Notes on Tension

Some stories have tension, some don't, and the question that I'd like to pose here is this: how do you create tension so it's strong enough in your story to compel readers to keep turning the pages?

Where does tension come from? What's the source of tension?

Let's look at the opening of Carolyn Coman's What Jamie Saw to determine how Coman introduced tension in the first paragraph of her story:

When Jamie saw him throw the baby, saw Van throw the little baby, saw Van throw his little sister Nin, when Jamie saw Van throw his baby sister Nin, then they moved. That very night--or was it early morning?--some time of day or night that felt like it had no hour at all, Jamie and his mother and Nin left the house where they'd been living with Van--Van's house--and they drove to Earl's apartment above Daggert's Sand 'n Gravel in Stark, New Hampshire, and from there they went on to the trailer. 

What's the source of tension here?

First, it's multi-layered, isn't it? It comes not only from the fear the reader feels when reading these words--fear that a vulnerable baby is being thrown--but also from the uncertainty of whether Jamie and his family can find a safe place away from danger.

But there's another source of tension, too, and I think it comes from the reader's concern for Jamie and how what he has just seen may injure him emotionally and psychologically.

To create the tension, Coman needed to do something that I find difficult to do as a writer. She needed to place one of the characters--a baby, an innocent baby--in danger,

And then she increased the tension by sharing the scene with the reader through the eyes of a third-grade boy, who might very well find himself in a similar position of danger if left alone with Van.

She also needed to create a villain, an antagonist, with such a strong streak of meanness that the reader is able to feel the same fear as the characters in the story.

So, we're given a tense moment, filled with tension, to begin the story, and it's nearly impossible to keep from turning the page to see what happens next. That is, can Jamie and the family find a place of safety to escape from the danger that Van presents in their lives?

Starting your story with a tense scene like this is one way to draw your reader into your story. But if you want to keep the reader turning pages, you'll need to offer tension in a rising ebb and flow throughout the story, as well.

In Graham Salisbury's Under the Blood Red Sun, you can find tense scenes throughout the coming-of-age story set in Hawaii when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

Here's a scene at the beginning of Chapter 12, halfway through the story:

     Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! "Open up in there!" Bam! Bam! Bam!
     The screen door rattled like it would fall off. I bolted up with a pounding heart, staring at the dark shadow of a man in the doorframe.
     "Whatchoo want?" I heard Grampa say. He was coming out of the kitchen. Mama following him.
     "Taro Nakaji... Does he live here?"
     Six thirty. Dark, wet morning. I staggered up as Grampa opened the door. "Please... come inside," Mama said, bowing in the Japanese way.
     "Taro Nakaji," the man said without coming into the house. He was tall. A khaki uniform showed under his rainslicker. Army. A pistol was strapped to his belt. Two policemen in olive-brown uniforms, also wearing slickers, stood behind him on the porch. One of them was looking around the yard. A Hawaiian guy. Gray clouds moved in the sky beyond, the wind pushing them toward the sea.
     "He fishing," Mama said.
     "Fishing?"
     "Three days ago, he went. Come home tomorrow, or next day after that.
     The army man glanced around the front room. "You have a radio?"
     Mama shook her head.
     Kimi sneaked up and peeked around Mama's legs.
     "You mind if we look around?" the man asked.
     "Please," Mama said. "Look the house... please..."
     Grampa stepped back and let them pass. He studied them closely. We waited in the front room while the three men searched the house in less than a minute. When they finished, the army guy went over to Grampa and said, "Someone reported that you kept messenger pigeons.... How long have you been sending messages to the enemy?"

The reader can feel the tension here, and it starts with a hammering sound--Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!--on the door of a Japanese family's house after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The banging sound is so loud, so frightening, that it sends shivers up the reader's spine, just as it makes the heart of the young narrator start to pound.

Then Salisbury gives the reader a voice ("Open up in there!"), followed by the first visual of the source of the tension: the dark shadow of a man standing outside the door, with a pistol strapped to his belt.

Not just any man. An Army man. And two policeman. With the power to search the house for evidence that these Japanese Americans might be traitors reporting to the Japanese in secret.

The searcher mentions pigeons--mistakenly thought to be messenger pigeons--which is all that the Army man and policemen might need to make an arrest.

So, fear is a source of tension here: fear of being falsely accused; fear of having what you love taken away from you; fear of losing your home; fear of being separated from those you love; fear of having your true identity stolen.

When you are an American of Japanese ancestry, and the Japanese have just bombed the United States, you come under suspicion--another source of tension--and are guilty until proven innocent (which is the opposite of what American justice demands). Will you or your family be persecuted unfairly? (More tension.) Will you suffer needlessly? (Yet more tension.)

In these examples from two of my favorite stories, we can see how tension is built around fear--fear of danger, fear of losing something valuable, fear of being misunderstood--but tension can also be built around the question "what will happen next?"

