WritersReign

Short Story Competitions Poetry Competitions

November 2008

WRITERSREIGN 2nd SHORT STORY COMPETITION NOW LAUNCHED!

Put Tension into Your Stories to Keep Readers Reading

Tension is inextricably bound up in the emotions of your characters, and by introducing tension you lead your readers into the same emotions, as they 'feel' for the characters in your story.

So just what is tension? We can define it as where a character is being pulled in two, or more, directions at the same time.

Tension is usually something which develops over a period of time and several incidents or conversations, but it is possible to hit the reader between the eyes with a situation that generates tension immediately. This will often be when the tension arises between just two people or between one person and a situation.

Here are examples of both of these situations:

Lizzie, in the staff room, is about to relieve her friend at the Post Office counter where they work, when she hears through the half open door two customers talking...

Scenario 1: They are saying that Tom has fallen off his tractor and is on his way to hospital. Lizzie can't go and sit by his bedside until her shift finishes at 5.30. But, oh dear, she is expecting Ralph to pick her up to go over to the town to have a KFC and then on to see a movie! Here the tension will build as Lizzie goes though the evening with one love, whilst fearing for the life of the other. It could be protracted over several days as one thing after another prevents her from seeing Tom.

Scenario 2: One customer is telling the other they have just heard that the Melksham & Milton Keynes Building Society is in turmoil. The Chief Cashier has disappeared and vast amounts of cash have disappeared with him. Lizzie's life savings are with MMM. What is she going to do? Of course, there is insurance in place to cover embezzlement, but Lizzie doesn't know this. Yet. When she does, tension is relieved.

Now, if you've got an hour or so, I would be awfully grateful if you would kindly finish the story above as I'm dying to know what happens to poor Lizzie. Will she, won't she? I'm on my fifth black coffee and the suspense is killing me!

Read this complete article here

Mervyn Love, Editor
WritersReign

writersreign

Free Giveaway Sites - You'll Love These!

Writers Giveaway

Self-Growth Giveaway

Software Giveaway

OK, so what's the catch? There isn't really a catch. You just have to sign up for the appropriate newsletter on the above sites and then you get access to a whole host of goodies. The newsletters are great too!

WritersReign recommends!

WritersReign Feature Article

Tips on Creating an Interesting Title
by Mary Arnold

When it comes to creating titles, I know of no other writer who does it so well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did. Even Agatha Christie, the Queen of Mystery, never produced a title as intriguing as those of Doyle. Christie's titles usually leaned towards describing the setting of the novel: Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, A Caribbean Mystery, Death in the Air, and They Came To Baghdad, for example.

Doyle's titles for his short stories and novels leap off the page and demand to be noticed, and thus, read. Titles such as 'The Five Orange Pips,' 'The Man with the Twisted Lip,' 'The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb,' 'The Musgrave Ritual,' and 'The Adventure of the Dancing Men' grab ones attention immediately and inspires intrigue and puzzlement. What does he mean by 'Dancing Men' anyway? What happened to the 'Engineer's Thumb'? And how did the man get a 'Twisted Lip?'

When thinking on a title for your short story or novel, you want it to be eye-catching but also to tell something about your story or novel. Speaking from my own experience, titles that say nothing about the story or novel leaves one rather disgruntled. I think, 'Why did the writer use that title? It's totally unrelated to the story!'

While some titles are obviously better than others, I've only come across one writer who has made me feel irritated over her choice of titles: Carol Higgins Clark. Some of these titles are Twanged, Fleeced, Iced, Decked, Burned and Popped. While these titles have a certain cuteness to them, they tell next to nothing about the novels and leave me feeling a little affronted.

To sum up, choose a title that will pique interest, that has a clue to what's hidden inside, and pass up any cutesy titles.

Mary Arnold is an author on www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Fiction Writing.

Her writing portfolio may be viewed at Writing.com/authors/

Download this article in PDF

creative writing