Compare and Contrast

That phrase - compare and contrast - underpinned just about every A-level essay I ever wrote, it became a default way of thinking when I was a student, but in the real, grown-up world of writing fiction it's something that is easy to forget.

I recently finished watching The Bridge on BBC Four.  I was so tense at the end of episode nine I had to lie down in a darkened room to recover.  As television thrillers go, it was lean, monochrome and beautifully nuanced.  The writing was restrained and the performances were taut, with none of the over-emoting that sometimes passes for good acting, or indeed for any kind of acting.

I've thought about it a great deal since.  Set on the Oresund suspension bridge that links Copenhagen and Malmo, the series was coproduced by Swedish and Danish television. but it wasn't just the high production values, the script, or the stars which made it so compelling, it was the use of contrast.

The programme was predicated on a clash of two different cultures, two different languages, two different ways of doing things. The two protagonists, Sofia Helin as Saga and Kim Bodnia as Martin, were male and female - she is on the autistic spectrum and he is a shambolic womaniser.  All of this means that at every stage and every level of the story, there are sharp juxtapositions, which lead to all kinds of conflict, both internal and external, and as Aristotle observed, conflict is at the heart of drama.

I'm mulling this over in the hope that, when  you are planning new work or revising old, you will pay close attention to how you use contrast. It won't just make your story more dramatic, it will give it definition, too.

Not quite the elegant Oresund, but it is a bridge, and the best that I could find...