the Art of the Slow Burn

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Time is a most precious commodity. Few things ruffle my feathers more than the wasted time on a piece of poorly executed slow burn fiction. Sadly, in movieland these days, so many folks want to be “artsy” and “different,” and save a production buck, there’s much of it floating around.

In comics, slow burn fiction is a maximum difficulty challenge. Talk more about that later.

So, before we get into it, let’s do what we do, and first define “Slow Burn” fiction, so we know what we’re talking about.

Technically, the idiom “slow burn,” comes from a slow rise to anger… While this may or may not be the origin of its application to fiction, a better metaphor in my mind, is the “black powder fuse.”

You know, the long stringy things they used to strike a match on in an old west gold mine, before running out of the mine as the fuse slowly burned away, finally blowing open a new vein of ore.

The idea here, is that “slow burn” of the fuse leads to an epic and decisive explosion.

Without the explosive conclusion, a burning fuse has no purpose. It’s a dud… useless. There’s probably a joke somewhere in there about watching fuses not attached to anything, burn.

Now, let’s unpack Slow Burn a little further, by calling on our long-trusted friend…

“HEY, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!!! OBVIOUS!!! OBVIOUS!!!!” <– That was an echo.

“Hey kids, thanks for calling. I’m always glad to help writers, figure out the impossible. And today, I can see that you need to realize, the “slow burn” narrative, is… SLOW! Until next time!” Swoooossshhh!

Right, by its very nature the Slow Burn executes at a slow pace.

Put that all together and we have a slow paced piece of fiction that leads to a tremendous third act, or at least climax.

A lot of writer folk make the misinterpretation that a slow burn narrative is defined by a slow development of plot.  Ehhhhhhh. Well technically, yes, because when the pace of the whole narrative arrives slowly, it’s pretty hard to have a fast development of plot… BUT, at the same time, NO, because simply slowing down the development of plot, doesn’t deliver a slow burn narrative. Simply slowing down the plot delivers a dragging, potentially boring and shitty narrative.

Good time to take note, that a SLOW piece of fiction that doesn’t lead to a particularly, “explosive,” third act…

Is just… a slow fuckin’ story.

There are plenty of dramas out there, good and bad, that just move slow.

They ARE NOT slow burn pieces of fiction. They’re just writers and creators who like a slower pace of things. They’re probably from the South.

On a side note, if you do write up a slow burn fiction piece and purposely dodge the explosive ending, you’ve either accidentally delivered a normal slow narrative, or jumped feet-first into the avant-garde, artsy fartsy territory I mentioned earlier. If commercial success you seek’eth…

Danger Will Robinson, danger! 

So, if you don’t have access to this site, or just don’t feel like reading the whole article, here it is in a nutshell boys and girls…

The slow burn story develops the best, fuckin’ fantastic ending you ever imagined. Then teases the reader of this fact for the first two acts on the way to get there.

Like much of writing, the concept is awful simple. The execution, mehhhh not so much.

Genres that love a Sexy, Slow Burn

Before we proceed, let’s quickly recognize which genres are particularly suited for a slow burn style narrative…

And that is to say, all of them… except…

Action

Confession of an Economic Hitman, YOU CAN actually deliver a slow burn action piece, it’s just since Action fiction is literally the antithesis of slow, it’s a lot trickier to pull off. AND, the action audience generally doesn’t vibe well on sitting through two acts of anything slow.

Ok, I lied. Sort of. There’s a second genre, that isn’t really best suited for slow burn, although it’s not really a genre anyway, I’m talking about,

Ensemble Cast Pieces

While the content, concept, and plot of an ensemble cast piece may be suited for a slow burn delivery, multiple protagonists and main characters by their nature, slow up a narrative. Trying to deliver an ensemble cast slow burn, is setting yourself up to work within the mother of all quagmires.

If you’re working on either of those two and determined to do a slow burn, allocate extra time to develop your structure… or maybe just go easy on yourself and switch to horror.  😉

A’ight… time to break it down, boys.

LEROY JENKINS!

Big Badda Boom – The Ending

Everything in the slowburn relies on the ending… so let’s cover that first.

I’m not gonna touch on the “avant-garde” quiet ending piece in this article. That approach is just too abstract, living in the lawless land of Salvador Dalí’s imagination.

Ok, so where was I…

Slow burn fiction IS NOT the place for subtle, quiet, or soft endings. By their very nature, these types of endings in slow burn narratives will always come across as anti-climatic.

Slow burn narratives require hard endings. Intense endings. 

