7 Writing Tips to Use From the Writers of Stranger Things!

Writing Tips that you MUST Use From the Writers of Stranger Things!

If you love writing and Stranger Things then you will love reading this post.

No Spoilers! Don’t worry, but by now you’ve DEFINITELY binged the entire thing 😉

What writing tips can we gather from the screenwriter’s of Stranger Things without giving any spoilers away?

They bend Time to their will.
They use Conflict to keep your Brain Hooked.
They Keep You Guessing with the Mysteries of the Universe.
Did you Notice How the Dialogue made you Feel?
They Manipulate you with Character Relationships.
They Make You Hate the Right People and Love the Wrong People.
They Don’t Promise That Characters You Love Will Survive.

Every year, I for one look forward to what the writers of Stranger Things are going to give to me.

Honestly, this year I was a bit disappointed that they decided to wait till summer to give us another nail-biting story, but hopefully, it’ll be worth the wait.

While I watch things I look for writing tips and tricks. Hopefully, you get writing inspiration from these and are able to make great use of them in your own writing!

#1. They BEND TIME to Their Will.

Have you ever noticed that in suspenseful stories the writer uses time to their benefit?

Stranger Things is no different.

I took a Class from Dan Brown and in that class, he revealed a writing technique for suspense that is genius and that I found so helpful!

Bend time to your will.

Stranger Things, Dan Brown, and other great suspense writers all use this same writing technique in one way or another to help their writing be more suspenseful.

How do we as writers bend time to our will and use it to keep our readers at the edge of their seats turning page after page after page without thinking about it????

We create a “ticking time bomb.”

This can be a literal time bomb, but that’s not what we mean here.

You can and need to create a time sensitive event that if the main protagonist doesn’t accomplish in time then “THE WORLD WILL END!”

Haha! The world ending doesn’t always have to be the big bad ending if they don’t make it in time.

It could be a loved one dying.
It could be a world ending. (usually the case in Stranger Things and Marvel)
The main character dies.
The town dies.
Half the Universe disappears 😉 Thanks, Thanos…
The house explodes.
Mom and Dad find out the kids are up to no good if they don’t hide the mess in time.
A monster is hunting them.
An alien race is chasing them.
I think you get the idea.

It could be a massive consequence or a “smaller” consequence depending on how old your audience is and how big you want to make the stakes of this one dire event, but it is up to you how you want to use this tool and how much you want to use it.

You can make it one big thing that the protagonists are trying to accomplish the entire journey or a series of little time-sensitive events along the journey to one big one. Build up and misdirection are always good tools.

Either way, if you want to turn up the heat this summer with extra suspense in your writing you need to create time-sensitive events that if not done something about…BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN!

2 things to keep in mind:

It has to be believable. Don’t go overboard.
Don’t use it so much that the reader gets sick of this technique without thinking about it. (He keeps defeating the bad guy, but then a bigger worse bad guy comes along too quickly, and oh look, he wants to blow up the world too…boring.)

#2 They Use CONFLICT to Keep Your Brain Hooked.

The writers of Stranger Things use conflict to keep you hooked.

As a writer of stories when you create a conflict your readers become curious about how the conflict will be resolved.

Conflict doesn’t work all by itself. You have to care about the characters in order to care about the conflict they face and whether or not it will be resolved.

The writers of Stranger Things know that you care about the characters and they use the conflict they put the children into to keep your brain hooked from start to finish. They also do a great job of first making us like the kids and characters they create before they create problems and danger for them to go through.

Create characters and help your readers like them. Make them like them for many reasons. Make them vulnerable, cute, admirable, funny, misunderstood, or likable and then create danger for them and some sort of conflict and your readers will be instantly hooked and keep reading out of curiosity as to how they’ll make it out alive.

#3 They Keep You Guessing with the Mysteries of the Universe.

The writers of Stranger Things have done an amazing job of creating their own universe.

It carries original ideas and original monsters. That leaves us curious for more. Such questions boil over in our minds. What are the demi dogs? Why do they hunt people? What is the underground really? What is the Mind Flare and what does it want? Are there creatures more powerful than the Mind Flare?

By creating this universe and creating it well they have given us all kinds of mysteries to keep us guessing and intrigued.

