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the concept of tension...

Harlequin

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...is quite elusive to me. If I successfully have it in a scene, it's usually an accident. If it's lacking, I have no idea how to fix beyond rewriting until it somehow appears.

what's it mean to you? how do you ensure you build it in, on a scene by scene basis and across an entire arc?
 

M.C.Statz

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I look for a thematic contrast, like order vs chaos, logic vs emotion, faith vs skepticism, and look to find ways to have characters conflict over that. I sometimes (always) do it very ham-handed. Hoping to make it more subtle and natural during revision
 

Jenna Reads

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For me, its a matter of something - a thought, a feeling, an object - gaining weight and demanding more time/attention/mental wrestling from my character. It might be something that starts as an offhand observation, a throwaway, that each time the character encounters or thinks about it, the thoughts/interactions grow more complicated. This may span a paragraph, a chapter, or a whole book.

But then, there's all sorts of tension and probably all sorts of ways to have fun with it.

When I initially started answering this question, I was thinking tension within the story, between characters, etc. But there's also the tension that the reader feels. This can/should/usually does mimic what the MC is feeling. As their tension rises, so does the reader's, and this has so many fascinating facets, too. How emotionally invested the reader is, this plays a role, ofc. If the character cares passionately, the reader should, as well. Have you written a deep enough POV that the reader is invested?

Pacing is another factor. If the pace never changes, the reader can become detached and then not care or recognize when you mean to raise the tension.

There's usually a chapter devoted to this, called various things like "Increasing intensity" or "Raising the stakes', etc etc in plotting books. This site has a little list that seems helpful.
 

Layla Nahar

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hmmm. There is also tension in musical composition. So I think of tension as part of the mechanism of moving a piece through time.

I'm thinking - if you have a scene with a goal, a conflict and a result, how can you have a scene that lacks tension?
 

sideshowdarb

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Rhythm and pace are definitely factors in it. Delays and haste. It's a really instinctual thing. Generally tension arises from two opposing elements in a scene / story - what somebody wants, what's standing in their way. What the audience knows, what the characters don't. Mysteries create so much tension because either we don't know something - usually - or more fun, we do, and our hero/heroine does not. Flannery O'Connor's short story A Good Man is Hard to Find is a key example of tension. Obviously, a lot of Stephen King.
 

JCornelius

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That tension thing in popular adventure literature (and films) is also called “suspense”.

Suspense is based on two questions the reader asks:

  1. OMG what’s going to happen next?
  2. OMG what’s going on?

When a review says a story is “a page-turning roller coaster ride” generally this is what they mean.

***
Suspense layers:

  1. Big question and outcome uncertainty for the central story;
  2. Middle-sized questions and outcome uncertainties for sub-arcs;
  3. Tiny short-lived questions and outcome uncertainties from chapter to chapter.

Ideally the tiny building blocks of point 3 are an endless procession of questions and uncertainties, with the moment an answer and a resolution is provided to one, a second has already taken its place.

Also, ideally, the tiny building blocks of point 3 have a parallel second function of moving along the larger questions and uncertainties of point 2, which in turn, ideally, is made up of elements that move along the central question and uncertainty of point 1.

***

Helpful tricks:

  1. Drawing out actions and introducing unexpected difficulties
  2. Providing glimpses, but not showing full picture
  3. The Countdown
  4. Foreshadowing
  5. Making character feel tension and fear the reader identifies with
  6. Drawing in opener at start of scene/chapter
  7. Cliffhanger at end of scene/chapter

***

Once you’ve mastered the mechanics of suspense, you can turn any story into a “roller coaster page-turner” and really don’t need any other writerly skills beyond the generic “prose not falling apart” level, nor ideas beyond "not ripped off the latest Marvel flick" level, nor characters beyond "vintage TV serial fodder". Good suspense makes all that not matter. There is a writer for kids (R.L. Stine) and a writer for adults and kids (James Patterson) and a badass horror writer (Richard Laymon) who are so good at suspense they don’t need anything else.

Dean Koontz is also as good at suspense, if not slightly better, but he also likes descriptive writing. Any other writer would produce unreadable fluff with that amount of descriptions, but Koontz keeps inserting suspense elements, and people keep leafing through. Koontz also inserts little social rants, which he learned from John D Macdonald—he was the pioneer of using suspense mechanics to force readers to read his rants put into the mouths of characters or for the asides and musings of the narrator. Stephen King venerates John D Macdonald for pretty much the same reason—showing you can indeed muse and rumble and rant about whatever, or go on poetic descriptive tangents, as long as it’s all flanked by suspense elements that force the reader to keep reading.

