How to tell When Tension Can Be Broken
There are two types of narrative tension: plot tension (drawn out over the course of the entire plot or just an arc) and scene tension (starts and ends within a single scene). I tend to think of tension as happening in stages, much like a plot (though it is not the same thing as a plot), and once you reach the final stage….. boom, that’s the moment to set off the Hitchcockian bomb. To be clear, I’m not saying that this is the best or only way to address tension/suspense, I’m merely illustrating a pattern I’ve noticed across many examples of engaging tension.
So, to paint a picture, let’s use two examples that everyone is acquainted with, covering one scene and one plot arc. (I want the examples to be familiar for the most amount of people, so you’ll have to forgive me for using film examples):
Scene: The first conversation between Clarice and Hannibal in Silence of the Lambs
Plot Arc: In Black Swan, Nina auditions for the lead role in Swan Lake and is later given the role
I also include a recognizable example of each stage done poorly and offer a revision that demonstrates how to change things around, which is intended to help you revise.
Stage 1: Need as Catalyst for Tension
Why enter the ring at all? The main character will not tolerate discomfort if they don’t need something important from the antagonist. This doesn’t even need to be the main antagonist, which Black Swan demonstrates here, it just needs to be someone/something that is standing in the way of the goal.
Clarice needs Hannibal to give her a clue, which will communicate to her superiors that she’s worthy of respect.
Nina needs the artistic director, Thomas, to give her the role she wants because that’s how she’ll get closer to her definition of perfection.
Bad Example, Revised:
Evil Dead Rise:
Context: A pregnant woman named Beth reunites with her estranged sister Ellie and her three kids because she needs a place to stay.
Why this is bad: We’re never given a need-based reason for any of the characters to engage with the antagonist (the possessed version of Ellie). We’re only given surface level reasons to care about them (Beth is pregnant and is relying on her sister Ellie for a place to stay, and the other characters are innocent kids) but the antagonist isn’t gatekeeping anything other than survival.
Revision: First scene would be the death of Beth and Ellie’s parents, then some scenes communicating the intense reliance the two sisters have on each other, then Ellie gets possessed. That makes the story about Beth needing to overcome her codependence on Ellie/her fear of being alone, and the antagonist is now gatekeeping Beth’s ability to rely on her sister.
Stage 2: Power imbalance
In order for the audience to believe that the antagonist is capable of blocking the main character’s goal, they need to pose a believable and preferrably overwhelming threat. The ideal amount of power imbalance is whatever will make even you wonder how you’ll get them out of this situation. It’s best for this not to be a pure display of power, because that comes off kind of cheap.
The beginning of the SOTL scene does a few things to frame Lecter as more powerful than Clarice.
As she walks toward his cell, the inmates become increasingly insane with Lecter being the last in the line, telling her and the viewer that he’s the most insane of all.
Lecter is expectantly waiting for her at the very end, inferring omniscience.
She finds that his cell isn’t segregated by bars but by plexiglass, insinuating that he’s more dangerous than the other inmates
He then ignores the very first thing she says to him and asks her an unrelated question, immediately testing what she will tolerate.
The antagonist of Black Swan changes with each consecutive act, but the company’s artistic director, Thomas, is the antagonist of the first act. To signal the power imbalance between him and the dancers:
The instructor allows him to interrupt the warm up
He walks among the dancers like he owns them, touching them and looking at them dismissively/judgmentally
He loudly speaks over the music and nobody interrupts him, everyone pays attention to what he’s saying
The dancers are visibly pleased if he shows them attention
Bad Example, Revised:
Signs:
Context: Aliens are introduced to us via crop circles on the news, some vague noises on a baby monitor, a farmer seeing something standing on their roof, and a veterinarian named Ray trapping one in a closet.
Why this is bad: None of this is making me feel much tension because we don’t see a power imbalance. We’re just getting ominous visuals. I understand that they didn’t want to make a gore-fest film, but ‘toned down’ shouldn’t equal ‘the antagonist isn’t scary’.
Revision: The family’s introduction to the aliens is spotting one in their field, which is where a large farm animal (let’s say it’s a cow) encounters it. The alien isn’t initially aggressive; the cow and alien hesitantly approach each other with curiosity, moving very slowly. But when the cow touches the alien with its wet snout (water is their weakness) the alien lashes out and effortlessly kills the animal. It is a display of power, but it also shows the characters and the audience that the aliens are emotionally/mentally complex beings and it makes us question why they’re on earth. This also makes the antagonist’s weakness feel less limp and presents a mystery (why did it attack when the cow touched it?).