So, in Coman's story, the question of whether Jamie can flee to safety is a contributing source of tension.

In Salisbury's story, the question of whether the Army man or policemen will find any incriminating evidence during the search is a contributing source of tension in the story.

You know when a story has tension and when it doesn't. Sometimes you wait patiently, sometimes impatiently, to feel its presence.

A story without tension is like carbonated soda that's lost its fizz. Flat. No surge or charge.

But a story with tension, well, it's like popping the cork out of a bottle of champagne and feeling the spray and never wanting the story to end.

For more information about crafting scenes with tension, you might check out: 
http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/six-tips-for-crafting-scenes/
http://writerunboxed.com/2015/05/07/when-your-scene-is-dragging-5-ways-to-add-tension/
http://www.nownovel.com/blog/create-tension-writing/

Where’s the tension?

Without tension, it’s almost impossible to hold a reader’s attention and keep her turning the pages of your story.

And yet many of us, despite knowing this (that tension is a key ingredient in sustaining a reader’s attention), produce stories that lack tension.

Why is it, I wonder, that it’s so hard to create a story with tension?

Tension, as a noun, is defined as “the state of being stretched tight,” or “mental or emotional strain,” and, as a verb, to “apply a force (to something) to stretch it.”

But where does tension come from? And does tension depend on the stakes involved--on what the character may gain or lose in trying to reach his or her goal? Or does it depend on something else, such as the outcome of an inner conflict, say, or the nature of a personal quest (or the attributes of the person on the quest), or the effort a character makes to attain a future reward?

Sometimes a reader can feel the tension immediately in the voice of a first-person narrator. That is, the reader may detect an undercurrent of anxiety or fear or doubt in the narrator’s voice –a hint of the narrator’s mental or emotional strain--that ripples to the surface of the page and makes its way into the reader’s heart.

Let’s say a first-person narrator wants to ask a woman on a date but is worried about being turned away, or needs more money to meet the recently increased rent but is afraid of going into the boss’ office to ask for a raise, or stands on a bridge because of a dare but is afraid that he won’t survive if he jumps into the river below.

In any of these situations, the first-person narrator’s voice will fill with different levels of tension, and this tension will spill onto the page so the reader can feel it. This tension is what will engage the reader’s sympathy and draw the reader into the narrator’s story. And it’s what will plant in our minds the question “What will happen next?” as well as the follow-up question “Will the narrator rise to the occasion and succeed?”

Sometimes you may notice that it’s not the tension in the narrator’s voice that draws you into a story but the tension built into the situation that a third-person narrator is describing.

For instance, if the narrator describes an assassin hiding on the roof of a building preparing to take his shot, or a quarterback running one more play to  win the game, or a lawyer pleading before a judge to save his clients from life imprisonment for a crime they didn’t commit, the tension of these situations will pique a reader’s curiosity about what happens next.

Tension—“the state of being stretched tight”— is what grabs our attention and compels us to keep reading so that we find out how the story turns out and what happens to the characters.

This tension may not always be obvious and palpable from the first page, but it must be there, building just beneath the surface, if the story is going to hold our attention.

You’ll know when it’s missing because that’s when you’ll put the book down to refill your cup with coffee or tea and forget to go back to the book. You’ll stop reading because the tension slackened or disappeared completely, or because you got tired of waiting for the tension to appear.

Are you reading a novel and noticing that your attention is flagging and you’re ready to put the story down? If so, can you spot where the tension is missing, or where the author might have added it?

If you’re unable to stop reading a story, and you find yourself rushing to turn the pages as fast as you can to see what happens next, can you pinpoint the tension in the scenes, as well as the line of increasing tension as the story progresses?

Whatever book you’re reading now, try to identify the tension in the story, and notice how identifying the tension (or lack of it) in another writer’s work can help you identify the tension (or lack of it) in your own.

For more information on tension in your story, visit:

http://www.nownovel.com/blog/create-tension-writing/

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2013/02/three-ways-to-add-tension-during.html

http://www.absolutewrite.com/novels/tension.htm

http://www.creativewritingsoftware101.com/articles/how-to-increase-tension-in-your-story.php

https://www.standoutbooks.com/10-facts-tell-how-use-tension-your-story/

Creating Tension

Fans of Printz Honor Award winner and National Book Award finalist Chris Lynch (Kill Switch, Freewill, Inexcusable, Pieces, Angry Young Man, Gold Dust, and Iceman), will be happy to hear he's writing a new middle-grade, historical fiction series that’s loaded with tension.

Set in Vietnam, the series tells the individual stories of four guys—Morris, Rudi, Ivan, and Beck—who swear they are best friends for life. When Rudi receives his draft notice, his buddies vow to stay together and sign up to serve, too, each in a different branch of the US military.

