  Action/Adventure
This week: Tension fuels the action, the adventure Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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Each day is a blank page, an adventure to be written, action and re-action ~ be pro-active when you write and allow your readers to react as they move about the adventure you've created for them.
Welcome to this week's WDC Action and Adventure Newsletter. Let's explore some of the ways we keep the adventure active. Let's explore some of the ways we can keep our adventure expanding, holding our readers in their chairs, turning the pages to see what will happen next
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Greetings, fellow Adventurers
It's a thin band to pull and release and bend and twist, mindful that if we pull it just a bit too hard, it will snap! But if we just let it sit, it serves no purpose other than to add clutter to a drawer. Yes, that's where I keep my rubber bands - until it's time to use one. In an adventure, a rubber band provides the active tension that winds and stretches the adventure.
Tension raises the stakes for your character and adds excitement. Tension and conflict raise the emotional level of the text and forces the reader to become involved in the story.
Tension hooks the reader and keeps him/her turning the pages. So, how do we keep that rubber band taught, the action immanent. Consider the following twists and turns to keep the rubber band tight, without snapping it.
 The clock is ticking. A time limit presents automatic pressure. If your character has to reach her goal by a certain time, or fail, the stakes are raised from the beginning of the story. If you then place unforeseen obstacles in your character's way, all the better. The clock can provide mental tension with a personal goal to accomplish, emotional tension where the character will be embarassed or shamed if the goal is not timely met, or impending danger, where harm will come to either the character or someone he/she cares for - once the time is up.
Conversations between characters can increase tension in both subtle and overt ways. If your protagonist wants something from the other character but doesn't want that character to know, tension underlies the seemingly innocent conversation. Another character may want information from your protagonist, who sidesteps the issue. Or, the dialogue can be openly confrontational. In any case, the exchange pushes the story to the next part of the adventure.
Pacing the adventure, making it stretch and release. Each time there's a crisis, the pace speeds up. Once the crisis is solved there is a momentary respite before the next challenge is encountered and the tension increases once again until all challenges have been met and the tension rises to the climax of the story or verse..
Keep it tight. Stretch the rubber band with tight, short sentences with active verbs that speak tension, i.e., "Run!" as opposed to "Let's get out of here." Hear the difference. The urgency in the first as opposed to the relaxed pace of the second example (which does work in the release after the crisis is resolved).
So, consider your own adventure story or poem. Is it active, stretching and releasing without snapping (overkill, or lack of resolution). Are the stakes high; is there a need to overcome obstacles to reach a climax and resolution? Stretch and twist that rubber band, and your adventure will be one for which your readers will need to turn the pages.
Write On!
Kate
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Do these adventures in prose and verse make you tense, keep you focused on the page, what is happening and what will happen next; let the writers know with a comment or review know and, while you're at it, stretch your own ruber band
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Thank you for sharing this exploration with me. I hope you have fun twisting and bending your own rubber band to create an adventure in prose or verse that creates tension and gives your characters (and readers) a need to stay in the story.
Until we next meet,
Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Action/Adventure: August 01, 2012 Issue [#5182]
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