96. Creating Tension in Your Book with Sam Cameron (Part 1)

If you've ever struggled with understanding tension in your writing, Sam Cameron and Suzy discuss what it is, and how you can make sure you have it, before you even start writing. 

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Welcome to the show. Don't Tell Writing Podcast with me, Suzy Vadori, where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction. Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be. Join me as I share the step by step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away. As I host successful writers who share a behind the scenes look at their own writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger. Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book. There are real and important skills that you need to learn on this show. I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need. I can't wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing. Today on the podcast we are going to talk about tension and how to create in your books 'cause that is something that will keep the readers flipping pages I have on the podcast today, Sam Cameron, otherwise known as Sam Cam. She's a Formula One fan and a writer of queer love stories. She put these two passions together, and now she writes queer F1 rom-coms based on Shakespeare plays. After 10 years as a high school history teacher, Sam shifted gears to become a book coach and a freelance editor. She's the author of the weekly Substack Truant Pen, where she shares actionable advice for stuck writers. I got the opportunity to record this in person with Sam. Sam is one of the most articulate people who can read the room and feed back to you what everybody is saying in just an absolute mirror of what we're thinking. And with the best word choice. He is absolutely brilliant. I can't wait for you to hear what she has to say about building tension in books because it's gonna help your writing so much. Have fun with it. Welcome to the podcast Sound cam. So excited to be here in Denver with you. We're recording with a few different book coaches. If you've noticed a trend, I'm at this amazing conference and some the like. Most seamed colleagues are here and we are bringing all of this live. It is my absolute pleasure to geek out with you about tension today. Thank you. I'm really excited to talk to you about it. I mean, tension is one of those things that I don't, I, we've never talked about on the podcast before. So listeners, this is a brand new thing. It's actually not something that I coach other than a few things. So I'm really excited to dive into this topic. First of all, I'm gonna ask you to define for our writers out there listening, what about me? When you say building tension in a novel, and specifically we're talking about fiction today. Mm-hmm. So what do you mean? What is tension? So I think there's a lot of ways you could define tension, but the way I like to think about it, what I find to be the most helpful is I think about it as being the feeling in a reader of wanting to know what happens next, the propulsive feeling that brings the reader through the story and wanting to know what happens next. So if you are thinking about the way it feels in your body when you're watching a television show or reading a book, and you have this like intense feeling of. I can't look away from the screen. I can't stop turning the page. To me, that's tension is that feeling. And what I think it comes from is an unresolved question that the viewer or the reader wants to know the answer to this intense curiosity of what's going to happen next. And so I have found that the way to build that feeling is to put a question in your reader's mind and make them eager to know the answer, which you can do by building it into your plot. You can also view it by, so you can bake it into your structure, but there's also ways to do it at the same level at the line wall. Yeah. That tension. Oh, I, I just love that and I mean, you're speaking our language here at the show and Tell Writing podcast because we talk a lot about the reader and you know, a lot of times. As writers, we're like, what do I wanna say and how do I do my craft? And we don't bring the reader into the equation, but at the end of the day, if you're truly honest with yourself, you are wanting to start a conversation with your reader. You want them to get the end of your book. I always say like, want them staying up all night, turning those pages? You can't put it down. Right. This is the key. So we're gonna pick Sam's Brain here and get all the details. So, okay. So. We talked a little bit about those questions. Is there anything else that has to exist for the reader to feel that tension? Is there, are there things that should exist in the book? Yeah, so the first very most important thing to, for building tension is you want your reader to ask us what I call with story question. Okay. Which is gonna sustain the whole novel. And in order to have a story question, you need to give your main character a clear goal. Clear stakes for that goal. Are those things you've talked about? Well, they are absolutely, but not on every episode. I don't know. There's lots of new listeners, but yeah, my clients will tell you. They, they're like, I hear it in my head. What does your character want? Yeah. And if they get those notes in their, in their seed craft, like in their seeds, and what do they want? You know, like, we need to know. But you're saying for the entire book? Yeah. Like what is the overarching goal? Absolutely. Yeah. What is their goal? What are the stakes if they fail? And in terms of agency, what is their deeply personal reason for wanting to go above and beyond in order to achieve what they want? Mm-hmm. Way beyond what a normal person would do. Why are they doing this? Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the other thing that kind of interesting about thinking about tension in terms of a story question is that different genres have different questions that are central to the genre. So in a romance, the question of the book, 'cause romance is a high tension genre, right? Yeah. And that's funny that you say that because I don't think about it. And actually I also recorded an episode here with Emily and so Emily Collin is, so go listen to that one if you haven't already, dear writers. But. Because she actually changed my mind about romance, even though I coach romance. Because you think, well, you know that everything's gonna turn out. It's a formulaic genre and you know where you're going. And yet it is. It's like actually so tense. But we think. The most tense ones are psychological thrillers or like, you know, high action or something like that. Yeah. But, but you're right. Romance actually has a lot of tension in it. Yeah.'cause the central question in any romance novel is, you know, so we know it can have a happy ending, right. As as you said, or for now. Yeah. Now. And so the question is not will the characters get together, but how will they overcome whatever the obstacle is? So they can be together and be happy together. Yeah. And if you're looking at like a mystery or thriller, you know, I think the genre is called a who done it, right? That gives you the question right away. So the format of the question that is holding, you know, together the book is gonna vary by genre. It might be a why question, it might be a how question. But it, it's still gonna be related to the story goal, right? Because in a romance, whatever the story goal is still somehow related to that relationship in a mystery. The story goal related to finding out who the murderer is, I think I use the Hundred Games of Lies as an example.'cause there's very clear goal in states there, right? To the story goal of winning the Hunger Games to protect her sister friend. You know? And so the story question is, depending on the reader, the one reader might assume that she's going to survive. I'll say, how is she gonna survive or will she survive? So that becomes the question and it intricately related to her goal. Yes. YA, you're speaking my language. Okay. So when we talk about building a story, we often talk about, you know, is it plot driven? Is it character driven? All of these things, and there's all these things that writers have to think about. Where does tension fit into this in terms of your planning? Oh, good question. That's a really good question. Like I said before, tension has a structural level and then it has a sea level. And so in your planning, there's a couple of ways that I think that comes up. So one is making sure that you're clear about the golden mistakes so that you have a story question in the first Yeah. For the overarching book. For the book as a whole. Yes. Which you're referring to as structured, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, um, you can kind of think of that as being, that's what gets the reader to pick up the book in the first place. And then in your planning, how you sustain that interest and sustain that tension. I like to think of this formula of set up. Anticipation and chaos. So the setup is where you, the writer, present facts to the reader, right? You present them with a situation. The situation then creates in the mind of the reader a question that they want to know the answer to. And then the payoff is later you answer. Good question. Okay, great. So an example of this, I'm gonna use an example from my favorite Rocom, which is Boyfriend Material by Alexis. Amazing. Haven't read it, but I, but I would like to, so the, um, the, the premise of this book is the main character's parents, his son, his name is Luke, and his parents are eighties rock stars, who are, he's estranged from his father, he's raised by his mother. And so he's just like in the British tabloids and it's very uncomfortable for him. You had me at eighties rock stars, but keep going. He is basically trying to protect his job and protect his mother from unwelcome, tabloid attention. And so he is seeking out a fake boyfriend, perfect on paper. Fake boyfriend and his friends set him up with a perfect on paper guy named Oliver, who Luke can't stand and Oliver seems to not be able to stand Luke either, but they agree they're gonna fake date. So a setup that Alexis Paul does early in the book is he shows us, like in the second chapter that Luke is extraordinarily messy. He describes his wa as a bomb spot about going on and then got too depressed rights. This like such. Great, I love that. Sounds like great writing all around. Oh, it's, he's such a writer and then he also very quickly sets up that Oliver is fastidious and tidy and that he further sets up that Oliver's gonna come to look flat. And so this, the setup is he's