Reading Micro-Tension
Hi everyone,
I’ve been going back over my 37 pages that I misjudged for micro-tension. Since re-reading the relevant chapter about micro-tension in Donald Maass’s craft book *, it’s much easier to identify where I can add micro-tension in my manuscript.
However, I’m a bit worried that I’ll miss the point and add in thoughts that don’t actually increase the micro-tension so I’ve decided to look at a few different books and search for different varieties of micro-tension to figure out what kind of micro-tension I like that makes me uneasy enough to keep reading.
This will, also, ensure that I don’t blitz through the micro-tension draft as it’s easy to fall into the trap of reading fast and thinking less.
Doing this makes sense to me. I need to recognize micro-tension in other author’s work and figure out what I like if I want to develop my taste for it. Which I have done for all my previous craft elements.
I analyzed a lot of books for POV, tense, dialogue tags, description, paragraphs, transitions of time etc., which gave me a good sense of what I like and don’t like.
I haven’t done this for micro-tension yet. So I’m not 100% sure if my own micro-tension is good/tense or if it just slows down pace because it’s indulgent and navel gazing.
I don’t want to add extra words that detract from the story.
I’m going to look at a variety of books. I know Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games has a lot of micro-tension and I, actually, haven’t stopped looking at random pages in this novel. However, The Hunger Games is an unusual book in the sense that life and death stakes are a near constant. So I want to look at some other books, too.
Today, I looked at:
The Stand by Stephen King
No Exit by Taylor Adams
The Martian. A Novel by Andy Weir
The Stand by Stephen King
Stephen King’s prologue has a lot of micro-tension but because there’s a lot of plot tension in it as well—it’s harder to pin down micro-tension—I’m focusing on the quieter scenes where micro-tension is the main player.
The Stand is about a plague being released and wiping out 99% of humankind. I haven’t read this book before—I wanted to look for micro-tension in a book I hadn’t read yet.
So far, the reader is following a different POV character in each chapter.
In what I read, Stephen King repeated phrases to create micro-tension and with each repeat, the micro-tension tightened.
He repeated the phrase ‘bright red’ quite a few times in one chapter. We know that the person who is coughing up this bright red blood must be infected. The ‘bright red’ phrase is a flashing bright light warning us and creating unease in the reader.
The other thing he does is follow a character and show their subtle symptoms—a sneeze, a cough. And each character brushes it off. These sneezes/coughs are spread out. This repetition of the actions/feelings of a sneeze, a cough and a headache gives the reader the same feeling as the repetition of ‘bright red’. They also mention ‘summer cold’ more than once and each time they do, I think ‘uh oh’ this is not a summer cold. I’m uneasy. This is micro-tension.
I, also, like the way he has a mundane setting, with people going about their lives as usual, while he interjects one line here and there that indicate something bad is coming but the characters brush it off and are completely unaware.
Micro-tension within a character:
King uses internal micro-tension to make one of the characters stand out to us. Specifically, the micro-tension of warring emotions. This character’s brother died when he was young. The family was very poor. The character stated that he loved this brother the most but felt guilty because his death came with the thought that there was now one less mouth to feed. The micro-tension here is the conflict between the feeling of sadness he experienced that his brother died in conflict with his happiness or relief that there was less of a drain on financial resources. Boiling it down to emotions without any explanation the micro-tension is between sadness happiness. Conflicting emotions. Micro-tension.
No Exit Taylor Adams:
Again, I haven’t read this book. It’s about a lady who becomes stranded at a rest stop because of a snowstorm and discovers a child locked in a van in what appears to be a cage.
Like Stephen King, the author also uses the repetition of a phrase to create micro-tension while she is driving in the snow. “SCRAPE-SCRAPE”, the sound of a broken window wiper.
She does this agin with the phrase: “She’s okay right now” referring to her sick mother and the plot tension of getting to the hospital before her mom dies.
The repetition of both these phrases adds micro-tension.
There is a large micro-tension passage about her mother who has cancer. The POV character details many exchanges with her mother while the mother unknowingly had cancer, “the cancer had been there inside her…” Page 16. The micro-tension is between appearing healthy v’s being sick.
Later the micro-tension comes from her reaction: “she needed to sit down, but was afraid to.” The micro-tension comes from the conflict between relaxing v’s fear.