If you can create curiosity and intrigue for your readers than you can create something interesting for them. When you create something that keeps your readers guessing in a good way (not because they are confused) you have done them a service of keeping them entertained and intrigued.

The writers of Stranger Things do this time and time again, season after season by slowly introducing more characters, more creatures, and more problems.

Make your universe full of intrigue and wonder, and make sure, if you create a question for your characters to solve make sure that you answer it at some point. Give them a question and then give them resolution. By doing this the right way, you keep them interested and intrigued and then satisfied when you answer the question for them.

Create a good universe and create good questions and problems for your characters and you’ll be taking tips from the writers of Stranger Things.

#4 Did You Notice How The Dialogue Made You Feel?

Have you ever analyzed the dialogue in Stranger Things?

The writers do an AMAZING job of making you feel certain emotions they want you to feel through the dialogue.

When the boys are playing D&D you feel like a little kid again by what they say, how they say it, and the emotions they are feeling while they talk and play.

Dialogue planned well carries the story along, but mostly reveals to you who the characters are. When you see who they are through how they act and talk you feel certain things about them whether you relate or not.

Notice the dialogue between Nancy and her couple of relationships. Depending on where they are at with their relationship the dialogue changes and as it changes we feel differently about them, their relationships and ourselves. We can feel happy for them, mad at them, sad, jealous, angry, worried, concerned. The dialogue between Nancy and her relationships makes us feel this way depending on where we are at in our relationships and life.

To take these Stranger Things writing tips to the pen and paper, learn how to use dialogue the way they do.

Use dialogue to:

Reveal character
Show character vulnerability
Show character growth
Show character immaturity/ maturity
Reveal character relations to other characters
Carry the story along
Make sure you know what types of emotions your readers will be feeling through your dialogue.

That brings us to the next Stranger Things writing tip.

#5 They Manipulate You With Character Relationships.

Take it from the writers of Stranger Things, if you have the ability to write relationship conflicts into your stories, DO IT.

We as readers and watchers eat up relationship intrigue and conflict. We are relational creatures so any type of relational conflict we can watch and be a part of is extremely fascinating to us.

Think about how you feel when the kids are getting into arguments. You feel bad, you don’t want them to fight or dislike each other. If you care about their friendship you want to see it resolved. Or at least you want to see if it resolves at all.

Do the same thing with your stories.

Think about your different characters and how you can create bonds in their relationships and how you can create conflict in their relationships.

Whatever you do, don’t make everything rainbows and roses all the time. It’s not real life and it’s not really interesting either.

The writers of Stranger Things know how to put our heartstrings by creating character relationships and by creating conflict between them.

#6 They Make You Hate the Right People and Love the Wrong People.

Think about your characters in your stories. Do you make them likable? How? Do you make them disposable?

Think about ways you can make your characters likable and hateable. Use the traits and dialogues you can think of to give your readers twists and turns with the characters you create.

Start off making your villains likable and don’t tell them it’s a villain. Give them a twist and inner turmoil when they realize the charming cute guy they like is a sinister evil man up to no good. Likewise, you can make your good characters do stupid things that make them despicable at first until they grow up a little.

Take it from the writers of Stranger Things, keep your readers guessing and interested by not revealing everything at first but making them read to get the answers.

#7 They Don’t Promise That Characters You Love Will Survive.

It’s hard to do and it can be hard on your audience, but it’s true to life. If all your characters always survived everything with no consequences eventually your readers will lose interest because they know nothing bad will happen to the characters in your stories.

Pick characters that you will eventually kill and do what you can to make their deaths worth it.

Make a death worth it by either killing a character they love and will miss or by killing a character they hate.

Don’t just kill random characters they have no emotional feelings towards.

The writers of Stranger Things have shown us from the start that characters we like might not make it to the end of the story.

They’ve done this many times with both characters we love and characters we love to hate. You may think that by killing off a character we like that you will lose the audience. This is true in fewer cases than you might think. Most times the audience feels the sadness but is even more curious to see how things turn out because it’s not easy to guess anymore. When death is a possible scenario, no character is safe. That means more curiosity and intrigue for your readers.

Do your readers and viewers a service and include these Stranger Things writing tips into your stories.