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by Gloria Kempton (mobi)

  degrees of tension

  In fiction, when we speak of tension or conflict within the context of dialogue, our minds begin to immediately think of fighting, arguing, and verbal sparring, and yes, all of that can happen in a passage of tense dialogue. But it doesn't have to. There are degrees of tension, and when a character falls silent in the middle of a conversation, that can be as tense, maybe even more, than if the characters start shouting at each other. You know how they say that it's calm before the storm? Before certain people go over the edge, sometimes they're eerily quiet.

  If you know your characters, you know which of them would exhibit this trait—the more tense a situation becomes, the more stressed out the character is and the more likely he is to grow quiet until he cracks. In a dialogue passage, you could show one character growing quiet by accelerating the dialogue of another character. This contrast would actually make the silence of the other character very loud, if you know what I mean. Whenever you want to emphasize something, put the opposite of whatever it is in the near vicinity.

  When turning up the volume on your characters' voices as well as moving them into physical conflictive action, you're going over the top and you probably can't suspend this kind of tension for a long time, so keep it short. Excuse the graphic example here, but I recently heard that it took only ten

  minutes for a dog to kill a young woman in San Francisco. Ten minutes seems like such a short time when we think about an entire day or week. If we think about our entire lives, what's ten minutes? And can we even imagine the kind of tension in a real-life scene like this? I can't imagine anything worse, honestly. But if you're writing a similar scene in a story, comparatively speaking, you wouldn't want to go on and on with either dialogue or description. You would want to speed it up to the max, let it peak, and then bring it back down just as fast. Every once in a while, Stephen King can get away with pages of tension for one single dialogue scene, but, well, he's Stephen King.

  The more you do this, the better you'll get at how much for how long. Check inside every so often and try to feel the scene the way the characters would. If the tension feels too drawn out, it probably is.

  On the other hand, you don't want to cheat your reader out of the action, especially if you've been building up to it, so make sure the scene is long enough.

  conflict—the center of tense dialogue

  At the center of every passage of dialogue should be some kind of conflict for the viewpoint character. This is often how you know whom to use as your viewpoint character—the one with the major conflict in the scene.

  The conflict can be external or internal, but the reader must be able to feel the tension when the viewpoint character speaks. Ideally, this character is experiencing an internal conflict that he's unable to keep from expressing externally to another character. If he'd like to keep his thoughts to himself and can't, this alone creates tension.

  When it comes to tension, you have to be careful that you don't have characters overacting to each other just because you know you need tension in the scene. I happen to see this quite often in the manuscripts of writers I work with. They have characters fighting just for the sake of fighting.

  Above, I mentioned that story conflict can be verbal, physical, or mental. In the most intense conflictive scenes, the writer employs all three. There's no order that works best, although the physical would most often come last. It's true that some psychotic people can physically attack and then rant and rave for a long time after the attack, both playing with their victim's mind as well as berating him with words. But most often conflict between two people starts with words that can then become mind play and sometimes finally escalate into a physical attack.

  The conflict at the center of a passage of dialogue doesn't have to be overt. The characters don't have to be arguing or beating each other up— with words or fists. There simply has to be something at stake for the viewpoint character, something to risk or lose, some kind of internal torment or crisis, some problem to resolve, an agenda that opposes the other characters, a decision to be made. The viewpoint character can struggle externally or internally or both.

  I've worked with many writers who not only don't get the need for tension in their dialogue or even in their overall story, but they don't want to get it. They don't seem to want to work that hard at writing to make sure their stories not only grab but also keep the reader. Tension grabs and if sustained, doesn't let go. You want to be the kind of writer who is willing to rewrite as often as it takes to make sure each scene of dialogue can be just as tense and have as much suspense as possible. Don't you? Then you have to be willing to throw your characters into conflict after conflict.

  I run into fiction writers quite often who seem to resist putting their characters in conflicts, and if they can be made to do it, the kinds of conflicts they finally come up with aren't really much for the reader to worry about. I sense that this is because these writers don't really want to create pain for their characters or hurt them in any way. They're basically nice folks who just want to write nice little stories where the characters have little minor problems to resolve. I tease the students in my fiction classes, telling them that if they want to write good fiction, they can't be too nice. It's too difficult for nice people to create problems for their characters. Fiction is about conflict and resolution. Characters resolving problems. The more serious, the better. The more desperate the character is to resolve his conflict, the more the reader is engaged in the story.

  You're not too nice, are you?

  techniques to tighten tension

  When you're in control of your dialogue (chapter eight), you can release and tighten the tension at will. So the first goal is to always get in control. If you feel like you have control, here are some useful techniques to increase the tension when your characters are interacting.

  Fixing Your Own Story

  Take a look at all of the scenes in your story that end in dialogue and see if they're as full of tension as they can be. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What have I left open-ended in this passage of dialogue?

