Let's talk about tension.

[Michael K. Eidson]

But, I think I may have to go with all books are controlling things, the author gets to make the world and present it. I don't know how it can be otherwise. I just don't have enough space to present it all. And when writing for dramatic impact, I don't think I would ever want to. I want to paint the scene and have it unfold in a way I think is impactful, and to do that, I must assert control over the readers experience, at least a little.

Making the world and presenting it is not the same as controlling or manipulating the reader. When I write, I give no concern to how to best manipulate the reader to feel certain emotions. If the plot, characters, and theme don't give rise organically to scenes that will impact the reader, then I feel I don't have good plot, characters, and theme.

I'm editing my WIP now, and I've come across scenes that I never thought when I wrote them how emotional they might be. In reading through now, some scenes bring me to tears, and I never planned that. I feel I'm not asserting any control over the story or potential readers, but rather the story is asserting control over me. Does that sound weird? Okay, I'm weird.

I think maybe we are taking the word control or manipulate too strongly. I would like to control the scene well enough that when the book is supposed to be scary, it paints a unsettling scene and leaves the reader with the feelings I would like to convey. That is not the same as seeing if I can round up some mindless masses and make them all vote to ban internet forums... But then, maybe I am...Muhahaha

For me, when the book is supposed to be scary, it will organically be scary if I stay true to the story. But I have no idea yet if my organic approach will be successful. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. If I had a degree in Creative Writing, I might have a different outlook on all these matters.

I do agree we might be taking the words control or manipulate too strongly.

The comment that attempting to control reader perceptions is pointless, I don't think I can agree with. I can attempt, maybe I will fail. But, if I did not attempt, I would be failing to deliver the story in what I would hope was the most impactful way.

I don't want to control perceptions. I want to create art (stories), and allow the observer (reader) to react to it in her own way. But I can see that if your goal is to sway people to behave a certain way or agree with a particular point of view, then you'd attempt to control their perceptions and not feel the attempt was pointless. If you're trying to force emotion or tension in a scene, I think the intelligent reader can see through your attempt, which means your attempt to control their perceptions is weak at best. If the emotions and tensions arise organically in the scene, it will feel more genuine, and to me that's more effective than any attempt to make the reader feel a certain way.

 

[skip.knox]

None of us can control how readers perceive things. Aiming to try is pointless.

I agree we cannot control how readers perceive things. That's why readers will often find things the author never consciously put there. I must disagree, however, that aiming to try is pointless. We must try to present our vision ... or what's a heaven for? (to coin a phrase)

I'm fine if the reader doesn't notice all that I put in; this is especially true for me because I put in lots of historical touches. If the reader doesn't know that I'm referencing the death of Constantine XI, that's fine, as long as they think the final desperate attack out from the city is exciting. If they don't perceive it's exciting, then I've failed. Or, I should say, if *most* of my readers don't perceive it so. I'm ok if a few think it was dull, though my heart will break in private.

 

[skip.knox]

I ought to have read more of the thread before responding! But still. I want the reader to feel the emotions that my characters are feeling. To me, that is successful communication. I want to succeed on all the main story elements. I want them to understand the plot, be involved in it, and not be confused or bored by it. I want them to like my likable characters and dislike the others, but I want all characters to be interesting. I want the theme to be meaningful, even if they understand it differently, or don't understand until they read it again twenty years later. I want them to be intrigued by the setting and to feel they have been some place new.

I don't think control is the right word. I don't think manipulation is the right word.

I think storytelling is the right word. Sui generis.

 

[skip.knox]

I ought to have read more of the thread before responding! But still. I want the reader to feel the emotions that my characters are feeling. To me, that is successful communication. I want to succeed on all the main story elements. I want them to understand the plot, be involved in it, and not be confused or bored by it. I want them to like my likable characters and dislike the others, but I want all characters to be interesting. I want the theme to be meaningful, even if they understand it differently, or don't understand until they read it again twenty years later. I want them to be intrigued by the setting and to feel they have been some place new.

I don't think control is the right word. I don't think manipulation is the right word.

I think storytelling is the right word. Sui generis.

[edit, because I can't help myself: sui generis = open-handed pig]

 

[Peat]

A few thoughts off the top of my head that may echo what others have said because I haven't read all 6 pages as I'm a bad human being and these thoughts have been burning a hole in myself -

For me as a reader, tension is where I'm genuinely unsure about what's going to happen next and really eager to know. If I'm pretty sure I know what happens next, or don't really care, there's no tension (which isn't to say someone else might find tension in those words).

