Writing Excuses 21.16: Tension and Release as Call and Response

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Writing Excuses 21.16: Tension and Release as Call and Response 

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-16-tension-and-release-as-call-and-response

Key Points: Tension and release? Conflict, juxtaposition, unanswered questions, anticipation, micro-tension. Conflict resolution, end of the fight (physical or emotional), escape for a moment. Safety versus danger, known and unknown. Movement! Release is pacing. Risotto! Genres of the body. Flow. Leapfrog! Season to taste. Frogs in a bag storytelling. Modulation. 

[Season 21, Episode 16]

[Howard] For more than a decade, we've hosted Writing Excuses at sea, an annual workshop and retreat in a cruise ship. You're invited to our final cruise in 2026. It's a chance to learn, connect, and grow, all while sailing along the stunning Alaskan and Canadian coast. Join us, the hosts of Writing Excuses, and spend dedicated time leveling up your writing craft. Attend classes, join small group breakout sessions, learn from instructors one on one at office hours, and meet with all the writers from around the world. During the week-long retreat, we'll also dock at 3 Alaskan ports, Juneau, Sitka, and Skagway, as well as Victoria, British Columbia. Use this time to write on the ship or choose excursions that allow you to get up close and personal with glaciers, go whale watching, and learn more about the rich history of the region and more. Next year will be our grand finale after over 10 years of successful retreats at sea. Whether you're a long time alumni or a newcomer, we would love to see you on board. Early bird pricing is currently available, and we also offer scholarships. You can learn more at writingexcuses.com/retreats.

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[Season 21, Episode 16]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Tension and release as call and response.

[Erin] Tools, not rules.

[Howard] For writers, by writers.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette] Today we're going to be talking about tension and release as a way to kind of guide your reader through your fiction. A lot of times we talk about conflict as being a thing that a story must have, but I've been thinking more and more that it's tension. We did a whole thing about tension season before last, last season... Previously...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] On writing excuses. So, we're just going to do a quick kind of reminder about what tension is, and then talk about specifically how you can use tension, but also the release of tension, as a way to control how your reader experiences the story. So, I'm going to start with some of the idea... Some of the pieces of tension that we talked about previously. There's conflict, of course, juxtaposition, unanswered questions, anticipation, and then micro tension, which is small pieces of tension. So those are types of tension. What are... When we're talking about, like, release of tension, what are some ways we can think about sort of the opposites of these?

[DongWon] I think, I mean, conflict resolution being sort of the most obvious one. Right? And the end of the fight scene, whether that's a physical fight or an emotional fight. Right? Like, coming to some kind of conclusion where you have that mini-resolution. Right? And this doesn't have to be resolution of the core tension of your thing. Right? The monster can still be hunting them. But you make it to a safe room, you bar the door. You escape for a moment. Right? Or you have a beat where you think you defeated it. Right? And I think all of these can be small releases of tension that give your story... It adds to the pacing. Right? It pulls you through it. Because, to me, tension and release is controlling pacing, is controlling flow.

[Howard] And part of what you said right there, if you resolve the fight, but maybe not the emotional conflict, well, those are two different sources of tension. It's entirely possible to relieve... To release some of the tension. Oh, okay, good, they're not shooting at each other, but they still need to have the big talk...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] And they haven't yet.

[Erin] A lot of times, I think about tension, especially in horror, but I think it works in other places, about safety versus danger, and the known versus the unknown. So if you move... And a lot of that is about tension as movement. So you move from one known state, a lot of times, to another known state. So you go from dangerous and known, I know I have to give a speech and I'm super par... Like, I just... It's just going to be so horrible, I know it. But it's dangerous. To dangerous and unknown. In the middle of my speech, the zombie apocalypse occurs.

[laughter] 

[Erin] Which is great, I don't have to do the speech anymore.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] However, new problem. But it does resolve the emotional tension of the speech.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And then you move on to a new place.

[DongWon] And the reason why release is pacing, in my mind, is because... Okay, so, my worst food opinion is I don't like risotto, and part of why I don't like risotto is that every bite is the same as the one you just had. Right? It just continues to be the same flavor going forward, and the same texture going forward. And so, if you have a book that has, or you have a story that has no release of tension, it can feel very same throughout. Right? Differentiation allows us to observe the passage of time. Right? And so, when you let people have those moments of release, it makes them feel like your story's moving forward, even if the main overarching thing is still not resolved.

