Timing Attacks and You

                                

                It sometimes surprises me, when I’m trying to think of a good way to explain something , how often Starcraft  comes to mind.  Starcraft for those of you that aren’t familiar with it is a strategy game that pits three different races each with its own strengths and weaknesses against each other in a Scifi setting.  It’s been described as a game that requires the mental focus of a chess master and the manual dexterity of a concert pianist. The very best players are capable of performing between five and six distinct, premeditated actions per second, sometimes keeping that pace up for over an hour.  This impressive feat is made possible by an intimate familiarity with every unit in the game, every structure, every map and a running mental clock that is keeping track of when it is mathematically possible for something to happen.  One common strategy that these expert players will employ is called a “timing attack”. I would describe it as seizing a window of opportunity, based on your race and the buildings and upgrades you have researched, where the advantage in battle has swung in your favor.  These players have it down to a science, having their army arrive at the front of the opponent’s base precisely as their advantage comes into play, thus maximizing the time of advantage before the enemy can counter it. In other words, their units are what they need to be, where they need to be, when they need to be it. In this way Starcraft is like a well written character arc.

                There are a lot of tools you are going to want to develop as a writer, but a well honed sense of timing is going to be crucial to take your writing to the next level.  For instance, there is the timing built into dialogue for effect.

 Sally:  “Yes! Oh! OH god! Yes! Yes! YES!!!” 

 (pause one beat for effect)

 Older lady at next table to waiter:  “I’ll have what she’s having.”

                Another type of timing is built into scenes to create drama or comedy, such as an interruption that occurs just as the hero of the romantic comedy is just about to tell the heroine how he really feels about her, then the moment is lost and she stays with the jerk boyfriend till the third act, or the Scene in American Pie when Jim’s dad walks in just as Jim is finding out if third base is really like warm apple pie.

                The most important timing for a well constructed story though will require you to keep track of the big picture the same way a Starcraft professional is keeping track of how much money he has, how many bases his enemy has,   what types of units the enemy can be building at 10:45 into the game and how long he has left on the cloaking upgrade, all while moving his tanks two spaces to the left so they can cover a bottleneck better.  When writing your story, you have to know where each of your important characters is going. How long it will take them to get there and what needs to happen before they do.  Luke Skywalker fighting Darth Vader in Star Wars just dies. He’s not ready. Luke fighting Darth Vader in Empire has to run for his life. Still not ready. It’s only after he’s been tempered by everything that happened throughout all three movies, the training, and the battles that he can meet Vader on equal terms at the end of Return of the Jedi. Imagine if Lucas had gotten so  caught up in the Han Solo/Leia storyline that he forgot Luke until about 40 minutes before the end of Return of the Jedi? Now he has to cram in a scene before Endor where Luke somehow massively powers up. he has to obviously and clumsily alter the flow of the story so that we can believe Luke can hold his own against Vader.

 Keeping a sense of where your character is in the big picture will allow you to make adjustments to his development without disrupting his character arc and costing you momentum.   Without this awareness, you often find your characters out of position and with little time or space to get him back on track the change is jarring and obvious.  You should strive to make your direction changes fluid and seamless like a flawlessly executed aikido throw, not like a freshman in drivers  ed attempting a three point turn. In this way your character arrives at the climax of the story in the best position possible.