(Notes
from a workshop presented at the RWA
Australian Chapter Conference, 2003)
According to my dictionary, tension
is the condition when feelings are tense
OR the effect produced by forces pulling
against each other.
What are the forces pulling against
each other in a romance novel?
On the one hand we have two characters – hero
and heroine, the most important element
of our romance novel. This man and woman
are fiercely, intensely attracted. They
want each other. With a passion.
If they can have each other, do we have
a story? Yes? No? Perhaps? One thing
is certain: there will be no tension.
But if, on the other hand, we have an
equally powerful and intense conflict
keeping them from acting on their attraction
... or forcing them apart after they
have given in to a moment of passion
THEN we have tension.
Attraction (left hand) – Conflict
(right hand) : the pull and push between
the two produce tension. In their splendid
romance writing text and workshops, Robyn
Donald and Daphne Clair refer to conflict
as the source of tension. I like that.
So. the interaction between attraction
and conflict creates tension ... in
whom?
The characters, yes, but also the
reader.
In the same way that emotional punch
or depth refers to emotion evoked in
the reader, I’m talking about tension
created in the reader. I want my reader
turning the pages rapidly despite an
early morning start the next day. I want
her bathwater to go cold because she
can’t put the book down. I want
her wiggling in her seat, I want her
anxious and worried about the outcome.
That’s what I mean by tension.
And this workshop will provide tips and
techniques for ramping up that tension
in the reader.
I mentioned keeping the reader worried
and anxious. How can we do that if we’re
writing a straight romance without a
suspense or intrigue or mystery subplot?
Every romance is built on suspense.
Have you ever thought about that before?
The reader picks up a book knowing the
hero and heroine WILL get together at
the end, same as readers of mystery expect
the mystery to be solved in the end.
That’s the most basic of reader
expectations.
So, our romance reader checks the blurb
on the back and knows that Jack ends
up with Rachel, or Nick with Tamara,
or Zane with Julia. OUR job as author
is to keep the reader guessing despite
knowing the ending. How will the h/H
work through the conflict to find their
happy ever after? That is the romantic
tension in your book, a tension that
should echo in your reader as she worries
and frets over how this will all end
up.
The harder you make it for the characters,
the greater the reader’s ultimate
satisfaction.
How do we do this? We work hard with
craft and technique, with things intrinsic
to our story regardless. But let’s
look at this in terms of building tension.
#1: Characterisation.
Most basic and most important. If your
reader doesn’t care about your
characters then she’s not going
to care what happens to them. Create
characters the reader wants to spend
time with. A heroine she longs to be,
a hero she longs to be with. If your
characters miss badly, then nothing else
will make up for that lack. If they miss
by degrees, then your tension will suffer.
#2: Attraction.
Remember how I mentioned the push-pull,
the two forces that create the tension?
One side is the attraction ... and it
needs to be a special bond, a connection,
out of the ordinary. Let the reader experience
the strength of the attraction; let her
savour that first meeting. Let her know
this pair is meant to be.
#3: Conflict.
Internal, external, doesn’t matter
as long as it is compelling enough to
balance the power of that attraction.
If it’s not, then ... no tension.
My favourite conflict statement is from
the movie Ladyhawke: always together,
eternally apart, as long as there is
night and day.
A strong, compelling conflict the reader
will buy into requires strong, believable
motivation. In ZANE: THE WILD ONE, one
layer of conflict was a heroine who loved
her small-town and wanted to live nowhere
else, matched with a hero who sweated
when he drove past the derestriction
signs.
That needed motivating: her first marriage
took her to the city where she was lonely
and unhappy. As her brother’s marriage
fell apart, his lack of support in the
city added to her motivation. Zane hated
the town that he felt still saw him as
poor white trash (to use the American
term.) That was an affront to his pride.
Motivation is generally found in a character’s
back-story. Think about the effect of
telling it all on tension, as opposed
to holding some back. Example: we know
Zane’s feelings about the town
quite early, and his background. But
we don’t learn the full story until
later in the book when he shares it with
Julia. This, needless to say, is a big
turning point.
