how we roll

Writing Excuses 21.15: Using Contrast for Maximum Effect 

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-15-using-contrast-for-maximum-effect

Key Points: Contrast! Light emotional beat, then dark. Or vice-versa. Dark night before the dawn? All is lost, then success. Or escape, then eldritch horrors. Foils! Bad, worse. Gradations! Clink-boom! Contrast makes the audience pay attention. Songs in a minor key. Juxtaposition. Ironic distance. Whiplash! Compress/expand. 

[Season 21, Episode 15]

[Howard] Locus magazine is one of the finest and most respected resources for readers, writers, editors, illustrators, and assorted aficionados of speculative fiction. Locus tells the stories of, and about, storytellers through author interviews, book reviews, curated reading lists, industry news, and more. The annual Locus Awards recognize and celebrate excellence across science fiction, fantasy, and horror, showcasing new and diverse voices in the speculative genres. Right now, Locus is holding their annual fundraising drive. I'm proud to support Locus, and I'd love for you to join me. Visit locusmag.com/igg26 to explore the awards available to this year's supporters. If you're looking for a long enough lever to move the world of speculative fiction, look no further. Locus is that lever. It's the rising tide that lifts all ships. It's the shining city on the hill. Visit locusmag.com/igg26 to help Locus keep the lights on and the future bright. locus mag.com/igg26.

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 21, Episode 15]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Using contrast for maximum effect.

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Mary Robinette] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[DongWon] And this week, we're continuing our conversation about moving through the middle of your book. And, one of the things we wanted to focus on, having talked about soggy middles, try-fail cycles, is ways in which you can use contrast to heighten the impact of certain scenes in your book. Right? And when we say that, we sort of mean contrast in a bunch of different ways. Sometimes that is putting a big light emotional beat next to or in advance of a dark beat, just to sort of give you a sense of loss when you get to the darker moment. Or even the other way around. Right? Having the dark night of the soul before your triumph and success. Right? The night is darkest before the dawn kind of thing. Right? And I think some of the examples that we're going to use will have a feeling of being a little cliched, but I think we're reaching for the ones that are very obvious in that way. And, in the back half of this, we want to talk a little bit about ways in which you can sort of make it feel a little bit more subtle, and a little more integrated, and not just the, like, yeah, the dark cave before the hero's success. So, when you're thinking about moments of contrast, what are some examples that you'd reach for, either in your own fiction or stuff that you see out in the world?

[Mary Robinette] So, this... For me, this came about because I was on a panel and one of the people on the panel said that there... That you always had to have a all is lost moment. And I always bristle a little bit about the... Anytime it's like you always have to.

[DongWon] Tools, not rules.

[Mary Robinette] Tools, not rules. Exactly. And so what I started thinking about was, like, yeah, the thing you have is the moment where it does look like they have lost everything, and I think it provides this big cathartic beat when you come out of it. There's a bigger contrast between the moment where, oh, no, I've lost everything, and, look, we succeeded. But, when you look at horror, you also get this beat of contrast where it's... It looks like, oh, they're going to get out, and then they get sucked back in and devoured by eldritch horrors. So I think that the contrast does this thing for you, and that you see it in a bunch of different ways, in this really big macro scale, but also a lot of other places. So, I also think about contrast like with foils, like a contrast for the main character.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, those are things I think about with contrast.

[Erin] Oh, let's say you have, like, contrast is like a foil, like a thing to show what the character is like. I was trying to think about how contrast is handled in long running formats, like wrestling and soaps. Where, like, there is no dark night of the soul, because, like, the show is on 300 days a week...

[laughter]

[Erin] And so, like, there might be one person's dark night of the soul, but, like, it will...

[DongWon] That's a really long week, by the way.

[Erin] [garbled] Eldritch horror has consumed my sense of time. But I think, like, that is a... Something like, I was like, well, how does that work? I was trying to think about it. But what they really do use is, like, the idea of, like, this not that. So...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] In wrestling, you have your heels, people who are just evil, and your faces, who are like the good people, and people do, like, a heel face turn or a face heel turn. But one of the ways that they do that, when they want to shift what a character is or how they're perceived is by, if you're a bad person, and then somebody worse shows up, then all of a sudden, ooh, you're not as bad as we thought.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And it makes it easier for you to turn face. And so, like, thinking about using contrast as a way to also reset audience expectations of what's happening on the canvas.