  • Do I have my viewpoint character making the last statement and/or how does the last line of dialogue affect my viewpoint character?

  • Have I pumped up the emotion in the last line of dialogue enough so the tension is palpable?

  • Have I successfully showed in this passage of dialogue the collision of my characters' agendas?

  • Have my characters' words to each other raised the stakes for my protagonist and created as much tension as possible?

  Silence

  As I mentioned earlier, one way to show tension during a passage of dialogue is to have your viewpoint character drop out of the conversation for moments here and there to evaluate the moment and how he feels about it. If he's thinking things he's not saying, for whatever reason, tension increases. Is he afraid to speak his real thoughts? Why? What will happen if he says these things out loud? You want to show the action continuing while the viewpoint character is silent, so let the other characters play out their parts, whether it's action or dialogue. Previously, we discussed contrast. It works. The louder the other characters are and the more they move around, the more tension you'll create by leaving your viewpoint character silent.

  Anxiety

  Consider what happens to your voice when you're anxious, afraid, nervous, excited, angry, or momentarily insane. Okay, first, you have to admit to these states of mind in order to observe your voice and demeanor in conversation. Most of us can acknowledge all but the last one. Who wants to admit to any kind of insanity, even momentary? Only the bravest soul, that's for sure. Momentary insanity is simply anxiety, fear, nervousness, excitement, and anger at their extremes. No big deal.

  Anyway, let's take a look at human behavior, for that's always where we find the most authentic dialogue. In the following scene from Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell, the protagonist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, is standing by as Sergeant Marino is interv
iewing a woman named Abby about her recently murdered sister. Watch how Abby's anxiety peaks as the scene progresses.

  "When was the last time you saw her?"

  "Friday afternoon." Her voice rose and caught. "She drove me to the train station." Her eyes were welling.

  Marino pulled a rumpled handkerchief out of a back pocket and handed it to her. "You have any idea what her plans for the weekend were?"

  "Work. She told me she was going to stay in, work on class preparation. As far as I know, she didn't have any plans. Henna wasn't very outgoing, had one or two good friends, other professors. She had a lot of class preparation, told me she would do the grocery shopping on Saturday. That's all."

  "And where was that? What store?"

  "I have no idea. It doesn't matter. I know she didn't go. The other policeman in here a minute ago had me check the kitchen. She didn't go to the grocery store. The refrigerator's as bare as it was when I left. It must have happened Friday night. Like the other ones. All weekend I've been in New York and she's been here. Been here like this."

  No one said anything for a moment. Marino was looking around the living room, his face unreadable. Abby shakily lit a cigarette and turned to me.

  I knew what she was going to ask before the words were out.

  "Is it like the other ones? I know you looked at her." She hesitated, trying to compose herself. She was like a violent storm about to break when she quietly asked, "What did he do to her?"

  I found myself giving her the "I won't be able to tell you anything until I've examined her in a good light" response.

  "For God's sake, she's my sister!" she cried. "I want to know what the animal did to her! Oh, God! Did she suffer? Please tell me she didn't suffer."

  Abby's pretty much losing it by the end of this scene—understandably. Any time your character encounters the kind of situation that sends her up the wall, you can count on increased tension. So, especially in mysteries or suspense thrillers, you want to keep moving your character from tense situation to tense situation, especially ones that involve other characters so the anxiety can be expressed in dialogue. Keep the anxiety up.

  Strategic tagging

  You can increase tension in small ways by stringing your sentences of dialogue out and inserting your tag in the middle of the sentence. "I came looking for you," he whispered huskily, "never imagining I'd find you here." Check out the difference between that sentence and the next two: He whispered huskily, "I came looking for you, never imagining I'd find you here." Or, "I came looking for you, never imagining I'd find you here," he whispered huskily. Can you see the difference? Say them out loud and hear how the rhythm adds tension to the first sentence that the next two don't have.

  Pacing

  We talk about the how-tos of pacing in other parts of the book, so I just want to mention here that to pace a scene of dialogue is to increase its tension. For example, if your character is in an agitated state and suddenly begins to talk slowly, it could mean he's gone over some edge. The opposite is also true. If a character is rambling on in his dialogue and suddenly becomes agitated and starts speaking very quickly, the edge is probably near, as well. Tension increases. Of course, there always has to be a reason for a sudden shift in the pace of dialogue. You can't just shift into either high or low gear for no reason.

  Suspense

  When you create suspense in a scene of dialogue, you automatically pump up the tension. The way to create suspense is to plant thoughts or ideas in the reader's mind that point to a future event or situation.

