Quick List For Adding Tension

[elisadasilva]

I need some suggestions for adding tension to a scene that's about as scary as Elmo. Any ideas?

[Cav Guy]

I don't know...Elmo's pretty scary. After all, we're talking about a Muppet who always refers to himself in the third person...could be possessed or something....;)

[NeuroFizz]

Not without more information: genre? story premise? scene premise? what do you want to accomplish with the scene?

[Vescoiya]

Also what sort of tension are you looking for?
Scared for their life tension?
Unresolved relationship issues tension?
I’m not sure I can do this tension?
Sexual tension?
There are quite a lot of options, depending on the answers to the questions NeuroFizz already asked.

[Maprilynne]

Scary music. Tuck a CD in the pages of the manuscript.:)

Maprilynne

[James D. Macdonald]

Without knowing more about the book and the scene, I offer three general pieces of advice for scenes-that-don't-work:

Crop it, flop it, or drop it.

That is: shorten the scene, or show it from someone else's point of view, or cut it entirely.

[Etola]

The two fastest ways I know to create tension in anything (and these are general, since I don't know the setting/genre/characters you're working with):

1) Throwing another character into the mix whose views/attitude contrast sharply with the central character. This could be the villain/antagonist, confronting the protagonist in neutral territory, so the tension is thick and present but cannot actually explode into full confrontation. Or it could be an ally or another person who shares the protagonist's same goals, but uses completely oppositional means to acquire them. Again, this creates a situation where there can be tension, but nothing can actually explode into resolution (because that would resolve the tension).

2) Having the main character in the scene be completely ignorant of something going on in the scene (or something that will happen). Suspense can be generated when the audience knows something the character doesn't, or when neither the audience nor the character know something so we have to find out from scattered clues.

If this is supposed to be a 'scary' scene, you could have the character(s) slowly discover clues to whatever horrible truth is supposed to be going on, and let their imagination (and the audience's) conjure up the ideas for you. The scariest things can be 1) what you can't see/define/know (indistinct shadows on the walls), and 2) something that is almost but not quite right (a candle flickering when no one should have been around to light it).

Hope this helps!

[JanDarby]

What does the protagonist want? Why is it important? Who (antagonist) is stopping her from getting it?

If you can answer those questions, and show the protagonist and antagonist in a struggle (verbal or physical), then you'll have tension in the scene.

If you've got the protagonist and antagonist in a struggle, then look at the "beats" of the struggle, and make sure they're getting more intense. For example, if the protagonist wants to go see a foreign flick, and the antagonist wants to go see the latest action flick, it starts out with the protagonist saying "let's go see this foreign flick," and the antagonist saying "I'd rather go see this action flick." That's the initial beat, and then the next beat is when the protagonist tries something different, perhaps bargaining, to show how important it is to him: "if you go to the foreign flick with me tonight, I'll go to two action flicks with you tomorrow." And she says, "Nah, I'd rather go to the action flick with another guy that I'm thinking about replacing you with," and the tension has escalated in this beat, b/c she's now thrown their relationship's future into the mix. And he says, "If you go out with another guy, our relationship is over," which is another escalation. And this whole example is pretty silly, but I'm just trying to show the conflict escalating, instead of going round and round (as people do in real life) at the same level of one person saying X and the other person saying no to X, and then the first person makes the same demand, without increasing the stakes, and the second person says no again, and so on, without an escalation.

As a little trick, if you've got the protagonist and antagonist, and the beats that are escalating, and you still want to ramp it up a little, setting a time limit often helps, like the 24 hours of the tv show 24. You'll see it in a lot of suspense/mystery shows/novels, where there's a clock ticking in some form -- the bomb will go off in 24 hours or the execution will happen in twelve hours, or the trial will start in 2 days or the serial killer will strike again tonight if he's not captured, or the boyfriend is moving to the other side of the world next week, or whatever. It verges on cliche, but it can be done subtly, and if it's become a cliche, it's because it works.