Hinting and leaving the reader wondering,
asking questions, working it out for
herself creates an active reader, a curious
reader who turns the pages, anxious to
test her own conclusions and find out
the whole truth.
#4: Pacing.
Pacing impacts hugely on tension and
is a whole workshop in itself. However,
let’s look at a few tips and techniques
you can employ.
1. For urgency and fast action, use
short choppy sentences and staccato pacing.
Word choice is critical. Slow down and
use lusher language for breathing room
for more tender scenes and emotional
evocation. Both can create tension of
different kinds – work your pacing
to create the effect, the tension, you’re
after.
2. Integrate setting, characterisation,
emotion and sensual detail into action
and dialogue. Break up the long descriptive
narratives to keep the pace moving and
the tension up. If you do use long introspective
narratives (and, yep, I can’t help
myself!), make sure something changes.
Something that directly impacts the story
and raises the tension.
3. Use the screen-writing technique
of getting into and out of a scene a
beat later and earlier (respectively)
than you think you need to. This is about
getting right into the action at the
start of a scene, and then setting up
a hook at the end. Leave the reader dangling,
and turning the page, anxious to find
out what happens next.
4. The reader needs to take an occasional
breath. Why? Think about hills and valleys.
How much higher does a hill look from
the depths of the valley? How much better
the view; higher the high? Variation
creates tension by contrast. You want
to ease the anxiety before turning the
screws again.
So, how do you let the reader draw breath
while keeping the book in her hand?
- Maintain interest even during the
slower bits.
- Control your pace and vary it.
- Combine mood with pacing to ease
the tension (humour’s a good
one, although inappropriate humour
is an immediate TENSION TRAMPLER.)
One of my personal favourites is the
warm and fun dialogue scene between girlfriends
or sisters. Caveat: this scene must propel
the story forward. It must have purpose.
It could provide mentorship/ advice for
the heroine; trigger a change in thinking
that leads to a turning point in the
plot.
And it’s not necessarily slower
paced but it is a different, lighter
mood and that eases tension, too.
5. Use slower pace to build tension.
Sound contradictory? Not necessarily.
One fine time to slow the pace is during
the sensual bits, the love scenes. Rather
than easing the tension, this slowing
of pace, this shift in mood, this concentration
on the visceral and sensual details,
ratchets up the tension.
An aside: how “hot” a book
reads isn’t due to who does what
to whom, how many times and ways, but
what is evoked in the reader.
Sexual tension = mental foreplay.
Make the buildup memorable; do so through
employing the senses, through making
it unique and character-driven (this
could only be happening between THIS
man and THIS woman) and through slowing
the pace and honing right in on the sensual
details.
#5: Point of View
Remember: we’re talking about
reader tension – what we, the author,
evoke in the reader. There are many ways
we can employ POV – restricting
it, shifting it – to either disclose
or withhold information.
POV technique 1. the reader is “in” on
things one or other of the characters
doesn’t know. The reader wonders
when and how this “secret” will
be revealed. Will she tell him about
the pregnancy or will he find out from
someone else? And then how will he feel?
What will be the consequences? Uh-oh!
Instant tension.
POV technique 2. through POV revelations
you can build anticipation in the reader.
POV Technique 3: time POV switches to
maximum effect.
#6: Scene Purpose
Think about what you want from a scene:
what is its purpose? Not just the character’s
scene goal, but your goal as the writer.
Sure, you don’t want to impose
yourself into the scene – it is,
after all, your character’s – but
that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t
have purpose.
What mood are you trying to create?
Think about the scene’s dominant
mood and don’t change it without
a sufficient and believable trigger.
Something I see often in contest entries
is inconsistent mood. The characters
are involved in a heated battle of wills
that’s edgy and intense, and suddenly
one of them drops in a teasing or flirty
remark that doesn’t fit.
