April 10, 2010

   

      

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                                 Table of Contents

TENSION on every page is the one quality your writing needs to keep readers hooked and turning pages. What exactly is tension? And how can you possibly increase tension on every page? Simple techniques show you how to infuse page-turning tension into your dialogue, your plot, your setting descriptions, and your characterization.

• Conflict/Plot: 14 tension techniques  
• Characters: 12 tension techniques   
• Dialogue/Inner thoughts: 15 tension techniques
• Setting: 9 tension techniques      

Introduction:

50 Tension Techniques:

Hold a Reader’s Attention from Beginning to End

What quality must your prose have to keep readers reading? TENSION. That’s it. Create tension on every page, and even readers who dislike your work may keep reading. (“It’s a silly book, but I still couldn’t put it down!”) Fail to create tension and even your fans will stop reading. (“She writes really well, but I just couldn’t finish it.”)  

You need uncertainty in your story. Readers read to find out what will happen next. Your job is to first create that initial uncertainty—create an “itch” for the reader. And as each uncertainty is answered in the story, it must be replaced with new uncertainties. Tension depends heavily on creating a steady flow of itchy uncertainties.

If readers have nothing to find out, nothing to anticipate, and nothing to be anxious over, they won’t read. Tension is a state of mind. To maximize suspense you must emphasize the tension, stretch readers’ emotions, and raise the stress levels.

Suspense is not about the things that are happening; it’s about the things that might happen, that threaten to happen. Tension exists between the time the reader knows what might happen and the time it actually happens—or doesn’t.

Tension is the act of building or prolonging a crisis. It’s the bump in the night, the school yard bully, the scary stepfather—it’s making readers aware of the peril. (A baby straying from its mother and toddling onto the railroad tracks makes you uneasy. Tension begins when, in the distance, a train whistle is heard and the baby plops down on the tracks to play.)

You need not see menace in every person or circumstance. But you must be aware as the writer of the potential threats—and make your reader aware. You—and through you, your readers—must feel the tension.

How to Use This Report

The emphasis of this report is on practical techniques you can use immediately in your writing. The report covers four areas where you may need to infuse tension:

·        conflict/plot

·        characters

·        dialogue/inner thoughts

·        setting

For example, let’s say that your story requires a certain passage of setting description. It’s flat on the page, but you can’t delete all your setting description. What to do? Peruse the section of this report on “setting tension techniques” and choose one or two ideas. Apply the techniques to that passage of setting description to raise the tension level. (Follow the same procedure if you have a section of flat characterization, dragging plot, or ho-hum dialogue.) Learn a published author’s “tricks of the trade.”

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