With correctly inserted suspense elements, you can force the reader to read anything. He may hate himself afterwards for the “time wasted” but will have to admit that “he read the damn thing in a day”.

***

Sometimes the best writers of thriller and horror, as in the ones whose prose is up there with Fitzgerald and Greene, and who have collected all the awards—have very weak suspense mechanics in the page-turning sense, so by themselves they rarely, if ever, achieve commercial success. Now, if, for example some master of suspense like Stephen King collaborates with some master of prose like Peter Straub, terrific things happen. However, Charles L Grant and Ramsey Campbell, for example, did not find their Stephen Kings* to team up with, and end up with shelves full of awards and deep respect from their fifteen readers (me included).

Every sentence-by-sentence or plot-point-by-plot-point or character-shallowness critique of Dan Brown, for example, misses the point, which is his solid use of suspense page-turner mechanics combined with commercially functional central concepts.

Popularity-wise**, strong suspense will get you through times of weak prose better than strong prose will get you through times of weak suspense.

thenug_1r4_RWlck7_V.jpg



_____
* But if they had, oh if they had. If Charles L Grant had teamed up with F Paul Wilson or Bentley Little, and if Ramsey Campbell had teamed up with Graham Masterton or Shaun Hutson--wowza! Maybe in an alternative Earth this really happened.
** Not as a universal certainty, of course, but as a general rule of thumb
 
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blacbird

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For establishment of tension, resist explaining stuff. Too many writers, published and unpublished, would improve their writing by less explanation, and more narration. You want good examples of writing that establishes tension, look to some older masters, like James M. Cain, Geoffrey Household or Eric Ambler.

caw
 

Harlequin

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hmmm. There is also tension in musical composition. So I think of tension as part of the mechanism of moving a piece through time.

I'm thinking - if you have a scene with a goal, a conflict and a result, how can you have a scene that lacks tension?

Hrm. Because it can be the *wrong* tension. For example (I'm making something up on the spot) in a scene, a character might have a goal of winning a competition to get money they desperately need, or fame they desperately want. The scene then could be built around his struggles to win. But perhaps the correct tension should be whether or not he cheats, instead (or whatever). Neither option would be wrong necessarily but both might be dependent on character nuance.

Stakes also fall flat if nobody cares about the characters or the consequences, or seem to.

It usually feels, to me, like something which naturally results from the other aspects being put in correctly, so getting other subtle things wrong can break it (and then I find it hard to fix). But I could be wrong.

most of the answers are very different so far >.>
 

Bufty

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And here's another two - reader's perspective. :Hug2:

When will what I think/suspect/know is imminent or could happen at any time - and which I know or suspect will cause anxiety or pain or hurt or whatever - actually happen?

Ouch - How on earth is he/she going to react/respond to that?
 
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Jenna Reads

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I grew up reading romance novels. Started with the light little Sweetwater highschool stories and ended up with full-fledged romance. As I matured, I expanded my reading shelf to include thriller and suspense titles. I never delved too deeply into horror, other than to read titles that were getting a lot of attention so I could hold up my side of the conversation. I offer this as perhaps it helps understand my perspective when it comes to tension.

The "slapdash essay" JCornelius wrote resonates with me. Think this is accurate, but I also think there are other factors. I think there is more reader investment if they care about the characters. But what JCornelius said applies here, a reader can care desperately about a character within a poorly or "averagely" written book (thinking about The Hunger Games, 50 Shades, etc). I read all of these books cover to cover, and while I hated the slow, wasted words for the 1st third of the Hunger Games and bemoaned a million things in 50 Shades, somehow, at the end, I cared what happened to the MCs in both--as must have a gazillion others to make them such huge successes. Or does this further JC's point? Not certain...not enough coffee...

For me, for tension, I think about things like pacing (overall tension/suspense) and frequency (increasing).

For reference, I strongly recommend Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer, his section on Fiction Strategy. Here he discusses tension in depth. He talks about fear causing tension, change causing fear, and the two factors of perception and experience. Well worth a read, if you have access.

Another is Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King. They talk about beats, easy beats and longer beats, and using these to convey the tension. This book is quite easy to digest.

Both books are oldies but goodies.
 

