Whether you’re writing a coming-of-age story, a serial killer thriller, a quilting cozy, a paranormal epic, a historical romance, or a children’s bedtime story, you want there to be enough tension to keep readers eagerly turning pages.
Donald Maass observed that people do this when they’re seeking relief from some kind of “apprehension, anxiety, worry, question, or uncertainty.” That means, even if you don’t want to make seven-year-olds feel uneasy before bedtime, you still want to make them curious.
And you want to sustain that curiosity -- that tension -- throughout the entire story.
This is the kind of curiosity that generates movie reviews about keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. These people can’t take a break because:
They’ve gotta know what’ll happen!
Will the Vikings prevail against the ocean’s fiercest storm?
Will the jealous ex show up before the long-awaited kiss?
Will the killer overhear the hostage signaling for help?
As writers, we need to raise questions. Leaving those questions unanswered -- whether they’re small ones that’ll be resolved in another few pages or big ones whose resolution will take until the end of the book -- is guaranteed to create tension within your readers.
And they’ll love you for it. (Oscar Wilde said of a story he was enjoying, “The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”)
Of course, the amount of tension will vary depending on your audience. Readers of different genres have different expectations regarding how much is over-the-top, and how little is yawn-worthy.
Keep in mind that the ultimate resolution of tension -- at which point your audience will feel satisfied even though they regret the story’s over -- has to wait until (yep) the end. Or very close to the end. Think of whatever question is resolved there as the dramatic focus of the story.
But this sure doesn’t need to be the ONLY source of tension in your book. You can pile on a whole lot more even while that big question is still pending. And if you’re not yet quite sure what your big question is:
Take a look at your genre.
If it’s a mystery, the question is generally “Will the mystery be solved?” (Justice is a nice outcome, as well, but that’s an even more prevalent question for legal thrillers: “Will justice be done?”)
If it’s a romance, the question is likely “Will they commit to living happily ever after?” For women’s fiction or coming-of-age, it’s pretty sure to be “Will this person come out better at the end?” For a thriller, “Will the good guys triumph?” And so on.
Since the answer to every one of those questions is almost always “Yes,” you might think it’d be difficult to sustain tension during the story. But the question your readers flat-out CAN’T answer (yet) is “How will this happen?”
So that’s what you need to answer as the story unfolds, bit by increasingly tense bit. Look at every scene and see how it contributes to the book’s (and the characters’) progress toward resolution. As long as they’re moving forward, it doesn’t matter -- in terms of building tension -- whether they succeed or fail in any given scene.
Sometimes things will turn out beautifully (until the next scene) and sometimes they’ll turn out horribly (until a few scenes later). Either way, you’re keeping your audience on the edge of their seats.
Because the best tension isn’t found in just a scene or two here and there.
It lasts even when things seem fine on the surface, with the characters happily roasting marshmallows in the park...because the reader still hasn’t gotten the ultimate reassurance that everything WILL be resolved.
That innate tension comes from your big Story Question.
And of course you can have dozens of smaller S.Q.s along the way, which will build even more tension. Not necessarily nail-biting, read-with-all-the-lights-on tension, but a sense of anticipation: what’s gonna HAPPEN?
We already know your character/s will have to struggle against something. Maybe it’s an enemy like the villain or the society they live in.
Maybe it’s an ally like their best friend, co-worker, parents, or team.
Maybe it’s a hostile environment, whether that’s nature or technology or the supernatural.
Maybe it’s themselves.
And it’s very likely more than just one of those entities. Anytime you’ve got uncertainty, you’ve got tension. Anytime you’ve got strain on the body, mind or heart, you’ve got tension. Anytime you’ve got a values conflict between or within people, you’ve got tension.
It’s a wonder anyone EVER gets a good night’s sleep, isn’t it? :)
But this is very handy for writers, because tension can arise from just about any situation. While your overall Story Question creates the longest arc, there can be all kinds of extra questions along the way that keep the tension building.
When you think of books that strike you as having an exquisite sense of tension, whether it’s “Will all life on earth be destroyed?” or “Will Jimmy win the blue ribbon?” you can usually see how this tension continued building throughout the story. And in fact, that leads to our:
Prize Drawing Question
What’s a book or scene that you remember as being especially good in terms of creating and/or building and/or sustaining tension? (There’s no wrong answer, because every reader has their own favorites.)
And somebody who comments will win free registration to “Tick... Tick... Building Tension,” an August 7-18 email class on doing exactly that. On Saturday evening I’ll have random dot org draw a name and post it waaaaay down at the end of the comments. How’s THAT for building tension? :)
About Laurie
After winning Romantic Times’ “Best Special Edition of the Year” over Nora Roberts, Laurie Schnebly Campbell discovered she loved teaching every bit as much as writing...if not more. Since then she’s taught online and live workshops including the one at groups.io/g/Tension, and keeps a special section of her bookshelves for people who’ve developed that particular novel in her classes. With 50+ titles there so far, she’s always hoping for more.
