Hi Sarah - thank you so much for giving us all the opportunity to ask you for help with our writing, in your latest substack! I wanted to ask you about tension. I have a real problem with maintaining it in the first half of a story, while I'm still trying to set everything up. I'm much better with the second half of a story. It feels a bit like setting up dominos and then at the mid-point, I let them all go and it all flows much better after that. Any advice?
Hi there petal!
Thank you for your great question. To start off, many apologies for the silence on this substack. I’ve had some health issues and I’ve also been doing revisions on LONG LIVE EVIL. This is my first book in some time, and my first book for adults ever, and I really want it to be great. So I spent the summer doing nothing else but trying to make it so. Some writers are best at revision, and some at drafting, and I’m definitely a drafting kind of lady.
But this post isn’t about that.
It’s about tension.
Your question made me think of the tension loaned a narrative by surprise. What happens when you don’t know what’s coming?
I was recently in Barbados with friends celebrating a big birthday. We were walking back from dinner, stepped off the boardwalk onto the beach, and I beheld a seething around my friend’s feet.
SARAH: (in tones of deep alarm) Don’t be alarmed! ... I see rats.
FRIENDS: (with considerably better eyesight) Baby turtles!
I was shocked by the sudden baby-turtles turn the evening had taken.
FRIEND: We must call the turtle hotline.
SARAH: Do you mean… the… the ninja turtles?
She did not mean the ninja turtles. Baby turtles often get confused thinking city lights are the light of moonshine on the sea, with tragic results. There’s a number to be called for people who will come take the turtles to a Dark Beach.
SARAH (in sudden speculative, fantasy-loving tones) … The Dark Beach…
Until then, we were told to go to any hotel on the sea front, who would provide cardboard boxes in which we would collect our baby turtle friends. Which is what we did.
Our next challenge came when we saw a crab flip a baby turtle for real, and tap upon its baby turtle underbelly with a single ominous claw…
More about that later.
I believe surprise is the most difficult thing a writer can do, and also the greatest tool in a writer’s toolbox. You can make your readers sad by writing things that make you sad, and you can make readers laugh by writing what makes you laugh – as long you run this by critique partners to confirm it’s as sorrowful or hilarious as you believe. But you have to plan to surprise people.
You can lead people to think it’s one thing, then reveal it’s another. (Rats to baby turtles.)
Speed can also work as a surprise.
SMALLTOWN COP IN A STORY: I’m actually a day away from retire—
(gets beheaded mid-sentence)
You knew it was coming, but you didn’t know it would come THAT fast!
In the new Dungeons and Dragons movie, which was unexpectedly great, our scene opens with our hero and heroine (not romantically but criminally involved) explaining their many crimes to a jury.
The hero, played by Chris Pine: I wish to explain my crimes to Jarnathan…
Jury: Please continue dropping backstory.
Chris Pine, frequently throughout his backstory narration: If only Jarnathan was here…
Jarnathan walks in, and unexpectedly isn’t someone on the criminal’s side. He’s someone in possession of large wings. Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez tackle him out a window, and fly him to freedom!
Jury, calling after them: But we were going to give you parole!
This delivers two surprises in quick succession, a) what their plan actually was and b) that it wasn’t actually necessary. It sets the scene for many fun revelations, and having surprised the audience once there’s tension, waiting to be surprised again. You can build tension into your set-up. Think of it as another domino.
You can also build tension with character revelations, and with a single sentence. Here’s an example from J.R.R. Tolkien.
‘Between the brothers there was great love, and had been since childhood, when Boromir was the helper and protector of Faramir. No jealousy or rivalry had arisen between them since, for their father’s favour or for the praise of men. It did not seem possible to Faramir that anyone in Gondor could rival Boromir, heir of Denethor, Captain of the White Tower; and of like mind was Boromir.’
This passage does a lot, telling you of the bond between an older and younger brother, the things that could imperil the bond (their dad…) and didn’t. It’s ‘aww’ all the way down, until the last part which I italicised. That’s the sting in the tale. Boromir’s own character, even though he’s clearly lovable, is what will bring destruction to their hearth. Nothing in the world could do it, save his own heart. Think about constructing paragraphs like that, signposting one way – until you pivot and point another.
Your question also made me think of Agatha Christie. Now, if you’ve read Agatha Christine, mistress and maven of mystery, you know she wrote many a murder in her novels. Often the book opens with a body discovered, perhaps sprawled in strange guise in the library of a stately home.
Sometimes, the murder takes a while. So how does Agatha keep the tension going? Well, by getting the atmosphere of fear on point. The reader is braced for a murder, so anyone acting sketchily will create tension. Are they about to do a MURDER? Are they covering up a secret they’re going to get MURDERED for?
In one such book, there is a to-do with a door opening at an unexpected time, ominously creaking, the shadows beyond the door...
It’s the butler with the tea.
Still worked as a tense moment, because we did know what was coming.
But of course, people reading Agatha Christie or any murder mystery novel know what’s coming. It is, not to shock you, gentle reader… a MURDER. Now I don’t know what stories you’re writing, my doves, but you do.
You know what you’re foreshadowing. You know what mood you’re trying to evoke.
If it’s romantic tension, think about how to imbue a narrative with that: have someone notice minute details of another person’s appearance, describe a fight scene (verbal or physical) with romantic language, drop a hint of why they might work well together that the readers pick up but the characters don’t.
If it’s a supernatural story, think along the same lines as the murder. What are the ominous hints? Is the creaking of the door a butler, a murderer… or a ghost? Exactly when, and who, might rise from the dead?
Peril is always coming in a story, whether it’s peril to the world or a bond between people. Let us see the shape of that peril approaching.
Sometimes, you can pull off both. Have readers think they know what’s coming, so the foreshadowing works… and then they’re wrong. Surprise! But always make sure the revelation is more interesting than your audience believed it would be, and play fair by leaving hints to the true reveal.
Two books with great tension and twists are Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief and C.S. Pacat’s Dark Rise. Both have surprise revelations at other points in the narrative, so a) you think you know it all before the end twist, b) the story works and offers fun tension all the way along even if you do guess the end and c) knowing you were surprised before, there’s always that little bit of suspense…
To end this piece and your suspense, my friends and I scared off the crab. The baby turtle was totally all right, and taken safely to the Dark Beach.
I hope this was illuminating! If you have a writing question, do feel free to comment or email me at msscarlet3000@gmail.com, and if you wish pray subscribe for more thoughts on writing. Or more pictures of baby turtles.