Building Suspense And Creating Tension Part 2
WITHHOLDING-
Withholding is one of the simplest and most effective ways to create tension and build suspense. Remember Christmas as a child? Did you ever pick up a gift-wrapped box with your name on it days before Christmas and shake it in an effort to determine its contents? Though you were outwardly chafed, there was something decidedly delicious about the whole idea of being made to wait until Christmas morning to get your presents. The same magical forces are at play when a reader is kept in suspense through withholding. But it takes finesse. You have to know when to stop withholding, and give your protagonist what he or she wants.
PLOT LEVEL WITHHOLDING – The first four tasks for every writer are as follows:
1) Ensure that you will identify early on in your story that person or thing your protagonist wants more than anything else in the world.
2) determine exactly what your protagonist is willing to do to obtain that desire or achieve the goal they’ve set for themselves. To what extremes are they willing to go to? Will they lie? Cheat? Will they break the law? Will they even hurt or kill to achieve the object of their desire?
3) create an opposition character (antagonist) or opposing force, such as mother nature, the supernatural, or technology, which will stand in the way of your protagonist and the object of their desire.
4) determine the primary motivating factor driving your protagonist. Is it need of love? Of belonging? A need to be esteemed by their peers? Or is it pure survival? The answer to this question will help you align your conflict with the opposition you’ve created.
LONGING AND DESIRE are two of the most powerful emotions known to man. Emotions like these are the driving forces of many great stories. What compels a reader to turn the pages of a 500 or even 1000 page novel is NOT the GRATIFICATION of those desires, but the FRUSTRATION of them. Because once that longing is satisfied, all the tension in your story dissolves.
SCENE LEVEL WITHHOLDING – In addition to withholding your protagonist’s main object of desire, you can and should, within each scene, create smaller desires which you can then withhold.
