Purple Prose:
tension

©Stina Lindenblatt

As you know, I love craft books on writing. As part of a somewhat regular feature, I’m sharing quotes that deal with a particular element. Today’s element is tension.

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Many authors feel it is important to portray what is going on in their character’s heads, but they forget that much of that material has already been felt and thought by the reader. Rehashing what is already obvious does not heighten it. It merely saps tension. Exposition is a time for what is new: extra questions, fresh anxiety, unforeseen angles. Think of exposition as plot turns. It’s just plot that plays out in the mind.

The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass (page 228)

Here’s an easy equation for maintaining tension throughout your story: Change equals tension . . . . The best changes throw the protagonist off balance, while the ensuing changes keep her tilting further off as she struggles to right herself, but never quite succeeds. If the change tips toward a positive outcome, it needs to eventually turn sour. You might want to keep another formula in mind: Change equals torment. Torment your characters, and tension must result.

Between the Lines: Master the Subtle Elements of Fiction Writing by Jessica Page Morrell (page 253)

You can’t build every plot completely around the emotional conflict, but every plot needs to highlight that conflict whenever possible. The more complicated your plot is, the more threads you have going on at once; however, emotional tension should underlie everything that’s happening. The emotional conflict should always be in the characters’ and the readers’ minds.

Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies by Leslie Wainger (page 88)

Every scene in your novel should have tension, whether that comes from outright conflict or the inner turmoil of character emotions. You create outer tension by remembering scene structure and giving the POV character a scene objective. What does he want, and why? It has to matter to him, or it won’t matter to us. Next, what keeps him from the goal? It may be the opposing actions of another character, or a circumstance in which he finds himself. Finally, make most scenes come out with the character suffering a set-back. This ratchets up the tension for the scenes to follow.

Even in scenes that are relatively quiet, characters can feel inner tension—worry, concern, irritability, anxiety.

Revision & Self-Editing by James Scott Bell (page 75)

Do you find it challenging to drip tension on every page, or it something that comes easily to you?

©Stina Lindenblatt

Dimension. It’s what we seek when creating characters. It can also add interest to your photos.

In the above picture, I turned off the flash and allowed the lighting from the side to form the shadows and add highlights. The photo was taken at the Exploratorium in San Francisco (my nine year old created the design on one of the science exhibits).

When shaping your characters, come up with both positive and negative traits. The protagonist will have more positive than negative traits, and the opposite will be true for the antagonist(s). Some positive traits may become negative in certain circumstance (and vice versa).

Also, give your characters two conflicting desires (wants). By doing this, you will heighten the emotion in your story and add conflict and tension. The “desire” the character decides to pursue at a given time will depend on your character’s motivation and who she is. For example, in The Hunger Games*, Katniss doesn’t want to be picked as a tribune for the games. If she is, the odds of her returning home alive aren’t good. Her other desire is to keep her little sister safe. So when her sister’s name is randomly selected to be a tribune, Katniss’s two desires are put at odds. Her desire to keep her sister safe outweighs her desire not to be a tribune, and she volunteers to take her sister’s place in the games.

Have you used any of these techniques to add dimension to your characters or photos?

*The link will take you to The Hunger Games movie trailer.

What do writers do when we watch movies? Yep, we analyze them. And that’s exactly what I did last weekend when I took my kids to see Rio (loved it, btw).

According to one of my favorite writing books, Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot (which I reviewed a few weeks ago), fear is an important element when creating characterization. The character must overcome his fear by the end of the story in order for character growth to occur. But you have to know what the underlying cause is, because this is what he will have to face in the end. This will also be the cause of some of the obstacles the character will face while trying to achieve his goal. His fear will dictate what he will do.

Okay, let’s go back to Rio. (Don’t worry, no spoilers here.)

Blu is the main character. He’s a blue macaw and the last of his kind. But unlike the typical macaw, he can’t fly. Why? Well, in the beginning (the prologue) his mama left him alone in the nest while she went off to get food. He watches a group of red macaw chicks get tossed out of their nest by their mama and start to fly. Something bad suddenly happens in the jungle and Blu knows he needs to escape, so he jumps out of his nest. However, unlike the other macaws, he doesn’t fly. He lands in a bush and is caught by humans.

So naturally, Blu never learns to fly and is scared to try. It’s his inability to believe in himself that leads to his fear of flying. By the end of the movie, he needs to believe in himself in order to succeed (character arc).

Do any of your characters (and it doesn’t have to be just the protagonist) have a fear they need to overcome by the end of the story?

When revising, do you find yourself too immersed in your story? Well, I’ve got the perfect game for you that will help you spot the problems on the page you might not otherwise notice.

RULES:

1. Print off the pages you want to do a more in-depth edit to. It could be a chapter, a few chapters, or the entire book.

2. Toss the pages in the air (or spread them randomly on the floor if bent pages freak you out). Make sure they’re all facing down.

3. Grab a page.

4. Read through it, and mark each line that contains tension (I use a T in the margin). Ideally you want at least one line (but more is better) per page with tension. If you don’t, go through it and increase the tension through dialogue, unanswered questions, action, exposition. That is what’s going to keep your readers turning the pages.

5. Find paragraphs that are begging for more description or emotion (or both). Can the action be improved on? You might not have noticed it before, but now the weaknesses are easy to spot.

6. Is there enough white space? Not enough and your reader’s eyes will glaze over. This can be easily fixed by adding dialogue and breaking up your paragraphs (and trimming them if necessary).

7. Is your dialogue suffering from the talking head syndrome? Add some physical beats to ground your readers and characters in the scene.

8. Did you spot those typos and awkward sentences often missed when you read the pages in order?

9. How’s the pacing?

10. Read the page out aloud and see what else you can find that irritates the hell out of you.

11. Either edit the page now on the computer or save it until you’ve finished marking up all the pages.

13. Pick the next page off the floor. If it’s too close to the one you just edited (I’m referring to page number here), then put it back and randomly select another one.

14. Repeat steps #4 to 13 until you’ve finished all the pages.

THE WINNER:

You, of course. Now you’re one step closer to having an awesome manuscript.

Any other suggests as to what else to look out for when using this technique?