The other day, I saw a question from a writer who was
asking if it was ok if the tension in his story wasn’t all that intense.
I’ve not read his story, so I don’t know if 95 percent of it is an action-packed
adventure and he was concerned about that remaining 5 percent. I don’t know if
it’s a cerebral thriller that traps readers in mental zigzags of seemingly
contradictory paths that turn out to make perfect sense in the end. I don’t
know if it’s a tale about a baby kangaroo whose best friend got in trouble and
went to bed without any supper.
But one thing I’m fairly certain about: if a reader gets
bored, no matter how well you write, you’re at risk of losing a reader. At a
certain level, writing is a symbiotic relationship with readers. A writer needs
a reader. Without a reader, the writer gets stale and dies, unknown and
unremembered. Not forgotten, mind you, because no one ever knew about me…er,
the writer… in the first place. The relationship goes both ways: a reader needs
a writer. Sure, a voracious reader can probably be sustained by dry technical
manuals and watching rabbits eat the grass in the back yard -- at least for a little while -- but most readers
need meatier stuff.
We writers sometimes play hard to get. We talk about how
we write for ourselves and don’t care if our books sell -- if we ever write a
complete book much less get it published. But secretly we all want to have some
recognition that our perspective is at least moderately interesting. It’s not
about the art of writing, it’s about communication, having a voice, being
acknowledged for existing.
Tension in a story isn’t about violence or death, it’s
about characters having a skin in the game. If your main character walks away
from the central conflict of the story and never returns, then we’re following
the wrong character. “But,” you argue, “the central conflict is what’s going on
in that character’s mind.” Maybe so. Show me. But, God forbid, don’t bore me.
You see, I only have so many minutes in the day to read,
and right now, I’ve got a four-year-old who wants one more rendition of the
trouble that ensued when Elmo was delivering a stinkweed plant to Oscar. A
barber was caught off guard by Elmo’s sneeze and buzzed a reverse Mohawk along
a customer’s scalp. His sneezing caused a monster-built brick wall to collapse;
so did the cans Bert was stacking in the store where he works. I think there’s
an untold story about circus elephants running amok in avenues near Sesame
Street.
Tension. We learn its value at an early age. We remember
it and learn from it. Use it copiously.
That reminds me, did you know that only a couple blocks
from Mr. Hooper’s store, there’s a blue-skinned guy in a trench coat selling
counterfeit ‘O’s?...
3 comments:
Spot on, Matt. I beta read for someone who wrote well and had a strong story, but continually backed away from things that ratcheted up the tension in his manuscript. It was a frustrating experience.
Great post. I am still finding, as a learning writer, it's hard to write the tension in. My characters are so real to me, I worry for them. Usually I have to gear up to write a tough scene. The first time I killed someone off, it took me two weeks to garner the strength to do it. Now it only takes me a day or two off and a few deep breaths to do the hard stuff.
Thanks, Jeff and Liza. I'll admit, it's easy -- especially for beginning writers -- to want to make things easy for the characters, but that ultimately is the last thing you should ever do for them. Heck, in one of my stalled novels, I have a prominent character who was a talented enough helicopter to not die when he was forced to a bumpy landing in Antarctica, but he's still stuck on the ice in Antarctica. And I haven't been back since. That must be cold.
Post a Comment