Episode 53: Giving Your Story Tension

In today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore discuss the delicate balance and learned skill of creating tension in a story. By its very definition, tension is “the state of being stretched tight”, “mental or emotional strain”.

Building tension is part of what keeps readers, including ourselves, turning pages in a book. It can be created by unanswered questions, internal conflict within a character, or friction between characters when their goals or viewpoints clash. It could also manifest through anticipation when you hope two characters will finally realize they are better together than apart, dread of a crime that’s unsolved and an unknown culprit poised to strike again, or anxiety for whether or not a hero or heroine will be able to stop the destruction of the world as they know it.  

We reflect from a writing perspective how the amount of information given to the reader at any given time helps to strengthen or lessen the tension. This makes striving to find the right balance of revealing information over time a key component of the editing process. We also discuss how setting up the stakes allow action scenes to fully land and having downbeats after action helps both characters and the reader emotionally grapple with the experience.

We also bring up examples of great tension from our own reading:

  • The subtly crafted questions about the truth of the main character’s life and impending death in Marilyn’s Robison’s Gilead

  • The enthralling and simmering romantic and dramatic tension woven throughout Renee Ahdieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn

  • The gripping action and horrifying dread that sets off Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

  • The masterful use of cliffhanger chapter breaks to propel the reader forward in Stephanie Garber’s Caraval

  • The use of repetition with key differences to highlight character transformation and growth in Shawn Smucker’s Light From Distant Stars

In the end, we brought up that thoughtful editing is integral to the process as well as checking in with beta readers to understand what questions they have and what emotions they feel at given points to ensure the story is resonating as hoped. It’s also important as writers to allow your readers opportunities to read between the lines and sit with uncertainty, so long as you are ultimately delivering on the promises and questions you set up.

We hope you enjoy listening to this episode! Keep reading, and writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore  

Notes

Names are important and in this episode the Verbivore mispronounces Renee Ahdieh’s last name. Here is some guidance from her website as to how it should be pronounced:

Q. How do you pronounce your name? - It’s definitely a tricky one—a flat “a” (like in “apple”) + dee + eh. Just put some Middle Eastern oomph behind it, and you’ve got it.

If you totally tuned out to that, I pronounce my name in the first few seconds of THIS video.

We used many different resources to prepare for this episode including our own experience. Here are a few resources we found useful:

The Verbivore quoted H.P Lovecraft towards the end of the episode, which is also referenced in the Ted Ed video How to make your writing suspenseful by Victoria Smith. Here is the full quote:

  • "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." – H.P Lovecraft

Books Mentioned

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman