20 Master Plots Lesson 2.2 Change Through Growing Tension

[ScienceGirl]

Continuing with Tobias' Common Denominators of Plot


3) Make Tension Grow as Opposition Increases

For a moment, let's visit music theory. Think about terms such as adagio, crescendo, moderato, stacatto, and sospirando. If you don't know what those terms mean, they describe the general movement of a piece of music. Faster, slower, building up, moderately fast, separate, spirited. All those words sound better in Italian LOL. But if you have ever understood the meaning and then experienced said meaning in a classical piece, you FEEL something. 

Take a few moments and listen to these two fellows play "The Sound of Silence" on mountain dulcimer and guitar. Now, The Sound of Silence is probably in my top five favorite songs. I love it's depth and intricacy. I think my favorite version is the one by Disturbed. If you listen to both of these versions, you'll experience two very different angles to the same song. And whew! That official music video, his intense eyes coming out of the shadows with that hint of light. Powerful! 

Both versions have something in common at the deepest level. The song rises and falls at critical moments. Story needs to do that as well. 

This rise and fall must come in some sort of pattern. It doesn't work to have only a continual buildup of tension. That's too intense for the reader. And having no tension is boring. So the question becomes, 

When do I add tension to my story? When should it increase or decrease? 

According to Tobias, tension should be a constant in your story. There should never be a time when it drops off completely. This is a point I didn't I agree with at first. I think moments of pause are sometimes nice as long as you keep them lively and interesting. It's like giving the horse a tiny bite of carrot so they keep hoping for more. 

However, you don't want to go too long without tension. So this is where the local tension vs. overall tension comes into play. You use local tension to up the stakes. Stress out your character. Write in those emotional rises and falls. But your overall tension is constant. Never lose site of the end goal. 

Tobias returns to the example of the guy who asks the girl to marry him, and she says no because he's an alcoholic. Every action in the story would be driven by the fact that he wants to get this girl to marry him and she won't agree to it. Even if he's having some success with an AA group and laying aside the bottle, he should still have that in the forefront of his mind. We can't have his pathway to sobriety be too easy. 

In Tobias' words, "we don't want the story to get stale." 

Local tension is only going to provide what he calls a series of equal roadblocks. Things that are easily fixed. The bully bumps the victim and knocks their textbooks to the floor. The victim picks up the books and goes to class. Problem solved. End of story. Boring! 

Tobias says to avoid becoming stale, we:

have the main character encounter along the way a series of barriers, which deepen the opposition. Each conflict gains intensity. Readers feel themselves being thrust toward the cataclysm, the climax, when all hell will break loose and the story will get resolved (for better or worse). 

It's that buildup of intensity that is key. So the answer is, you don't "add tension" for the sake of adding it. Instead, you add opposition, and tension will be the end result of it. He says,

To write a plot that will work here, you must develop the tension not ust locally but at the deeper level as you investigate the character of the hero in crisis. It's not enough to have motivating action that gets the story going; you must continually test the character through each phase of dramatic action. 

Next, Tobias takes us through the plot of Fatal Attraction as an example of how this overarching tension builds until it bubbles over at the climax. He divides this analysis into three acts:

Act 1 (Setup) "Boy meets girl. Boy is already married (local tension). Boy and girl go to bed together over a weekend while wife is out of town. When boy tries to go home, girl cuts her wrists."

Act 2 (Complications) "...they represent a series of escalations" Girl starts intruding in boy's life in small ways. Surprise visits. Phone calls. He pushes her away and she becomes hostile. Boy realizes the threat to his marriage and tries to cover it up. Girl becomes so violent she kills the family rabbit. Boy fears for his family. Girl kidnaps their child and wife and has a car accident. 

Act 3 (Resolution) Psycho girl breaks into the house and tries to kill the wife. Depending on which ending version you watch (there are multiple released), psycho girl dies. The husband is arrested for her "murder." The wife finds evidence to free her husband of the charges. A lot of people don't get to see this end, but it works better for our overall example. 

What you'll notice is that every single opposition raises the stakes just a little bit more. There's always that "I'm going to get caught" factor hanging over the husband's head.

So, let me explain what this is not. It doesn't work to have this family on a vacation and the dad cuts off some random biker dude and they fight in the parking lot of the local Wawa. That event might be an example of tension, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the overall tension of the story. These incidents of opposition should be related and piggyback their intensity off each other. It makes all the difference.

4) Make Change the Point of Your Story

If you don't know how your character will change by the end of your story, then you truly have no story. Your character cannot be static. As Tobias says, "Meaningful events change people in meaningful ways." It could just be that Boy learns his lesson and never cheats on his wife again. But it could also be much, much deeper than that. Does the character become a better person? Do they heal from their brokenness? Do they overcome some deep-rooted problem like alcoholism or drug addiction? Even if the change is just something small like acknowledging to themselves that they are an alcoholic

Tobias says,

Well, you say, don't you know that love can conquer all? Of course it can, but there's no hint that Girl helps Boy through his drinking crisis. We believe in the Power of Love, but we also know how the real world works, and we want to see opposition--love stacked against, say, his self-destructiveness. That's a good source of conflict. But without change, our story doesn't give us a clue.

By being the point of the story, it's like the point of revolution. The focus that all plot revolves around. How does this highly flawed character become less flawed? Understanding that can make all the difference.