[DongWon] I love the idea of having... Contrast not just being opposites, but also, like, gradations. Right? You can have this guy that you thought was the worst villain, and then the real villain shows up, and you're like, oh, no, the bad guy was just a henchman. The bad guy is actually the nice one. What is truly evil is whatever is happening over there. Right?

[Mary Robinette] It's one of the things that makes us love people who are doing heists. They're criminals.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But they're not bad.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Like the way the person is whoever that they're heisting against.

[DongWon] Exactly. Exactly. Like, Danny Ocean is not a good guy, but Andy Garcia's character, like, that dude's evil.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You know what I mean? And so I think having that differentiation really matters.

[Mary Robinette] Something else that I was thinking about was... As a contrast moment was in Memory of... A Memory Called Empire...

[DongWon] A Memory Called Empire.

[Mary Robinette] Which we've talked about in a... At length a couple of seasons ago, but more recently, there's the scene at a restaurant. And it's... They're having a nice meal, and then there's an explosion. And this is a classic kind of setup where there's everything's really lovely, and then things go terribly wrong. And it's often so predictable. But one of the things I love about the way Arkady Martine handles that is that she makes it about something else. But, specifically, she makes it about something else that is also a contrast.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It is the difference between the way food is prepared in one place versus another place, and so you focus on that contrast in the scene, and you're enjoying the nice meal, and then there's this other... This other bigger contrast. So there's a lot of fun things you can play with.

[Erin] I also think contrast can be in a single moment.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Erin] All my examples are a little... Very me.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] There's a famous... And I'm going to get it wrong now, so, gee, [garbled Tran don't at me?] but there's a famous General Hospital moment called clink BOOM in which one pair of characters clink glasses after getting married, while another one dies in a car bomb explosion. But what's interesting is that you see both of the things coming. Like, neither one is a surprise. The wedding is being prepared, someone's creeping around, they do that camera angle where you can show that somebody's being followed, but what you don't expect, despite the fact that both these things are coming, is for them to come at the exact same time. So it makes something that you would have thought was, like, super not surprising all of a sudden surprising, because you have to deal with it in a contrast that you weren't used to.

[Mary Robinette] And I think that that's a really good example of why it works, because both of those feel earned, like, even though you see it coming. In Downton Abbey, when they get rid of Matthew, the... It's this big contrast moment. Lady May is having a baby, and then he is driving, and then there's just this random car crash, and he dies. And it's unearned. It doesn't... It comes completely out of nowhere. Which, like, is a thing that happens. But it exists only because there is a contrast... Contract dispute. And it just... It felt cliched, it felt like this is a thing I've seen, this is... There's no surprise, there's no interest, and also they're telegraphing it so much leading up to it, that... Like, if he'd been racing home and desperate to get there, then actually I would have been a little bit shocked if he had died in a car crash, because I was expecting the happy ending to be him arriving at home. And instead, he's tooling along, and he just doesn't know that she's in labor, and it's... Like, birds are singing, and he's enjoying a nice car ride, and I'm like, oh, this dude's dead.

[DongWon] Yeah. Well, and sometimes you can just use contrast to heighten moments that wouldn't be heightened without them. So... Just by defying the audience expectation.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Right? And this is a thing that's been used so much, it's becoming cliched. We can think of all the moments in action movies where everything, like, slows down, and they're getting, like, a moody pop song...

[Erin] Yes.

[DongWon] Over a scene of a bunch of people dying. Right? I think, like, this is a gamer reference, but, like the Gears of War commercial that used Mad World, like, played in this moody slowed down way while a guy is, like, chainsawing aliens in half. And you're like, all right, what are we doing? At the same time, it was like, this is cool as hell. I want to play this game. Because that felt novel and interesting at the time. But the contrast between the two actions gets your audience to pay attention in a way that they might not have otherwise. And can give the feeling of more weight and impact then it necessarily would have been if you just shown the thing in a more quote unquote normal way.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. That was the way it was used in the much older film, Good Morning Vietnam.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Which is one of the first times they see that...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Contrast between the music and the horrors of war. And that one is very generated by the story. It's like, this is music he's playing at the radio station...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] While these things are also happening.

[DongWon] Yeah. Yeah.

[Erin] The thing, and this will not help you right at all, sorry... But the thing that I love about those is that they're often the song in a minor key. And what's interesting about that is that is a contrast right there. Like, I will say, if you want to creep yourself out, listen to Don't Worry, Be Happy...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] In a minor key. Because it's so... The lyrics are so bright and the music just sounds so creepy on some primal level. And you start creating story... What I think is really interesting about listening to it is I'm like, I don't trust you that you're telling me to be happy, because the music is not matching. And so I'm actually going to create, in some ways, like, what could be going on here? What's happening with this character? And I think that sometimes contrast can also leave space in us for the reader, in between the two poles, like, something is... There's some, like, gap that needs to be bridged, and the reader can kind of step in to bridge that gap.

