Tension You Can Cut With a Knife

Today's blogpost will be some advice for writing tense scenes, or scenes with action in them. I do realize that I am not the best writer in the world (and I'm not even published...yet), but hopefully what I have to say will help anyone in this area. Furthermore, I also hope that if there are any flaws or missing items in my advice that those who read this will point them out! Onto the blog proper

I enjoy writing face paced scenes, or scenes that play on high emotions, when time seems to slow down or speed up for all involved. It gives me the chance to lead the reader along and be made to feel as if they to were in the same situation. You know, good heart pumping tension! One of the greatest helps I have for writing scenes like this is music. Ordinarily when I'm writing normally (or a tough scene) music sometimes gets in the way and I prefer quiet. But what I've noticed for myself is that when I'm writing tension/action, music of a like-type helps me. The pace of the piece of music I have chosen for a scene helps me to let the flow of emotion and senses get written down on the page. I can use the music to help shape images in my head and then let them flow into my writing (or so I hope!). The idea here is that action or tension is something you use to make the reader feel tense. Music for me, is a good way to help channel my efforts in this. However when I write like this it is far from perfect. But when I do have it written down I can then chip away at the general structure of a scene and still preserve the essence of urgency. I can even check and correct key observations and details that must be included.

I've found that writing tension or action cannot be too thought out initially or you end up adding in so much to the scene that it becomes another part of the prose. For instance a WW2 action movie has action and tension, whereas a WW2 documentary is more bland and all parts of it are on roughly the same level. Action or tension I feel has to be set somewhat apart from the normal flow of the story (although the boundaries are fuzzy). When I read I usually know that a scene is part of the action or tension is when I begin to feel my heart race, or that when I read I sort of rush through the words to get the feel rather than what is actually there. I want to be able to write scenes where the reader is rushing right along side the characters, feeling the urgency of the situation.

What I've also noticed about action in particular is that it cannot be written too long, or if it is that there should be a few respites (both for the character and the reader). Recently in my own current short story project I found that an action sequence had become far too long. For the purposes of my short story I felt it became cumbersome and too strung out. One of the dangers with writing action or tension is that you can only string the reader on for so long. After a certain point the tension or action becomes meaningless and normal. Action and tension should be punctuation points in a story, peaks in the plot. Having brief pauses in such scenes helps if the action or tension must be continued. The reader then has a chance to catch a mental breath before plunging into the fray again, and actually process what has just happened. However if the action or tension in a given story is such that there couldn't be any breaks then it must be condensed. A long sword fight for example could be condensed into an overall description while still preserving the sense of tension and urgency.

Interestingly enough, I believe the ones to be the best at sustaining action and tension are first-person-shooter game makers. If you pay attention you'll notice that a FPS game is not 100% action all the way through (or at least the good ones aren't). The Halo and Call of Duty series are good examples. Both contain short punctuated action sequences, or in the case of longer missions, breaks from the action. This allows the player's senses time to recover and get ready for the next bit of fun. The fact that these games are so popular is evident in their control of these skills.