High Tension

High Tension

Of all the elements that go into a story, pacing is among the most misunderstood. Most writers think they know what makes a book feel fast-paced. A majority of them are wrong.

Stringing short, clipped sentences into wall-of-text paragraphs within rapid-fire chapters doesn’t always give readers a sense of speed. In fact, it can do the opposite by bringing on action fatigue.

Pacing has less to do with keeping lots of plates spinning than with with motivation.

Here are the rules to remember:

  1. Storytelling is about manipulating the reader’s perceptions. It’s primarily emotional. Intellect is secondary.
  2. The physical relationships between text elements hardly ever have the same proportional effects on readers’ perceptions. In fact, the opposite is more often true. It’s like dream logic.

It’s counterintuitive, but nonstop action feels like a slog. Yet a story with one explosion every 5000 words can feel like a runaway roller coaster ride if you’ve set up your characters’ motives.

To put it in technical terms, the element that keeps the reader turning pages on the edge of his seat is dramatic tension. And conflict builds tension.

Note that conflict and action are not the same. Conflict arises when a character in pursuit of a goal encounters an obstacle to getting what he wants. Action often releases tension by providing a measure of conflict resolution.

The longer a fight scene, the more tension is reduced, Think of action as a tension release valve.

That doesn’t mean you should pull an Indiana-Jones-shooting-the-swordsman routine every time. Balancing dramatic tension with satisfying conflict resolution is a tightrope act. Having the hero blow through every challenge desensitizes the reader until the appearance of new obstacles no longer raises the tension.

The trick is to have an overarching goal for the protagonist. Regularly introduce new obstacles–and new kinds of obstacles–that ratchet up the tension. And have the hero believably defeat the opposition without releasing all of the additional tension.

You’ll know you did it right if, every action scene, the dramatic tension is at least a little higher than it was before the scene began.

Picture a series of peaks and valleys, with each peak and valley higher than the last.

That’s effective tension.

Dramatic tension should reach a crescendo in the third act climax. At that point, the story should downshift from rising action to falling action as loose ends are tied up and the last conflicts are resolved.

Since action scenes can act as release valves, breaks in the action can maintain or even heighten tension. Characters can use downtime to discuss the story’s stakes, which is a great way to heighten tension.

Think of any scene in an Ocean’s movie where the characters are planning a heist. Showing you all the complex security measures they must defeat to succeed turns up the tension, even though the only action is a conversation between characters,

For the ultimate example of non-action tension building, look to The Empire Strikes Back. Many viewers erroneously think Luke’s lightsaber duel with Vader is the movie’s climax. It’s not. Their discussion afterward is. It doesn’t get any more dramatic than Vader’s pivotal revelation. The resolution comes when Luke makes his choice and jumps.

Where to place the breaks? A piece of advice Jagi gave me that I try to use in every novel is to give the characters a chance to rest and reflect on their situation at least once per act. This serves as a recap of the story thus far for the reader’s benefit and can build/maintain tension as explained above.

For some added action genre structural help, check out Lester Dent’s Master Pulp Formula. It was devised for short stories, but it scales up to novels easily. Just divide your total word count by four, and replace the 1500 value with that number. It maps to three act structure pretty well, too.

 

To see the Lester Dent Master Pulp Formula in action, read my fan-favorite anthology:

Strange Matter Cover

12 Comments

  1. D.J. Schreffler

    JW4’s long action sequence at the end would have had far more dramatic tension if the first two sections (streets near Eiffel Tower and around Arc de Triomphe) were mostly from the perspective of Mr. Nobody watching Wick massacre the goons, and occasionally offing one himself, and on the phone with the Marquis. Then the last two sections (abandoned building and stairs) would have felt far more dangerous and cathartic with release rather than the end of a marathon slog.

    The only things that ratchet the tension in those first two parts are a) Wick is battered and so not as good in later parts, b) increased pressure on the Marquis to take Nobody’s deal, and c) it takes time. So there’s absolutely no thought that the mooks are going to seriously impede Wick. At best, he’s going to show up to the duel at the last second.

    The only moment I noticed in the fight sequences that had a serious possibility of changing outcome was in the 3rd section where Wick and Nobody are in a Mexican standoff, while Marquis Goon is about to shoot Nobody’s dog. Does Wick accept the risk of moving his weapon away from Nobody to defend the dog or not? And it’s a wonderful question, because of the incitement to act in the original movie. Yes, it turns out exactly as one expects, with again an expected payoff, but it upped the dramatic tension to see what would be chosen, and then to see if the payoff many expect to happen, does indeed happen.

    A side note on subverting expectations. The proper way to subvert expectations is to fulfill promises in unexpected (or at least not straightforward) ways. Say, an honorable opponent wants the duel to proceed and so will help the character get there and not forfeit after he has been defeated and set back severely. It’s not straightforward, and perhaps many will see it coming, and so it’s expected. Be that as it may, it’s still proper, because the goal of subversion is not to break the promises made, but to keep them. Or to offer a different promise to put a character into a choice of which is more important.

    • Yes, John Wick 4 is a perfect example of action fatigue.

      Re: The duel – how likely do you think it is that Wick and Caine made a secret agreement to engineer that outcome; perhaps during their earlier meeting in the chapel?

      • D.J. Schreffler

        More likely going up the steps after the action sequence is done and before they get to the portico.

        They both knew what each needed for win conditions, and there was a scenario that could get them all what they needed. If Caine could see, it would have only needed a raised eyebrow and a slight nod. Since he can’t…probably one of them makes a very short reference (like Black Widow and Hawkeye referencing Budapest) and the other says “Yes.”