JCornelius

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/.../
For reference, I strongly recommend Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer, his section on Fiction Strategy. Here he discusses tension in depth. He talks about fear causing tension, change causing fear, and the two factors of perception and experience. Well worth a read, if you have access.

/.../.
Oh, this is the most actually useful book a writer of adventure fiction can read to this day, I very much second this recommendation!
 

Putputt

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To me, tension comes from having stakes. The best example of tension that I have come across was in a theater class in college. The teacher called up a student and asked her to fold a piece of paper into a small square without making any noise. She did so (or tried to). Then he said, "Do it again, but this time, if you make A SINGLE NOISE, you will fail the class. Think I'm kidding? Ask my old pupils." And he looked so absolutely stern and serious when he said that. Everybody stilled. The girl looked like she was about to piss herself. The easy-going air in the class suddenly froze, and all eyes were on her. She handled that piece of paper like it was a live bomb.

Afterwards, he asked us what was the difference between the two attempts at folding the piece of paper. Why was everyone's attention riveted during the second attempt, whereas during the first one, we were just kinda slouched in our seats watching without much interest? It was because he raised the stakes during the second attempt. And raised stakes leads to tension.

He was just kidding about failing her, btw. :D
 

Bufty

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Ditto.

Swain's was the first book I ever read on writing. The only one I've since read that was as helpful was Scene & Structure -How to construct fiction with scene by scene flow, logic and readability. by Jack M Bickham, who, I believe, was a student of Dwight V Swain....


For reference, I strongly recommend Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer, his section on Fiction Strategy. Here he discusses tension in depth. He talks about fear causing tension, change causing fear, and the two factors of perception and experience. Well worth a read, if you have access.

...

Both books are oldies but goodies.
 

JCornelius

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Oh, almost none of what I said so far in this thread really applies to the end of the spectrum that deals with the deeper human condition stuff where the stakes are emotion and character growth.

For this I recommend John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist and On Writers and Writing. And lots of John le Carre, Graham Greene, and Ross Macdonald :D
 
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MythMonger

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Often times I won't realize I've missed the potential tension in a scene until I do the next draft. I don't know if it's because I'm more focused on the "big picture" tension and miss the little things, or if it's because I know my characters and their problems better after each draft.

Or both. Probably both.
 

Harlequin

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I'm grateful for the suggestions and will have a look at all the ones mentioned. However, I tend to struggle with nonfiction craft books, so I might attempt the fiction recommendations first if that's alright ;-)
 

Laer Carroll

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"Tension" is such a general term that it's close to meaningless.

Here is the dictionary definition: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/tension. There are several versions, but most have in common the idea of two opposing forces which put stress on something.

I've noticed that it varies according to the type of story. In thrillers the tension is between fear of danger and our desire for a character we care about to avoid the danger. But in cozy detective stories the detective (Miss Marple or her like) is never in any danger. The tension is based on curiosity: who done it? And why? Or how?

In romances, where a Happily Ever After is guaranteed, the tension is not based on whether the main characters will get together, but how? What keeps them from collapsing into marital bliss the second they meet?

In science fiction and fantasy much of the tension is between ordinary life and strange life: life forms, or societies, or physical realities, or events.

Some of our favorite books we read time and again. Tension is largely irrelevant. Instead we read because the minute-to-minute experiences are pleasant. Trying to stretch the concept of tension to cover absolutely every story and story experience means we'd tend to neglect the other kinds of enjoyment a story delivers.
 

Harlequin

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I remember your posts re conflict which were similar.

In some ways I agree but surely the character needs that tension, if not the reader? The experience of their emotions and reflections is evoke by the things they encounter and struggle with.
 

JoB42

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I always think of tension as the keeping of one or more problems on the table. A character has a goal and an obstacle. The stakes of not meeting the goal are what determine the level of tension in my mind. So a lot of little goals with small stakes might add up, or a large goal with a huge stake might haunt the character and thereby increase the tension as the deadline to solving the problem and achieving the goal gets closer.

The tension, as I understand, should escalate as the story continues, but not at a constant and precise angle. Meaning every scene shouldn't stack newer and bigger problems on the character's plate until there's nothing but a froth of anxiety for the reader. Instead, it should step the tension up periodically and allow moments for the reader to breathe. Again, just my understanding.

Also, I'm a fan of the "yes, but/no, and" approach. I believe I first heard this on a Writing Excuses podcast. Anyway, if you haven't heard of it, this is roughly what it's saying: does your character solve his or her problem? It's best to answer that question with either "yes, but..." or "no, and..."

