Entertainment Weekly described BLACK OUT-- "[A] hurricane of a thriller...impossible to extract yourself until the last page.”
Let’s dig into some examples from BLACK OUT that make Lisa Unger’s writing as powerful as a hurricane.
EXAMPLE, Page 118:
My mother liked to drink. It was a mad dog she kept on a chain. When it got loose, it chewed through our lives.
Analysis: Lisa Unger played off the cliché: acted like a mad dog. She empowered that cliché with twists, amplification, turning it into a stimulus and showing the response, and backloading. Twenty-four words. None wasted. Every word drives the reader toward the next word. Every word drives the reader deeper into the scene terror.
EXAMPLE, Page 213:
I see a flash of something on her face that I’ve never seen before. It happens when our eyes connect through the thick glass of her front door. It’s just the ghost of an expression, and in another state of mind I might not even have noticed it. It’s fear. Vivian is the strongest woman I’ve ever known, and when I see the look on her face, my heart goes cold.
Analysis: If you’ve taken my Empowering Characters’ Emotions course (or reviewed the Lecture Packets), you know FLICKER-FACE EMOTION. Because this flash of fear on Vivian’s face is critical, Lisa Unger wanted the reader to pay attention to this news of a difference.
How did Lisa Unger get the reader’s attention? She did not use a stronger descriptive word. She did not have the POV character react outwardly with a typical line, “What’s wrong?” She did not just label the look, fear, and move on.
She empowered that look by giving it more words, by amplifying it, by indicating it was so brief (the ghost of an expression) that she almost missed it, by labeling it fear, by telling the reader that Vivian is strong (implying rarely fearful), by using cadence, by backloading, by using the look as a stimulus and showing (not telling) the POV character’s reaction, by writing a VISCERAL RESPONSE.
Margie-grads know visceral responses set the emotional hook for the reader and contribute to making the book a page turner.
EXAMPLE, P. 236:
“Watch yourself.” His voice was tight with menace. There was a trail of brutally murdered women behind us, his tone said to me, and I could easily be next.
Analysis: Lisa Unger used a one-two punch. The dialogue cues in the first sentence inform the reader how the dialogue was delivered. The dialogue cue in the second sentence provides the reader with an interpretation of the subtext. It ups the stakes, ups the tension, and ups the fear factor.
Without the second dialogue cue, it’s just a tight, menacing voice.
With the second dialogue cue, the reader gets the conscious impact of the subtext and the subconscious impact of power words: brutally and murdered.
EXAMPLE, P. 293
I notice how still he is. There was so much anxiety and adrenaline living inside me that I couldn’t keep myself from fidgeting, shifting my weight from foot to foot, padding a few steps away, then back toward him. But he is fixed and solid. He keeps his hands in his pockets, his eyes locked on some spot off in the distance. All there is to him is his raspy voice and the story he tells.
Analysis: Lisa Unger spotlights the contrast between how the POV character displays her tension—and how the non-POV character keeps his cool. Note the use of specificity. Note the number of Emotional Hits. Note the power of cadence.
Specificity: shifting weight, padding/steps away and back, hands in pockets, eyes/spot in distance, raspy voice
Emotional Hits: TELLING and SHOWING = 11 Emotional Hits
Telling: anxiety, adrenaline, fidgeting, fixed, solid
Showing: shifting weight, padding/steps away, back, hands in pockets, eyes/spot in distance, raspy voice
Cadence: Read the passage from page 293 out loud. You’ll notice variability in sentence length, agreeable phraseology, and a last sentence that is pleasing to your Cadence Ear.
All there is to him is his raspy voice and the story he tells.
What if Lisa Unger had written the last sentence like this?
All there is to him is his raspy voice and his story.
AACK! Hear it? The cadence is off.
Read her line again:
All there is to him is his raspy voice and the story he tells.
Ah – My Cadence Ear is happy. ;-))
Lisa Unger’s writing is as elegant and enticing as it is electrifying. The Associated Press described BLACK OUT as, “A largely gripping narrative and evocative, muscular prose… Unger…create[s] the perfect razor's edge of tension.”
If you want to make your writing grip the reader with your muscular prose, read Lisa Unger’s literary thrillers and analyze her writing. Her stories and her writing craft will thrill you.
