his tale).

An aside from the narrator can be more or less frustrating, depending on how relevant the aside seems to be to the main battle. It might be, for example, that the narrator chooses to introduce a Homeric metaphor at the peak climax: this is a rhetorical means of standing back from the fight and seeing its context, and can be a way to exalt or enhance the struggle’s meaning or significance in the grand scheme of the tale. Or it might be that the narrator steps back to explain something about one or other of the contestants, which he will then lead into showing why and how that contestant wins (or loses) the battle.

The switch to another storyline may be directly relevant to the main battle, if that second storyline brings its characters or their works to bear upon the main battle itself. For example, if we take a military battle for the conflict in the tale and we are most concerned with the fighting at the center, reinforcements are summoned into the battle, they charge the center of the fighting, and give needed relief to their side. Or the left wing of the battle is suddenly swept back and crushed, and the enemy thus presses against our center’s left flank.

On the other hand, the other storyline might be entirely separate from the struggle at hand; the threads might not join until far later in the tale. For example, in our military battle, the reinforcements might yet be traveling toward the battlefield, and be several days’ journey away. Even as the battle seems about to be won or lost, the talesman switches to tell us how the reinforcements encounter some trouble in their journey, and might not reach the battlefield at all.

Edgar Rice Burroughs used this last strategy in many of his tales. He would split his heroes into two or three separate tales, each man or woman struggling to reach the others. Burroughs would bring one hero to a dire strait; death hung in the air; Burroughs then took us to another hero, and brought him to a dire strait, which death hanging in that air; then back to the first hero, who won free of the trap, and went on, only to reach a second dire strait; back we go to the second hero facing death.

Because each of these segments ends with a peak climax, switching to the other brings us back to something that was of vital interest to us. On the other hand Burroughs worked this strategy mechanically at times, and once we in the audience saw through it, it became more frustrating than exciting.

(Composed on keyboard Monday, April 14, 2008)