Tension

This week’s post is fairly similar to the one I posted a few weeks back on ‘Gas stations’. However, this week I’m going to talk more specifically about tension.

In my ‘gas stations’ post, I talked about keeping your reader interested and I quoted George Sanders’ essay Rise, baby, Rise : ‘When I was a kid, I had one of those Hot Wheels devices designed to look like a little gas station. Inside the gas station were two spinning rubber wheels. One’s little car would weakly approach the gas station, then be sent forth by the spinning rubber wheels… A story can be thought of as a series of these little gas stations.’

In the ‘gas stations’ blog post I mainly focused on intrigue and beautiful writing as ‘gas stations’. However, during my work experience, I think the most useful thing I learnt was the importance of tension in fiction. I read so many manuscripts in which there was no tension in the plot and, therefore, I didn’t care what happened to the characters and I got bored. The best manuscripts I read were packed full of tension.

Tension isn’t quite the same as intrigue but it can work in a similar way. It keeps the reader reading because they want to know whether the tension will be resolved or whether it will escalate. I read one absolutely fantastic manuscript during my work experience. I won’t say its name because, even though it has been published in the US, I signed a confidentiality agreement and I don’t want to get into trouble. But I think I’m allowed to tell you vague details about the plot.

It was a novel told in two parts. The first part was set during the First World War, the second was set in the lead up to the Second World War in Germany. Throughout the novel there is almost constant sexual tension between various characters. There is also tension in the construction of an anti-Semitic man involved with the SA and his communist sister planning to marry a Jew. There is also the tension that comes from the fact that the protagonist lived a secret life in Russia during the First World War and is now trying to keep it a secret from his family.

The whole novel was absolutely packed with tension and, even though I was sat at a desk reading off a computer screen all day, I could not stop reading. Tension is so ultimately important in writing. Without tension, a book can easily get boring.

Like many of my blog posts, I feel like some of you may think I’m stating the obvious here. But there are so many things to think about when writing fiction that it’s easy to forget about some of the simpler things. And the importance of tension in a work of fiction is something we shouldn’t forget.

I hope this is helpful. Thanks for reading.