[SPEAKER_00]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. [SPEAKER_00]: If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patrion.com slash writing excuses. [SPEAKER_00]: Season 21, Episode 16 This is Writing Excuses. [SPEAKER_03]: Tension and release as call and response. [SPEAKER_03]: tools not rules for writers by writers. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Mary Rubinette. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dahlon.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Erin. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm Howard. [SPEAKER_00]: Today we're going to be talking about tension and release as a way to kind of guide your reader through your fiction. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times we talk about conflict as being as thing that a story must have, but I've been thinking more and more that it's tension. [SPEAKER_00]: We did a whole [SPEAKER_00]: whole thing about tension season before last season previously on writing excuses.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're just going to do a quick kind of reminder about what tension is and then talk about specifically how you can use tension but also the release of tension as a way to control how your reader is experiencing the story. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to start with some of the pieces of tension that we talked about previously. [SPEAKER_00]: There's conflict, of course, juxtaposition, unanswered questions, anticipation, and then micro-attention, which is small pieces of tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are types of tension. [SPEAKER_00]: When we're talking about like release of tension, what are some ways we can think about sort of the opposites of those? [SPEAKER_03]: I think, I mean, conflict resolution being sort of the most obvious one, right? [SPEAKER_03]: They end up a fight scene, whether that's a physical fight or an emotional fight, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like coming to some kind of conclusion where you have that mini resolution, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And this doesn't have to be a resolution of the core tension of your thing, right? [SPEAKER_03]: The monster can still be hunting them, but you make it to a safe room, you bar the door. [SPEAKER_03]: You escape for a moment, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Or, [SPEAKER_03]: you know, you have a beat where you think you've defeated it, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And I think all of those can be small releases of tension that give your story, it adds to the pacing, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It pulls you through, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Because to me, tension and release is controlling pacing is controlling flow. [SPEAKER_05]: And part of what you said right there, you know, if you've resolved the fight, but you know, maybe not the emotional conflict, [SPEAKER_05]: Well, those are two different sources of tension. [SPEAKER_05]: It's entirely possible to release some of the tension. [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, OK, good. [SPEAKER_05]: They're not shooting at each other.
[SPEAKER_05]: But they still need to have the big talk. [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: And they haven't yet. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a lot of times I think about tension, especially in horror, but I think it works in other places about safety versus danger and the known versus the unknown. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you move in a lot of that is about tension is movement. [SPEAKER_01]: So you move from one known state a lot of times to another known state.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you go from dangerous and known. [SPEAKER_01]: I know I have to give a speech and I'm super pair like I just it's going to be so horrible. [SPEAKER_01]: I know it, you know, but it's dangerous to dangerous and unknown in the middle of my speech. [SPEAKER_01]: The zombie apocalypse occurs. [SPEAKER_01]: Which is great. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to do this speech anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, new problem, you know, but it does resolve the emotional tension of the speech and then you move on to a new place. [SPEAKER_03]: And the reason why release is pacing in my mind is because, okay, so my worst food opinion is I don't like risotto. [SPEAKER_03]: And part of why I don't like risotto is that every bite is the same as the one you just had, right? [SPEAKER_03]: It just continues to be the same flavor going forward in the same texture going forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, [SPEAKER_03]: if you have a book that has or if you have a story that has no release of tension, it can feel very sane throughout, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Differentiation allows us to observe the passage of time, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And so when you let people have those moments of release, it makes them feel like your story is moving forward, even if the main overarching thing is still not resolved.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was just thinking of, uh, I don't know if it was in, uh, alien earth or not, but there's a moment where the xenomorph has gotten away. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_05]: Now we're all tense because we can have a jump scare at any point where the xenomorph leaps out. [SPEAKER_05]: And then someone says, you know, oh, you know, we know where it is. [SPEAKER_05]: It just killed so and so.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's actually a release of tension because now I know it's not going to jump out [SPEAKER_05]: And then they go after it. [SPEAKER_05]: And now I'm tense again because they are approaching the place where we could again be jumped by the alien. [SPEAKER_05]: And so it is a very nice rolling forward of tension and release as we make me tense. [SPEAKER_05]: And make me relax. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I think it's not just that it's boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's also fatiguing for the way their if things are at the same level of tension. [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you think about a set of stairs, there are landings on stairs in order to give you your muscles time to recuperate before you do the next set of stairs. [SPEAKER_03]: It's one, this damn master at the gym is the worst thing ever invented. [SPEAKER_01]: Is it worse or better than Rosodo? [SPEAKER_01]: That's a good question. [SPEAKER_03]: It's better than Rosodo.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, tense about wondering why? [SPEAKER_03]: My dislike of Rosodo knows no bounds. [SPEAKER_03]: But the reason we keep going to horror, I think, is it's one of what is sometimes called a genre of the body, right? [SPEAKER_03]: It's a genre you feel in your body as you have the tension, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Romance, erotica, there's a few humor. [SPEAKER_03]: All of these are sort of categorizers, or genres of the body.