  Here's a scene from Garden of Lies by Eileen Goudge. Watch the tension increase as Rachel tells David what her plans are if he doesn't do what she wants. He's her boyfriend, but he's also a doctor and she wants him to perform an abortion on her—to abort their baby. He's just basically told her she's crazy, that she needs a "shrink."

  ".That's what you need, baby. Yeah. You've really gone over the edge this time."

  "Maybe," she said. "But that doesn't change anything. We're still in this together, one way or another."

  "What do you mean?" His eyes were narrowed, suspicious. "I mean that if you won't perform the abortion, there won't be one. I'll have the baby."

  "Are you threatening me?"

  "No." And she meant that too. "I'm just telling you what's possible for me. What choices I can live with. Having your friend Kelleher do a nice neat D and C on me isn't one of them."

  Having the baby, of course, is no better than getting an abortion in David's eyes, maybe even worse. So what will Rachel do? And how will David react? Goudge successfully engages the reader with a few lines of suspenseful dialogue that point to a future event. If you can use your dialogue to do this all the way through a story, you'll never lose your reader—not for a moment.

  in scene endings

  You can use a character's words at the very end of a scene to create the kind of tension that will compel the reader to keep turning the pages, no matter that it's the end of a chapter and he had planned right then to turn out the light and go to sleep. The trick is to leave things open-ended. Too often, we think the end of the scene or chapter is the place to neatly tie things up. Nothing could be further from the truth. You want to do the exact opposite. You want to leave things hanging. As many things as possible.

  Also, if your viewpoint character makes a statement that increases the tension and causes another character or the reader to gasp, you don't need to let the other character respond and then include the moral and everything else to bring things to a tidy ending. You always want to end a scene with either a statement by your viewpoint character or one that will affect your viewpoint character. A statement that is suspenseful and will compel the reader to keep reading into the next chapter to see what happens. Sometimes a question works. Or a reaction just left hanging.

  In real life, when someone makes a startling or shocking statement and no one says anything, the words are suspended in air and are much more powerful and influential than when others around that person begin to fill in the emptiness with their own words or reactions.

  Rita Mae Brown is an expert at this in her novel Venus Envy. The story is about a woman, Frazier, who goes into the hospital thinking she has cancer and "comes out" to everyone that she's gay, then finds out that someone made a mistake and she doesn't have cancer after all. Now she has to live and deal with the mess she created by coming out. Without even knowing the events of each chapter, let's just look at the dialogue Brown uses to close some of her chapters.

  • "I can see I'm getting nowhere with you. You won't be content until you ruin this family. Why? So you can be queer?" Libby was ripshit. "The only people who are queer are the people who don't love anybody. That means you, Momma. You are incapable of love!" Frazier slammed down the phone so hard she scared the cat.

  • ".. .Maybe every human being has only one question to answer—" Carter, listening intently, interrupted: "What's that?"

  "Do you want to live or do you want to die?"

  • Frank sighed. "What this town needs is an enema."

  • As Kimberly left, Sara and Frazier sat for a moment. "Sarah, I get the feeling people would have preferred that I died. It would be better than having to face things. Or maybe saying that they want me dead is too strong. Maybe they just want me to get a pink slip, you know, so I could be excused from life."

  The author clearly knows the effectiveness of this technique, which is why she uses it so often and so well. I'm guessing she really gave her chapter endings a lot of thought to come up with a tense line that would create enough suspense so the reader has to keep turning the pages. And notice how she doesn't go on to the other characters' reactions. She just leaves us with the one shocking line of dialogue.

  Sometimes it can be difficult to leave our characters' words hanging, but it works wonders for suspense and tension.

  Is there anything that creates more drama, more suspense and tension, than people's feelings? Feelings create wars between individuals and nati
ons, and at the same time create mutually loving relationships. In the next chapter, we'll explore how dialogue can convey our characters' feelings so as to engage our reader at an emotional level.

  Scene openings. Go through some of the novels on your bookshelf—preferably the ones you've read — and study the scene and chapter openings. How hard did the author work to grab the reader with dialogue to get the action rolling and bring the characters to life? Choose at least five scene or chapter openings and rewrite them, using dialogue that will pull the reader into the scene or story. Go over the top and be as outrageous as you can. Doing this exercise will free you to think out of the box. Now go through any of the sto-

  Conflict—the center of tense dialogue. Write two pages of tense dialogue for each of these conflictive scenarios:

  • a character who is keeping a secret from another character, while trying to make small talk

  • a character who is being forced to go against her value system in a job setting; she's in dialogue with her boss

  • a male character who has just discovered that his best friend has slept with his (the first character's) girlfriend; the two friends are at a bar playing pool

  Techniques to tighten tension. Write one page of dialogue for each of the five techniques we discussed earlier in this chapter:

  • Silence - Put a character in a scene that creates such intense feeling for him that he doesn't trust himself to speak. Show the other characters around him chattering away.