Even if the rest of the story was on point, a weak ending will ruin the narrative, and unique to slow burn, vice versa holds true; a pretty shitty story for the first two acts will be forgiven, if the third act/ending pays off in a big way.

In order to nail the explosive third act or ending every time, you need to keep two critical concepts in mind.

First, of course, is hitting the ending in an ultimately satisfying manner. Your ending has to be a winner. If you don’t have a particularly strong ending, it’ll be nigh impossible to develop an effective slow burn narrative.

I won’t get into all those details of developing a climax here, you should already know what makes for a winning ending, and I’ve probably covered endings in another article.

In short, the key to a solid ending is tying up the loose ends, delivering on the biggest, fastest, most powerful punch of the story, focusing on you narrative’s core promises (more on this promises bit later) and genre conventions.

Keep in mind a hard, intense ending works in any genre. The tools may change, scares in horror, brawls in action, emotional breakthroughs in drama, but the nature of the ending doesn’t.

Last mention of the ending before we move on, if you really want to hot load the gunpowder of your ending for maximum power, nothing works better than a twist ending. Of all fiction, slow burn fiction is perhaps most suited for the completely unexpected ending that turns everything upside down.

The second critical ending element, is timing.

That is to say, satisfying endings in slow burn CAN NOT BE SHORT. As pay off to the reader for sitting through all the slow stuff, you’ve got to give them “a significant portion,” of the fast stuff at the end.

Like a fireworks show, or a symphony session, when it comes to the grand finale, BIGGER (and LONGER as it were) is BETTER.

Balance the Scales

This isn’t a defacto rule, but it works.

Add up all the key, climatic moments from your major plot points in the first two acts. These are moments you hit on the promises of the ending in a big way.

Make sure your ending is at least as long as ALL these moments combined.

In screenplay land, if you tally up 8 pages, of key climatic moments in the first two acts, you’re looking at least an eight minute third act climax.

If you have 20 minutes of key boxing fisticuffs throughout the first two acts of your slow burn boxing story (is that even a thing?), then deliver a 2 minute boxing brawl for your finale, the scale is way out of balance. Strictly on a technical level, the ending delivers less than the beginning and middle. Even if that final 2 minutes is executed to perfection, the narrative will still FEEL off and ultimately, unsatisfying. 

Don’t make the mistake of thinking, “of course there’s more, in the first two acts, duh!” Yes, there’s more content, but that’s not what we’re talking about here… we’re talking about the gravy… the sugar… you don’t want more of that sweet sweet secret sauce in the beginning than the end.

This is the same concept of general narrative escalation.

In a normal narrative, if you put the biggest most explosive moment, early, then the ending will always feel and fall flat, and in most cases come across anti-climatic. In normal narratives, the length of the final narrative escalation isn’t as important as its “impact,” a normal fiction narrative doesn’t rely on the timing of the climax to compensate for any of the material before it…

but here, in slow burn fiction, the exact opposite is true, the actual length plays a much more critical role. The slow burn ending, must in fact compensate for the material of the previous 2 acts. Where the first two acts gave only bits and pieces, or slow, small glimpses, the only path of change for the ending, is in fact, a longer, faster moving showcase.

Don’t soften the Pace  

While you have the flexibility to structure your third act with all the tools in your writer toolkit, the most effective slow burn endings keep a fast pace.

Perhaps, the best climaxes of slow burn fiction arrive at a frantic pace. Drop the floor out from beneath your readers and put them in free-fall, scrambling to find that emergency pull cord. Avoid, establishing a frantic pace, only to slow it down for some emotional dramatic play, or exposition dumping.

Let’s make a parting clarification on this point, that a frantic pace, doesn’t necessarily mean John Woo action—it can—but it doesn’t have to.

In fact, let’s use this as a segue into Pacing…

Pacing 101

I’ve talked a bunch about some deeper considerations of pacing in efforts to design the narrative rollercoaster effect: emotional change, change in the protag’s plan and approach, etc.

There is no pacing without change.

But as a refresher, let’s look at pacing at face value.

Arguably, any narrative element can be used to affect the pace of fiction… but the major ones are action, intensity, movement, and timing (most notably, the rate of change).

A frantic pace means hurried, excited, and chaotic way.

Showcasing one element, without change, is the opposite of a frantic pace.

// We're only 25% through the art of the slow burn. We're gonna cover pacing, delayed rising action and steady rising action, how to shape your first 2 acts through suppressed promises, showcased promises, the dangers of promising plot, dominant All is Lost, two key types of reactive protagonists, avoiding the explosive opening, and more! If you're working on a slow burn story you absolutely want to sizzle, sign up to get the rest of the article. //