Also, when the POV character realizes that there is a child abuser in the rest stop with her (again she assumes it’s this person-we also don’t know yet), the micro-tension comes from the contrast between the mundane setting—people playing cards oblivious to the danger—and her fear and vigilance watching this person she thinks is an abuser. This incongruency of backdrop and the POV thoughts/suspicions/fear creates a lot of micro-tension on the page.
All the time the POV character is feeling fear and extreme dis-ease, the author intersperses the dialogue from the innocuous, mundane card game. While the card game is going on, the POV character is standing in front of someone whom she thinks (no idea if she’s wrong) is a child abuser.
“Jack of clubs.
Go fish.
Darby stood still, hairs prickling on her skin…She wanted to turn around, but she couldn’t. Her body wouldn’t move.” Page 20.
There are two types of micro-tension here. The incongruency between the setting and the thoughts and feelings the main character is experiencing. As well as the internal battle. Move v’s stay still.
This type of micro-tension continues for a few pages, getting more and more tense, which is very well done.
The Martian. A novel by Andy Weir
I also haven’t read this book but I know the entire plot. The main character is stranded on Mars.
I thought it would be a good book to read for micro-tension because it’s just him on Mars and so I assume he must have a lot of micro-tension thoughts and emotions. Let’s hope.
Reading the first few sections, he has a lot of conflict ideas/thoughts within one sentence. So far I’d say that this is Weir’s strong point—writing single micro-tension lines. Perhaps they could be called micro-tension zingers.
For example:
“Six days into what should be the greatest month of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare”. Page 1
‘Greatest month’ paired with the word ‘nightmare’ causes the reader to be uneasy and make us read on.
“It was a ridiculous sequence of events that led to me almost dying, and an even more ridiculous sequence that led to me surviving.” Page 3.
Pairing the word ‘ridiculous’ with ‘dying’ and ‘surviving’ again makes the reader want to know more because these are not usual pair-ups. The gravity and tone of the words are in conflict. Ridiculous v’s dying. Humor v’s gravity/serious.
Random pages for The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and A Fault in Our Stars by John Green.
Since I’ve read these books (more than once), I’m still doing a random pages selection in both these books based on the pages in my own novel that lack micro-tension. Both sets of pages I examined, contain huge spoilers so I’ll just say the type of micro-tension.
On page 243, in The Hunger Games the micro-tension is Katniss waging an internal war. A philosophical debate with a huge emotional undercurrent. The debate is very gripping and full of micro-tension.
The second page I selected (page 67) in The Hunger Games uses the micro-tension of anticipation.
A tiny spoiler:
The page discusses the unveiling of Katniss’s and Peeta’s costume and there is quite a lot of anticipation on the part of Katniss, Peeta and the reader. Will it work? Will it burn them? Peeta and Katniss are genuinely worried even though they’ve been reassured that they won’t be harmed.
Their worry makes us worried. The line that sets up this uneasy feeling that grows and grows about the costume is: “It crosses my mind that Cinna’s calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.”
Because Katniss thinks that Cinna, the designer, might be crazy, we discount his reassurances. This allows the micro-tension of their worry to make us feel uneasy and worry with them. Without this line, I don’t think the following lines would work so well.
In addition, calm and normal are not usually paired with madman. So this is very similar to the micro-tension in the Martian except that the tension builds and builds line by line until the costume is revealed. Each line tightens the micro-tension. The reader can’t put it down.
In The Fault in Our Stars the micro-tension on page 243 is that of warring emotions. The micro-tension is very poignant and heart-rending.
The micro-tension on page 67 is that of anticipation. The reader wants to know what’s next. It’s not something big. Just what a room looks like and how the POV character will react to it. But it’s enough to keep us reading.
That’s what I did today as well as examining 10 pages for micro-tension in my own novel. I’ll discuss what I found on those tomorrow when I finish going over all 37 pages I accidentally blitzed through.
Talk to you tomorrow,
Happy writing,
Joanne.
* If you want to learn more about micro-tension see Donald Maas’s, The Breakout Novelist: How to Craft Novels That Stand Out and Sell. Chapter 17.
He’s also given webinars on it which can be bought from the Free Expressions website I linked on my courses recommendations page. Here’s the link directly to the webinar recordings. https://www.free-expressions.com/webinar-recordings
