This blog examines the types of stakes you can use to raise tension to its highest levels.
A good place to begin is with some questions:
What happens if the protagonist fails?
What is at stake? Personally? Publicly? Morally?
Why can’t your protagonist just walk away?
Tension is a key element in storytelling. It’s that strain and uncertainty that hooks the reader. What’s making that creaking sound? Will the hero save the world? Can the kidnapped boy escape before the villain returns? Will the heroine ever recover from the spell the witch cast or is she doomed forever?
Putting your characters in peril pulls your reader into the story and makes it interesting. When there’s no tension, stories can feel flat or boring. But how do you add tension to a story?
Context is everything in stories and in life. In the last blog, we explored the relationship between context and complication. This time, we’re going to examine the ways to establish context within your story.
There are two ways in which context affects story—the context of the plot (or event, in the case of nonfiction) and the context of character.
Context is the foundation for everything. It colors perception and fact. It changes minds and tugs on emotion. Without context, a story is nothing more than an anecdote floating in space.
Context provides the background, backstory, setting and structure that holds the details of a story together and gives the reader the framework necessary to understand. Without this, the reader cannot know how to feel.
The first part of this two-part series covered the importance of complications and how to test whether the complications you are are adding are within the framework of your story. In this blog, we’re going to look at the different kinds of complications typically found in stories.
There are many ways to add complications in your story. In a romance novel, it might be rival or obstacle that keeps the two main characters apart. In a mystery, it could be a serial killer or a lack of clues. In SciFi, it might be an alien invasion or a dystopian world that oppresses its citizens. The list is limited only by your imagination.
I don’t know many people who don’t lean in when they hear that phrase. “It’s complicated.” Two words that hold the power to intrigue and pique curiosity. They make us click to find out more. They prompt questions and promise a bevy of details. “It’s complicated” might not be a great way to live, but it sure is a good way to tell a story.
Complications make stories. As writers, we understand this. It’s why we cram complications into our stories and keep shoving until our characters can’t take it anymore…and then we add more.
Taste is directly linked to smell. It, like smell, also happens within the body. We have to take in the food in order to taste it. Taste cannot happen passively. It is an active act, a decision. We drink the wine, eat the pizza, and savor the chocolate. As it’s linked to smell, I am going to limit my commentary, but I highly encourage you to include taste in your work.
Experts say that smell is the sense most closely related to memory. The one that can transport us in time. It is also the sense I am least able to discuss. I was born without the sense of smell (congenital anosmia). I have not smelled anything in my life. Never will (so please do not ask me to smell things, especially things like ammonia. Been there—done that—can’t smell it).
When we’re young, we learn about the world through touch. We put dirt in our mouths, Run our toes through the grass. Embed our hands into the dog’s shiny coat. As we grow, we learn not to touch dirty things and to keep our hands out of our mouths, but we never lose that desire to touch our world—to run our hands over objects of our desire.
Hearing is a physical reaction within the eardrum. A vibration that carries meaning. Everything your character hears should do the same. It should resound within the story or characters.
Welcome to the Sense Series. The first part was an overview of sensory writing. Now we’ll tackle one sense per week. First up: Sight.
Sight is the most common sense used in writing and the most important. Visual words and phrases bring that world to life. Through words, we recreate the world around us or invent an entirely new world for our reader.
We experience the world through our senses, through what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell. It’s our senses that define our existence, which is why it is imperative to incorporate sensory writing into your work.
Senses take a flat world and transforms it into a fully realized one with depth, texture and vibrancy. All five senses should be integrated into your description somewhere. If your story takes place in the woods, you might talk about the dappled lighting, moist ground, and sounds of the birds and animals moving about. It might smell of wet Earth or decomposing leaves. If your story takes place in a bakery, I would hope there would be talk of scents and tastes—touches of vanilla and chocolate and the feel of warm cookies straight from the oven. The goal is to offer details about your world through the five senses, not just sight and sounds, which are the most easily accessed and obvious.