Tension - Slow and subtle over time

[Svrtnsse]

So I got into a bit of a discussion about tension - again...

I like to think I've got the basic idea of tension right. To put it simply, it's the result of some kind of conflict. It doesn't have to be violent action conflict - like armies at war deciding the fate of a nation. Simple things can also be conflict - like the emotional struggle of whether or not to have another cake even though it's got lots of calories in it and I already had one.
Done right it should be possible to get as much tension out of a struggle between armies as out of a person's struggle with their diet, right?

To add tension to a scene you add some kind of conflict to it. The MC is alone in the room with the cake, will he eat it or will he not? No one's going to see him?
Okay, that may not be super exciting, but it could be used as a source of tension. This puts tension into the scene so that's good and makes it interesting.


Now for the actual questions:

What other ways are there to add tension?



I've got this idea that it should be possible to create tension through getting the reader to know the character and then putting the character in situations where the reader knows that's what's going to happen is something the character will have issues with.

Let's take the guy on the diet. He's finally gotten his desire for cake under control and then he meets this pretty girl that seems really awesome. She's perfect in every way, except she's absolutely loves baking cakes and while the reader knows this the guy on the diet doesn't. There's impending disaster looming on the horizon, but the guy charges on happily without a clue and if the reader knows him well enough and roots for him they'll worry about what's going to happen to the guy when he finds out.

Okay, it's a slightly silly example, but if you can look beyond that and see the principle, does it make sense?

I'm trying to make use of this in my WIP. I've got the occasional bursts of "action", but I'm also trying to create a bond between the MC and the reader so that they will care for him and take an interest in what he's doing, even if what he's doing is in itself not that exciting.

What are your thoughts on this? How would you go about it if you tried to do something like that?

 

[Feo Takahari]

You're describing exactly how I do tension, although I'd ratchet it up a bit more.

If you'll pardon me for stretching the cake example, perhaps the guy's been successful in his diet, and he's lost a lot of weight, but he considers it a "change in his eating habits" and knows that he can't go back to gorging on cake. However, he's a bit vain, so when he's with people who don't know he used to be fat, he pretends he's never had trouble with his weight and has full control over his eating habits. Because of this, the girl thinks he's a bit of a health nut--she can tell that he really wants to eat sweets, and since she consumes in moderation, she thinks he can learn to consume in moderation, too. She's baking him a cake as a birthday surprise.

I guess there are two things to draw from that:

1): You can get a lot of conflict from character flaws, particularly arrogance or overconfidence.

2): You can get a lot of conflict from people not being honest with each other. They'll make decisions based on incomplete information and inadvertently make things worse for each other.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I think tension is more than just the result of conflict. Rather, tension is the risks or consequences associated with the conflict.

Grave consequences will more than likely have greater tension than scenes where someone is debating their calorie count. Grave consequences can result in conflicts grand and small, overt or covert. A simple conversation between two power brokers can create extreme tension when lives hang in the balance of their words.

Of course there's varying degrees of tension. Yet, tension should, in my opinion, be desperate in nature. I need to feel concern for the characters I love. What's more emotionally provocative than harm, or even death?

"The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart." - SUSAN SONTAG

 

[Trick]

I think it's more about the character's emotion during the tension than the tension itself. If you can make me feel how he feels about resisting cake and the anger and depression he feels when the love of his life ends up being a baker and thus a temptress towards his ultimate downfall in the realm of his powerful cake addiction... that I would read. And I don't even like cake.

I've tried to have tension in every scene by making my MC have a perpetual issue that exists within but also independent from the main plot. He starts out as a thief and becomes a full fledged kleptomaniac by his early teens. If he wants to steal something, he does, regardless of even the most immediate of consequences. A scene with him walking down the street idly can be tense because he's constantly tempted to steal. Once he tries to conquer his problem, it get's even more tense.

Just my $0.02

 

[Feo Takahari]

I think tension is more than just the result of conflict. Rather, tension is the risks or consequences associated with the conflict.

Grave consequences will more than likely have greater tension than scenes where someone is debating their calorie count. Grave consequences can result in conflicts grand and small, overt or covert. A simple conversation between two power brokers can create extreme tension when lives hang in the balance of their words.

Of course there's varying degrees of tension. Yet, tension should, in my opinion, be desperate in nature. I need to feel concern for the characters I love. What's more emotionally provocative than harm, or even death?