        So they certainly were in agreement. My only question is: did they need to coordinate with each other, or did they each trust the other to do things this way without needing to bring the matter up beforehand?

        • Good question. The way Caine says, “Come on, John. We’ve got to get you up those stairs,” and John’s “Yeah, I know” reply inclines me to favor the prior gentlemen’s agreement theory.

          • D.J. Schreffler

            Fair enough. I just don’t think they had time in the chapel to make such an agreement formally. instead, I lean towards them being enough of gentlemen towards each other that they didn’t need to make the agreement to actually do it. They simply did it since they could not otherwise be who they were.

            Before the duel, I simply took the exchange as the honorable opponent who wanted to see things done the right way. Both close friend and consummate professional. After, well, perhaps they had made the agreement explicitly. I think it’s ultimately far cooler if they had made it implicitly, not needing to communicate, just trust each other.

  2. CantusTropus

    Very interesting. I have a question, though – in many works (I’m thinking primarily of Shonen battle anime here, though it’s far from unique to them), you often reach a stage where it becomes extremely difficult to inject any believable tension into the story because the hero’s pedigree is so impressive that it’s nearly impossible for the audience to be plausibly convinced that he could fail at any task or be defeated by any opponent. Obviously, this runs the real risk of ruining the show. Do you know of any way to “cure” a story that has reached this stage? I’ve seen quite a few options tried, from scaling up the enemy power levels to insane degrees (very easy to make absurd, and can result in apathy from the audience as the scale passes beyond the human mind’s ability to truly comprehend or care about) to inflicting a shock defeat (works best if it serves a good story purpose, such as punishing the hero’s hubris/complacency or to drive home the fact that he isn’t actually as invincible as he thinks) to changing the nature of the conflict (so now the hero still has something he can struggle at). “Scaling down” for a story arc or two can also help – that being a choice to deliberately lower the scale of the next conflict in order to reset viewer expectations. The cleverest stories I’ve seen manage to maintain tension in scaled-down arcs by making the conflict far more personal to the hero (such as trying to save a loved one from an illness rather than saving the world). That way the stakes are small-scale but still high, because while they might be small in the grand scheme of things, they mean the world to the hero.

    • That kind of power creep has long been the Achilles’ heel of shonen fighting anime. This problem arises from the arbitrary – and frankly weird – trope which dictates that the most powerful character always wins. Stated that way, you can see how one-dimensional it forces stories that rely on it to be.

      It also gives the illusion of character growth without any real character growth by way of the “How squashed do you want your tomato?” problem.

      There are plenty of ways around this issue. The first and best step is just not to paint yourself into that particular corner.

      American superhero comics get a bad rap, but by and large they avoid power creep. Characters tend to have set powers and power levels. But it’s often smarts and pure tenacity that wins the day. Take Spider-Man vs Juggernaut for example. In anime terms, that would be like Krillin beating Majin Buu. But it happened, and they made it believable.

      Making the stakes personal, as you alluded to, is another time-tested method. It’s often featured in Superman stories for a reason. Supes is perhaps the most deceptively difficult character to write about. He has a flat arc, and he is already so powerful that almost nothing poses a credible physical threat to him. So the writers were clever to make his archnemesis a man of ordinary strength but possessed of a supergenius intellect and Jeff Bezos-level wealth. And that nemesis is smart enough to know better than to come at Big Blue head on. He targets the hero’s beloved city and friends instead.

      See the movie Unbreakable for an excellent meta-treatment of that dynamic.

      • CantusTropus

        This is pure speculation, but I wonder if that trope comes from the concept of qi? Maybe it just feels wrong to think that someone with a less-cultivated spirit could defeat one with a more-cultivated spirit? There’s an entire (absurdly popular) genre of action fantasy called ‘xianxia’ which is very popular on the Chinese internet, and seems to be centrally focussed around heroes who develop themselves to increasingly ludicrous levels of power through chi-farming (essentially an incredibly souped-up and over-the-top version of wuxia fiction). Then again, it’s probable that this genre itself is taking inspiration from Dragon Ball, since it’s relatively recent, so it might just be reflecting Shonen anime sensibilities.

    • “Do you know of any way to “cure” a story that has reached this stage?”

      That raises the question on whether or not a series should have ended a long time ago. I’m thinking of Dragon Ball in this case. As someone who has fond memories of the Z-series, I’d say that the series’ power creep problem started after the Frieza arc. Remember when the Super Saiyan was meant to be this super powerful unbeatable form that makes short work of Frieza? Oh, they’re no match for a bunch of androids lol. And let’s not get started on the Buu arc.

      • CantusTropus

        Yeah, Dragon Ball is the most classic example of such problems, made worse by the series’ vice of just forgetting about less-powerful characters, meaning that by the halfway point of the show more than 75% of the large and colourful cast cannot meaningfully contribute. I’ve heard others argue that the Creep began all the way back in the original Dragon Ball in the fight with Tao Pai Pai. This is the first time in the series where Goku loses a fight to a superior opponent, does some training, comes back “stronger”, and then does exactly the same thing he did last time but it now works because he has a bigger number.

      • Blame my penchant for genre-bashing Eastern and Western fiction. But for my money the solution to manga/anime and American comics’ problems would be writing series combining the Western superpower paradigm with the definite beginning, middle and end that (most) manga series have.

        • CantusTropus

          Come to think of it, this is one of the major compliments that people give to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – that it generally manages to make its fights creative and avoids the power scaling problem. Maybe the fact that its author is a famous West-o-phile has something to do with that?

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