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| Photo credit: garryknight on Flickr |
In order for a story to be interesting, in order to keep
your readers turning the pages, there needs to be constant conflict. On every
page.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that someone needs to run in
with a gun in every chapter or that you need constant high-action scenes—in
fact, too much of the same thing, even something as exciting as gun fights and
car chases will tire your reader out and, eventually, bore them.
So how do you keep your readers interested between those
high-excitement scenes without exhausting them? The answer, my friends, is
tension.
The definitions (via Google dictionary) for tension are
actually pretty interesting, so I’m going to share them with you.
I especially like the first, third and last definition, but
looking over them I think you can get a pretty good idea as to what tension
really is.
Tension is like micro-conflict—it’s an underlying pressure
that should build up as the plot progresses, water turning into steam in a kettle.
When used correctly, tension brings your readers from the first plot point to
the last, it sews everything together and keeps the pages turning.
So how is tension utilized in a story?
I’m going to use a couple of popular examples (without
spoiling anything, I promise), because there’s a lot to be learned from
best-sellers. So.
The Hunger Games
(Suzanne Collins)—In the beginning of the book, Katniss and Peeta have to
pretend to be friends, an idea that doesn’t sit well with Katniss as they will
have to kill each other once the games begin. This is pretty brilliant on
Suzanne Collins’ part, because it makes every action (even something as simple
as eating breakfast next to each other) rife with tension.
Harry Potter and theSorcerer’s Stone (J.K. Rowling) —Again,
taking from the beginning of the book, when we meet Harry he’s living in a
cupboard under the stairs with his hateful Aunt and Uncle who would rather
pretend he (and his magic) doesn’t exist. Instant tension.
Shatter Me (Tahereh
Mafi)—Without giving anything away, an
imprisoned girl who can’t touch anyone without killing them wakes up in her
cell to find a boy is now there. And a rather obnoxious one at that, who seems
to have no problem getting terrifyingly close to her. Tension.
Tension is a valuable tool that you can (and should) use at
every stage of your story—you don’t need to wait until a huge plot point to
utilize it, in fact tension at the beginning of your novel is a great way to
hook readers from the start. All of the examples I gave you come right from the
beginning of their respective novels.
Don’t ride over any opportunity to use tension—it’s a
valuable asset in your toolbox that can really hook your readers in right from
the start.
Are you using tension in your novels? What other examples of great use
of tension do you have?
12 comments:
Great examples, Ava. And I loved the Google definitions. Who would have thought of checking there for writing tips. :-)
I hope you had a great holiday!
Thanks, Susan! Google can have some surprisingly useful information, and the built-in dictionary has become an automatic go-to place for me.
Also, I had a wonderful Christmas. :) Hope your holiday weekend was just as fantastic!
This is so great! Wonderful post - and I was stunned because I just wrote one called "Confusion versus Suspense" - similar subject. Love your posts.
Thanks so much! It's funny how those kind of topics can all come up at the same time. I've had it happen on more than one occasion where the topic I wrote about was written on multiple other blogs on the same day. :)
Great post, Ava, and I like the examples. I'm reading Shatter Me next. It was a Christmas present! :D
Guess I'd better figure out how to write with electromotive force... ;P
I saw that on Goodreads! (That you were reading Shatter Me, I mean). Enjoy it--I know I most certainly did!
lol I didn't say ALL of the definitions are relevant...although that sounds like a powerful way to write. :D
I read a great formula somewhere and swearby it: "give a character something they want badly, then move them further and further away from it."
That's a really good way of looking at it. I read something yesterday that said basically the same thing and I've read things like that before. The best thing you can do is make it as difficult as possible for your characters--then make it worse.
Great points. I love reading Don Maass about microtension as well, how adding even small elements to a scene can bridge moments where tension might otherwise be low. As far as examples go, despite the bad rap she has with writers, Stephanie Meyer's success is based on her use of both overall tension and microtension. She has readers turning pages as if by magic.
Martina
Thank you, Martina! I agree that despite the bad rap, there's a reason Meyer's books sold as well as they did--people enjoyed reading them in one form or another. Tension certainly helped facilitate that.
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