Anticipation

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
–Oscar Wilde

Tension is the engine that propels your story.   Tension is what keeps readers turning the page to find out what happens next.  Tension is stressful, even painful.  When readers turns the page, they seek release from that pain. How, then, does an author create tension? 

Anticipation and Conflict

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
–Alfred Hitchock

A pre-requisite for tension surely involves anticipation.  The reader needs to see different ways the story might evolve. The reader needs to be able to imagine these alternatives before they appear on the page, and to anticipate the consequences.

Tension almost always involves some form of conflict.  Conflict can arise in many ways.  It can be internal to the characters, it can be between characters, it can be with the physical or social world, it can be spiritual, or it might be with the supernatural.  These are just a few of the ways conflict arises.  Conflict puts parts of your fictional world in opposition. Conflict encourages readers to imagine how the conflict resolves, so conflict and anticipation are intimately connected. 

Notice that your protagonist might want two conflicting and mutually exclusive things—the conflict might be internal.  Oscar Wilde said that the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting what you want.  Emotional conflict is among the most disturbing and compelling. 

But anticipation is just the first step. It has to matter how the conflict resolves.  In particular, it has to matter to your characters.  These are the stakes. Conflict almost always involves your protagonist surmounting obstacles to resolve the conflict. The stakes must be significant—trivial stakes won’t energize your readers.  Typically, your protagonist faces disaster if the conflict doesn’t resolve successfully. You can increase tension by increasing the stakes or increasing the obstacles.  Rising tension is one of the features of compelling fiction.

The conflict has to matter to your characters, but it also has to matter to your readers.  If your characters are passive or don’t care about the outcome, why should the readers?  Your readers need to care enough about your characters to cheer for them, or at least understand them. Your characters don’t have to be perfect—who is?—but should be humanized enough for readers to care about what happens to them.  Your characters might have a strong moral sense.  Maybe they do a gratuitous good deed despite having other faults.  Maybe they are helpless victims and we want them to stand up against their abusers.  Thomas Harris managed to give even Hannibal Lector a back story that is both tragic and horrifying.

Scene and Sequel

Tension propels the story, but unending, relentless tension is exhausting.  Stories need lulls in tension.  The main conflict can still be there, lurking in the background, but characters need time to interact with each other, to fall in and out of love, to laugh and cry, and to form and break bonds.   

The basic elements of tension involve goals, conflict, and outcomes.  A novel involves, in part, repeated packets of rising tension.  But the characters also need time to react to the outcomes of these packets.  The places where the characters react are slower and occur after the most recent bit of tension has resolved.  In these interludes, the characters react to what’s just happened, they puzzle over what to do next, and concoct a plan.  This sets the stage for the next packet of tension in the novel.  This is the basis of the scene/sequel notion of writing, with the “scene” being the packets of tension and the “sequel” being the packets where the characters react.  Alternating these two provides a natural pacing and rhythm to your novel.  The interludes between crises can make each new conflict more compelling and urgent.

It’s not uncommon to end a chapter with a cliffhanger, a disaster.  That’s the packet of tension resolving, albeit in a way unfavorable to the protagonist.  This sets the stage for the characters to react at the start of the next chapter.  The characters form a plan and act on it. That plan confronts reality and the chapter again ends, usually with disaster, which starts the cycle over again.  The hook at the end of a chapter usually involves the resolution of the plan confronting reality but might be something other than disaster: dilemma or decision can be equally compelling, for example.  But the end should set the stage for the cycle to start anew.

Point of View and Suspense

Mystery is when the spectator knows less than the characters…Suspense is when the spectator knows more than the characters…
–Alfred Hitchock

Point of view can also contribute to tension. That’s properly a topic for an essay all to itself, but consider this example.  In one chapter, a detective might discover that a terrorist has planted a bomb in a restaurant that will go off at noon.  It’s 11:59, and the detective frantically calls the restaurant as the chapter ends.  In the next chapter, we might be in the point-of-view of someone eating in the restaurant.  We know what the detective knows, but the person munching on her Salade Niçoise does not.  The clock is ticking.  Our special knowledge adds to the tension since the readers can anticipate the bomb going off.  The character dining on her salad will be surprised by the bomb, but the readers will not.  The “sequel” interlude is so short it’s almost missing—it’s the detective making the phone call—but it’s there.

The point of this little example is that you can employ multiple points of view to give readers special knowledge and thus better anticipate events.  You don’t have to use omniscient narrators or otherwise violate good craft to achieve this end. 

Conclusion

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just so long as he finishes the book.
–Roald Dahl

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
–William Faulkner

To gain your own voice, you may have to forget about it being heard.
–Alan Ginsberg

The main idea of this little essay is that you can use tools like anticipation, conflict, tension, and release to keep the reader engaged, turning the pages of your story to the end.  It’s natural for writers to yearn for readers.  But if you don’t first write for yourself, why would anyone listen to you?  These tricks of the trade can be useful, but first find your own voice. Write what brings tears to your eyes or warmth to your heart or anger to your soul.  Take chances.  Find your voice. Most of all, write!