How Do You Create Tension?

Last night, I watched two TV shows. One was brand new in Australia (Hot in Cleveland) and the other was just into its second series (Rescue Special Ops). I have to admit that I don't watch much TV these days. I suspect that five fantastic series of The Wire has kind of killed commercial TV for me! Although The Street (written by Jimmy McGovern and currently on ABC2) is so wonderful that it restores my faith in what is possible in television land. But after I watched the afore-mentioned shows last night, I got to wondering, as you do when you're a writer, why they didn't work.

And for me, it came down to tension. I think a lot about tension. I teach it in Story Structure, but I'm not sure the students really grasp how important it is yet - they're grappling with climaxes and outlines, but I think it does take a while to put all the elements together. Kristi Holl, who has written a lot of middle grade mysteries, has an ebook on Tension Techniques, and I've picked up lots of ideas from it. But really - what is tension? How do you create it?

Firstly, in Rescue Special Ops, I felt little tension at all. Very early on, there was a conflict between two of the rescue cops, and straight away I thought: One of them will save the other one's life to resolve this. Yes, I was right. And not happy to be right. It was way too predictable. Two episodes into Series 2, it feels like all the situational tension (rescues, death, survival) has been sidelined and the show has moved into competing with Packed to the Rafters (for readers outside Australia, this is like a slightly more grown-up version of the Brady Bunch or Full House!). Which is fine if you're writing a show about relationships.

I thought Rescue Special Ops was a police drama show, not a thing about romance and having kids and thwarted love, with a few explosions as a sideline. I am astounded that the writers and producers of this show have gone down this road! Do they think the only viewers in Australia are those who want soppy stuff? Hey guys, take a look at NYPD Blue sometime. And how they managed twelve series in which crime (hello?) was the key, and characters provided depth and colour.

So where do the writers of RSO seem to think tension will now come from? Yep, a cast of hot young actors who apparently all want to jump into bed with each other (just add sexy firies and more cops). The biggest moment of surprise came at the end of the episode where one of the rescue guys steps onto the street and gets run down by a speeding driver. Bang. No set up. No sense of anticipation. Just a dummy (we presume) smacked into the air and an actor lying on the ground. To me, this is fundamental stuff. Something like that in a story only achieves maximum impact when you set it up properly. The rest of that episode was not a decent, well-crafted set up.

As for Hot in Cleveland, the writers don't seem to understand that even in sitcom, we still want tension. We still want to be surprised. No surprises here, apart from how awful the writing was. I think I heard every tired old joke recycled. Tension can come from several things - firstly, from the reader/audience either knowing more or less than the character/s. It's especially effective when you think you know more and you're waiting to see if the main character works it out. Kind of like kids in a stage show shouting, "He's behind you!"

But it can also work the other way - you know less, and the narrator is keeping stuff from you. A good unreliable narrator, for instance, can create tension. If the situation is that you know what the main character knows, tension then must come from anticipation and surprise. You have to build up the tension, be aware of how it's working and have a good idea of what the reader's experience is going to be. Too often, a writer forgets the reader in this situation. The writer might forget to provide information, or not make things clear, or try to deliberately confuse. Or go for the quick pay-off, which is death these days in sitcoms. After shows like Frasier, some of us hope for more (but sadly, rarely get it).

I suspect this is why reality TV appeals, because even when a show is "scripted", you can't totally rely on the participants to "behave". I like a UK show called Relocation, Relocation, because even though people start out saying what kind of house they want, often they're wrong, or misguided, or have to face reality about finances, so you can criticise or be engaged, or imagine what you'd do if it was you. There's no plot, sure, but there is anticipation and the ongoing possibility of surprise. Like the Masterchef contestant whose dessert crashes and burns (hey, most of us have been there!).

Over the past few years, there has been a fair amount of comment about Australian scriptwriters, about the 'dumbing down' of TV drama, about the way in which only the ABC and the cable channels are prepared to take a risk on new writers and new ideas, while the commercial channels churn out the same old boring rubbish. But Packed to the Rafters rates, so what does that say about our TV viewing? That we get rubbish because we're happy to watch rubbish? Not me! I'm off to watch the next episode of The Street. You can catch two episodes on ABC iView if you like. Yeah!

Structure in Stories

Teaching has started where I work, and I'm spending a lot of time reviewing all my materials on mythology for one of my subjects. But I'm doing the same for Story Structure, bringing in some new information and ideas. I team-teach this with a scriptwriter, and we learn from each other as we go along. This week we wanted to look at shorter stories and films, such as Tropfest, but we're also going to analyse some TV drama.

I've got plenty of books on my shelves about scriptwriting - very often the structural stuff they talk about relates just as well to fiction writing. But I had little on TV writing, so today I bought a new book, Successful Television Writing by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin. I have no intention of writing TV drama myself (however, if they were still making NYPD Blue, I might have a go at a script for that!). But it was fascinating to read what these guys had to say about how a one hour drama works.

They start by saying "Every TV drama series is the same." And go on to explain the four acts, how each one works, and what each act needs in terms of building tension. What is even more interesting is the next chapter where they talk about why audiences watch. Not for the plot (which usually has the same elements, depending on the genre and setup), but for the characters and their lives. If we care about them, we will want to tune in every week to see how they're going.

They also talk about the key scene in any episode, and how the whole story of that episode is about leading up to that key moment. Inevitably, I started thinking about how this relates to fiction writing. What is our key moment? The climax. How often do I talk to students about the narrative drive, the main character's intense need or desire that propels them through the story, the fact that you need to continually increase the tension to keep the reader turning the pages?

And how often do I see people start writing a novel and come to a grinding halt after three chapters or 10,000 words? Because they don't really understand where they're going. They haven't worked out what the key scene or climax needs to be about, what needs to happen in it, and how everything you write in the novel should be leading up to that. And all of that still comes back to character, 98 times out of 100. The other two times are, I'd say, in movies or novels that are thrillers (think James Bond) where the climax is about saving the world.

Even if you resist writing any kind of outline, even if you are a "seat of the pants" writer, don't you still know somewhere in your writing gut what that thing is that your main character wants? And if you don't, how much writing do you have to do before you work it out? 50,000 words? 100,000 words? One chapter? What works for you?