The big part of uncertainty to me is - I think, this is a fairly recent thought I haven't talked to that many people about - is the stakes. For there to be tension, I have to believe the author is really willing for the character to win or lose the stakes.

Which is a big problem if the stakes are the character's life and the blurb has led me to believe the character won't be dying anytime soon. To get tension out of a life or death struggle for a character at that point, you're going have to write it so well that I completely forget logic and my clinical detached self. See also: McGuffins that the character can't have yet because there's still another hundred pages to go, villains who return in the next book etc.etc. An author can surprise me to great effect by taking an action I'm not expecting, but they can't really cause tension in me about it happening until its happened.

The other part of it - caring - is mostly driven by pacing for me. Or to put it a better way, the tension has to resolved before I get bored of it, and endlessly ratcheting it up when I know the author has to release it in a safe fashion increases the chances of me getting bored. I can get bored by tension over characters I like as much as those I dislike; the last book of Song of Ice and Fire and GRRM's attempt to play "Will they won't they" with Jon Snow is my big example there.


Anyway, add these together, and I find action a risky way of achieving tension. It tends to put the stakes too high too quickly with the effect that either I don't believe the author is serious (no tension) or the pace is too quick (I'm bored and over it).


Mystery is a far better way of achieving tension for me. I think the two tensest books I've read are Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Le Carre and Feet of Clay by Pratchett.

The big clever thing Pratchett did with Feet of Clay imo is that it investigated an attempted murder that was likely to become a real murder if they didn't succeed. That gave the book really good stakes. The tension was also well cut with a comedic subplot or two to stop it getting overwrought. I'm not sure its all tense looking back but it got me at the time.

The real masterpiece though is TTSS. Because there's no cutting of the tension there, just an incredibly well paced slow build. I think maybe the cleverest thing about is that for most of the book Smiley is not so much investigating who did it, but whether it happened at all and how. Building up that picture increases our desire to know Who and Why without really giving much away. But in general, its mostly a masterpiece of pacing and writing. Le Carre really captures and gets us to share Smiley's frustration, slow comprehension, occasional bouts of fear.


Which segues nicely into the thing about manipulating/influencing the reader. I agree with a lot of what has been said in the past few pages about it being art - I think I'd sum it up best as "Art is usually about provoking responses from the viewer" (although I suppose sometimes Art is about capturing something - an emotion, a moment, a place). I'd also agree that its really hard to reliably provoke the same response from a lot of people - or at least it seems to be for most of us, and those who can do it are very rich - its why I think accurate observation is at the heart of a lot of good storytelling. If you haven't observed what humans do, what makes them tick and the odd little things they do that make the rest of us smile, how are you going to reliably provoke responses in us? (Or, to use the other thing of Art, if you haven't observed something accurately how can you capture it?)

edit: This said, provoking emotion is frequently done subconsciously, and sometimes conscious appreciation of it can make a writer worse at it. end edit.


Anyway. I guess if I had to summarise it (so that I at least can understand it) -

Tension is about provoking and maintaining our desire to know Why/What/Who.

Doing it successfully often depends on knowing what readers expect from books and the world, and thus presenting them with scenarios and stakes they find genuinely compelling

Scenarios and stakes aside, the biggest issue with doing tension well is pacing


Also, you don't need tension to write a successful book.


I wish I could think of a good example of a book/art form where the tension wasn't with whether the MC succeeded, but whether they were still able to keep their moral compass when succeeding. Best Served Cold was what sparked that thought, but I never had too much tension, as this is Joe Abercrombie so I know well enough where Shivers' attempt to be a better man will end. But, having thought of it, I can't. And the best example I can think of for a story where a Moral Compass is the stakes is Order of the Stick, but I don't think its quite what I was thinking of.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I don't want to control perceptions. I want to create art (stories), and allow the observer (reader) to react to it in her own way.

This should probably go in the show vs tell thread, but...

The way you write this seems to be like you think controlling the reader and allowing them to react in their own way are opposites. Optionally, you're using control in the sense of "force the reader to experience a specific emotion" in which case I would agree with you. I basically get the impression you focuse too much on the word control - but we're probably talking about the same thing.

This is also why I like the word influence instead of control.

The way I see it, througout the story I set the reader up for what's to come later on, both at the end of the story and in the next scene/chapter. The reader's memories of what they read in the previous chapter will influence how they relate to the events in the current chapter. In this way we will guide the reader in a general direction. Hopefully they'll come along without feeling like they're being led or pushed, and hopefully they'll reach a destination that has something in common with the one we envision for them.

