Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to add a DEADLINE

One thing many books fail to include early on, and the reason they drag, is the lack of a DEADLINE.

The DEADLINE means: *Character* must *do something* before *a certain time/deadline* otherwise *something really bad will happen*.

If your story is dragging (this especially ails the middles of books, but also it can occur at any point), try filling this out. Can you do it? If not, it might be time to consider adding in some kind of deadline.

Doctor Who does this all the time, probably in every episode. Rose is playing a game show where, if she loses, she gets disintegrated. The Doctor has to reach her before the end of the game. Tension increases with each wrong answer Rose gives and the closer they get to the end.

The Angel is materializing out of the TV with Amy stuck in the room. The Doctor has to get the door open before the angel kills her. It gets closer and closer, and its face gets more vicious and bloodthirsty.

Their spaceship is hurtling toward the sun. They have 40 minutes before they burn to their deaths, and they have to work their way across the ship to the engine room while some alien-possessed killers are out to get them.

Let's look at examples from other sources for the nonWhovians:

D'artagnan must race to England and retrieve the Queen's diamond studs (which she'd given to her lover, but now the King wants her to wear them at the ball. whoops.) before the King finds out.

Neo must escape the Matrix before the Agents find him and kill him. When Morpheus gets kidnapped by the Agents, Neo must race to free him before they steal Morpheus's vital secrets.


Keep in mind, a story doesn't need to have a deadline to be gripping and page-turning. But if you want a little extra excitement, adding some kind of deadline can transform a story. And it should be a meaningful deadline with huge risks, a huge payoff, and a huge consequence if the character(s) doesn't make it in time.

The consequence is vital: it should be of some personal stake to the protagonist. They can't just need to save the world by sunday because the evil guy is about to take over. Maybe the evil guy has some important personal item, and the protagonist needs to stop him to get it back. Maybe the evil person kidnapped someone important to them and is torturing that person or about to kill them.

A personal stake could be something a little more subtle such as in Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang needs to stop the firelord from taking over the world, and there's this coment coming at the summer soltice that would make the Fire Lord unbeatable. Aang has to stop him before then. The personal stake tells us why AANG is the one who has to do it? Why not someone else? It's because he's the Avatar, and everyone expects him to. So he goes on a long journey to do it in order to live up to everyone's expectations. Right before the big battle, we see this really weighing down on him because he can't sleep or eat, and he's a nervous wreck. It's not just about saving the world. It's about living up to his Avatar name, to the expectations of the people he loves and trusts and to save his friends, and that is a very personal struggle for him that heightens the stakes, risks, and consequences of the DEADLINE.

In Doctor Who, when the spaceship is hurtling toward the sun, the Doctor's personal stakes are 1. his own life, and more importantly, 2. his companion's life. Martha (the companion), phoned home to her mother to say goodbye, sure she was about to die. Things got extremely personal there. And the Doctor knew it was his fault that she was on this ship in the first place. He brought her here, and she trusted him with her life, so his guilt and internal struggle here was huge.

Let's look at a counter example: Brandon Sanderson's The Rithmatist. The story and concept itself is brilliant (Harry Potter meets Fullmetal Alchemist)! but the first 100 pages, while interesting, lacked that heart-pounding intrigue that a deadline would've brought. The basic premise is that there's this magic system called Rithmatics, and Rithmatists draw chalk glyphs that come to life and they battle each other. The protagonist, Joel, isn't a Rithmatist, but he's INFATUATED with Rithmatics and is extremely bummed that he isn't a Rithmatist. The first 100 pages introduce him and this boarding school he goes to, and he's always sneaking into the Rithmatist classes. He tries to get one of the Rithmatic professors to tutor him in Rithmatics (he ultimately wants to become a Rithmatics scholar).

And that's about it. There's subtle conflict with Joel being unable to do Rithmatics himself yet he wants to be one really badly, so he's trying to wiggle himself into the Rithmatics world anyway he can. But those aren't very high stakes. There's no huge deadline to anything he does, which makes the story seem a bit quiet and tame, kind of ambling along. Had a deadline been set, it would've greatly heighted the action and intrigue of the story. (Then again, this isn't an action novel and I'm more privy to high action, so take this opinion with a grain of salt.) About 100 pages in, he gets involved in a kidnapping case--two of the Rithmatic students had been kidnapped. There could've been a deadline for him finding the kidnapped students that linked back to his own situation. (a poor example would be that if he finds the kidnapped students, he'll be allowed to pursue studies in Rithmatics. I don't think that works in-story, but we'll use it for our discussive purposes on deadlines.)

Another thing to consider with deadlines is the closer we get to the deadline, the more the tension inflates, which is important to keep your readers on the edge of their seats and turning more pages.

So in short, a DEADLINE can add more excitement and on-the-edge-of-your-seat moments to a story. They're not necessary to have an exciting story, but play around with the idea of one if your story is dragging. The higher and more personal the stakes are with meeting the deadline, the more interesting it'll be.