OMG Tension

Hi everyone,

Today, I added micro-tension to five pages (5/10). Nothing earth shattering to report there.

I finished the Martian by Andy Weir. I absolutely loved it. Like I said yesterday, Weir is an expert at the micro-tension of uncertainty, one line micro-tension zingers and dialogue micro-tension (I forgot to mention this last one yesterday).

Let me elaborate on his micro-tension of uncertainty. What he’s really great at is suspense which comes from micro-tension. Basically, he keeps telling the reader in many different ways:

OMG, look at the bomb under the table. It’s about to explode!!!

Sometimes, the main character knows about the bomb and sometimes he doesn’t but the reader always knows.

Throughout the book, the main character, Mark, tends to say:

If I do X action, this bad thing MIGHT happen BUT…

If I DON’T do X action, this REALLY bad thing WILL happen.

And I’ll die.

This scenario of doing something risky (that might kill him) to stay alive keeps the reader on the edge of their seats.

In my own manuscript, I realize that sometimes I don’t tell the reader the dangers of failure like Andy Weir does.

This omission gives me one less source of micro-tension.

Looking at my pages through this lens, has already led me to add one OMG micro-tension to my manuscript (better known as micro-tension of uncertainty and trepidation).

Without giving away spoilers for my novel, the general gist of my new micro-tension addition of uncertainty (bomb under the table) is:

I’m in trouble

I must do this risky thing to survive.

If it doesn’t work, I’ll die.

Previously I just had my main character, Ellodie, do the risky thing without this thought beforehand. It’s more tense now. Thank you, Andy Weir.

So if you want to create the OMG, there’s a bomb under the table kind of suspense/micro-tension (which is line by line suspense), then read The Martian: A novel by Andy Weir. It’s jam-packed with it.

That’s all from me.

I’ll continue reading and taking notes from the other books I’m studying. My guess, and hope, is that each author is talented at different types of micro-tension and will use one type more than the others, giving me an immersive lesson in that type of micro-tension.

I need to be good at each type of micro-tension by the time I finish my draft because that’s when I’ll be adding my notes into my manuscript and refining the words I’m adding.

I want to be better at knowing what micro-tension is, so that when I’m adding the micro-tension notes I’ve made, I can veto anything that is navel gazing or just self-indulgent circular thoughts that I THOUGHT were micro-tension when I made my notes but actually aren’t. Gosh, I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, talk to you tomorrow.

Happy writing,

Joanne.

Micro-tension draft: 92 pages