[Mary Robinette] I think you've hit on something that there is a distinction in kind of the ways we're using contrast. But what you're talking about right there is creating something that is unsettling because of the juxtaposition of two contrasting elements.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Whereas the other type, where it's like these are very happy moments followed by a terrible moment...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] There's a contrast there where you're trying to create more emotional distance for the character... For the reader to travel, so that you get a bigger cathartic snap. And they're both forms of contrast, but just for different effects.

[DongWon] Yeah. I think this hits on a really important point, and one I want to get into more after the break, but how is distance important for juxtaposition and contrast?

[Howard] For more than a decade, we've hosted Writing Excuses at sea, an annual workshop and retreat in a cruise ship. You're invited to our final cruise in 2026. It's a chance to learn, connect, and grow, all while sailing along the stunning Alaskan and Canadian coast. Join us, the hosts of Writing Excuses, and spend dedicated time leveling up your writing craft. Attend classes, join small group breakout sessions, learn from instructors one on one at office hours, and meet with all the writers from around the world. During the week-long retreat, we'll also dock at 3 Alaskan ports, Juneau, Sitka, and Skagway, as well as Victoria, British Columbia. Use this time to write on the ship or choose excursions that allow you to get up close and personal with glaciers, go whale watching, and learn more about the rich history of the region and more. Next year will be our grand finale after over 10 years of successful retreats at sea. Whether you're a long time alumni or a newcomer, we would love to see you on board. Early bird pricing is currently available, and we also offer scholarships. You can learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

[Mary Robinette] Writers know something a lot of people don't. The darkest, strangest spots can be some of the most personal ones on the page. We make space for them in our work all the time. But what happens when a dark or disturbing thought shows up and won't leave? Not as a story idea, but as something that just takes over. Something that feels completely out of character for you, but your brain keeps circling back to, no matter what you do to try to feel better. That experience is actually one of the hallmarks of OCD, and it's more common in creative communities than most people realize. OCD involves persistent, unwanted intrusive thoughts about anything that matters to you. Your identity, your relationships, your fears about who you are. Along with mental or physical behaviors you feel driven to do to get relief. The harder you try to push them away, the stronger they get. These thoughts can feel very real. Which is what makes them so upsetting. And because OCD is so widely misunderstood, many people live with it for years without knowing what it is. But it doesn't have to be that way. Because OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy. OCD needs ERP, or Exposure and Response Prevention, which has proven to be the most effective treatment. And that's where NOCD comes in. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatments, and it's covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. All of their licensed therapists specialize in ERP therapy and will help you learn to take the power away from intrusive thoughts in live, face-to-face virtual sessions. They also provide support between sessions when you need it most. So you're never facing OCD alone. If this sounds familiar, visit nocd.com to book a free call with their team. That's nocd.com.

[DongWon] In life, there's always going to be something you want to get better at. Whether that's a hobby or your writing craft or understanding better how to pursue your career goals. At Master Class, you can learn about writing from a luminary of the genre like N.K. Jemison, who is truly one of the most insightful and thoughtful crafters of imaginary worlds working today. And it fits into real life. There's audio mode, short lessons, and you can follow along on your phone or TV. You don't have to carve out hours, you just have to start. Master Class features the world's best instructors. Unlike other learning platforms, Master Class puts you in the room with the people who defined their field. Not just experts, but the best in the world. There are 200 plus classes across 13 categories, like business, writing, creativity, Wellness, and more. With plans starting at just $10 a month billed annually. It fits into any schedule. The audio mode turns a commute or workout into a classroom. You can download lessons for offline access, and learn on your terms. And it actually works. Three in four members feel inspired every time they watch. 83%, have applied something they've learned to their real lives. And lastly, there's no risk. Every new membership comes with a 30-day money back guarantee. Master Class keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/excuses. That's 15% off at masterclass.com/excuses. Head to masterclass.com/excuses to see the latest options.

