Tools for raising Tension in a Thriller

I talked earlier about some of the basic ways of writing a thriller, in this post, I'm going to focus on actual tools you can use to raise the tension in your audience. Each can be used in the right circumstances to put your audience on the edge of their seats and put that sick feeling of sympathetic tension in the pits of their stomachs. I think of them as "Does he know?", "Will they find out"?, "Hurry up" it's brother "Slow down", and "Will it break?" So, lets get right to it.

     "Does he know" is the tension that happens when the person interrogating you seems to know what you're trying to hide from him and it's like he's just toying with you. Pacing is important here. For example, you're a Jew trying to escape Nazi Germany with forged papers. The train that can get you to neutral Switzerland is right there. It leaves in 3 minutes. The SS officer takes your papers. He looks at them. He looks at you. He ask you what the purpose of your trip is. You tell him you're visiting your sick mother in Geneva. He ask you a question only someone from Switzerland would know. You think you got it right. He looks at your paperwork again, and compares it to a list. The train gives the last all aboard call. The phone rings. The SS officer answers and looks at you. "Ja....Ja...Sehr Gut." He returns. "My apologies Herr Shmidt, we can't be too careful these days.
You turn to get on the train as it begins to move. "Herr Schmidt"! You freeze. "Don't forget your papers."

    "Will they find out" is a fairly standard tension builder. It's that guilty feeling you get when you pass a cop car whether you've done something or not. An example would be you were on vacation in Mexico, and a drug cartel kidnapped your wife and made you mule drugs across the border. Now you've got 10 kilos of cocaine hidden in the seat of your car, and the border guards are heading towards you with the drug dogs. You know if they bust you, your wife dies. You're being watched. If you try to tell them, your wife dies. if you don't make the rendezvous in Texas your wife dies. Now the police are only one car away....

     "Hurry up" and "Slow down " are related, and I'll handle them at once. Hurry up is the tension that happens when something isn't happening fast enough. You've broken into the Chinese consulate and you're decrypting files on his computer. Your decryption gadget in running as fast as it can and its only at 53%. Your handler warns you that the guards are coming over your earpiece, and you have to get out of there, but you know you'll only get one chance at this, and thousands might die if you don't get the information.You hear the elevator open in the hall, and you're only at 85%.....Slow down is the flip side of that tension. The Ambassador was supposed to be out of his office for the night, giving you time to work, but he realizes he forgot some paperwork and is coming back way too quickly. Your accomplice tries to delay him in the lobby, but they were only able to buy you a minute.

    Finally, "Will it break" is the tension of thin ice and frayed rope. The answer is yes, it will break, but the tension is will it hold long enough to get you to safety. The bad guys are after you. You can hear them behind you with the guns and the dogs, in the woods, but you've made it to the river. Its frozen over. You've made it a couple of dozen steps onto the ice when you hear the first sharp crack. You can see the ice begin to fracture out in a spiderweb from where your foot is planted. You take another step and the ice cracks even further. The other side and safety is just  100 feet away, but you can hear the dogs getting louder and see the flashlights moving in the trees behind you. You drop to the ice and begin to crawl, spreading your weight out. One of your knees goes through the ice the next time you put it down.

Fighting for "Good"

There will be times when you are writing, when you seem to hit a brick wall. There will be a scene, or an important bit of dialogue, maybe just a sentence or two that just will not come out right. You'll beat your head against it for an hour or two, and then you'll reach a point where you'll be tempted to just say "It's not good, but it's good enough to get me to the next thing, so I'm just going to move on now".  It can be very discouraging to get bogged down like that. You're making no progress, and all the people who read your stories are on the forums are emailing you; "When's the next chapter coming out", "Hey is the chapter done yet""Hey, remember that story you were writing a while back, is that still happening"? I hope that when that happens, you'll find the strength somewhere to clear your head, make a fresh cup of coffee, then go back for one or two more passes. Because "good enough" may finish the story, but "good" is what it takes to move people.

If you really think about it, for the stories, and the characters and "ships" that you love the most, there was a single moment that hooked you. Sure, there were a lot more since then that you like, and that you might post on Tumblr of make animated gifs or music video's of, but there was one moment, a bit of dialogue, a look, a touch, one scene that "had you at hello" and made you a fan.

I have to think that some of those scenes didn't come easily. The writers and artist and actors had to fight to get them where they needed to be. You put so much time and effort into writing these things. Isn't it worth just a little bit more to make your story unforgettable?