The Buffy the Vampire Slayer series is famous for its cliffhangers. Charles Dickens invented this literary device, which ends a narrative sequence, such as a chapter in a novel or an episode in a television series, on a note of heart-pounding suspense that virtually guarantees that the reader will read the next installment or that the viewer will tune in again next week to watch the next episode and see how everything turns out. Constant cliffhangers keep readers reading and viewers viewing.
The first season of Buffy ended with the death of the protagonist as The Master, an ancient vampire with hypnotic powers, bit into Buffy’s neck before letting her unconscious body fall into a pond, where she drowned. Was this the end for Buffy? Would The Master gain control of the world, ruling the earth as he’d planned? What would become of the slayer’s friends? If Buffy was to return, how would such a wonder be effected? With an ending like this, viewers were bound to tune in again when the second semester began, several months later--and tune in, they did.
In “What’s My Line, Part I” (episode 21, season 2), a trio of assassins, “some” of which “are human, some. . . not,” are hired by Spike to kill Buffy so that the slayer won’t be able to interfere with Spike’s and Drusilla’s plan to kill Buffy’s vampire boyfriend Angel to restore Drusilla to full strength. Aware that “a very dark power is about to rise in Sunnydale,” Mr. Buto, the Watcher of a second slayer, Kendra, dispatches her to Sunnydale to assist Buffy in thwarting the threatening catastrophe. Buffy is awakened by Kendra, who attacks her as she lies asleep, in Angel’s bed, informing Buffy that she is “Kendra, the Vampire Slayer.” Since the series, several times previously, has made it clear that there is only one slayer in the world at the same time, viewers want to know all they can learn about this young woman who tries to pass herself off as a slayer. Kendra’s appearance and the fight between her and Buffy that ensues is a cliffhanger extraordinaire.
“What's My Line, Part II” (episode 22, season 2) also ends with a powerful cliffhanger. After the audience gets to know Kendra and to care about her, she’s killed by Drusilla who, after hypnotizing her, as The Master had hypnotized Buffy, slits her throat. Informed by Angel, with whom Buffy is fighting, that he has lured Buffy away from her friends as a ruse, Buffy dashes back to the Sunnydale High School library, where she has left her friends, to discover that Xander Harris is unconscious and that her fellow slayer has been killed. As she kneels beside Kendra’s corpse, holding her hand, the sound of a gun being cocked is heard as a voice yells, “Freeze!” Buffy jerks her head around, and the words “To be continued” appear on the screen. Is Kendra really dead? Will she be brought back to life somehow, as Buffy was when she died? Who’s holding a gun on Buffy, and what does he or she want? Will Buffy be able to avenge Kendra’s death? Can she stop Angel and the other vampires? Will Xander be all right? What about Willow, who was knocked out by a bookcase's having fallen on top of her? Cordelia Chase fled for her life. Did she escape? These unanswered questions have but one meaning: to find out what happens next, viewers will have to tune in again, next week.
In “Becoming, Part I” (epidie 33, season 2), Angel seeks to awaken the demon Acathla, whom a virtuous knight has turned into stone by plunging an enchanted sword into his heart. He has invoked the ritual that is supposed to awaken the demon, but it didn’t work. To find out why, he dispatched Drusilla and other vampires to abduct Buffy’s watcher, Rupert Giles. After a fight in which Xander and Willow Rosenberg were injured, Kendra was killed, and Giles was knocked unconscious, the watcher is brought to Angel, who tortures him in an effort to learn the secret of awakening Acathla. Assuming the form of Jenny Calendar, the teacher with whom Giles was in love before Angel killed her, Drusilla persuades Giles to tell her how Angel can awaken the demon. In a confrontation with Buffy, as Willow tries to reverse the spell that removed the curse that had restored Angel’s soul, Angel is stabbed with a sword and sent to hell after Willow succeeds in restoring his soul, because he has already opened a vortex that can be closed only the same way that it was opened--with Angel’s blood--and, if it is not closed, it will suck the world into hell. Horrified, Buffy looks on as her lover, his soul restored, is sucked into hell, where he will spend eternity, suffering unimaginable misery. This event changes everything for her, and the episode ends with Buffy aboard a bus, leaving her hometown. Where will she go, and what will she do? Has she given up her duties as the slayer? What will become of Sunnydale, her mother, and her friends without her? Can anything restore her spiritual health? This episode, like many others in not only this season of the series, but also in many episodes of every other season of the series, ends with a tantalizing cliffhanger.