just presenting us with facts about who these two men are and how they interact with each other, and then creates the anticipation of what's gonna happen when this is like Luke tension. Well, no, this event is gonna happen. You can also think of it as like that radio, that old time, like radio or TV host. Will our intrepid hero, like whatever. It's a little bit like that. Will they succeed? Will they succeed? Will they see the world? So, and then the payoff is when Oliver does come to Luke Flat and sees that it's very messy. So there's this repeating site throughout, I think a successfully planned novel of that anticipation payoff. Yeah, and it's, I think, important to do it in a cycle because. What you don't wanna do is have all this anticipation and set up and questions and not give any answers. Yeah, to those questions. It can be very frustrating, frustrated, right? Yeah. You wanna give the reader a little dopamine hit. Or they just keep those, like I find that you open a question and you don't answer it. Then the reader just is looking for the answer. They'll start skimming because they're curious. They'll start flipping and they're missing all your cool prose because they want the answer. And sometimes if you wanna keep things a secret and you, oftentimes the answer is, if it comes up and you're feeling like you're hiding something, it's probably time to reveal it. Mm-hmm. But if you really need to keep the secret to keep it going, especially if you're doing thriller or so, you know, something that requires that one way to do it is to answer the question, but answer it incorrectly. Yes. So to give, right, like that can keep the tension going. Mm-hmm. So you give the reader an answer. And oftentimes we're in somebody's point of view, so they can give an answer that they think is true, but they can be wrong. Yeah. Um, but the reader goes, oh, there's the answer. And then they forget all about it. And then your setup is even cooler. Yeah. Because it turns out to be wrong and not an unreliable narrator where they're lying on purpose. Just that they're making a guess. Yeah. Yeah. And, and there's also ways where it, it is a tricky balancing act because once you answer a question, what you don't want is attention to totally go away. Right. So you introduce a new question or you raise. Or you raise the stakes. An author who I think does this really well is, uh, it's the Inheritance Games Jennifer Lin Barn. So this is a YA series that the main character has suddenly been left. She's 17 years old and she's been left an enormous fortune by a reclusive billionaire who has heirs, has grandchildren, but he's chosen to lead his sport with to Adrian instead the main character. So the story question is, why did Tobias Hawthorne lead Avery his fortune? There's a series of puzzles that she and this guy's grandchildren have to solve in order to find out the answer to this question and what the author of this book does really well is anytime the kids succeed in finding one of the clues or answering one of the puzzle, it just unlocks a new puzzle. So they are getting closer Yeah. To answering the question and they've like, okay, we've settled this question. This one question, this specific question is closed. But a new one has been, yeah. And they need to do that. Before you close it. Yes. Right. And, and the reason like before you close it, so you're gonna be, if you're gonna do this cycle, right? Mm-hmm. If you wanna be opening the next question before, because otherwise there's this moment where the reader's satisfied and we care. Yeah. Because they're gonna go to the bath, put it down, and go, you know, go to sleep or whatever. And. In their brains, the characters are safe and happy, and everything's been resolved. Yes. Okay, so when we talk about the cycle, I like to think of it in terms of scenes or chapters or, or whatever. You know, I, I talk about scenes, chapters are relatively arbitrary, so ignore that. I just that, but in terms of scene, there's only really three ways to end a scene. You can end a scene where we have a C level goal. They either achieve the goal. Mm-hmm. We don't want that very often. So you wanna hold that same tension through to the next scene. Because if we resolve it all the time and they're always getting what they want, that's no fun. Yeah. You want them to, or they can fail and then roll, which is great. Lots of failure, plea in your box. Mm-hmm. Or they can get a new clue that leads them on a different ta. Yeah. Leg of the journey. Those are the only three ways that you could end a scene. But in terms of like your cycles, it sounds like how,'cause that's how I teach you. But when you're talking about that. Question. Mm-hmm. That question can hold over for several scenes until it's resolved. Exactly. Yeah. And I also think it's really helpful when you're figuring out how to use this cycle of set up anticipation of payoff. There are strategic points in a novel structure where it's a good idea to put those payoffs and it, it is a little genre dependent because the other thing that's, like you were saying, you don't wanna satisfy the reader too much. And so if you have too many payoffs, yeah, then it, it stops being as interesting. So. I think that in a lot of genres, not a hundred percent of genres, the midpoint is a really good place to put one of those payoffs, especially like a really big payoffs. I