I don't mean to bag on you, but I think this idea is connected to what ruins so many big-budget Hollywood movies. In another thread, I linked an article about how the story of John Henry would be made into a movie--the first draft would be relatively low-key, and subsequent drafts would keep raising and raising the stakes, until eventually it would be filmed as something akin to a superhero movie, its original intentions obfuscated or even lost.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I don't mean to bag on you, but I think this idea is connected to what ruins so many big-budget Hollywood movies. In another thread, I linked an article about how the story of John Henry would be made into a movie--the first draft would be relatively low-key, and subsequent drafts would keep raising and raising the stakes, until eventually it would be filmed as something akin to a superhero movie, its original intentions obfuscated or even lost.

I don't think you're understanding the point then, which is likely my fault as it's difficult to explain. I'm not saying that each and every time you introduce tension you must put health or lives on the line. Rather, I'm saying that stakes should increase toward desperation. The most drastic desperation is usually death unless the character considers other outcomes worse than death. You'll also notice, I said "...harm, or even death".
There are many types of harm. Harm isn't only physical in nature.

There are many ways to introduce tension:
1) Changes to setting, character, storylines, etc. Change, whether the character agreeably takes it on, or if they're forced into a state of change, can cause tension.
2) Mystery & the unexpected an cause tension. The unknown is full of tension, but the known can be equally disconcerting. If the reader knows a character's decided action is wrong, knowledge the character lacks can cause tension (if the reader cares about the character). The same is true if the reader & the character are both left in the dark.
3) Revealing aspects of character (or plot) at the proper pace can cause tension. As we learn more about the characters, tension should increase because we gain more interest and concern for the characters, but also because we start asking questions about what's happening.
4) Dialogue as mentioned before should be a tool to ratchet tension and reveal information. We want to leave the boring bits out of dialogue & focus on the interesting.
5) Speed up the ticking clock. Setting characters on a course restricted by time (or some other aspect) and then shortening that time is an effective way to ramp up tension.
6) Leave problems unresolved. Things left undone or unresolved can cause tension. The more ominous these things are, even if they exist in the background, the greater the tension may be.
7) Red herrings & Foreshadowing

There are so many ways to create tension. The list could go on quite awhile.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Of course there's varying degrees of tension. Yet, tension should, in my opinion, be desperate in nature. I need to feel concern for the characters I love. What's more emotionally provocative than harm, or even death?

In my experience (8+ years of front-line customer support) people can get extremely worked up over the strangest of things. I've had people screaming their heads off at me because they encountered an issue the previous guy wouldn't even raise an eyebrow at.
It's very much about perspective. Someone linked Maslow's hierarchy of needs the other day and I think that's something that's quite important to consider. The need to be at the next step up in the pyramid feels as great whether you're on the first step or the fourth step.

This is where connecting the reader with the character comes in I think. It's a lot easier to related to needs lower in the pyramid as they're more universal, while the needs higher up gets more personal and more specific.
Everyone can (should be able to) relate to being hungry and not having any food, but not everyone can relate to how frustrating it is when the contact list on your phone is sorted by surname instead of first name.


EDIT: Didn't see your reply to Feo's post.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

Here's my favourite blog post on tension, by author Jody Hedlund:

Author, Jody Hedlund: Ten Techniques for Getting Tension on Every Page

Cliff notes version: apart from mega tension (risk of death, war, global apocalypse, etc), use smaller scale tension to keep each scene interesting ie 1: Smaller scale drama; 2: Unanswered questions; 3: Contrast; 4: Internal conflict;5: Hints of problems yet to come; 6: Raising the stakes; 7: The ticking clock; 8: Mystery; 9: Micro-tension (what happens next); 10: Sub-plot.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

In my experience (8+ years of front-line customer support) people can get extremely worked up over the strangest of things. I've had people screaming their heads off at me because they encountered an issue the previous guy wouldn't even raise an eyebrow at.

It's very much about perspective. Someone linked Maslow's hierarchy of needs the other day and I think that's something that's quite important to consider. The need to be at the next step up in the pyramid feels as great whether you're on the first step or the fourth step.

This is where connecting the reader with the character comes in I think. It's a lot easier to related to needs lower in the pyramid as they're more universal, while the needs higher up gets more personal and more specific. Everyone can (should be able to) relate to being hungry and not having any food, but not everyone can relate to how frustrating it is when the contact list on your phone is sorted by surname instead of first name.

EDIT: Didn't see your reply to Feo's post.