So, for instance, does your character make it to that important client meeting on time? Yes, but... your character is ambushed by the competition at the meeting.

Does your character do well in the ambush? No, and... your character loses the important client account.

Or whatever example. The idea being that occasionally things go right for the character, but new problems come along, and even when things don't go right for the character, new problems still come along.
 

Layla Nahar

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Hrm. Because it can be the *wrong* tension. For example (I'm making something up on the spot) in a scene, a character might have a goal of winning a competition to get money they desperately need, or fame they desperately want. The scene then could be built around his struggles to win. But perhaps the correct tension should be whether or not he cheats, instead (or whatever). Neither option would be wrong necessarily but both might be dependent on character nuance.

Stakes also fall flat if nobody cares about the characters or the consequences, or seem to.

It usually feels, to me, like something which naturally results from the other aspects being put in correctly, so getting other subtle things wrong can break it (and then I find it hard to fix). But I could be wrong.

most of the answers are very different so far >.>

ach. I'm sorry, but I don't understand 'wrong tension' either...

BUT - I suspect this comes from approaching the story in a counterproductive way. Forex, focusing on what you *think* the story is (or should be) rather than letting the story be, discovering what it is and writing that.

I had a story development problem of 'jumping' - I knew something was off, but until somebody (on SYW) pointed it out, I couldn't figure out really what was off. In my case an event happened and somebody said 'you had that happened because you wanted it to happen, but nothing in the story that existed before led that event'. So, that event still fit the story, but I needed to develop things in advance of it so that it wouldn't seem so out of left field.

You have enough posts - have you posted examples of this to SYW? You can get some very excellent feedback there.
 

Harlequin

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I'm reasonably active in SYW ;-) Mostly as a critter. Critting is good learning. I suspect I'm inflicting a lot of my newbie mistakes on people, but usually there are other people to balance it out.

I think it would be very difficult to post excerpts which take place at the end of a character's arc, though (right near the start of Act 4). Without a sense of that character or where they've come from/are heading to, it'd be hard for SYWers to help much.

The "yes but" or "no, and" (that JB mentions above) is kind of what I mean about tension being wrong or right. Either could work in a given scene, but one is probably better than the other for whatever reason.
 

Bufty

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You baffle me sometimes with your explanations, H. :snoopy:

There's either tension in a situation or there isn't.

You must know what tension means, and if you don't, going on about the 'concept' isn't helping you.
 
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JoB42

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I'm reasonably active in SYW ;-) Mostly as a critter. Critting is good learning. I suspect I'm inflicting a lot of my newbie mistakes on people, but usually there are other people to balance it out.

I think it would be very difficult to post excerpts which take place at the end of a character's arc, though (right near the start of Act 4). Without a sense of that character or where they've come from/are heading to, it'd be hard for SYWers to help much.

The "yes but" or "no, and" (that JB mentions above) is kind of what I mean about tension being wrong or right. Either could work in a given scene, but one is probably better than the other for whatever reason.

Just my opinion:

I think what works "best" is subjective to taste, and I think an author has to rely on instincts to make those decisions. It's like a painting, right. Would it be better with more blue? Shrug. Someone else might want more green. All said and done, it's art. How closely do your artistic storytelling instincts align with what your readers want?

Tension. It's an anticipation of conflict, a sequence of obstacles, deadlines that must be met, things that cause stress, buried secrets in the backyard, the agony of tomorrow. But how much tension is enough? I suppose it depends on your novel and genre and readers, but I like to think of it as pushing the characters to their breaking points, and sometimes maybe beyond. The real trick, in my opinion, is keeping the tension from becoming overwhelming. To slip in a little, then a little more, then more, and let the character breathe and enjoy a night, then hit them again, and so on, always seeking to shift and subsequently grow the overall essence of tension in the story. It escalates, gaining in strength and urgency as the novel progresses.

Whether or not the reader cares. That's an interesting question, and I suspect it has to do with more than just tension. Fundamentally, the reader has to care about the character to care about the challenges and struggles the character must face. So I feel like that has a lot to do with sympathy. Does the character have sympathy? I don't think this is necessarily about the character being nice so much as it's about whether or not the character has depth and skill, whether the character is proactive and willing to spend time and energy to tackle the problems that continue to mount. If the reader likes the character then the reader will care about the tension. If the tension continues to shift and grow then the reader will have reason to keep turning the page.