Season 2 of the series teaches many other lessons about how to write an engrossing (and, sometimes, a gross) horror story (albeit one with comedic moments to leaven the terror), but, in this post, we’ve chosen to focus on the cliffhanger, a powerful narrative technique invented by one of the world’s greatest writers, Charles Dickens, as a means of keeping his readers coming back for more. The technique worked for Dickens. It worked for Joss Whedon. It has worked for countless other writers, and it will work for you. It’s especially effective when a writer employs it with the deliberation that Edgar Allan Poe developed his short stories, plotting backward from the end of the tale, as he explains in “The Philosophy of Composition,” which we will examine in a future post.
In “The Witch” (episode 3 of season 1), Buffy defeats a witch who has used a magic spell to swap bodies with her daughter so that she, the mother, can relive her glory days as a former cheerleader in a more-than-merely-vicarious way. When the witch seeks, literally, to cast a spell at Buffy, the slayer uses a mirror to deflect the witch’s hex, and, as a result, the witch ends up trapped inside the miniature figure of a cheerleader inside the school’s hallway trophy case, the only part of her that can now move being her eyes. In a later episode, Oz notices that there seems to be something odd about the cheerleading trophy--”its eyes seem to follow you”--but no more is made of the witch’s odd prison. The trophy could be the basis for another plot, though. The witch could escape. Maybe the trophy topples from its shelf when custodians move the case and it breaks, releasing the imprisoned witch. Alternatively, the trophies could be shipped to a new location (for example, a new high school is built after Buffy and her friends blow up the old school) and, in the process, is stolen by someone who uses it Ali Baba fashion, as a genie’s lamp, releasing the witch--or, as before, it could simply get broken in transit, becoming a threat to new characters in a different time and place. Possibly the daughter, missing her mother, despite her abusive ways, steals the trophy and takes it home, using magic to release her.
Based upon this plot seed, several storylines could be developed. Again, were one to take up this leftover plot, he or she would have to change it substantially. For example, the origin of the trophy would have to be different, since, otherwise, the plot that ensues would be a rip-off of “The Witch” episode’s plot. Therefore, one would have to come up with another reason for the trophy’s being inhabited, as it were, by a human soul, whether the soul is to remain that of a witch or to become that of another character. Inspiration’s wanted, not plagiarism or copyright infringement. Maybe the cheerleader was just a cheerleader, but she put so much of herself into her practice and performance that, upon winning a cheerleading contest, she really and truly (and permanently) bonded with the token of her success, becoming the trophy. Absurd? Perhaps, but believable within the parameters that you would establish at the outset of your story, given people’s willingness to suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoying a fantastic tale. For example, in a world of witchcraft and magic, anything’s possible as long as the incidents make sense dramatically and emotionally. In fantastic fiction, which obviously includes horror and, often, science fiction, the cause-effect relationships among the incidents of the story’s action are motivational, dramatic, and emotional, not necessary physical (in the scientific sense of the word) or natural.
“Teacher’s Pet” (episode 4, season 1) also ends on an unresolved note that could be the basis of a plot for another story. In this episode, Xander, attracted to the beautiful teacher, Miss French, who substitutes for his regular biology instructor, goes to her house, ostensibly to help her create a model of prating mantis egg sacks for the upcoming science fair. Soon after he arrives, however, Xander finds out that Miss French is herself a preying mantis in human guise, and she (or it) has lured Xander--and another boy, Blayne--to her lair to mate with her, after which she, good praying mantis that she is, would devour them alive. Buffy rescues the dudes in distress and all ends on a positive note--until the camera shows the audience the storage closet in the biology classroom, in which a praying mantis egg sack waits to hatch. Silly? Of course, but, again, in fantastic fiction, which obviously includes horror and, often, science fiction, pretty much anything is possible, since the cause-effect relationships among the incidents of the story’s action are motivational, dramatic, and emotional, not necessary physical (in the scientific sense of the word) or natural.
