Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with the scene set up: we’ve put Mitch into a situation where he would be uncomfortable, unsure of himself, or required to perform a monumental feat. And yet somehow, the scene still doesn’t get the reception we want. Critique partners note that the scene—a turning point for the character—drags.

We need this scene—so now what? Can’t they see how this situation would be stressful and tense for Mitch? Doesn’t that automatically imbue the scene with tension?

Uh, no. Not if we didn’t put that there. Yeah, even though we’d all spent 300 pages together, if the feelings we know Mitch would have weren’t on the page, readers won’t see it.

Simply introducing more more tension—more conflict—through the narration can increase the tension in a scene. If Mitch just sits there and takes this pivotal situation, the readers won’t be engaged in his change—and it won’t be as believable.

Camy Tang wrote an article about this, taken Donald Maass’s “tension on every page” axiom to the next level—tension in every line. She used a great before and after comparison of a cut scene from one of her novels—one without the “tension commentary” and one with (going for tension with a humorous tone).

Weaving in your character’s emotions and observations—whether they’re a “why me” comedic effect, a “not me!” suspense effect or a “can I do this” character effect—can help to increase the tension in a turning point scene.

But don’t beat your readers over the head with it. If this is the fourth scene in a row where your protagonist is battling his Inner Demon, we readers are probably familiar enough that the conflict doesn’t have to be mentioned in every paragraph. In fact, if this is the fourth scene in a row with the same inner conflict, it might be a good time to see if all of those scenes are really necessary. Also, too much internal monologue can slow down the action of a scene, so try for a balance.

What do you think? How can you bring out your characters’ internal conflicts more?

Photo by Penguincakes

Yesterday, I said “if the character’s goal or purpose isn’t early in the scene, we can risk losing our readers.” I believe that’s true—but at the same time, I recognize that sometimes, it would make no sense for us to jump from the previous scene to the scene goal or start of the action without motivating the POV character properly.

This is one of those times where it’s vital to have a sequel—a “scene” where we focus on the character’s emotional reaction to the action of a scene. Most of the time, we tack these onto the end of the appropriate scene—but that’s not always going to work. Say, for example, we were in Jimmy’s head for the confession scene and his sequel—he tells Gina that they really can be together. Then we move on to Gina tearing up all his letters. Huh?

We need a sequel in Gina’s perspective to clarify her motivation. But starting her scene with half a page (or more) of her emotions and thoughts in reaction to the last action is . . . well, slow. (Especially if we just saw Jimmy’s emotions and thoughts on the same subject.)

So how do we make the reader understand? One great way to create tension is not to explain these actions—at first. The reader is taken aback by this interesting or inexplicable action—and they’re eager to not only find out what happens next, but to learn why this is happening now.

As James Scott Bell says in Revision And Self-Editing, you can “marble in” this sequel information through the beginning of the scene. As she rips up the letters, we have a natural reason for her to think about the last scene and to give us her response—and now we’re really compelled to find out.

This can be effective within scenes, too. I found a scene in my WIP where, halfway through, a minor character gave a two paragraph monologue to the hero to catch him (and us) up on her subplot. I’d interrupted the speech with the hero’s thought about the minor character’s habit to ramble, but still, the blocks of text were more than even I really wanted to read.

After she finished the speech, she went and retrieved a piece of evidence in a crime—a threat against her. I realized if I had the minor character hand him that evidence first, the readers would be pretty surprised—and now they want to know how she crossed the bad guys. Then her speech could keep the readers’ attention.

It can also be useful to pick up the pace (and increase suspense)—if a lot of our scenes are actually sequels, the story can slow down. If that’s not the appropriate pace for the story, ending scenes with disasters and combining sequels with the beginning of the next scene can also help speed up the action of the story.

Of course, this technique shouldn’t be used too often—we don’t want our readers to get whiplash from all those head-fakes. But it can be used to ramp up the tension at the beginning of a scene, and make the reader want to know about the emotional reaction that led the characters there.

What do you think? How do you handle necessary sequels? Do you use the “head-fake” explosion opening?

Photo by Rob

One of the ways that I’ve found to increase tension as I’ve read a bunch of craft books and reread my WIP is to pull readers into scenes and create tension quickly.

Our scene openings are really key in establishing tension early on. Many times, however, we spend the beginning of the scene “warming up”—rehashing the last scene or sequel, running through mundane events, working up to a conflict (or even to a scene goal). Even after I’d edited specifically focused on making scene goals clear, I still found many scenes meandering near the beginning, wandering around until we found a conflict.

The first step is to make our POV character’s scene goal clear. Often, that will be stated explicitly: she’s waiting for her mystery date or he headed into the office to check on the Q4 numbers. (Thrilling—though I actually do know someone shopping an MG financial thriller, so maybe it could work.) Sometimes it’ll be pretty darn clear from the way we ended the previous scene: the couple just had a fight, and now he’s at a florist.

If the character’s goal or purpose isn’t early in the scene, we can risk losing our readers. And if we don’t get those characters to work on those scene goals, we can risk losing our readers. And if those characters don’t do something interesting—find a source of tension—pretty quick, we can risk losing our readers. (They’re just fickle like that.)

I’ve said before that conflict is at the heart of tension—just as conflict is at the heart of any fully-imagined scene.

Once we’ve established the character’s goal, explicitly or implicitly, we should bring on the conflict. Maybe he’s headed to the florist but—the elevator’s broken—the stairs are being painted. He twists his ankle getting down from the fire escape—the nearest florist is closed—he can’t get a cab—he gets hit by the bus he’s trying to catch. Notice that the conflict doesn’t have to start huge—he doesn’t have to jump straight to the disaster.

It doesn’t even have to be big—maybe the florist doesn’t carry her favorite kind of flowers, or after he pays, he remembers she’s allergic. But don’t just leave him in there, pondering over whether to get daffodils or dianthus.

Along with this, we can look at the whole scene to see what we can tighten. Eliminate unnecessary or redundant words and use powerful, fast-paced language instead. Check out this tightening checklist at the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood for help.

What do you think? Is there a time when we need long sections of thought between the goal and the conflict?

Photo by Matthias Rhomberg