✍️ Why Tension is Crucial to Your Writing, and Some Ways to Add It
or, How to Put an Elephant into Every Single Room
I came to the novel A Room with a View as most Gen-Xers did: through the movie. It was also how I came to Dame Maggie Smith for the first time, who I just learned less than an hour ago of writing this, has passed away. I’m sure that news will colour this post; I feel a little weighed down.
Like The English Patient I mentioned last time, A Room with a View is a polarizing movie, though not as dramatically so. I loved (love) it. Many didn’t. C’est la vie.
But the reason I’m thinking about it today is that a friend of mine, Sam Plavins, suggested a topic for this post. A quote:
“What makes a reader keep turning pages? I mean, obvious things like plot and voice, etc. But what else? Those wonderings keep me in a state of hmmmmmm.”
-Sam Plavins
Coincidentally, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately. EM Forster, who wrote A Room with a View, said that successful writing keeps the reader guessing. “(A story) has only one merit: that of making an audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next,” Forster said.
A hundred years later, literary agent and author Donald Maass concurs. I’ve mentioned I read his “The Emotional Craft of Writing” – or at least, maybe, I mentioned I was going to read it. It’s now been read. Maass has said that the number one reason a manuscript fails is lack of tension.
Which made me think about A Room with a View again. It’s a quiet book – and movie. One murder, only. Mostly, the plot revolves around picnics outside of Florence and playing piano and lawn tennis and boys frolicking in ponds. But when you look closely, you notice that every single page has tension. It revolves around one question: When will Lucy wake up, dump Cecil, and get together with George as she should?
The Grey’s Anatomy of Tension in Black and White
I’m no stranger to tension-less writing. In the immortal words of Cecil Vyse in the movie, I am guilty as charged. Many writers are nice, quiet pacifists who lead nice, quiet lives. Unfortunately, that can lead to nice, quiet writing that is exciting if you’re living it, but boring if you have to read it. Nobody wants to hear what happens after “happily ever after”! We want to know about when you’re twisting on the rope, running from Jason, or driving off a cliff.
We want to hear about struggle.
Except that, action can’t be the only thing that’s going to get your motor running. Again, back to A Room with a View. A quiet book. How was Forster able to keep tension on every page?
Maass’ philosophy can explain it extremely well: because tension comes from the inner struggle of emotions triggered by external actions, not necessarily the actions themselves. A great way to show this is through horror books and films. In the Friday the 13th series, Jason chases down teenager after teenager. The horror is in the slashing and the hidden and the unknown, with a good dose of timing. Lots of action! But can anyone remember the names of the slashed?
On the other hand, Stephen King is perhaps a notch above because you do remember Carrie. You do remember Jack, the writer who goes mad in The Shining. And, not incidentally, in both these cases the main villain is also in many ways the main victim. How will they react internally to the external action happening to them? Can they keep it together? Or will they go off the deep end and kill as many people as they can until they meet their own grisly demise? Note that even though we already know the answer to that last question, we’re still intrigued by the story. We want to know the details about how and why they finally derail.
How to Keep – Wait for It – Tension
I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers here. This is an area of my fiction writing that I’m still working on. But here are a few things that I’m doing that seem to be working for me so far.
I ask myself, what lingering question is there permeating this scene? In A Room with a View, we’re always wondering when Lucy will wake up. But this main question also leads to other questions like, how does she hide her true feelings from her mother and her cousin? What will she say to George, now that we know she loves him? What will she say to Cecil, now that we know she doesn’t love him? How much does Reverend Beebe know, and who will he tell? If I can allude to an elephant in the room during every scene, I know I’m on the right track.
I ask myself, what am I going to reveal in this scene? My instinct is to tell everyone everything all at once. My instinct is wrong. I’m learning how to hint at things, how to give answers that only raise more questions, and slowly reveal answers over time. It’s not easy (for me), but I think I’m getting better at it.
I ask myself, what can put these two or more characters in conflict with each other, even (or especially) if they have to work together? We always say to a friend, “I’m glad we’re on the same page!” Later, we’re shocked and maybe hurt when we find out that although we may be in the same book, the actual page might be different. As a person who hates conflict, this makes me uncomfortable. But I’m trying to force myself into those uncomfortable moments in my writing for the sake of the writing. Underline the similarities, but double-underline the differences. Even if the characters are friends.
I ask myself, how do the characters feel at this particular moment? Just as the news of Maggie Smith’s passing affected my writing today, feelings affect every moment of our lives. When we’re happy and in a good mood, we do and say things differently when we’re in a bad mood. In group settings, things change when moods collide, too. Bad moods clash with good moods. Good moods all around lead to some fun. Bad moods all around lead to blow-ups and break-ups.
I ask myself, what are the characters walking towards or away from at this particular moment? Thom Hartmann reminded me recently that we are all either walking toward pleasure or away from pain. We are never static. Even if we are just sitting there, it’s because we’re enjoying the moment or avoiding doing something else. There is individual tension built into those moments, and collectively they can add to any conflict between characters.
Read books that will help me understand tension and plot and story better. Emotional tension, plot, and story are all part and parcel, though they are different parts of the parcel. I’m finding that dissecting all of them individually is helping me bring it all together. My suggestions for books to read in this regard:
The Emotional Craft of Writing by Donald Maass
Story Genius by Lisa Cron
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
Key Takeaways: Any fiction writing needs tension to keep the reader wanting to find out what happens next. Even “quiet” books need tension, usually generated by the emotional struggle in reaction to external events. If you can place an elephant in the room of every scene and have your characters dance around it, you’re likely off to a good start. Double-underline their differences.
Over to You: How Do You Keep the Reader on Edge?
Any tips or suggestions you’ve found? Note: this mostly applies to fiction, but non-fiction often benefits from tension – or at least questions to be answered. So if you have tips for fiction or non-fiction writing too, please let us know in the comments below!
I’ll leave you with a famous scene from A Room with a View, below. Note that Dame Maggie Smith’s character adds tension immediately in one of those picnic scenes where all the tension comes from internal struggle. Scroll down below to watch it.
Until next time... keep writing with wild abandon!
~Graham
email me if you get lost.
My elephants tend to be small and decorative rather than impossible to ignore beasts. I have a habit of writing where characteristics are shown early in the piece which leaves little tension or reason for the reader to continue. I am working on this. Thank you for the reference material!
In my writing, I'm learning to drag out (flesh out?) the tension. Often there are other elements of a story that are prominent in my mind or were the core bit of inspiration for a story, and then the plot points and the tension are bits that, in a first draft, I fill in two or three sentences. And then what happens is that I have teleported the reader right past the tension. I'm learning to avoid teleportation by stretching out the tension.