Stage 3: The Test
The antagonist tests the main character to determine if they’re worthy of that which they desire, testing their limits and abilities, and the main character fails. This increases tension because we become worried that that main character will fail to surpass this gatekeeper.
Hannibal asks to see Clarice’s credentials and she abides. He asks her to bring it closer, which she does. He then asks her to bring it closer once again, in a voice that denotes how unserious he’s being, and she abides yet again. She could have put the badge away after the third demeaning request, but she doesn’t. This tells him (and us) that he has the upper hand and that she’s struggling to respect herself… so she’s not yet worthy of his respect. He follows this up with a few other demeaning requests and comments, lengthening this stage of tension.
Thomas chooses Nina to audition for the part, but he tells her that while she’s perfect for the white swan, she lacks what it takes to embody the black swan. It’s notable that Lily, Nina’s direct rival and embodiment of what she needs to become, interrupts her audition.
Bad Example, Revised
The Visit:
Context: Two kids are staying at their estranged grandparents’ house, but their mom isn’t there because….. plot. It’s the first night of their visit.
Why this is bad: The Test is essentially just the grandmother walking around and doing weird shit in the dark, which doesn’t work as a Test because the kids can’t get in a car to leave or meaningfully confront the grandparents. At best, it’s a test for the mom (who barely counts as a character in this film), and she just tells the kids not to worry about the strange behavior because her parents are old. This harms tension because it gives the audience the impression that the antagonists aren’t safeguarding anything meaningful, they’re just being scary for it’s own sake.
Revision: We get more backstory about the emotional reasons why the mother and the grandparents are estranged (let’s say that the mom was an abusive alcoholic and the dad tolerated it, but now she’s sober) and find out that they’re offering her a very substantial sum of money in their will if she lets them have a relationship with the grandkids. The mother comes with the kids (I’m aware that this ruins the eventual plot twist, but let’s be real….. it was kind of a stupid twist anyway) and it’s a very emotional reunion. They all turn in for the night and the mom stays in a seperate room from the kids. The kids experience the creepy nighttime behaviors, but the mom doesn’t. So now when they tell their mom about it, she has to choose between believing her scared kids and the fragile relationship with her parents, who are holding the money over her head.
Stage 4: Self Doubt
This is where most writers get tension wrong. Either they let the tension snap off right before they get here because they thought that the failure of the Test was the bomb that was supposed to go off, or they get caught in the Test stage and stall there, unsure of where to go next (especially true of survival horror). Self doubt deepens the affect of the failure, which gives the tension a new perspective and provides information about what drives the main character.
Clarice makes a few stumbling and half-hearted attempts to gain some ground, insulting Lecter by revealing that she’s just a student and asking him about his drawings as a reminder that he’s the one in the cell, not her. But this fragile footing crumbles when she self-consciously asks him to fill out a questionnaire, a failing which Hannibal quickly acknowledges when he calls it a ‘hamhanded segue’. This further solidifies the notion that Clarice is struggling to take herself seriously despite her many achievements, which is also reflected in Hannibal’s response when he tells her that she had been ‘doing fine’ before then.
We see Nina overthinking the audition, mostly feeling sorry for herself but also trying to understand her failure. She vents to her mother about her frustrations and this is when we learn that her mother had a failed ballet career and now she’s living vicariously through Nina. This means that Nina is likely suppressing her authentic self to achieve a goal that is not her own, which is why she cannot embody a character that represents her Jungian shadow.
Bad Example, Revised
You’re Next:
Context: Erin and her boyfriend are going to a dinner party at his family’s vacation home. During dinner, a man in a mask shoots a bolt through the window, killing one of the family members.
After the attack starts, Erin entirely skips the self-doubt stage, which gives the audience whiplash because she instantanously went from a normal person to a hyper-competent survivalist. This isn’t believable because even the most seasoned survivalists would at least momentarily doubt their ability to help the inexperienced people around them. It also makes Erin look like a Mary Sue and limits our ability to understand her on a more personal level.
Revision: After the initial attack, Erin drags one of the injured people into a sealed-off room and tries to save their life but fails. She breaks down crying, saying that she should have been able to do something, revealing that she was raised in a survivalist compound. This is the correct moment to reveal this information about her because it comes off as less “I was raised by seven brothers” and more like “I had a fucked up childhood”, and it tells us that she has unrealistically high expectations of herself.
