Part VII: The Art of Delay--Creating Tension and Reader Anticipation

***This post is the seventh in a series of eight exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***


Back in January I posted a piece on the importance of tension in writing fiction, but the topic is worth revisiting I think, especially now that we're in the process of reworking our short story "masterpieces." So, what are people referring to when they talk about tension in storytelling? I like this definition offered by the late Rust Hills, long-time fiction editor for Esquire magazine, and author of Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular:

That “something” which is “going to happen” usually involves conflict of some kind, and the foreshadowing of that conflict is a key element in creating tension that works.  “Conflict is the heartbeat of all writing,” says Lajos Egri, author of The Art of Dramatic Writing.  “No conflict ever existed without first foreshadowing itself.  Conflict is that titanic atomic energy whereby one explosion creates a chain of explosions”:

Says Hills, “As with every other discussion of method, of course, there has to be an amount of competence and care on the writer’s part, or the effect won’t be caused by the method.”

Our mentor, the late John Gardner, agrees:

So for every piece of delayed information we'll need to do three things:  a) foreshadow the event so that the reader will anticipate its eventual coming; b), resolve or reveal the event or information at some point later in the story; and c) keep the tension taut throughout the story leading up to it, writing with such care, such rich language and startling accuracy of perception, that the reader can’t wait to skip ahead to the end, but is kept from doing so only by his own unwillingness to leave the gorgeous passages leading up to it.

Simple, right?

Rust Hills: Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular

John Gardner: The Art of Fiction

Lajos Egri:  The Art of Dramatic Writing

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

Setting & Emotion

It's been tough getting back into my novel again after idling these last couple of weeks over the holidays. Not to mention taking the month of November off to write a new  novel for NaNoWriMo '09! There's nothing like the start of a new year, however, to get my engines revving again.  Unfortunately, I can barely remember where I left off.  


Thank goodness I made some detailed notes in my novel journal before quitting at the end of October.  Looks like I was in the middle of a scene where my protagonist enters a new and frightening situation--moving into a house with six people he's never met before--for him, his worst nightmare.  I was having some difficulty getting into my character's mind for this one, when I remembered a writing exercise on emotion and setting from a Gotham Writer's Workshop class taught by Brandi Reissenweber.  The trick, as always, is to tweak the exercise so that it fits the problematic scene in your own project that you're hoping to improve.  In my case, the "surroundings" my character enters into will not be vacant--there'll be six other characters to greet him when he walks in the front door.

Janet Burroway describes the relationship of character to place in her book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft: 

Below, Burroway refers to an example from the short story "Ralph the Duck" by Frederick Busch:

Happy writing!