[Howard] I was just thinking of... I don't know if it was in Alien Earth or not, but there's a moment where the xenomorph has gotten away...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Now we're all tense, because we can have a jump scare at any point, where the xenomorph leaps out. And then, someone says, oh, we know where it is, it just killed so and so. That's actually a release of tension.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Because now I know it's not going to jump out...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Right here. And then they go after it. And now I'm tense again, because they are approaching the place where we could again be jumped by the alien. And so it is a very nice rolling forward of tension and release as we make me tense, and make me relax.

[Mary Robinette] Well, and I think it's not just that it's boring, I think it's also fatiguing...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] For the reader if things are at the same level of tension. Like, if you think about a set of stairs, there are landings on stairs in order to give your muscles time to recuperate before you do the next set of stairs.

[DongWon] Exactly. That's why the StairMaster at the gym is the worst thing ever invented.

[laughter]

[Erin] Is it worse or better than the risotto?

[Mary Robinette] That's a good question.

[DongWon] It's better than risotto.

[Mary Robinette] I'm so tense about wondering why.

[DongWon] I know. I know. My dislike of risotto knows no bounds. But the reason we keep going to horror, I think, is it's one of what is sometimes called a genre of the body. Right? It's a genre you feel in your body as you have the tension. Romance, erotica, there's a few... Humor, all of these are sort of categorized as sort of rom... Or genres of the body. And so they're great examples of looking at how tension builds. Right? Humor is also tension, as you tell a joke, Howard, what you called the comedic drop, is you're building tension until you have the reversal, you have the drop that lets the humor sort of be resolved. That's why you can use humor in a horror story to get that little release valve of tension before you ratchet it up again.

[Howard] It's why horror is one of my favorite things to write...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] Because the whole humor tool box applies.

[DongWon] It's the same skill set, it's just a different resolution.

[Howard] Yeah.

[DongWon] That's why Jordan Peele is one of the greatest horror auteurs of all time, because he's also one of the funniest people of all time.

[Mary Robinette] But you can also use it in things that are not particularly funny...

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Or overtly horror. The Spell Shop by Sarah Beth Durst is this cozy, and it's just delightful and charming. But one of the things that she does in it that I think is so fascinating is, like, I could not stop turning the pages, she's so good at the tension and release. And one of the things she does is uses juxtaposition and questions to pull you through. So the opening of the story, our main character's a librarian, there's a coup that is going on in the city. We do not actually see the coup, we see smoke rising in the distance. But all she has to do is get out of the library with her sentient house plant. And just the juxtaposition of librarian, sentient house plant, smoke from coup in the distance, and you know that at any moment, those things could intersect...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And even though they don't directly intersect at the beginning of the book, that is still looming over you for much of the book. And it allows you to be like, any moment now, this anticipation, this juxtaposition of this extremely cozy thing with some real horrors happening in the background...

[DongWon] Well, what's useful also about your list of different types of tension is that you can alternate between them to keep flow moving through the story. Right?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] So the game Blue Prince is a great example of this, because you have the tension and release of receiving a puzzle, and then solving the puzzle. Right? And that is one kind of resolution. What made me think of it is in the background, there's also this revolutionary narrative happening, and the succession narrative happening in the background. So as you're getting story elements, that is pulling you through, as you want to know what's happening in the world, who are these characters, why is this house the way it is? At the same time that you're getting the tension and release of the puzzle solving. Right? The game Hades uses a similar structure, in terms of the tension and release of doing a very difficult combat and then dying and then getting more story. Right? So if you alternate them too, as you let pressure off one valve, you have the other one still pulling you, and then you release that one, and the other one's... You can alternate them.

[Howard] I think of it as leapfrog.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Howard] The frog jumps, we're tense, the frog lands, and we've relaxed, and now another frog is going to jump over it. And that pattern... I mean, obviously, if that's the whole pattern all the way through the book, it will get a little stale.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] But as a structure for helping you understand tension and release in your own work, that's a fine starting point.

[DongWon] Well, this is...

[Mary Robinette][garbled] more frogs.

[Howard] You just need more frogs, literally.