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so there are great examples of looking at how tension built, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Humor is also tension. [SPEAKER_03]: As you tell a joke, how are what you call the comedic drop. [SPEAKER_03]: is you're building tension until you have the reverse so you have the drop that lets the sort of humor beat resolve. [SPEAKER_03]: That's why you can use humor in a horror story to get that little release valve of tension before you ratchet it up again.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's why horror is one of my favorite things to [SPEAKER_03]: It's the same skillset, it's just a different resolution. [SPEAKER_03]: It's why Jordan Peel is one of the greatest horror in terms of all time, because he's also one of the funniest people of all time. [SPEAKER_00]: But you can also use it in things that are not particularly funny or overtly horror. [SPEAKER_00]: The spell shut by Sarah but Beth Durst is this cozy. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's just delightful and charming.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the things that she doesn't that I think is so fascinating is like, I could not stop turning the pages. [SPEAKER_00]: She's so good at the tension and release and one of the things she does is use as juxtaposition and questions to pull you through. [SPEAKER_00]: So the opening of the story our main characters of the librarian, there's a coup that is going on in the city. [SPEAKER_00]: We do not actually see the coup. [SPEAKER_00]: We see smoke rising in the distance.
[SPEAKER_00]: but all she has to do is get out of the library with her sentient house plant. [SPEAKER_00]: And just the juxtaposition of librarians sentient house plant smoke from who in the distance and you know that at any moment those things could intersect.
[SPEAKER_00]: even though they don't directly intersect at the beginning of the book that is still looming over you from much of the book and it allows you to be like any moment now this anticipation, this juxtaposition of this extremely cozy thing with some real horrors happening in the background.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, what's useful also about your list of different types of tension is that you can alternate between them to keep flow moving through the story right so the game blue prints is a great example and that's because you have the tensioner release of receiving a puzzle and then solving the puzzle right and that is one kind of resolution what made me think of it is in the background there's also this revolutionary narrative happening and the succession narrative happening in the background so as you're getting story.
[SPEAKER_03]: elements, that is pulling you through as you want to know what's happening in the world who are these characters, why is this house the way it is at the same time that you're getting the tension release of the puzzle solving, right? [SPEAKER_03]: The game hate is used as a similar structure in terms of the tension and release of doing a very difficult combat and then dying and then getting more story, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you alternate them to as you let pressure off on one valve, you have the other one still pulling you and then you release that one and the other ones. [SPEAKER_03]: I think of it as [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the frog jumps. [SPEAKER_05]: We're tense. [SPEAKER_05]: The frog lands.
[SPEAKER_05]: We've relaxed and now another frog is going to jump over it and and that pattern I mean obviously if that's the whole pattern all the way through the book it will get a little stale but as a structure for [SPEAKER_05]: for helping you understand tension and release in your own work. [SPEAKER_05]: That is a fine starting point. [SPEAKER_05]: Well, this is like more frogs.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just need more frogs because I think like again like we talk a lot about how humans are patterned recognition creatures. [SPEAKER_01]: And if you [SPEAKER_01]: have the exact same type of tension resolution, tension resolution, the reader already sees the resolution when the next tension occurs and therefore they don't feel tense.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, it's like when you have like the hero who's played by a really big name actor in danger in the first three minutes of a movie and the person's like, I'm not really buying that like, I doubt that you got Val Kilmer in order to kill him in minute one. [SPEAKER_01]: And so when it does happen, it's very shocking. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think playing with different types of tensions says, OK, we're going to do this a little differently.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got a question recently at a live event about how to make tri-fail cycles feel different. [SPEAKER_01]: And some of it's having a different fail to the same tri, or a different tri, but the same fail. [SPEAKER_01]: Changing one thing changes the pattern enough that then humans are like, this is new. [SPEAKER_01]: And yet again, I'm feeling my emotions.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, all this kind of plays into a thing that we talk about with the difference between short fiction and longer fiction. [SPEAKER_03]: And as you go from short story to novel, you need to layer in more plots. [SPEAKER_03]: You need to go from an A plot to an A plot B plot C plot D plot. [SPEAKER_03]: And that having those different layers lets you alternate when you're building a when you're releasing tension to sort of create this movement of flow that we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: Speaking of tension release, we got to take a break for a second, but when we come back, I want to hear from you guys about how you decide where to put those releases. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so when we went to break, I kind of wanted to hear more about your decision-making process, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So when you're putting together a story, what is the thing that's telling you, okay, I need to release here, I need to build tension here, what are those things that are like mechanically going into your process there? [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a big baby. [SPEAKER_05]: I do not like being tense. [SPEAKER_05]: I am not as tense when I'm writing it as when I'm reading it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so generally speaking, [SPEAKER_05]: I like my food much saltier than Sandra does, and so I know that it's the right amount of salt. [SPEAKER_05]: I've screwed up. [SPEAKER_05]: It's reverse for tension. [SPEAKER_05]: If I feel like this is, this is two tenths, then I need to turn it up a couple of notches, and that will be accurate, and that's where my barometer is now. [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if that's where my barometer will be in.
