Conflict creates tension in the book and is a key component in creating pace and avoiding the rejection pile Those ‘page turner’ books are filled with conflict. The basic idea of building tension in a manuscript is the age-old ‘two steps forward, one step back’ notion. For everything a protagonist accomplishes, for every success he or she achieves, something else should worsen. But how is this accomplished in fiction?
What is Tension?
Tension is created by the careful planting of questions in the reader’s mind. For example, in a James Bond film, the questions would be: Can Bond get out of this? How will he manage to save the girl? In a romance novel, the general question is: how will the hero and heroine overcome their obstacles and find happiness together? The smaller questions each scene plants in the reader’s mind are what keep the tension high and the pages turning.
How to Pose the Questions
The questions that will create and drive the tension can either be planted by the writer through the plot and character actions that direct the reader wonder (will Bond save the day?), or by dialogue (either internal or aloud) that voice the question the writer wants the reader to ponder (e.g. “Bond, how are we going to get out of this?”) That is building tension through questions.
What Are the Stakes?
What are the stakes of the book? In most action films, the stakes are a person, country or world’s safety, whatever is at stake for the protagonist. But it doesn’t have to be quite so dramatic as world obliteration. In Dirty Dancing, one of Baby’s main stakes was the respect and acceptance of her father. Those stakes were put at risk each time she got closer to Johnny. This was shown by the scene where she pulls him down so her father won’t see them together. Since the writer made Baby sympatheticto the viewers, movie-goers cared about her and the stakes became important.
How to Manipulate Stakes
As Alison Kent explains in her book Writing Erotic Romance, “Think of each scene as a rung on a ladder that reaches into the unknown…The higher you climb, the greater the danger of falling, and the greater the fear of what awaits at the top. All this adds to your story’s dramatic tension and keeps you reader on the edge of her seat.” This is what stakes should do. Each action, each complication should bring the protagonist one step up the emotional ladder and make failure even more dangerous.
How to Manipulate Sexual Tension
New writers often confuse sex and sexual tension. What sells romance novels, and erotica as well, is the tension, not the sex. The ladder analogy works here as well. Each step closer to sex should increase the tension, not ease it. For example, the first kiss should make the tension between them worse, not slacken it. The first touch, even the first sex scene…they should all make the tension between the participants worse. Not better.
It’s All about the Tension
Tension in fiction is all about withholding. Sometimes that means withholding the answers to questions like: How will Bond get out of this? Will Baby and Johnny find a way to be together? Other times it’s just a series of obstacles on the road to a place or state of being that make the reader wonder if the hero will ever achieve the final goal, such as Harry Potter trying to defeat Voldemort.
 |