[DongWon] If your anxiety, depression, or ADHD are more than a rough patch, you don't just need another medication. And Talkiatry makes it easy to see a psychiatrist online using your insurance in days. Talkiatry is a 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar, OCD, PTSD, insomnia, and more. Unlike therapy only apps, Talkiatry is psychiatry. That means you're seeing a medical provider who can diagnose simple health conditions and provide medication when it's appropriate. All of their 600 plus clinicians are in network with major insurers, so you can use your existing insurance instead of paying monthly prescriptions or out of network fees. You'll meet with an experienced, licensed psychiatrist who takes the time to understand what's going on, builds a personalized treatment plan, and can prescribe medication when it's right for you. Your care stays consistent, and evidence-based. Getting started with Talkiatry takes just a few minutes. Complete a short online assessment, get matched with clinicians who fit your needs, and schedule your first visit in days, not months. More than 300,000 patients have already found high quality psychiatric care through Talkiatry. Head to talkiatry.com/wx and complete the short assessment to get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes.

[DongWon] Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed contemplating distance...

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] In that little bit of a break that we had. And one thing that really strikes me, as we're talking about both these examples, as you were discussing right before the break, Mary Robinette, is in one way, we have ironic distance instead of, like, expectation setting. Right? when you have, like, the moody music over, or, like, a happy song in a minor key. That creates an ironic distance. That's something internal to the reader, and the reader's expectations, that's creating an emotional distance from the work in a lot of ways. To then have the emotional impact of them coming back into it. Versus the contrasting sort of things within the story of, like, a happy scene followed by a dark scene, or sometimes vice versa, that creates impact from shortening the distance between two different types of emotions. Right? So how do... How are you thinking about distance in these ways, and are they connected in terms of these two different modes?

[Mary Robinette] The way I think about it is using the... Using the... The first moment, say, to kind of set expectations, to place the reader in a specific spot, and then the second moment is kind of like a whiplash or a catapult situation. Where, in order to move from one state to another, you have to move through it fairly rapidly. And, like, the faster you go across a bigger distance, kind of the bigger impact snap it can have.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Sometimes that will backfire, because it didn't actually load it enough to get that snap. Like, everything that's surrounding it.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But that's kind of the thing that I'm thinking about. I will say sometimes do this by not necessarily having a happy moment before having a big tragic moment, but sometimes making you think, oh, we're dealing with this story problem, and, oh, no, it's actually this one. But there's a contrast between the kinds of things that the character is trying to solve. And the... I don't know. I don't know another way to describe it, other than whiplash. Which can be a negative. But in this case, I think it's a little bit more like a slingshot effect around a planet...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] As if we've done that, all of us.

[laughter]

[Erin] I have. No. So, here's a question. Do you think it matters whether it happens... To the characters but not the reader? So what I'm thinking, we talked about a few episodes ago, the thing that happens where the, like, spaceship is exploding, and then the story rewinds and says, like, 12 hours earlier...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] So at that point, you know that, like, every happy moment that's happening in the 12 hours leading up to this, is just the prelude to disaster. The characters don't. They're moving forward in real time. And I'm wondering, like, does that create... Is that the same effect, is that a different effect?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. I think it is the same effect. Like, there's a story that Justin C. Key wrote, a short story, in which you know that you are reading about someone who is dead by the end of the story. And it is... It's an examination of their life together and it's a form of mourning. And so you're seeing these memories, and there's this bittersweetness because you are existing in both states. And so... And I do think it is... It... I know that it wouldn't work without that contrast, without that awareness. Otherwise, it's like, oh, look, they're at a soccer game. That's cute. And so having that... Preloading that knowledge for the reader does provide that contrast for them as they're experiencing things.

[DongWon] The deep dive project we did last year, Charlie Jane Anders All The Birds In The Sky is all about contrasts. Right? A lot of times, what she's doing is either doing the Greek tragedy thing, of, like, this is going to end in disaster and we know that that's creating contrast in the overall narrative tension way, or directly contrasting two extremely different people by showing us their relationships and the conflicts they have around that. And that lets us see all the unreliability in each of their narrations. Right? We can see the ways in which... I believe her name is Patricia is being unreliable in reporting about her own relationships be... Through the contrast of how other people see that, how other people experience those relationships.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. As we were talking, I suddenly had a... Small revelation, which I always enjoy. It's why I like doing this podcast with you guys.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Um, there's a thing in puppetry we call compress/expand, in animation they call it towards and away. And the idea is that if I'm going to jump, I have to bend my knees first, so that's the compress, and then I expand. And so, one of the ways you can think about these contrasting moments is loading energy. And that is also, I think, why some of them don't work. Because it's so obviously not loading energy of any sort. This is the thing where you're at the beginning of the movie, and it's like, look at how happy this couple is... I'm so sad, she's going to die. Because there's nothing else happening in that scene. It's not doing anything. That scene itself is just existing. So it's not loading energy...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] In any sort of way. In terms of your expectations, in terms of tensions that you can have. And then when it releases, it's like, but I didn't... I'm set for that.