[SPEAKER_05]: six months or six years or whatever, but it's life is a moving target. [SPEAKER_05]: I just scale things in that way because I've discovered that my tastes are such that I like a little less tension and so when I'm writing for a wider audience, I'm going to put in more tension than I want. [SPEAKER_03]: I like that you're almost checking in with yourself somatically as you write of like, where am I feeling tension? [SPEAKER_03]: Is this too much?
[SPEAKER_03]: Then it's like, oh, then that's the right level, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I tend to think about it. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the challenge and leaning on how it's metaphors that it is a season to taste. [SPEAKER_00]: For me, when I'm using tension, I'm often using it to control pacing and also to control the effect on the reader. [SPEAKER_00]: So if I have a slow scene, it's a quiet scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's people in a room and they're having a conversation or I don't know making tea. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm very likely to then try to insert some other kind of tension [SPEAKER_00]: take a long, even while giving people the illusion that they're resting.
[SPEAKER_05]: I love this contrast because, you know, I'm speaking to how am I feeling while I'm reading and my Robinette is speaking to how is the structure of the book working in terms of [SPEAKER_05]: And that's why it's so important to call out all of them. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, this makes so much sense me with both how each of you individually talk about process and talk about fiction.
[SPEAKER_03]: Aaron, I'm kind of curious, like, you write incredibly times fiction, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like an error Robert, short story, has me sweating from line one to the end. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, how do you think about that maintaining that level or increasing or de-operative, like, choose to intentionally decrease it? [SPEAKER_03]: Or do you just make me suffer the whole time? [SPEAKER_01]: I often go in writing thinking, how can I make done one suffer? [SPEAKER_03]: Bad, bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's written on top of my desk. [SPEAKER_05]: But I think... Resotto. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that part of it is that I have trained myself. [SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking to love tension. [SPEAKER_01]: Some of this is a lifetime of watching soap operas, which have to create tension all the time in situations that are very familiar. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's a lot of it like who's in love with who, and who lied to who about this. [SPEAKER_05]: So many frogs.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's so many frogs. [SPEAKER_01]: It's basically putting a whole bunch of frogs in a bag and shaking it. [SPEAKER_01]: Is it so fun, Rob? [SPEAKER_01]: Don't do this and he eats frog. [SPEAKER_03]: Now the frog's in a bag, but the story telling is always like, okay. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that because like I sort of grew up with that as a level of storytelling, I always want more attention. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like they're spending too much time feeling safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like it throw something at them. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think also I've learned a lot about tension from singing and seeing other people sing. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I love that. [SPEAKER_01]: He talks about risotto earlier. [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, this is how I feel if you ever go to karaoke or even professional singers who don't modulate, like they have just belt.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a beautiful belting voice, but they're just like belt for five second minute straight after a while, you just tune it out. [SPEAKER_01]: And when you, I'm singing, I like to be like, I will watch the audience for like, when I feel that they're kind of done with it and immediately modulate what I'm doing in real time to try to like do something different like, oh, that's a perfect time to get quiet.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a perfect time, you know, now you know what I can do, like I'll do something else. [SPEAKER_01]: And so a lot of it for me is very gut feeling, but in order to do that as somebody who's writing a story, I will read my stories to myself or have the voice of like Microsoft Word, read it to me and feel like, if I'm not feeling tense in this moment, I need to add something else to it. [SPEAKER_05]: I feel like you can make you tense. [SPEAKER_05]: You're doing it well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clicky makes everyone tense. [SPEAKER_00]: You just made me think about a thing about why we modulate in a song, and we do it for emphasis. [SPEAKER_00]: There are times when we go quieter because we want someone to lean in, and that's also, I think, places where you, where you have those quieter scenes where it looks like the tension is dropping, but there's this undercurrent underneath it that you're like those, I have this creeping sense of dread.
