It's a Nail Biter: Mastering Tension in Your Writing with Meg Medina

 

Meg Medina served as the eighth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. She is the author of many notable works for young readers of all ages, including the Newbery Medal–winning and New York Times bestselling book Merci Suárez Changes Gears, the first in a trilogy. Meg's work has won numerous distinctions over the years, including the Pura Belpré award, the Ezra Jack Keats Writer's Award, the Charlotte Zolotow prize, and the Margaret Wise Brown prize, among others. 

Meg likes to think of tension in a novel as a psychological trap that we lay for the reader, a sort of a manipulation of the readers feelings. It's a concept of worrying. 

• Sneaky suggestions of all the horrible possibilities
• Deals with the future, with the what-ifs of a character situation
• Inspires the page turn, the flashlight reading, the longing to reach for the book again

Three are several elements we can tap into that can add to tension: 

character, plot and structure, and atmosphere/mood

CHARACTERS 

Consider: How do people unsettle us?

Create villains that are layered. Make them worry you (your readers). Make them a worthy opponent. 

Give your protagonist an exceptional skill and a critical flaw. Ask yourself, what is the very worst thing your character could do? Also, what is the worst thing that could happen to your character? 

PLOT AND STRUCTURE

The way in to the story can create tension. We need to get kids attention quickly, it doesn't have to be immediate, but fairly quickly. 

Meg reads to us the prologue of Graciela in the Abyss. You should read it too. This point will become clear. 

ATMOSPHERE AND MOOD

This is where your artistry matters, your word choice and style. 

Let the environment and natural world reveal the emotion of the story. 

Common tension killers:

• Long exposition 
• Character with uninteresting or relatively minor problems
• Backstory 
• Stakes don’t rise
• The severity of each unfolidng problem is the wrong order
• Predictable events
• Subplot and the main plot are not building in tandem