Tension specifically involves a character attempting to hold in their feelings and battle through them inwardly, rather than getting an emotional release. The emotional release will need to happen in order for the tension to pay off, but the more you build up the tension the better that release will feel for your readers. Writing tension should make your readers feel… well, tense. Here are some tips on how to show rather than tell your readers about different kinds of tension throughout your manuscript.

1) Anger

One form of tension that a character may experience is through anger. Perhaps their friend said something derogatory about their sibling and, though they weren’t brave enough to say anything at the time, the anger is still within them, festering. It may be tempting to simply write ‘[INSERT CHARACTER NAME HERE] is feeling tension because they’re upset.’ but that’s lazy writing. Instead, write about how their leg begins shaking once their friend walks through the door. Write about how their jaw clenches when their friend speaks. Write about how they look down or straight ahead when they address their friend, instead of looking at them directly. Write about how their responses are curt instead of talkative like normal. All of these actions show rather than tell the reader that there is tension between two characters, in the form of anger.

2) Nerves

Another form of tension that can occur for a character is through nerves. A character can react to nervousness by becoming tense and rigid. Let’s say a character who adores theater has a big musical audition coming up after school. Throughout the day, that character may sit with their posture rigid as they bite their nails. They may pick at a piece of their sweatshirt, slowly unraveling the fabric by a single thread. They could clench their fists only to quickly dart out of class, run to the bathroom, and vomit in the toilet.

3) Affection

Tension can also exist between two characters who are romantically involved with one another. This form of tension can be shown through the characters sitting close together, their hands almost touching but not quite. Or perhaps one character says something a little too personally revealing, so they blush and rub their hand behind their neck. Maybe they’re forced to work together on a project, they’re bouncing ideas off of each other excitedly when one of them drops a pen and they both bend down to reach for it, then look at each other embarrassed.

4) Long Build-up

Build-up involves a form of tension that comes from long unresolved feelings. This is something readers would notice over the course of an entire book. Perhaps there’s a character who is constantly being teased by another character (let’s call them character A and B). At first, you see that character A is able to bounce back easily from character B’s teasing. Character A is a very sweet easy-going person and they let the teasing roll right off of their shoulders, smiling along with the joke.

As the book goes on, however, you start to see their attitude change. Perhaps they snap back once after a joke, or maybe they’re frowning slightly after a particular joke. But as the story progresses, their reactions become more pronounced until suddenly they’re walking around frowning, clenching their jaw, and snapping at people all the time. This example allows readers to see how certain types of unresolved feelings can create tension if they happen over a longer period of time.

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Do you feel that fist-clenching tenseness? Cultivating that feeling is a crucial part of what horror readers are looking to experience throughout your book.

1) Layers of Terror

There are a few different types of terror that horror aficionados will expect in their books. We could tell you about them, but famed horror writer Stephen King really says it best, “The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…”

The best types of horror novels will have layers and will find ways to incorporate all three of these terror types. When they pick up your book, your readers want to be scared so it’s best to give them as many different ways to be scared as possible.

2) Create Continued Suspense

Another aspect of these novels that horror-junkies can’t get enough of is the continued suspense one feels when reading a horror book. This suspense isn’t created through the monster jumping out of the shadows or wreaking havoc on the town, but rather through the absence of that. Suspense is created through a looming sense of danger- we don’t know what it is or why it is or how it is, but we know it’s coming. One way to create suspense is through foreshadowing or placing lines or moments into the book that hint at what is to come later. This can be in the form of the character finding a mysterious substance at the park where a child died recently or taking a series of photos and seeing the same old lady in all of them. These devices show the reader that something isn’t right, that something is lurking in the background of this story and you never know when it will rear its head.

You can also create suspense through your characters. Perhaps there’s a character who is exhibiting some shady behavior, this puts the reader further on edge wondering if they’re in on whatever danger is lurking. The more you can call back on the danger that’s building, the more tense readers will feel. Think of the feeling you get when you’re watching a movie and a character is walking through a dark house. You know something is going to pop out and scare you, but you don’t know when. Your novel should have a more drawn out version of that feeling.

3) Balance Suspense with Calm

Even though you want to have a looming sense of suspense present in your book, you need to also give the readers moments of calm as well. Suspense is a very intense feeling and, if you don’t create a balance here, you’ll risk having a reader need to put down your book to take a breather. These moments present opportunities to build on your characters and their relationships as well. This will not only create a more enjoyable fleshed-out reading experience, but it will also make the moments where we return to the tension feel much more palpable.