Stage 5: The Pushback
This is also a stage where writers commonly get a bit lost. The issue I see most often is the writer stalling here, mistaking this for the hero’s final push toward victory and skipping the next two stages, which ends the story on a note of unresolved tension (which is not the same thing as ambiguity btw). This stage is when the main character makes it seem like they might come back from unbeatable odds and shows us that they’re capable of overcoming the main issue, but doesn’t quite reach victory yet.
When Clarice points out that Hannibal ate his trophies rather than keeping them, he looks down and away from her, realizing that she’s smarter than he originally thought and that she possibly has real powers of deduction; Clarice finally has a slice of solid ground to stand on. This pushes him to accept the questionnaire.
Nina puts on some lipstick (which she is using as a shallow signal of change) and then approaches Thomas to ask him to reconsider her for the role. It’s very out of character for her to be this assertive.
Bad Example, Revised:
The Last House on the Left:
Context: Mari has been assaulted and left for dead by a group of young men, who then seek refuge from a storm in the house of Mari’s parents. The parents find Mari alive and discover what the young men did, overwhelming them with anger and sadness.
Why it’s bad: The last third of this film becomes completely stuck on the Pushback stage. As soon as we find out that Mari’s parents are going to kill these guys for what they did, the whole thing essentially devolves into revenge porn, leaving zero room for any meaningful Second Test. This also undermines the antagonists, making them look incompetent and weak… and while I understand wanting to take away an assailant’s power, doing so does nothing for tension and it makes Mari look gullible for falling prey to such idiots.
Revsion: After the parents find out about what the young men did, the dad is overwhelmed with emotion and charges into the house to fuck their shit up… but one of the young men knocks the dad out and the mother runs to find a gun that we would have been shown earlier. She hides somewhere in the house so she can try to get a good shot at the guy, but it’s a pretty bad hiding place and she’s in serious danger of being discovered. This creates better tension because now we don’t know what’s going to happen to the mother and we don’t know if the dad is alive.
Stage 6: The Second Test
In response to the pushback, the antagonist tries to call their bluff. This is important because any worthy opponent isn’t going to just accept defeat at the first sign of defiance, they’re going to push even harder in an attempt to get the main character to crack.
Hannibal asks Clarice if she thinks she can dissect him with such a blunt tool, baiting her into backtracking. When she takes the bait, he leans into her lack of self-assurance by dissecting her appearance and cultural background, displaying his own powers of deduction as a sort of ‘you wish you were as good as me’ move. When she tries to push again, he responds by telling her that he killed the last person who tried to test him, and then essentially tells her to fuck off.
Thomas tries to prove to Nina that she doesn’t have the self respect/free personality that’s necessary for the role by forcibly kissing her. Initially she gives in to the advance, making him (and us) think that she’s going to fail this test, but then she surprises him by biting him and running out of his office.
Bad Example, Revised
Blair Witch Project:
Context: Heather, Mike, and Josh are college students filming a documentary about the Blair Witch. They go into the forest she supposedly inhabits and they become lost in the seemingly endless trees while being hunted by something unseen.
It’s a classic, but we all know the ending of this movie kinda sucked… and this is why. The witch’s first Test was seeing how Heather dealt with Josh’s sudden disappearance (Mike is also there, but nobody cares about Mike). Then the second test is the abandoned house that appears in front of Mike and Heather, where they hear Josh’s voice calling to them, and Mike goes running inside. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a creepy ending, but it’s a lame test because Heather isn’t existentially afraid of losing Josh/her friends, she’s afraid of being responsible for this entire situation. This is why she takes the time to record an apology to her family and two friends.
Revision: Early on, we learn that Heather is struggling with loneliness as a college freshman. She’s falling out of touch with her high school friends, had to move away from home for school, and now she’s struggling to make friends because her schedule is so busy. This trip is supposed to be her attempt to become friends with Josh and Mike. They actually have a great time together for the first half but as tension rises and blame comes at her, she breaks down and apologizes and admits to how scared she is of being alone out in the woods. When Josh goes missing, the witch is taking away one of only two connections that Heather has. So now the Second Test makes thematic sense rather than feeling like a random spooky setup. She cannot tolerate being left by Mike, and she’s desperate to find Josh…. not because she’s worried about either of them, but because she’s terrified of isolation.
Stage 7: Win/lose
This is not the same thing as the detonation of the bomb, this stage determines which party won the interaction, but we don’t yet know what the final move is going to be. Kind of like the moment right after a fighter lowers his guard, but right before the opponent gives him the finishing blow. It’s important to create a clear distinction between this moment and the actual detonation.
Clarice leaves, but one of the other inmates viscerally disrepects her (I hate even thinking about this part of the scene) and he riles the other inmates up, creating a cocophany of shame. Additionally, this is an excellent metaphor for her failure in trying to be taken seriously in a male-dominated profession.