[laughter]

[Erin] [garbled] Because I think, like, again like we talk a lot about how humans are pattern recognition creatures, and if you have the exact same type of tension resolution, tension resolution, the reader already sees the resolution when the next tension occurs, and therefore they don't feel tense. They're like, it's when you have like the hero who's played by a really big name actor in danger in the first 3 minutes of a movie and the person's like, I'm not really buying that, like, I doubt that you got Val Kilmer in order to kill him in minute one. And so when it does happen, it's very shocking.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But I think playing with different types of tension says, okay, we're going to do this a little bit differently. We got a question recently at a live event about how to make try-fail cycles feel different. And some of it's having a different fail to the same try, or a different try, but the same fail. Changing one thing changes the pattern enough that then humans are like, this is new, and yet again, I'm feeling my emotions.

[DongWon] Well, all this kind of plays into a thing that we're talking about with the difference between shorter fiction and longer fiction. And as you go from a short story to a novel, you need to layer in more plots. You need to go from an A plot to an A plot, B plot, C plot, D plot. And that, having those different layers, lets you alternate when you're building and when you're releasing tension to sort of create this movement and flow that we're talking about. Speaking of tension and release, we've got to take a break for a second. But when we come back, I want to hear from you guys about how you decide where to put those releases.

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[DongWon] Okay. So when we went to break, I kind of wanted to hear more about your decision making process. Right? So, when you're putting together a story, what is the thing that's telling you, okay, I need a release here, I need to build tension here? What are those things that are, like, mechanically going into your process there?

[Howard] I'm a big baby.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] I do not like being tense. I am not as tense when I'm writing as when I'm reading it. And so generally speaking, I... I like my food much saltier than Sandra does, and so I know that if it's the right amount of salt, I've screwed up. It's reverse for tension. If I feel like this is too tense, then I need to turn it up a couple of notches, and that will be accurate. And that's where my barometer is now. I don't know if that's where my barometer will be in 6 months or 6 years or whatever. But it's... I'm... Life is a moving Target. I just scale things in that way because I've discovered that my tastes are such that I like a little less tension. And so when I'm writing for a wider audience, I'm going to put in more tension than I want.

[DongWon] I like that you're almost, like, checking yourself somatically as you write, of like where am I feeling tension? Is this too much? Then it's like, oh, then that's the right level. Right?

[Howard] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I tend to think about it... I mean, the challenge in leaning on Howard's metaphor is that it is a season to taste. For me, when I'm using tension, I'm often using it to control pacing, and also to control the effect on the reader. So if I have... If I have a slow scene, it's a quiet scene, it's people in a room and they're having a conversation or, I don't know, making tea. I'm very likely to then try to insert some other kind of tension in order to make that moment kind of tick along, even while giving people the illusion that they're resting.

[Howard] I love this contrast. Because I'm speaking to how am I feeling while I'm reading, and Mary Robinette is speaking to how is the structure of the book working in terms of pacing. And to be honest, I use both tools.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] And I think a lot of us end up using both tools.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] That's why it's so important to call out all of them.

[DongWon] Yeah... I...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] I mean, this makes so much sense to me with both how each of you individually talk about process, talk about fiction. Erin, I'm kind of curious, like, you write incredibly tense fiction. Like, an Erin Roberts short story has me sweating from line one to the end. Like, how do you think about maintaining that level or increasing it? Do you ever, like, choose to intentionally decrease it? Or do you just make me suffer the whole time?

[Erin] I often go in writing, thinking, how can I make DongWon suffer?

[DongWon] That's... It's successful.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] I think that part of it is that I have trained myself... I was thinking, to love tension. Some of this is a lifetime of watching soap operas, which have to create tension all the time in situations that are very familiar. Like... It's a lot of it like who's in love with who and who lied to who about this.

[Howard] So many frogs.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] But there's so many frogs [garbled] Like, it's basically putting a whole bunch of frogs in a bag and shaking it...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] Is a soap opera. And so...

[Howard] And then you nickname each frog.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Well...

[DongWon] The frogs in a bag method of storytelling is what we're saying? Okay.

[Erin] And so I think because I, like, sort of grew up with that as a level of storytelling, I always want more tension. I'm like, they're spending too much time feeling safe. I don't like it. Throw something at them.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And I think also I've learned a lot about tension from singing and seeing other people sing.

[DongWon] Ooh, I love that.

[Erin] When you talked about risotto earlier, I was like, this is how I feel... If you ever go to karaoke or even professional singers who don't modulate...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. 

[Erin] Like they haven't...

[DongWon] Who just belt. Yeah.