4) Put Your Readers into your Protagonist’s Head

As we said earlier, your reader wants to get scared. The most visceral way you can create a scary experience for them is to make them feel like they’re going through this experience themselves. This is why a first-person or a close third-person POV works best for a horror novel. You should put your reader into your protagonist’s head and allow them to see the world out of their eyes. Suddenly they’ll find themselves in a darkened field, being chased by a masked man with a chainsaw. Which is much scarier than simply watching that happen from a safe psychic distance.

5) More than Gore

Although different facets of suspense and terror are important, the best horror stories are about more than just gore. Stories such as Us, The Platform, It, It Follows, etc. are all dealing with psychological themes as well as simply present danger. Both The Platform and Us deal with themes of classism and the resentment that a corrupt system can cause. The story It involves childhood innocence being corrupted and It Follows is a thinly veiled idea based on STD’s. A horror audience will want to see some depth from your idea, so attempt to think of a societal or psychological human condition by which everyone has been troubled or tortured. Use that idea to create your monster or killer and the parameters through which he, she, or it operates in the world.

The post Writing For Your Audience: Horror appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

ThreeDimensional Female Characters

Given that (statistically) the vast majority of romance readers are women, they obviously want to be portrayed in a realistic and respectful manner. Whether you’re writing from a male or female protagonist, the last thing readers want to see is an annoying, whiny, one-dimensional female character. And the stereotypical ‘manic pixie dream girl’ protagonist isn’t going to cut it either. Female readers don’t want to see themselves portrayed as simply plot points furthering a man’s character development and story- they want to be shown as complex, interesting, relatable, strong characters in and of themselves. Whether a female lead is a protagonist, love interest, or close friend- readers want to be able to love and root for them.

Swoon-worthy love interests

Romance readers aren’t picking up your book to get an action hero style gray, dark, cynical character. They want someone who they can gush over, that they fall in love with and constantly grow to love more and more throughout the story. If you’re doing the hate to love trope like in Sally Thorn’s The Hating Game, you have to be careful. You’ll have to craft the love interest so that he doesn’t do anything absolutely cruel or unforgiving in the beginning stages; otherwise, the character will cause more controversy than swoons. And, if this is the trope you’re going with, your readers will crave that moment where (plot twist) you find out he/she was only mean because he/she was attracted to your protagonist and didn’t know what to do with their feelings. Make sure you give your readers that moment.

Real Conflict

Emphasis on real here, fellow writers. A common mistake among romance writers is spending so much time focusing on the love story that the conflict feels disingenuous. Your readers may enjoy the romance in this circumstance, but there needs to be something keeping your characters apart to build up the tension. And there’s nothing more annoying than reading a romance about two people who have no good reason to not be together. Don’t make the mistake of the conflict just being words taken the wrong way or misunderstood- this isn’t real conflict. Use something external- like the protagonist’s parents disapprove of the love interest or one of them is sick.

Tension/Build-up

Romance readers crave a buildup of tension. They don’t want your characters to be hooking up on page two of the book, they want a gradual build-up of the characters’ feelings toward one another. They want to see their relationship grow; they want the characters to have little adorable moments where their hands touch and they feel sparks. They want them to question their feelings for each other, experience confusion when they feel things they didn’t expect and maybe don’t want initially. Make sure you build up the romance for your readers with little moments throughout the story until the characters (finally) get together.

Relatable/Average Characters

Gone are the days where readers crave these characters with rich, lavish lifestyles. When it comes to contemporary romances, they want to see characters with student loans who get gum stuck on their shoes. That may sound very unromantic, but the closer the character feels to themselves and the more relatable he/she is, the more a reader can imagine themselves in the protagonist’s place.

Happy Endings

We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again- romance readers want happy endings. You can spend the entire book tormenting your readers with super sad and tragic scenarios, but they want to be happy when they finish the book. Yes, there are romance novels that have sad endings and sometimes they work, but it’s not what the readers are looking for when they pick up a book in this genre. They want to leave with warm and fuzzy feelings inside–but that doesn’t mean it has to be unrealistically happy. The love interests should end up together, but maybe a character didn’t get their dream job–that’s still OK. It may even feel more realistic and, as long as the characters have each other, the reader still gets their happily ever after.

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