I'm not talking about pushing them forcefully into the emotional bullseye, but rather about making them want to hit it themselves.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

I'm not talking about pushing them forcefully into the emotional bullseye, but rather about making them want to hit it themselves.

We still have different perspectives on this, and I believe I understand yours. Not sure you understand mine. People read things with tinted glasses, and we as authors can't do anything about what glasses they wear. We can show or tell or racket up the tension or have respite scenes or adhere to certain structures or use purple prose or hide our prose, but you ask readers about their experiences with a specific book, and they are going to vary, sometimes vastly so. Otherwise, every review would be the same and have the same rating.

Sometimes it's the discussion of the book after it has been read by many people that will influence readers, rather than the work itself. Some readers will bring up points the story seems to be making for them, and the writer never had that in mind at all.

I don't have the goal of influencing readers to believe a certain belief or understand a certain concept or even experience a particular emotion. I present the story and let them make of it what they will. If I present them a story rich in conflict and fairly balanced viewpoints on both sides, then readers will have plenty to discuss. If I want to make readers do anything, it's to read my stories and talk about them. That's where all the rules of writing come into play for me: what do I need to do to attract and keep readers.That's it.

What does this have to do with tension in a story? We maybe all agree that stories need some degree of tension. We maybe all agree that tension helps to pull the reader through the story. But if you have a particular goal for your story to influence the reader, I think the tension you'll try to create in your story must be shaped according to the direction you want the reader to go. Whereas, if you don't have a goal of influencing the reader's opinions, you'll care more about shaping the tension in a way realistic for your characters. Having the thought in your mind that you want the readers to learn this particular thing or understand this particular principle of science or law colors how you craft your scenes. To me, it would be a distraction from telling the story.

 

[Svrtnsse]

We still have different perspectives on this, and I believe I understand yours. Not sure you understand mine.

I'm pretty sure we're on the same train of thought, except we're sitting in opposite facing seats and arguing about whether the train is going forwards or backwards, but not about the destination.

 

[Chessie2]

I'm pretty sure we're on the same train of thought, except we're sitting in opposite facing seats and arguing about whether the train is going forwards or backwards, but not about the destination.

It wouldn't be as fun here if we didn't try to disagree on some things, at least.

 

[Svrtnsse]

It wouldn't be as fun here if we didn't try to disagree on some things, at least.

<grumpyoldfart>It's not my fault he picked the wrong seat!</grumpyoldfart>

 

[Chessie2]

This should probably go in the show vs tell thread, but...

The way you write this seems to be like you think controlling the reader and allowing them to react in their own way are opposites. Optionally, you're using control in the sense of "force the reader to experience a specific emotion" in which case I would agree with you. I basically get the impression you focuse too much on the word control - but we're probably talking about the same thing.

This is also why I like the word influence instead of control.

The way I see it, througout the story I set the reader up for what's to come later on, both at the end of the story and in the next scene/chapter. The reader's memories of what they read in the previous chapter will influence how they relate to the events in the current chapter. In this way we will guide the reader in a general direction. Hopefully they'll come along without feeling like they're being led or pushed, and hopefully they'll reach a destination that has something in common with the one we envision for them.

I'm not talking about pushing them forcefully into the emotional bullseye, but rather about making them want to hit it themselves.

This is it right here for me. The part in bold. It's all about the build up. I like to do it slow and sneaky. Other authors I read are more intense. So long as it's entertaining that's all I care about. And believable.

 

[Peat]

We maybe all agree that stories need some degree of tension.

Maybe, depending on our definitions of tension.

Arguably any book you're re-reading is devoid of tension because you know what's happening and arguably if you can reread it happily, the story never truly needed the tension.

Less tenuously, I can think of stories I've read and enjoyed that didn't really have anything in the way of tension. David Eddings and Brian Jacques have somewhere between minimal to no tension depending on how you define it because they wrote classically structured stories with happy endings. Maybe some would say there's some tension in how it happens?

Even less tenuously I just finished reading Wootton of Smith Major and there's just no tension at all there as I recognise it. Its simply a series of unusual events that eventually come together to reveal a hidden mystery. Its a very unusual story, but a wonderful one too.

To me, tension is as salt is to cooking. It goes in just about everything; it improves just about everything if not overdone. But it is not necessary. There are recipes that don't need the addition.

But if you have a particular goal for your story to influence the reader, I think the tension you'll try to create in your story must be shaped according to the direction you want the reader to go. Whereas, if you don't have a goal of influencing the reader's opinions, you'll care more about shaping the tension in a way realistic for your characters. Having the thought in your mind that you want the readers to learn this particular thing or understand this particular principle of science or law colors how you craft your scenes. To me, it would be a distraction from telling the story.