[Erin] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[DongWon] I mean, that loading comes from stakes. Right? And that emotional investment in how the character sees themselves, how the character feels about other characters. And if you're loading that up with the tension, then when you have that contrast, either through success or failure, that's where you get that big release of energy that makes for an exciting story moment.

[Erin] But how do you not make it feel like, oh, I'm about to have this moment of horrible thing, like, now I've just like lo... How do you earn that, like, the happy moment before the sad... Or the sad moment before the happy?

[DongWon] That is a bit like...

[Erin] In order to...

[DongWon] This is my last job...

[Erin] Yeah. Exactly.

[DongWon] And then I'm going to retire.

[Erin] But, like... I just got my place fixed out in the country. Yay.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I think by doing exactly what Arkady Martine did in A Memory Called Empire, which is that you make that scene about something else. So, you're faking the reader out. It's like the scene appears to be doing something. It is doing something, it is carrying energy for this story. It's doing all of this load-bearing thing, stuff about the differences in their world, about her feelings, about being in this space, about exploring this, her, like, horror that people just eat an entire piece of an animal, coming from a space station, that's just weird, and so it's doing all of these other things. And so, in a way, it's a form of misdirection. You make the reader think that's what this scene is about. And then they don't notice that you're setting them up for this other thing.

[DongWon] But it feels inevitable when that other thing happens.

[Mary Robinette] Yes.

[DongWon] Right? Because you've been lingering in this response and the tension is coming from all the micro contrasts of the scene that are leading into the bigger contrast.

[Mary Robinette] How do you do it?

[Erin] I don't.

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] You do.

[Erin] I don't... I don't know. To be honest, off the top of my head. I think... I don't think I use contrast as much, because I think I tend to... A lot of times, I like to center my stories in a mood. And so the mood will predominate, so even though there's differences in what is being experienced, it doesn't... The highs and lows are not quite as high or low.

[Mary Robinette] Well, I mean... I do... I shouldn't have sprung that on you like that, because I do think that you use contrast, but in short form, it shows up differently, I think.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] In short form, what we're often looking at is a contrast between the beginning state and the ending state, or the contrast in the middle between the way a character handles things at one point and the way they handle it in a second point. I'm thinking about the contrast... Some of the contrasts that are in Sour Milk Girls. Like, there's the difference in the way we are talking and interfacing with memory at the beginning versus where we moved to at the end. And the reader's understanding of what we are talking about shifts. For listeners who are just coming into this episode, you can go listen to our deep dive on Sour Milk Girls a couple of seasons ago. It will be correct in the show notes, but I don't remember.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] So I think that that in short fiction, because we aren't having to... We don't have as much room to work, that it is often a contrast between beginning and end. Sometimes we use contrast in terms of, like, what I sometimes call an avatar of success. Like, at the beginning, your socks are cold and wet, and at the end, look at how dry and warm they are.

[Erin] Thinking actually about the story that we actually just did recently, which is yours I believe...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] Which...

[Mary Robinette] Yes, we definitely...

[Erin] Possibly.

[Mary Robinette] Yes, time travel, yes, we have done that.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] The story, and, like, the contrast... Where I actually think... In thinking about the difference between the beginning state and the end state, and the difference in the way that, like, the character holds power at the beginning and at the end, what is interesting, because I think in some ways, I don't know that contrast is within the character so much as it is within our understanding of what the character's capable of.

[Mary Robinette] So, I'm going to point out that and say at the end of the story, I am using contrast very consciously because I had forgotten that I did this. So, but it's an example of how you can do it in a very tight space. There's a... The very last scene, she is having... She's prepared welcome snacks for her asshole cousin, and it looks like the tension is just, oh, he's here, I have to be hospitable to him because he's my asshole cousin. But really, it's setting you up for, look at how I've been exercising my power this entire time.

[DongWon] Exactly. And I'm going to introduce a little contrast into this episode by transitioning from us talking about the concept to you doing some homework. So what I'd like you to do is to look at a pivotal moment in your book, and add a beat, either before or after, that inverts some element of the original beat. You can switch the tone, the mood, introduce a character or a character that's a foil to your protagonist, or switch up the location in a way that allows you to highlight some interesting aspect of your first scene.

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.