think that's the reason why in romance, you frequently will see a first kiss or a sex scene around the midpoint. Is that the payoff? Yeah. Right. That's answering your question literally. Um, and it all saying, yeah. And so because it's a payoff, it kills tension, which is why I think it's really hard. And then we gotta blow it up again. Yeah, no likely. And I think heated rivalry, for example, like a really interesting example, it's unusual. To have a successful romance story and it's really hard to pull off a successful romance story where the characters are having sex right away. Yeah. And I, but I think the reason that one ends up working is be, and mm-hmm. There's certainly tension. There's tension because they're not public about their relationship. Yeah. Right There, there's tension about, you know, are they gonna be out in, there's tension about once. Are starting to realize they want more out of the relationship. And I think that's frequently what happens with romances that are like ultra spicy right away, is that it starts out as just sex and then the romance comes in later. Yeah. The character develop, the character development comes in later. Um, but things like sex scenes, any sort of physical intimacy, violent or resolving of mystery, finding a clue, those kill tension. And so you need them because you don't want the care of the reader to get frustrated. But you have to be like judicious about where you put them. Yeah. And planet. Yes. When we're looking at your, you know, it's, it's great talking earlier plot, character development, tension, right? Like looking at your outline as you start, or looking at the finished manuscripts and making sure that those make sense. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Pay off around the midpoint. Yeah. Okay. Do you think it's okay? I mean, I have my own thoughts on this, but I truly wanna know what about blah. When a lot of times writers will come to me and say, I'm like, oh, you know, it's lacking tension here or something, and they'll say, well, you know, we just had this really intense moment. I wanna give the reader a breather or a moment to recover. How do you, like, how do you deal with that? If tension is one of the things that you love? What do you think? So, I think it depends. On the genre, what are the expectations of, of those ebbs and flows? I mean, I'm a ya writer. The answer is no, thank you. Yeah. Like, 'cause you, 'cause kids just don't have the attention span. Yeah. Or the time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that honestly, like, I love to read ya as an adult. And I, I love ya. Fantasy, but adult fantasy bores me to tears because there's so Well, and that's for the, the sort of new newish genre of romantic, right? That's where those writers that went into that space, they literally took the pacing Yeah. Of romance and ya, it pushed it into adult fantasy, right? So that is that change. Yeah. And it is cha, it does change over time, but yeah. So yeah. What do you think, which genre is, can we have a law. In something like a romance. I think that the reader wants some time to be happy with the couple. To see them happy together because that's why they, that's the only way you're gonna get the reader to root for the couple to be together. Is to have to, and that endorphin rock. Right? Like that, happy that, 'cause we feel, I mean, we are our characters, right? Whether you know this or not. As you write your protagonist, your reader becomes them. Yeah. And they experience grief and they wanna cry with them when they fail. They, yeah. Cheer with them when they, when they succeed, but also be happy with them. Yes. And in those genres. And I think the way to like accomplish that kind of lull that, you know, so-called law, I don't actually think it's the, well, I think it's just rearranging what the tension is about and like reducing the tension, but not. Making it go away. So I'm gonna return once again to boyfriend material and I apologize for some light spoilers. So I gave the example already of there's a setup, anticipation payoff cycle of about the cleaning of Luke's flat, right? That he's very untidy, Oliver's very Lee. A little bit later in the book, it becomes clear that like Luke is trying to figure out how to fix his whole life, and he is like, I should clean my flat. And he wants it to be a surprise for Oliver that he's clean his flat. So we now know that Luke likes Oliver. Even though he is not supposed to, like with him, he goes through all this trouble to clean his flat. But as many scenes later, before there's any payoff of Oliver actually seeing the flat, oh, nice and cleaned. And that's the midpoint of the book, right? And so they've gone through all these other emotional things, Oliver's so overwhelmed by this gesture that could kisses them. So yeah, you see all the happy feelings. And then the rest of the external plot very quickly catches up and have a big fight. And there's, you know, now more tension of like, are we gonna resolve this fight that they're in? And from there, the stakes are then raised because now. We know that they genuinely like each other. Yeah. And they aren't sure what do about it. And they've shown it. Not told it. Yes. Right. Like, so we're on the show, hotel podcast, so I just have to point these things out. I love that. And thank you. And Boilers are welcome by the way. And so