I don't think this is true; if an author has a set goal in mind, then that will be reflected in the characters and there should be no discernible seam in between looking to nudge the reader and shaping things to fit the characters' realistic actions. Similarly, there is no distraction from telling the story, as it should be part of the story, part of the blood and bone and brain.

Obviously not for everyone, but to those with a strong thematic bent of mind, generally how it works. It's all one.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

People read things with tinted glasses, and we as authors can't do anything about what glasses they wear. We can show or tell or racket up the tension or have respite scenes or adhere to certain structures or use purple prose or hide our prose, but you ask readers about their experiences with a specific book, and they are going to vary, sometimes vastly so.

Absolutely true, with one exception. You're not writing for every person in the world, or even every reader. You're writing to your audience. You know who that is. They're that person you're thinking about as you're drafting and editing. They're you, in fact, or readers just like you.

The following comes from Donald Maass, and I agree with him wholeheartedly on this point:

Readers turn to fiction...to have an emotional experience. They want to be blown away by stories and changed by the novels they choose. You can write your story and hope to have that effect on your readers, or you can craft a story to make sure it does.
- The Emotional Craft of Fiction (Maass)

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

Well, I can't argue with Donald Maass, especially on this forum.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Well, I can't argue with Donald Maass, especially on this forum.

Of course you can. Doesn't stop others.

What exactly do you disagree with?

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

What exactly do you disagree with?

"or you can craft a story to make sure it does"

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

"or you can craft a story to make sure it does"

If you're writing to your audience, readers like you, you should be able to ensure that emotional & changing experience.

It isn't easy, and as you said, not every reader world-wide will have that same experience. But we're not talking about every potential reader. I prefaced that statement with an understanding that we're taking about you writing to your audience, those readers most like you.

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

If you're writing to your audience, readers like you, you should be able to ensure that emotional & changing experience.

It isn't easy, and as you said, not every reader world-wide will have that same experience. But we're not talking about every potential reader. I prefaced that statement with an understanding that we're taking about you writing to your audience, those readers most like you.

And earlier I remarked how I had written passages that I never planned for them to move me the way I find they are now during editing. I did not make myself have the emotions that came from what I wrote. It came about organically.

It has taken a lot of work to create my story. Maybe if I had formal training in creative writing, I'd have reached the point where I am now a lot sooner. But I don't think so. I think, with training or not, if I'd been concerned about trying to evoke certain emotions, the story would have been much different. In fact, with the first version of my novel. I had certain concepts I wanted to force the reader to think about. When I finished it, I decided not to publish it. The same thing happened with the second version of the story, and even then I didn't fully understand why I didn't want to publish it. For the third version, the current one, I let go of all the crap I thought I wanted to impress upon people and let the story have a life of its own. That's when I hit upon a story with real emotion. So even with me as the audience, I was not able to make myself have an emotional experience with my own writing.

To your point, I kept at it until it clicked. But I didn't start out thinking to evoke the particular emotions the story evokes in me now.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Forgive me for continuing, but I really want to understand what you're saying.

I'm not sure if you're telling me the emotion came about accidentally, as you wrote, with no intent on creating an emotional effect, or if you're telling me that during revision the emotional tones came to the surface.

Further, are you also saying that a writer can't ensure an emotional experience in a targeted audience, or that it's just not your way of doing things?

 

[skip.knox]

I had something of the same experience, Michael.

I wrote a couple of novelettes where I wasn't aiming at anything much more than "cool." By the time I'd finished with them, all I felt was "finally." I can't speak to how they struck others.

With my novel I was not aiming at much more, either. More epic in scope, so maybe I was going more for "cool" in all caps, but honestly my main goal was just to tell a coherent story. But late in the final editing (the book took me years, because it was my first), I found there were certain scenes that genuinely touched me. Pathos is the correct word. I have at last some evidence others felt that as well, which makes me happy.

I did not set out for that effect when I started the story. Once I recognized a scene as tragic or comic or some other emotion, at that point I did indeed try to craft it, to improve the chances the scene would work for the reader the way I wanted it to. So far, even in my current novel, such scenes are something of a surprise to me. Or, at the very least, the details of the scene can surprise me--a touch, turn of phrase, bit of dialog--that really makes the scene succeed. It's like finding a gem while combing through detritus. I know I'm looking in the right place, but the actual find is still a surprise and delight.

Isn't it odd that we who trade in words find it so difficult to describe that trade?