Nina, convinced she ruined her chances, goes home in defeat to be consoled by her mother.
Bad Example, Revised
It Chapter 2:
Context: Pennywise is an eldritch monster that gets power from the fear of others. A group of people who were tormented by Pennywise as kids have come back to kill him in his cave.
Why it’s bad: Stephen King is notoriously bad at writing endings, and it’s usually because he loves to undermine his villain at this stage of tension. We’ve spent a lot of time viewing Pennywise as the unbeatable epitome of all that we fear…. and then he’s turned into a crying whimpering mess by a group of people insulting him, which makes the entire story feel laughably childish. Not to mention, it’s a bit ridiculous as a metaphor for dealing with fear because you never just stop being afraid of things.
Revision: I’d cut the time-jump, entirely focusing on the kids’ timeline because this is supposed to be a coming-of-age story and the metaphor works much better within that context. Rather than killing Pennywise, Bill gets fed up with running from him and, against the advice of his friends, decides to face It head-on. Pennywise approaches, but, despite being extremely scared, Bill refuses to back down and goads It on. All the other kids are screaming their heads off, terrified that they’re about to watch their friend die, but then Pennywise retreats, looking disgusted, and disappears. The Loser’s Club realizes that Pennywise won’t hurt them if they choose to face him because courage taints the taste of fear, which defeats It’s entire motivation. While Pennywise is still free to torment them, they’re going to be okay so long as they stand their ground, which is harder to accomplish than just yelling insults. This is also a much more coherent metaphor for overcoming fear and it doesn’t suddenly turn an all-powerful eldritch entity into a whimpering mess; it’s strength meeting strength. It also leads to a much more interesting Detonation.
Stage 8: Detonation
During the commotion, Lecter calls Clarice back to him and, out of desire to right the wrong done to her (as he views ‘discourtesy as unspeakably ugly’), he gives her a clue. While Clarice does leave with something she wanted, Hannibal gave it to her on his terms for selfish reasons and didn’t provide everything he knew. Clarice still lost this round.
Nina goes into work the next day to find that she was given the lead role, and she immediately calls her mother to tell her the good news, crying tears of happiness. This sets the tone for aggression/violence equaling victory for her.
Bad Example, Revised
Sinister
Context: Ellison, a true crime writer, has uncovered a pagan deity named Bughuul that’s been coercing children into killing their families. Ellison unknowingly walks into the trap, he and his entire family are killed, and his daughter Ashley is kidnapped by the entity.
Why this is bad: After everyone is dead, Bughuul plays the film that was recorded during the murder and walks into it with Ashley. Which….. look, just because it’s the end of the story, that doesn’t mean you have permission to suddenly lay all the cards on the table, okay? I’m not mad at the concept of Bughuul existing within the films themselves, but horror loses all of its vitality when you give the audience all of the answers. We then see the box of tapes in the attic, and get one last stupid jumpscare that ruins the entire vibe of the film (fuck you Jason Blum).
Revision: Directly after an implication of Ellison and his family’s deaths, we’re taken into another room with the projector and we hear Ellison and his family’s screams, but aren’t provided any visual input. Ashley and Buguul walk hand in hand in front of the projector, and as they walk forward their figures disappear, but we aren’t explicitly shown that they’re moving into the film. We cut to the box of films in an attic, and after a prolonged moment we hear someone open the attic entrance and comment on the box that someone else left, wondering what’s in it, and it ends there.
Where you can see these stages in literature :
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Pet Sematary by Stephen King
The Town Manager by Thomas Ligotti
The Shining by Stephen King
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Etc etc etc
Additional Note;
Don’t use a single channel of tension in your plot. This is one of the leading causes of limp tension in stories, allowing for long periods of action that provide very little progress. Generally I think it’s best to have at least three main channels of tension
Examples:
In I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid, the unnamed narrator experiences the tension of whether or not she’s going to break up with Jake and the tension of who is calling her and leaving strange voicemails and why. These are combined with tensions that come and go with changing contexts, such as trying to figure out why Jake’s parents are acting so strangely.
In Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, The Kid is enduring the chronic threat of impending violence, plus the philosophical tension between himself and Judge Holden, plus the persistence of a landscape/setting that’s dynamically hostile (disease, lack of water or food, etc).
In Black Swan, Nina is dealing with the threat of Lily taking over her role, the fear that she could have another hallucination at any time, she must maintain favor with Thomas, and Beth is reminding her that her goal won’t give her long-term happiness.