I watch you putting forth so much effort, weaving your creativity, shaping your ideas, but then you stress.
You wonder if you’re doing the right thing. You question each decision you make, then watch other people make headway while you feel stagnant. So you change things up, hoping it’ll make a difference — instead of giving your plans enough time to manifest enough results to measure.
You've been following people on In-Yer-Facebook and InstaGlam who make it seem like they have no issues and a perfect life. You’re clicking on ‘secrets’ spewed out on YouTube adverts by people showing paychecks I can outdo in three minutes with Photoshop and an iPhone.
Stop it.
Seriously, just stop all of it.
You’re in a better place than you think you are. That’s why we need to have this conversation. I’ve been where you are. I’ve done what you’re doing.
…and I’ve used the same potty-mouth words you did last time. I know, it frustrated you and you had to vent out loud.
It’s going to be okay, I promise.
…and it’s a promise I can keep.
Here’s The REAL Secret
There are no ‘secrets’.
You already know this, but something in you wants the lie to be true.
‘Secrets’ is just a marketing word used to get your attention. A tactic encouraging you to make irrational decisions. When you see this used in any form of writing, you don’t have to be fearful. Just know it is always, always, always, a hook. The person using the word is manipulating you. That’s the intent when using that specific word in an explanation or copy, plain and simple.
Since you already knew that, and I’ve slapped you with a reminder, let me slap you again for good measure.
There are no shortcuts.
Oh, there may be a better path, a more efficient way of doing things, but no shortcuts. Not if you want anything to last.
What about luck, you ask?
That can happen, sure. You don’t control it, you can’t guarantee it, and it also isn’t a shortcut, it’s…luck.
Now that we have those two aspects of reality out of the way, take a moment and shake the stress off. It’s time to take you on a mental ride you won’t soon forget.
Can You Guarantee Your Own Success?
Strange question to start our conversation?
Not really.
Oh, and the answer to that question is an unequivocal ‘yes’.
You can guarantee your own success, and you should be promising this to yourself every day of your creative life.
How can you do this? Simple.
Start with the end in mind.
When I was training to be a bodyguard, they trained me to approach every conflict with the end in mind. The absolute resolution that I was going to get home to my wife and children, no matter what. It forced me to see every confrontation from a new perspective.
Physical contact was no longer ‘self-defense,' it was damage control. Avoidance, negotiations, body language, and positioning became critical skills. My first line of defense became the actual self-defense. I also developed a complete disregard for personal property. If a life was at stake, anything but an innocent was fair game to be used, abused and destroyed if it helped me do my job.
I decided not to take that path in the end. Learning about myself and what I could do opened my eyes. My very existence changed in how I viewed the world and interacted with those in it. My personality transformed forever.
The same goes for writing.
When I started shaping the Wanted Hero story in 2004, I started with the focus. How I wanted readers to feel about my comic books. My ‘going home no matter what’ became my ‘what does the story have to be to make it into the mind and heart of a reader’?
Did it work?
Virtually everyone I talked to in 2004 said what I wanted to do, making a traditional comic into a ¢.97 downloadable PDF, wouldn’t work. I’d never sell any. People wouldn’t be interested. I wouldn’t make any money. Blah-blah-blah. That pessimism doubled when I said I’d learn HTML and build the site myself in a world where programmers held the world hostage.
One year later, I had readers in 60 countries. Over 750,000 visitors came to my website, and I had a message board with 15,000 active members. Years before the invention of the Kindle, I earned a full-time living by creating comics alone.
Now that I’m writing these stories as fantasy novels, I ask the same questions during that process:
How can I start with the ending in mind?
What do I want readers to feel when they read my stories?
What do I want readers to take away with them?
What makes readers talk about the stories they read?
What makes a reader share the books they read?
What makes readers come back to a series?
Answering those questions provides a roadmap to success. Then I apply that to the stories.
The View To Consider
The point of this article is to help you shift your views. To change the words you use, specifically about yourself, because words matter. Words have power.
When we use the wrong words, we train our minds and skew our perspectives to accept lies.
Lies about ourselves.
Lies abut our work, and the things we want to bring into this world.
When you start with the end in mind, you take something that may seem “impossible” and transform it into “probable”.
Your success goes from ‘if’…. to ‘when’.
…and that, my friend, if you will remain consistent and not give up, is a guarantee.
I have to go for now, but I want to continue this conversation soon. There are some specific details I’d like to propose to you and show you how you’re perfectly aligned to succeed as a writer.
Until then, keep writing.
If you want to find that success, it’s the best decision you’ve made this year.
I guarantee it.
What 'lies' have you been telling yourself that may be holding you back from success? I want to know!
About Jaime
Jaime Buckley is a cartoonist and best-selling author.