[SPEAKER_00]: versus other times when you when you do built full out because you're trying to emphasize a different kind of thing So I think I think thinking about the emotion of the scene is really and is really like why you were choosing one type of tension over another and whether you're doing it as a release or or a tightening
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to, yes, and that, like, from the singing part of things, when you, when people sing quietly, they're able to enunciate more from more likely to hear the lyrics of what they're saying to actually get a sense of what the words are. [SPEAKER_01]: When someone sings the louder if you sing the broader your voice becomes, and a lot of times people don't listen to the words as much. [SPEAKER_01]: They just listen to the sound of it and the feel of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in writing, I think in those small scenes, if there's a small detail of tension, like the tension is actually like, whether or not this person wore the thing on their left wrist versus their right, the small detail that works better in a quiet scene. [SPEAKER_01]: In the middle of a large fight scene, it's gonna be hard to pay attention to like, what side somebody had something on, because the bigness of it is actually drowning out some of those small details.
[SPEAKER_01]: So having both of them allows you to give both types of tension their day and the sun. [SPEAKER_05]: And in the spirit of, yes, and I've got an, oh, wait. [SPEAKER_05]: When I was studying audio engineering, I had things exactly backwards and the instructor in the studio had to come over and tell me, no, you're pushing the faders the wrong time.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was mixing something where the singers would be, you know, really loud and then really whispers and then really loud and really whispers as sort of a call and response.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I was turning them up during the loud and down during the whisper and he said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, what you're trying to mimic is the the lean in when people lean in in order to hear something they concentrate on it and their brain makes it louder and so when the when the soft singing happens turn it up let us lean in when it's loud bring down the fader and let us sit back and it washes over us.
[SPEAKER_05]: I do not know how this applies to writing, but it's fascinating to me. [SPEAKER_03]: As pattern recognition machines, what we do is you recognize edges, right? [SPEAKER_03]: An edge will always stand out to us more than the middle of something, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So when you have that micro-tension release, it gets us to lock it and focus. [SPEAKER_03]: Like when we're like, oh wait, what was that punchline? [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: Even though if the scene isn't over all a funny one, having that little bit of just friction there, [SPEAKER_03]: let's us refocus and pay attention and lean in as you're saying to hear the thing better and then we can go back to sort of what the baseline of the scene is. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thinking of that and the call in response you were talking about since we put that in the title is the like the it creates a pattern that you then break.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like lean in for a hug, this is great, lean in for a hug, this time I stabbed you, you know, and so it's like surprising yet [SPEAKER_01]: So if you know me, yes, so like I think like that is a thing that allows you to almost lull the reader into thinking there isn't tension, we're in a low tension and then allows you to ratchet up really quickly, which makes that edge that much sharper to not cut your reader with, but to cut through their attention with.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you, apparently? [SPEAKER_00]: And it is that the thing that we'll see often at the end of a story that we get this big cathartic snap because of a big tension release. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's also why you'll see in a lot of places where you get, like in the horror thing where they're about to get out. [SPEAKER_00]: And everything looks great. [SPEAKER_00]: It's that contrast can provide you with more of a reaction to this new tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of new tension, it is time for homework, and I want you listeners to consider adding some new tension to your story. [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to look an existing thing that you already written. [SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to look at it and see if you can spot what in that scene causes the tension. [SPEAKER_00]: And if there's not anything, it's a good sign that you should add something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Try listening to one of the early episodes where we do a whole module on tension that several episodes long. [SPEAKER_00]: See if you can add a bit of juxtaposition. [SPEAKER_00]: See if you can add a question. [SPEAKER_00]: If there is tension already, what happens to that scene if you change it? [SPEAKER_04]: This has been writing excuses. [SPEAKER_04]: You're out of excuses. [SPEAKER_04]: Now, go right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. [SPEAKER_00]: For this episode, your hosts were Dong Wan Song, Aaron Roberts, and Howard Taylor. [SPEAKER_00]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds. [SPEAKER_00]: For more information, visit writingexuses.com.