dear listener, before you. Sebi Hate Nail. I wanna talk about that first because this is a show for writers, right? If we are on a show for readers, spoiler alerts would be appropriate, but I'm sorry, dear writer, you are now a writer and you need to be okay with spoilers because you need to look at, you need to look at books differently, movies and consuming. You need to understand the spoilers, so if it still frustrates you. To understand a spoiler, it should actually excite you. That made me want to read this book more because I wanna understand the craft of how you know exactly how that was achieved. Yeah. And so much like knowing in a romance that it's gonna end happily ever after. Sure. And yes. And. There's still ways to create tension. Yeah. And so you as a, as a writer now, putting on your writer goggles when you read reading is gonna be ruin for you forever. Oh yes. Totally true. So you're gonna understand all the techniques. Mm-hmm. But that's okay. That should be exciting. Yeah. At in its own right. Anyways, I just wanted say that it's spoilers. There's no need for apology there about spoilers. So anyway, so in that example, the lull is that we have this back and forth between. An emotionally tense scene with Luke and his father, Luke and Oliver getting to be happy together. Luke and Oliver are having a sight. Luke and Oliver are getting to be happy together again, but you, one of my favorite craft books were Romance is Romancing the Beat and the author of that says, you've inflated the balloon in the reader, and you're also holding the pin, right? So you have this daunting sense of it's all gonna go wrong, it's all gonna go wrong very soon. Now a thriller or a mystery or any other sort of like high action adventure, you know, like you said in ya, you don't want those balls most of that time, right? You're, you're not gonna give, that might be a place to bring in a subplot. So like, if you just had a big payoff moment and you wanna kind of gradually build up, that might be what I would say is the more appropriate things. You've had a big payoff. You've deflated, you've either, depending on what you're trying to do, you've either deflated your tension and need to quickly build it back up. Or you increase the states or introduce the new question and you've ratcheted the tension up. Yeah. Can we just talk about, 'cause it just comes to mind for a second, more complex structures, right? Mm-hmm. So when we're talking about this, it's fairly straightforward if you're telling a story in chronological order, but a lot of times writers wanna tackle, and this is a whole other conversation, wanna tackle something? Yeah. A little bit mixed up or a dual timeline book. There's considerations on how you set that tension up. I don't know if that's something that you wanna talk about. Yeah, so I'm actually working as a writer right now who, there's a sort of a dual timeline. Most of the book takes place in one kind of time period, but the backstory of this character is there's some flashbacks, right? Where we are told some of the characters passed out of order, and one of the conversations this writer and I have been having is there's. Some traumatic events in this character's path, and we're like, when do we want it revealed to the reader what happened? Yeah. And so that's really a, a question of building up. Like we don't want the reader to become confused or frustrated, but we wanna build up the tension for the reader of, okay, what happened? What was it that happened? Exactly. And I love that example. I mean, I, I work with a lot of dual timelines and one of the things I try to impress on writers is that it's very difficult. If not impossible to create tension in the past. It's not impossible, but it's more difficult. And the reason is, spoiler alert, they're still alive in the future. Yeah. So it's hard to put them in mortal danger. Yeah. It's hard to, you know, you know what their life ends up like whenever that is. Whether it's horrific or whether it's beautiful. You know, the outcome. And so again, talking about spoilers all kind of part of that tension conversation, it's difficult. So yeah, the placement of those scenes and when they appear is really important because readers are only gonna care about the backstory. If it helps us predict the story, like how they're going to act in that present day story that we're actually following. Yeah. Like that's the main timeline. And I think that's something that a lot of writers get wrong. Yeah. Because they get carried away with the backstory. They think that it's equal and they don't pay attention to what you were just saying. Yeah. Which is where does that belong? Yeah. When do you, you know, when do you deflate? When do you take that pin and pop the balloon? But more importantly, how do you, yeah. Inflate the balloon in the first place. Yeah. So if you're doing like dual timeline, I think what's important to think about is just though you are showing the reader, here's who this person is in the present and in setting that up, it's important to hide key pieces information. Yeah. So that the reader's like, okay, how did meat get here? Again, not necessarily an unreliable narrator, you just don't need to, we don't, we don't wanna lie. Do they? In your first person point of view or in your third person? Close.'cause then we don't trust them. I mean that's a whole different