Once in a while a scene needs something more, a touch of extra emphasis to increase the tension. Usually this means either asking a character to make a sacrifice, or forcing a character to endure and suffer.
.creative writing
Immediate Tension 104-04
Within a scene each character has a goal and obstacles preventing them from achieving that goal. This means every scene contains at least one conflict, if every character is collaborating or competing to achieve the same goal.
Creating Tension 104-03
Tension is created whenever a conflict prevents a character from achieving a goal. This can be a force of nature, another character, or an internal struggle, such as the character debating what to do. Tension also helps to create a sense of pacing, the rate at which scenes progress. Generally an audience will perceive a low tension scene as longer than a high tension scene.
Perspective & Motive 104-02
Part of good storytelling is making the audience believe in the story, believe that the characters really existed, acting out events exactly as the author outlines them. This means everything the character says and does needs to be rooted in who the character is. An author must always be aware of why a character acts and reacts as they do, so that audiences never stop to consider the invisible hand behind the curtain.
Why Characters Change 104-01
The plot of a story is the various events that occur over the course of the story. A character’s journey is how those events affect a character. A plot is a combination of 1 or more character journeys, often using a character hierarchy, focusing on specific characters. Many stories contain pieces of a character’s journey, with other portions happening before, after, or “off camera”.