Relating to the reader is important. I would never argue against that. But let me ask you this...

Which scene has more tension?:
1) The angry customer on the phone going berserk because the coffee maker they just bought doesn't work.
2) The man who will freeze to death within the hour if he can't get a fire started.

At first glance, it looks like #2, but it isn't. It could be either, depending on the execution and the level of desperation the writer introduces. The complaining customer could be a serial killer who profiles his victims in this manner. Lots of tension there....

The situation is less important than what's at stake. In both examples above, it's life or death. But, it doesn't have to be mortal peril to still be perilous. It could be the end of someone's career when that's all they have. It could be the trashing of a mother's reputation to gain custody of her children.

Tension is best delivered with desperation of some degree.

 

[Devor]

For me, I find it useful to understand tension more like a reader's craving. It's the sense of suspense, unease, or anticipation that a reader feels whenever your conflict is building. As I understand it, a tense setup leads to a satisfying payoff later on.

So you build tension by tying everything to an escalating conflict.

I remember once seeing a writing prompt that looked something like: "You're hungry and want a cup of ice cream. Write three paragraphs about getting yourself ice cream. Make sure that each sentence builds tension!" I think that's a great example of what I mean. You would write a few paragraphs about how hungry you are, how great the ice cream will be, about how every little obstacle like maybe a stubbed toe prevents you from getting your ice cream, about the satisfaction you get when you open the fridge, and then the feeling when maybe you find out that the carton is empty.

The reader's satisfaction at the end comes from the writer's ability to promise, and then tease, that coming ending. Sure, world war and death have more potential than ice cream. But tension is really about your ability as a writer to deliver on what the story has to offer. It's the difference between:

I came home, went to the freezer and got myself some ice cream. It was good.

After a long day working outdoors, a day which started with with my wife burning the eggs and included dropping my lunch in front of my boss, I came home and just wanted a small bowl of ice cream. But the power had gone out, and the ice cream was a sloppy mess, just the way I like it.

In that sense, to me, tension is far more about your skill as a storyteller teasing out the story to a reader, than about the story itself.

 

[Addison]

There's a few ways to add tension, some of it depends on what kind of hammer you're planning to drop on the character's - and readers'- heads. If you're going for something like Jaws or a Horror or Slasher flick then I suggest using the setting. It's suddenly quiet, cold, the shadows seem to swallow the character into darkness etc. I don't think a narrative can write in "two spine-chilling notes".

Another way is a ticking clock. Whether it's the clock on a bomb hidden somewhere in the city or the time the character has to find the antidote before their fiance dies. This clock can be the reader's secret. The MC doesn't have to know. Like if the MC needs to find a treasure and is under pressure from a loan shark, he might not know that the goons are either holding the fiance hostage or watching her, but the goons are getting more aggressive toward her so there's a small window before something bad happens to the fiance.

With the latter you really have the readers holding the story white knuckled screaming at the protagonist "Hurry up!" "Do it already!"

So is it a tension that you believe the character and reader should share, or should it be one-sided? The method you use to propel the story should rise gradually as it progresses. One string grows tight then maybe that's eased a bit but then there's a second string, then a third, fourth, fifth until you reach the climax and all of them get strummed into a loud note that brings everything to a head.

There's as many layers of tension as there are conflict; internal, external, interpersonal and antagonist. Tension and conflict should be as balanced as showing and telling.

Hope this helped. Happy writing!

 

[BWFoster78]

To add tension to a scene you add some kind of conflict to it.

I find that I get better results when I plan the entire scene around the tension, not try to add conflict to create it. That may sound like I'm just splitting hairs, but it really is an important point. In most scenes from most authors, tension is what drives the readers' interest. By focusing on the most important facet for driving interest, you make your scenes more interesting. If tension is an afterthought, you're not nearly as likely to create a truly compelling scene.

I've got this idea that it should be possible to create tension through getting the reader to know the character and then putting the character in situations where the reader knows that's what's going to happen is something the character will have issues with.

Fantastic idea. You absolutely should have long term tension that drives the story. The problem is that you seem to think that this long term tension is a substitute for immediate tension in the scene. It can be if you execute it well (though I think it's the kind of thing you should use only sparingly), but ideally you want immediate tension driving the scene as well as the long term tension.

Layer your tension. The more, the better.

 

[Michael J. Tobias]

Best education for developing tension is watching Hitchcock. No one has ever done it better, imo.