Does the scene have conflict? Do the
stakes escalate?
Use hooks to end scenes; use scene and
time jumps to good effect..
Ask yourself where the scene starts,
where it ends, and what has changed.
And I mean, for the character.
#7: Story Structure
Structure Tip 1: When you are plotting/planning
your books, do you plot the turning points
that will provide the highs and lows?
Yes? Good, because this will naturally
provide a variation in tension. Simply
through structure. Caveat: IF these turning
points are provided by character decision
and action. That makes an active protagonist
and a story impelled by character action
rather than by chance actions.
Structure Tip 2: Match and meld the
romantic plot with the story plot. One
reflects the other or contrasts with
the other. This helps build emotional
tension because they are both either
building on the one theme, or contrasting
each other.
That segues nicely into my next point,
which is the relationship between sexual
tension and emotional tension. In most
romance lines, the reader wants to feel
more than lust and physical chemistry.
They want a deeper awareness, an engagement
of emotions. They need to feel “the
special.” Emotional intensity,
emotional tension is key to romance and
underpins the sexual tension. The push
and pull is more than sexual attraction,
deeper and more personal and more important.
Think about this: at which point
is sexual tension at its lowest?
Yup, that’s right. Straight after
they do it!
An immediate tension trampler of elephantine
proportions, yes? Or maybe not. Because
there will be consequences. There better
be consequences. The sexual tension hits
an all-book low but the emotional tension
hits an all-book high. If it doesn’t,
then the reader puts down the book and
nods off to sleep, too.
Okay, we’ve covered the seven
big issues that drive the tension level
of your book. Here’s some more
little things to consider.
- Surprise the reader occasionally,
with a plot twist, with a good line
of dialogue. Remember: predicability
can lead to boredom.
- Motivation: when h/H draw closer
physically (the pull of the sexual
attraction) ensure there’s a
good reason for them to pull apart.
Nothing destroys building tension more
quickly than contrived and repeated
interruptions.
- Look at sustaining emotional tension
the same way you would sustain suspense
if you were writing a thriller or a
mystery – use clues but don’t
reveal all. In suspense books there
is always some threat to the protagonist – often
a villain or a group of villains. What
threat produces tension in your romance?
It should be the threat of revelations
to come; the threat of the conflict
between hero/heroine imploding.
- Change goals and conflict as part
of character growth. If your conflict
is one dimensional, if it never changes
or diverts, if the characters remain
pig-headed and never change their way
of thinking, then your story can descend
into “am, am not” bickering.
No change, no progress. Rising conflict,
growing as the character changes, grows
the tension and the interest.
- Use layered and multi-dimensional
conflict to keep tension high.
- Urgency creates tension. Deadlines
create tension. This is the ticking
clock technique with its own in-built
tension: Will the hero save the heroine
before the bomb goes off? Will the
heroine tell the hero before her pregnancy
is the talk of the town?
- Keep some doubt in the reader’s
mind about how these two will resolve
the conflict, about whether they can
overcome what seems insurmountable.
- Make words matter – pare away
the unnecessary detail that doesn’t
add to the story.
- Don’t force the tension – let
it flow naturally from the characters
and the conflict. I have read many
contest entries where the writer tries
too hard, too early. Especially in
trying to create sexual tension. Sometimes
less IS more. (Movie example: Last
of the Mohicans – “I’m
looking at you, Miss.”)
- Tension doesn’t only have to
come from not letting them have what
they most want. What about letting
them have it...only to discover it’s
not what they wanted at all?
- Keep the h/H in proximity through
situation/plot, not through contrivance.
This adds the natural tension of putting
them together, all the time, unable
to escape. They’re together but
they can’t have each other.
- You, as the author, should also be
feeling the building tension. If you
don’t, then your reader probably
won’t either.
In conclusion: building tension requires
an outlet valve. Let it build and build
and build ... but then it must explode.
That gives your story power. All the
build-up is wasted if the climax and
resolution fizzle. |