More importantly, he’s a loving husband and father of 13 children. Since 1986 he’s worked for famous authors and TV personalities, and illustrated for hundreds of new authors across the genre spectrum. If you can think of a creative project or marketing strategy, Jaime's likely done it… but always finds his greatest success by being himself. You can find Jaime writing fantasy for readers on LifeOfFiction.com and sharing his parenting antics through kidCLANS.com.
You’ve written your book, edited it, collected beta reader feedback, and now you want to shop it around to editors and publishers. First off, congratulations! You have finished a book. But now you will need to know how it fits in the world of book stores and online sales, and one step to categorize your book is by using comp books.
Comparison books, comp books for short, do the work of giving the agent, publisher, and ultimately your readers an idea about the content, style, and story promise of your book. Finding books that are similar to yours can be tough and confusing, since each story has its own unique imprint on the world. Choosing books that are closely aligned to your story in multiple ways can help you sell your books and connect to more readers who want your type of story. Read on to see key ways that your comp book choices should reflect the essence of your story.
Why do authors need to find comp books or stories that are like their own?
Helps with cover design
Helps align accurate metadata (categories, keywords, descriptions
Helps with marketing your target readers
Helps you identify your ideal audience for your book.
And it shows agents and publishers that you understand the market and which readers your book will appeal to.
What things does your work have in common with them?
Be specific when using a comp book to solicit a publisher or agent. How does your comp book reflect these aspects of your novel?
Similar protagonist
Same genre
Main conflicts align
Address the same theme
Have a similar style or tone
Choosing books that are truly representative of what you have written also shows that you understand your book’s connection to readers. Giving book comp information to an agent or publisher shows a close relationship to a book with a proven audience base--and that your book can appeal to those readers as well.
How can you decide on and refine your Genre?
Genre Classifications
You may first want to read this article by our own Jenny Hanson about ow important it is to choose your genre carefully. But there is a slight art to picking the labels for your story.
It's problematic since there isn’t a definitive list. There are also major players, publishing houses, agencies, etc that use slightly different definitions. There are many, many stories that overlap in genre forming hybrid stories, complicating the process even more.
Another good place to look for genres and subgenres is to find your comp books in the places where they are sold. A main one is Amazon.com and they have a very detailed collection of categories to choose from. There is more strategizing when it comes to which subgenres are best for your book, but looking at books similar to yours could help you germinate your ideas on which subgenres best describe your novel.
Genre Practice and a Game
Figuring out the genre of you writing can be tricky. Let’s look at some well-selling books and see how close you choose the main category and subgenres.
Ready to practice your genre identification skills? Here is a question-based game to get your genre juices flowing!
Each question slide will include a description of a novel that was popular and considered in the “Best of” genres according to Amazon during the last 7 years. There will be 3 main categories to choose from, worth 1 point for each correct answer. There are extra points if you can guess the title of the novel from the description too!
Instructions:
Grab something to keep track of your answers.
Start the slideshow or read the descriptions from the stills included in this post below.
For each question slide, read the description, and write down the genre you choose.
Write down any titles you can identify.
Check your scores and brag incessantly in the comments at the end of this post. 😊
Question 1- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of our protagonist, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
Question 2
Question 2- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape.
The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Question 3
Question 3- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
A girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaks into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeps with rock stars, and dreams of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting noticed is a band led by the brooding Billy. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road. The two cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
Question 4
Question 4- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
A slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia is an outcast even among her fellow Africans. She is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when another slave who has recently arrived from Virginia urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him.
Question 5
Question 5- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
Question 6
Question 6- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
The alcoholic narrator catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens.
She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only she could be that happy. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed.
Question 7
Question 7 - What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?7
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.
But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose.
Question 8
Question 8 - What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?7
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
Subgenres of these best sellers
In this game you saw book descriptions for novels that hit the Best of Genre categories according to Amazon. As you will see the Best Literature & Fiction category is very wide in definition. Colton Whitehead’s Underground Railroad is a completely different story than Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six. Here is how these descriptions topped the charts:
Take a look at your correct answers. At 1 point for each correct category and an additional point for any correct titles, how many points did you get? Check the scoring chart and see how you did!
Final Thoughts
Genre is a tricky, slippery beast, and lets take the example of Outlander for a moment. Although historical fiction seems appropriate, the story has time travel (which we said is a subgenre). It fits in other categories.
According to the almighty-Bing search engine (hee hee),
So, genre may just be in the eye of the beholder and a useful tool for marketing one's book to their targeted readers.
But one thing is certain, I should be handled with care as it connects your book to the readers who want your story.
Take a look at that list again and check out the Amazon subgenres listed. Are any surprising to you? Would you have expected something different? Share your thoughts below (and your scores if you really want to!)
You can find her horror stories and young adult writing on her website. Keep up with future projects and events by subscribing to her newsletter. And other writing work HERE, including author coaching and critiques.
A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors.
And occasionally, she takes hikes in the woods with her dog.
