What looks effortless is actually a perfect combination of impressive upper body control, short and very rapid dance steps, and hooped skirts beneath the dancers’ floor-length gowns to help conceal their busy feets.
The graphic above is based on a psychological study of tension and suspense in 2015.
>>BUILDING TENSION WITH THE SIX KEY COMPONENTS
CONFLICT: Your character wants something but they can’t have it – not without a struggle. Do they want to escape? Do they want to save someone? To create tension, it’s so important to make sure your readers know what your character’s goal is.
UNCERTAINTY: We need to make our characters fight for their goal by throwing obstacles at them. The more impossible the task seems, the more your readers will doubt your character will succeed.
ANTICIPATION: This is where foreshadowing comes in. If something bad is going to happen, allude to it and build that atmosphere. Inject fear into the hearts of your readers.
EMOTIONAL SIGNIFICANCE: If we want our reader to want to see our character succeed, then we need to make sure there’s an emotional reason for them wanting this goal. What will happen if they fail? The stakes need to be clear and important to our character in order to make our reader care.
LACK OF CONTROL: One way to increase tension is to pile obstacles onto your character which are beyond their influence. If they feel lost despite their efforts, achieving their goal seems more impossible and, as mentioned above, that helps build “uncertainty”.
TEMPORAL ASPECTS: If your character has a set time in which they must achieve their goal, then will this add a ton of tension. And if you have succeeded in making clear, emotional stakes then the reader will be biting their nails as they count down alongside your character.
If you feel your manuscript is lacking in tension, analyse it for the six above components. Every story needs “conflict”, “emotional significance” and “uncertainty” to be obvious. If you are confident all three are clear, then try ramping up “lack of control”, “anticipation” or “temporal aspects”. All six aspects should be present for a story to really shine, but sometimes they might be more vague. For example, it might not be a set time limit but an inevitable event and this also touches on anticipation and lack of control.
Inspiration Haven 