How is your NaNoWriMo manuscript is going?  I thought I’d take a break from our romance structure today and offer a bit of encouragement. 

 

Just keep writing, Just keep writing….(that’s my Dorie impression). 

 

But, I know, once you get to the middle, it can be a challenge to keep the tension high, the reader turning pages. 

 

I call it…the Muddle. 

 

How do you manage the Muddle?  If you find yourself stuck, writing the same old scenes, rehashing the same issues, the same tension, I have a solution. 

 

You may be missing an element of the Tension Equation. 

 

Tension is what drives every scene.  You’ve heard it over and over.  But what is Tension?  It’s a combination of a Sympathetic Character + Stakes + Goals + Obstacles + Fear of Failure.  If any of these are missing, you don’t have tension, you are simply muddling along. 

 

Without a Sympathetic Character, we don’t care about what happens to him.  Without something to lose, (stakes), it doesn’t matter.  Without a reason to be there, (Goals) they could go home.  Without something to push against (Obstacles), there is no conflict.  Most importantly, without the real fear of failure – if we know they will accomplish their task, then why even both to show us the scene? 

 

The Tension Equation is why we love football or sporting events.  We have our team (Sympathetic Character), we have the game and our record to defend (Stakes),  the goal is to win, the obstacle is the other team, and of course if they are not good, if they are not fighting back just as hard, then it’s not a great game. We love games where we win by the skin of our teeth, don’t we?  A hard fought battle?  We have to believe we could lose in order for the game to take on resonance.  This is how the Tension Equation Works in your scene. 

 

Let’s define each of these elements just a little:

Sympathetic Characters:  Building Sympathy isn’t just about putting our characters in sympathetic situations – it’s about seeing ourselves in our characters. We need to build emotion into our scenes in a way that strikes a chord with our reader and to build in one magic moment that capture the emotion in a profound way. Our reader has to say….that feels real – aka, a reader has to be in the character’s skin.  (for hints on how to do this, read the blogs on Emotional Layering in the archives.  Or, pick up a copy of Deep and Wide: Advanced Fiction Techniques).

 

Stakes: What will happen if the character doesn’t meet their goal?  What fear hovers over the scene?  Both the character and the reader must see what might go wrong in the scene to create tension. This involves using the Push-Pull, a MBT technique for creating the right motivation.  (in short, it’s the PUSH away from something negative, and the PULL toward something positive.)

 

Goals:   What does POV want?  Emotionally, physically?   What do they need?  Why?  Answering these question gives the character a quest – something that pushes them forward. 

 

Obstacles:  can be People or Situations, (weather, or machines, or even government) – but at the end, they lead to the biggest issue, and that is a person’s own conflicting emotions/values, something called Inner Dissonance.  Inner Dissonance is when two values or emotions are pitted against each other. 

 

Consider a married man on a business trip.  He goes into the hotel bar to watch the football game.  He’s been on the road for three days and just fought with his wife about problems at home.  A nice waitress takes his order.  Maybe she sits down with him, has a conversation.   The tension comes from the conflicting value of him needing to stay true to his wife, and the emotion of an attractive woman caring about him.  The longer the waitress sits there and the more he pours out his woes to her, the more the tension rises. 

 

Fear of Failure:  This is the secret ingredient to keeping tension taut in a scene.  Without this fear, and this believe that it could happen, the scene is flat.  If we know the outcome is a sure thing, then why bother?  Even if the tension is only inner dissonance, it’s that fear of losing themselves that keeps the tension high. 

 

How do you build in the Fear of Failure?  First Ask: does your character achieve their goal, or not? 

 

If they achieve their goal, then you want to hint at failure (that they won’t) at least two times in the scene before they win the day. 

 

If they fail, then you want to hint at victory at least twice before they fail. 

 

So easy.  But it’s the key ingredient to the Tension Equation.

 

So, if you’re stuck in the Muddle, take another look at the Tension Equation and turn your Muddle to uh, Magnetic?  Magnificent?  Magic?  Muscle? 

 

Oh, you get what I mean. J

Write On!

 

Susie May