The leftover plot--the egg sack--provides the opportunity for a sequel, but the series ignored this possibility, except to pose it as something of a teaser. The egg, like the seed, is a natural point of origin that can be used to introduce a monster. Presumably, some monsters at least, are born (or hatched), just like people--well, maybe not just like people--and, if a seed can produce a natural plant, why shouldn’t a deformed, radiated, or extraterrestrial seed produce an unnatural or otherworldly plant? In fact, another Buffy episode, “Bad Eggs” (episode 24, season 2), uses this same motif as eggs that Buffy, Xander, Willow, and the other members of their health class are given as surrogate babies upon which to practice future parental responsibilities hatch into monsters, attacking, possessing, and threatening students and townspeople alike.
Likewise, natural forces--volcanoes, earthquakes, icebergs, shifting tectonic plates--effect change; if they do so in nature, they can do so in fiction as well, although, in fantastic fiction, the changes thus effected may not be those that normally would result from the same causes. The leftover egg can become the springboard to new plot that uses an egg, a seed, an earthquake, a melting glacier, a volcanic eruption, an earthbound meteor, or anything else that can change the natural order or create something new and, of course, in horror fiction, something hideous and horrible. A story idea, including those that derive from the manipulation of leftover plots or plot-seeds, can be developed in as many ways as one has the capacity to imagine.
In “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date,” Buffy accepts a date from Owen, a boy in love with what he believes, based on his reading of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, is the romance of death. When he follows her to a funeral home, where she must go to dispatch vampires and save her mentor, the Watcher Rupert Giles, Owen thinks he’s found his soul mate. Buffy breaks up with him, not wanting to endanger him, and that’s the end of their relationship. But what if it weren’t? What if Owen refused to take no for an answer? What is he continued to follow Buffy around and to get in her way, posing a danger to himself, to Buffy, and to others? Here is a potential plot for one or more stories--the pesky devotee whose naiveté, incompetence, or foolishness causes dangerous situations and potentially lethal consequences. Such a character need not associate with a vampire slayer and her friends. He or she could hang out with any character or characters who routinely perform dangerous tasks. The use of such a character, therefore, can (and should be) original.
Xander and some school bullies are transformed into a pack of hyenas when they visit the local zoo. At the end of the episode (“The Pack,” episode 6, season 1), Buffy again saves the day, and Xander and the other students revert to themselves. The zookeeper, who is behind the enchantment, is killed when Xander, to save Willow, tosses him to the hyenas. However, the mystic circle inside of which the students had stepped, triggering their transformations, remains. Could it be used as a catalyst in a future story, to bring about the same or a similar transformation? The circle is an artifact--a physical object that introduces change. There are many others--rings, amulets, charms, potions, garments, even spaceships. As such, it makes an excellent inciting moment. (An inciting moment is the incident near the outset of the story’s action that sets everything that follows in motion--the narrative spark, so to speak, that ignites the rest of the story’s action. It is the one moment in the action of the story without which there would be no story. If Xander and the other students hadn‘t stepped inside the mystic circle, they wouldn‘t have been transformed; if Dorothy Gale hadn‘t run away from home, she wouldn‘t have been caught in the tornado that carried her off to Oz; if Huckleberry Finn’s father, Pap, hadn’t returned to take custody of his son, Huck would never have run away from his foster home.) The mystic circle reminds us that virtually any physical object can be an inciting moment or a catalyst for change and that it can be used again and again to accomplish the same purpose (although too much repetition of the device will become boring).
What have we learned, so far, from considering “leftover plots” or plot-seeds or springboards or whatever we choose to call narrative motifs that suggest additional storylines?
Ideas cannot be copyrighted, so they are fair game as inspirations for plots.
The specific and unique ways in which ideas are developed can, and often are, copyrighted. Using the characters, settings, and other elements of such treatments could constitute plagiarism and/or copyright infringement.
Ideas must be given an original treatment in which characters, settings, and other elements are new, not derivative.
Posts
