5 Tips for Increasing Dramatic Tension in Writing

5 Tips for Increasing Dramatic Tension in Your Writing

Anybody Can Write a Novel

Chapter 7 “From Story to Art” – Section 7 “Rules, Limits, and Stacking the Odds”

With Links to Supplementary Material

If you've got a draft of a story or a story in mind, sooner or later you will begin to realize that you might want a certain quality—a certain epic intensity that you've seen and experiences with books and movies that keep you on the edge of your seat with tremulous excitement, and then makes you feel like your mind has been blown after you are finished. But wait! Doesn't Shyamalan try to make his movies epic, and just leave his audience irritated because in doing so he makes his stories seem terribly bloated and self-absorbed? Yes! But YOU can reach epic tension without making your story self-pleasuring and pretentious; and one of the key ways of achieving that is by the three plot-dimensions of Rules, Limitations, and Odds that are stacked against the protagonist.

Tip 1: The more the Odds are stacked against the hero, the greater the dynamic tension.

A plot, in its most basic form, is a protagonist struggling against an antagonistic force in order to achieve a goal. Not only is it the essence of plot, but it is the most basic element of dramatic tension—a question of whether or not the hero will be able to achieve his or her goals. We increase the tension by increasing the doubt in that question—making it more and more unlikely that the hero will achieve that goal. If the hero is flawed; standing against the world; with physical, mental, and emotional limitations; and up against a seemingly invincible and all-powerful antagonistic force; we will be far more drawn into the story and biting our nails as we read than if the protagonist is a morally perfect, invulnerable, fearless alien that is facing a foe that is not much of a challenge to defeat.

Tip 2: We stack the Odds against the hero by way of Limitations.

Limitations can be physical, such as a disability, a lack of resources, a lack of specific skills, or simple mortality. They can be emotional, such as anger that causes the protagonist to make genuinely bad choices, debilitating fear, addictions, and even passions that cloud the hero's judgment. Or they can even be mental, as it is quite a struggle if the antagonist is smarter or mentally stronger than the hero or if the hero isn't very mentally strong at all. Each limitation to how effective the protagonist can be at reaching their goal and facing their antagonistic force, will increase the dramatic tension.

Tip 3: We create additional Limitations by creating Rules.

When I say “rules” I don't mean arbitrary laws that the characters in your world, or this one, hold—nor rules of writing you may have seen in writing guides. I mean the rules that you have created through the plot, genre, and characters of the story—a set of guidelines to keep you and your reader on an even playing field. The better Scooby-Doo series, for example, had three such rules—that the clues would be all one needed to deduce the criminal from the list of suspects, that the monster would always be human, and that Velma would subtly cue the audience when she found a clue. Some of the better Batman comics and series give the hero a self-applied Rule that he must deal with his problems without resorting to killing. It would be best to think about your Rules as more of a structured “standard” by which to uphold the quality of the story.

Tip 4: The Rules of your story should be obvious to the reader.

I've spoken before about how reading a story is a lot like playing a game or a puzzle. In that sense, the rules should serve to make the game more dynamic and challenging for the reader, as they guess and predict how the protagonist could ever hope to overcome overwhelming odds and reach their goal. But for your audience to be able to respect your limitations, they must know the Rules and how the game is to be played. This can be done through obvious physical restraints on your character (such as having to go through the entire adventure with a set of handcuffs on), by rules that the world establishes (the strange sorts of laws that make stories like “The Hunger Games” possible), by the villain (such as the classic “if you call the police your family will die” plots), or by the hero (Batman refusing to kill). Just make the rules abundantly clear from the moment they become relevant, so that your reader feels included in the puzzle.

Tip 5: Your characters gain admiration as they work within the Rules of the story, not when they try to lawyer around them.

There are lots of questions as to the difference between a legitimate twist-ending and a Hoodwink, and this is a part of it. If you, as the Narrator, break the rules at the end (such the Scooby-Doo villain actually being a monster,) you have openly admitted that you were not a skilled enough writer to work within your own limitations and that you had to cheat to win the game. The same goes for every other character. Whether hero, narrator, or villain, we more fully engage with characters that we respect; and whichever character cheats instantly loses any respect we might have had for them. (Check out my articles on protagonists, antagonists, and narrators for more insight as to why we must be able to respect them.) Your audience's minds will finally be blown in an epic conclusion when they realize all the brilliance, preparation, planning, and skilled writing that it took for the hero to solve the puzzle in the truest spirit of the Rules and Limitations you have created.

Feel free to comment with other suggested resources. Any questions about writing? Things you want me to discuss? Comment or send me a message and I will be glad to reply or feature my response in a later article. If you enjoy my reviews, please feel free to share my articles with friends, add it to your favorites, become a watcher on my page, or send send a llama my way!

Originally posted at www.facebook.com/JosephBlakePa… (Feel free to “Like” and subscribe)

And: josephblakeparker.wix.com/theb…

And: josephblakeparker.deviantart.c…