JD

[wordmonkey]

My in-laws.

Tension is ALWAYS ratcheted up when they visit.

Alternatively, I believe Hammett or Chandler would throw in a dead body whenever the story began to lose momentum. Though out of context, that could be of less use to you than adding my in-laws to your scene.

All things considered, I'd add my in-laws.

Can you tell my in-laws are visiting at the moment?

And that the associated tension is at an all-time high?

Can you tell that?

Hmmmm?

Not that I'm on edge now you understand.

How long does concrete take to set? And just hypothetically, would concrete set before the smell of deadbodies could seep through the wet concrete?

[Cathy C]

You guys are making this way too complicated. ;)

Just shoot someone.

Don't kill them---just shoot them. Doesn't even matter what kind of book (other than the below 12 set.) Tension is immediately added by the shock of the event, the addition of police, if any, and the necessity of having a bullet removed or the wound looked at. If it's a fluffy book, have the bullet wind up in an embarrassing spot that can be turned into a comical situation. If the person needs to use their full body later, just have it graze the skin. Or it can be a clean miss but takes out the side car window or home picture window so now they have to replace it before the rain, or some such. The possibilities are endless!

There's my solution! :D

[BruceJ]

My in-laws.

Tension is ALWAYS ratcheted up when they visit.

Alternatively, I believe Hammett or Chandler would throw in a dead body whenever the story began to lose momentum. Though out of context, that could be of less use to you than adding my in-laws to your scene.

All things considered, I'd add my in-laws.

Can you tell my in-laws are visiting at the moment?

And that the associated tension is at an all-time high?

Can you tell that?

Hmmmm?

Not that I'm on edge now you understand.

How long does concrete take to set? And just hypothetically, would concrete set before the smell of deadbodies could seep through the wet concrete?

That was great! You really oughta publish it. Oh, wait...

[UrsulaV]

You can never go wrong with having ninjas attack.

[LeeFlower]

or pirates.

Worked for Shakespeare in Pericles: Miranda talking about how virtuous she is ('I stepped on a bug once, but I wept for it!') and why her foster mother hates her gets interrupted by the stage direction "Enter Pirates." And then the fun begins.

[AnnieColleen]

So, I saw "Quick List for Adding Tension" in the list of threads, and then glanced down and saw "Current Events & Political Theory" on the next line.

Yep, that would do it.

Alternatively, my little brother always suggests a big battle scene when I ask him what happens next...

[Linda Adams]

A scary scene isn't just about making something scary happen whether it's someone going to their first job interview or someone about to be attacked by the bad guys. Sometimes people will use events and think that's scary enough--but you need to get the emotional reactions of the characters in there, too. Someone below mentioned to just shoot someone. But there's a huge difference between someone getting shot and that's it to someone looking down the barrel of a gun and realizing he's going die. That gets an emotional spike, which helps make the scene very frightening.

[elisadasilva]

Well I just found out a way to add terror. Have the protaganist find out she might be pregnant with twins like I just found out. ACKKKK

[James D. Macdonald]

Who are your favorite authors?

How do they add tension to a scene?

[elisadasilva]

Thanks Uncle Jim. I would have to say Stephen King is definitely one that I read often. I have been looking a lot at structure,etc in what I think are the scariest parts of his books. I'm wondering if there are any typical tools that could be used, such as sentence structure or certain kinds of verbs, etc. I am in the middle of editing/rewriting my first chapter and doing my best to make the writing stronger and to increase the tension. I'm beginning to think that perhaps I am not using enough visual clues.

[Bufty]

Can I suggest that somewhere in the scene, somebody has perhaps said 'Yes' when they should have said either 'No' or better still, 'Yes, but...'

And tension and scary are not the same thing.

[Cathy C]

I'm beginning to think that perhaps I am not using enough visual clues.

It was a dark and stormy night...

:tongue

[elisadasilva]

The night was too damn sultry...

[NeuroFizz]

Tension can be something as simple as trying not to f@rt in church.