In Vietnam: I Pledge Allegiance, the first book of the series, Morris signs up with the US Navy—the best place, he thinks, to watch over his friends—and initially is stationed on the USS Boston off the coast of Vietnam, providing support for his buddies and the troops on the ground.

But then, with the tension already high after attacks on his ship, Morris finds himself reassigned: 

For only the second time in about a hundred years, the US Navy has divided itself in two. My life on the USS Boston, floating off the coast and on the ocean, was part of the Blue Water Navy. What a lot of people would call the easy war. 

From now on, that won’t be the case at all. I am now part of the Brown Water Navy, where life is a whole lot more complicated. 

What do you notice about these two paragraphs? How does Lynch suggest danger? How does he raise the stakes of the story?

Now here’s Lynch building tension as his main character settles into his new home: 

There is a lot of jungle in Vietnam. There is a lot of jungle. And it is cut up, north-south, east-west, and every possible combination of all that, with rivers. Thousands of miles of rivers. If you are going to move effectively around here, if you are going to find the enemy, engage the enemy, deliver troops, equip them, move them from place to place, and above all cover them with the Navy’s special brand of protection, you are simply going to have to use a good bit of boat power to do it.

And where that jungle and those waterways come right up close and personal to each other? Well, that is about the most dangerous place on planet Earth.

Welcome to my new home. Welcome to the Mekong Delta. 

Again, notice the tactics that Lynch employs to build the tension. Not just jungle but a lot of jungle. And thousands of miles of rivers, size clearly indicating more opportunities for danger to strike.

It’s not just a question of finding the enemy, is it? No, it’s a question of finding the enemy, engaging the enemy, delivering troops with equipment, moving everyone and everything from place to place, with the implication that each task exposes US forces to greater risk, and at the end of the long list of necessary actions will be a fight. The Navy’s job in such a situation will be to protect the fighters. And the outcome of all these preparations? Lynch has planted a seed in the reader's mind: expect trouble.

Here Lynch continues to raise the stakes, building a heightened sense of tension: 

We’re cruising south down the Mekong, returning from dropping a load of Army troops off about halfway to the Cambodian border. Cruising back down should be the simple part, but nothing is simple in this brown water. We can go days without seeing anything hostile on the banks, but that by no means indicates that hostility isn’t hiding in there. Facing the Vietcong sprinkled throughout the heavy foliage of the southern riverways or in the hills beyond is a much more dicey and uncertain thing than taking on the regular army of the North. 

Ping!

It starts with just one shot bouncing off of plate metal. Then two and three and six, like popcorn starting up. 

Notice how Lynch builds toward danger, lulling the reader into a false sense of security with the opening sentence (“cruising”), but note the hint of danger (“nothing is simple in this brown water.”). Onward Lynch leads the reader into uncertainty until the moment when Morris hears—and the reader hears it at the same time—the first sound of trouble: Ping!

And then the trouble is defined. It starts with just one shot. Then it multiplies: two and three and six, like popcorn starting up.

And then, after building to the climax, Lynch takes his reader down the other side and offers this, the aftermath: 

There’s one last, loud salvo from shore, then Everett throws an arm around my neck as the captain powers up the monitor to head upstream. The air is filled with sulfur, smoke, and sunset. Everything around us is burning.

The brown water is like gravy, bubbling in our wake. To make us more nimble on shallow water, we have light, crisp armor plating and jets instead of propellers pushing us on.

My heart has never pounded like this. I take a moment to watch all thirty-two inches of my sweaty chest puff crazy like a hummingbird. Then I look back out at the water, the banks, the low sky ceiling. There is something beautiful there, in the smoking murky scene we’re fleeing.

“Wow,” I say to Everett. “Who did we shoot?”

“Who knows?” He laughs weakly. “We got ‘em all, though, whoever they were.”

There’s something wrong. I look down at where Everett’s arm is draped over and down my chest. There’s blood. His blood. 

Again Lynch lures his reader into the scene with a false sense of security—the "last" salvo—and the afterglow tension of the battle (even going so far as to note a kind of beauty in the battle’s aftermath) before pushing the pedal to the metal again and increasing the tension: “There’s something wrong.”

What could be wrong? 

There’s blood. His blood.

And you can bet there's more tension to come.

If you want to learn how to create tension in your work, read the books that make up Lynch’s newest series set in Vietnam: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Vietnam&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AVietnam%2Cp_lbr_one_browse-bin%3AChris%20Lynch

And for more information on how to create tension in your work, visit:

http://suite101.com/article/how-to-build-tension-in-fiction-a83387

http://lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/2010/06/creating-tension.html

http://andreajwenger.com/2011/07/08/five-key-elements-to-creating-tension-in-fiction/

http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/beat-writers-block/how-to-build-tension-to-heighten-the-stakes

http://trinaallen.wordpress.com/tag/building-tension/