technique. Yeah. But yeah, how did, how did they get here? And what about their past? What about that trauma? What about that misbelief? Mm-hmm. What about their wound is going to inform how they actually react in the present? That's that interesting piece of a duana. And then before you go away. Dear writer and be like, oh my gosh, I learned about, you know, I was thinking about that and maybe my structure isn't difficult enough. I mean, the answer, especially if it's your first book, I often say just do it in chronological order. Yes, it's usually the right answer unless the structure is actually part of the story and is integral. To telling it and it's, the structure's pretty important in say, psychological SROs, um, or a mystery because it's part of the book. Right. And it's how you hide that stuff. Yeah. And I think it's, um, it's also really useful if you're thinking you want a more complicated structure. I think it's really helpful to first write it for yourself in chronological order. Yeah, because I, I say this to someone who doesn't actually write my own books in chronological order. I have to puzzle my way into a story. Before, I don't even write my books in order at all. I if, if I was to like try to do a fractured or a dual timeline or anything like that, it's still really helpful for the writer to be able to say, here is chronologically the event. So the writer I was just talking with, I work with, she absolutely figured out in chronological order, who is this person and what is their life? It wasn't like she has some trauma. I don't know why she knew. And so we're actually now in revisions. And so this whole question of like, okay, where's this, that ends up being kind of a revision question. And again, it's it's taking the reader into the, yeah. When does the reader need, first of all, when we're talking about backstory, let's take one step back. Does your reader actually need that information is really important.'cause there's a lot of work that we do in the planning of a book that you, the writer needs. You might have a hundred thousand words of their backstory, but my question you, or the question that you need to ask yourself and you need to be able to step away from is, does the reader actually handle all of that? And if the answer is yes, cool. How do you, where does it belong? And does the reader need it right now? Yeah. Right. And if the answer is no, I'm sorry, get rid of it, but don't feel sad about it because you had to write it and you couldn't possibly have written this book if you didn't know those answers. There's so many places out there that you're gonna hear about word count and all these things, and, and productivity. Sometimes there's just words that we write that don't get used. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's totally true that you write things that it's not a waste. Right. And it's, it's helpful visualization that you wrote it. So like I dilly did a scene from one of my books that no longer the scene no longer happens on the page, but it still happens in the timeline of the characters. Right. And it was so much easier to reference that scene and like figure out, well first of all, I needed it to figure out where we were going. Yeah. Emotionally. But if it's not important enough to bring us to that moment. Yeah. It just repeated like I cut the scene 'cause it repeated like emotionally, it repeated. It was a repeat of a previous C. Exactly. It didn't need to be there. Yeah. So if you're dragging your reader through an emotional arc, please do by the way, that's awesome. But then if, you know, if we're in the battle and we see the best friend die in the character's arms and we go through that tear jerk and it touching an awesome. We don't then need the next scene to be the best friend going to tell the widow about the scene where the best friend died in his arms. We were just there. So not only is it repetitive and the reader's like kind of bored, but also we just dragged them through the exact same emotional. Right. And there's a tension, not very. Yeah. Right. Because the question has been answered and we're tired. Yeah. The reader's like, oh, I just did that. I can't do it again. And you won't grab them the same way. Right. It's sleep. Thanks for tuning into the show. Don't Tell Writing podcast with me, Susie Vadori. It is my absolute honor to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing or the book that you're planning to write. Please help me keep the podcast going by helping people find us. You could subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening. To show the show. That's how other listeners will find us. Also, visit susie Vadori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list where you'll stay inspired and be the first to know about all the upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community. You want my eyes on your writing? Submit a page in your current draft for a chance to come on the podcast at the link in the show notes. I'd love to chat with you about your writing in my always positive, incredibly supportive way so that you can make great strides towards your writing goals. I'm here to cheer you on. Remember that book you're writing is gonna open doors that you haven't even thought of yet, and I can't wait to help you make that it the absolute best it can be. See you again right here next week.