[Erin] They have a beautiful belting voice...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] But they just belt for 5 minutes straight. After a while, you just tune it out.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Erin] And when I'm singing, I like to belt, like, I will watch the audience for, like, when I feel that they're kind of done with it, and immediately modulate what I'm doing in real time to try to, like, do something different, like, oh, that's a perfect time to get quiet. That's a perfect time... Now you know what I can do, like, I'll do something else. And so a lot of it, for me, is very like gut feeling. But in order to do that as someone who's writing a story, I will read my stories to myself, or have the voice of, like, Microsoft Word, read it to me, and feel like, if I'm not feeling tense in this moment, I need to add something else here.

[Howard] Man, if Clippy can make you tense...

[Chuckles]

[Howard] You're doing it well.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Clippy makes everyone tense.

[Mary Robinette] You just made me think about a thing about why we modulate in a song, and we do it for emphasis. There are times when we go quieter because we want someone to lean in, and that's also I think places where you have their quieter scenes, where it looks like the tension is dropping, but there's this undercurrent underneath it, that you're like, I have this creeping sense of dread, versus other times when you do belt full out because you're trying to emphasize a different kind of thing. I think thinking about the emotion of the scene is really, like, why you are choosing one type of tension over another, and whether you're doing it as a release or a tightening.

[Erin] Just a yes-and to that. Like, from the singing part of things. When do you... When people sing quietly, they're able to enunciate more, you're more likely to hear the lyrics of what they're saying to actually...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Get a sense of what the words are when someone sings. The louder you sing, the broader your voice becomes, and a lot of times, people don't listen to the words as much, they just listen to the sound of it and the feel of it. And so in writing, I think, in those small scenes, if there's a small detail of tension, like the tension is actually, like, whether or not this person wore the thing on their left wrist versus their right, the small detail that works better in a quiet scene. In the middle of a large fight scene, it's going to be hard to pay attention to, like, what side somebody had something on, because the bigness of it is actually drowning out some of those small details. So having both of them allows you to give both types of tension their demesne.

[Howard] And in the spirit of yes-and, I've got an oh, wait.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] When I was studying audio engineering, I had things exactly backwards, and the instructor in the studio had to come over and tell me, no, you're pushing the faders at the wrong time. I was mixing something where the singers would be really loud and then really whisper, and then really loud and really whisper, as sort of a call and response. And I was turning them up during the loud, and down during the whisper. And he said that no no no no no no no. What you're trying to mimic is the lean in. When people lean in in order to hear something, they concentrate on it, and their brain makes it louder. And so when the soft singing happens, turn it up. Let us lean in. When it's loud, bring down the fader and let us sit back and it washes over us. I do not know how this applies to writing, but it's fascinating to me.

[DongWon] Well, as pattern recognition machines, what we do is recognize edges. Right? An edge will always stand out to us more than the middle of something. Right? So when you have that micro tension response, it gets us to lock in and focus, like, when we're like, oh, wait, what was that punch line? You know what I mean? Even though if the scene isn't overall a funny one, having that little bit of just like friction there lets us refocus and pay attention and lean in, as you were saying, to hear the thing better, and then we can go back to sort of what the baseline of the scene is.

[Erin] Yeah. Thinking of that and the call and response you were talking about, since we put that in the title, is the like... It creates a pattern that you then break. It's like lean in for a hug, this is great, lean in for a hug, this time I stabbed you.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And so it's like...

[DongWon] Surprising, yet inevitable.

[laughter]

[Erin] If you know me, yes. So, like, I think that is a thing that allows you to almost lull the reader into thinking that there isn't tension, that we're in a low tension moment, and then allows you to ratchet it up really quickly, which makes that edge that much sharper...

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] To not cut your reader with, but to cut through their attention with.

[DongWon] Cut me, apparently.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And it is that... The thing that we'll see often at the end of a story, that we get this big cathartic snap because of a big tension release.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And I think that's also why you'll see in a lot of places where you get, like in the horror thing where they're about to get out and everything looks great. It's that contrast can provide you with more of a reaction to this new tension.

[Mary Robinette] Speaking of new tension, it is time for homework, and I want you, listeners, to consider adding some new tension to your story. I want you to look at an existing thing that you've already written, and I want you to look at it and see if you can spot what in that scene causes the tension. And if there's not anything, that's a good sign that you should add something. Try listening to one of the earlier episodes where we do a whole module on tension that's several episodes long. See if you can add a bit of juxtaposition, see if you can add a question. If there is tension already, what happens to that scene if you change it?

[Howard] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.