This week’s video answers one of your questions about the finer points of distinction between these two important story catalysts.
Video Transcript:
I talk a lot about conflict and tension, because, as we all know, they’re the gasoline in our stories’ engines. A few months ago, one of you asked the very astute question, “What is the difference between conflict and tension?” So today let’s a take a sec to find some answers. I often use the two terms interchangeably, not so much because they’re the same thing—because they’re not—but because they’re kissing cousins that fulfill similar functions within the story.
Conflict indicates outright confrontation. Two people arguing. Two armies fighting. Or even something slightly less aggressive, such as someone who desperately needs money losing their winning lotto ticket. Tension, on the other hand, is what I like to think of as the threat of conflict. You’ll have tension in a scene in which your characters are hunkered down in a bunker waiting for the next artillery bombardment. You won’t have any actual conflict in this scene, since nothing is actually happening to the characters. But you do have plenty of tension because characters and readers alike know something is about to happen.
Think of conflict and tension as pistons, working in concert, pushing and pulling to provide contrast within the story. If you’ve got your conflict going gangbusters in every single scene, you’re going to find yourself in the ironic position of having created a monotonous story. Tension allows you to dial down the excitement and the altercations without losing reader attention. In fact, tension-heavy scenes can often be more gripping, simply because readers know the conflict is coming and they can’t do anything to stop it.
So bottom line: you need to strive to have either conflict or tension in every scene. But recognize the difference, so you can balance and enhance the effect of each.
Photo Credit
Thumbnail – Screen Capture From Video
Originally published on Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors
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[…] how we talked last week about conflict and tension? The scene is where we find the conflict. This is the action part of the action/reaction dynamic […]