The Golden Rule That Ensures Your Story Has Narrative Tension
Make Every Scene a Story in Miniature
Empathy for the character is the glue that draws readers into a scene, and to make empathy sticky, seasoned storytellers ensure that every scene sets up a three (or more)-sided situation.
Hello Loreates,
I want to circle back to a critical point that Jennifer Acker made last week during our conversation about narrative tension:
When Jen said, “A character has to make a decision at the end of every chapter,” I could hear fiction students reaching for their pens. But I actually disagree a tiny bit with Jen; I think narrative tension depends on at least one character making a decision not just at the end of every chapter but at the end of every scene. In a book like Jen’s Surrender, the distinction is largely moot because her chapters are short, mostly single scenes. But in a typically large, sprawling novel a single decision isn’t nearly enough to drive a whole chapter.
For me, the golden rule when plotting fiction is: Make every scene a story in miniature.
Read on below for details!
Aimee
Save the Date!
Tuesday, August 11 at 10am PT
Well Published! Live with
Dara Kaye, Nonfiction Literary Agent with William Morris Endeavor
We’ll be talking about what it’s like to be a literary agent within a Big Deal entertainment agency, what kinds of nonfiction Dara loves to represent, and why she focuses only on this end of the publishing spectrum.
Making a Scene
I’m going to say something you might not want to hear. You might object, resist, deny the need for stories to be propulsive. You might righteously claim the desire to luxuriate, sink, dwell, meditate, or simply sit with prose one page at a time. If so, you’re probably a poet at heart. But if you’re a storyteller who aims to hold an audience and perhaps interest agents and editors in your tales, then hear me now when I say, every story needs to be a page-turner.
I do not mean that you must write action adventures or commercial potboilers, international thrillers or psychological suspense novels. I simply mean that you must generate enough narrative tension to compel your readers to turn the page. Every page. For however many pages you expect them to read.
This applies to both memoir and fiction, and a great deal of narrative nonfiction, as well. If you don’t produce a page-turner, readers won’t want to keep reading your book. Simple as that. And if readers won’t turn your pages, neither will agents or editors.
So what’s the secret to getting readers to turn the page? I’m not going to discount the importance of poignant prose, vivacious voice, killer characters, or sensational settings and situations, but none of those elements alone or even in combination will drive readers to turn the page. What readers need is narrative tension that continually ratchets up, chapter after chapter, until it feels like the pages are turning themselves. Scenes are the engines that generate that tension.
