Keeping up the tension/suspense in slow scenes

vongcw 2016-08-24 05:34:26 UTC #21

Hmmm, as a Creator, I don't keep the tension up during the down time of the story lol. That's why it is downtime. I actually prefer downtime, that's when the characters develop more. They interact, contemplate, dream, remember, converse, laze around, eat, etc. which usually makes them come to life, and sets up the next sequence.

As long as good information is being communicated, (e.g. an insight, a change, a realisation, a banter) down time is pretty fun. And is definitely supposed to be.

scythe 2016-08-24 05:41:03 UTC #22

Actually, here's an example. In one of my recent updates, the story switches scenes and it's a huge drop in tension. It essentially goes from an action/fight sequence to two people talking over a cup of coffee. But at the end of the scene, I made a point to really focus on the face of one of the characters who's got an ambiguous, concerned expression. Nothing is said, no action is taken, but readers picked up on it and said things like, "she knows something." I think that's a decent example of finding a way to keep an audience intrigued when there's not much in terms of imminent danger to go around.

tayo_rafferty 2016-08-24 17:20:54 UTC #23

You can use quiet moments in a story to diffuse tension so that the audience doesn't grow comfortable with the threat/conflict. This is a perfect moment for some character development, a character death, two characters igniting or confirming a romance, or a character dropping a major WTF line of dialogue which raises the stakes. It is also a good time to give the audience a moment to process everything that happened prior to this quiet moment so that their brainholes are properly prepped for the SH*T that's about to go down.

Kamikaze 2016-08-24 17:48:19 UTC #24

Now THAT is brilliant. I'll be using that one for sure. Thanks scythe! <3