Is Your Narrative Thread Taut Enough?

Pay attention to tension

Photo by Richard Horvath on Unsplash

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Hi everyone,

Some time back, the line, “Pay attention to tension,” flashed through my mind. I have no idea now what prompted it, but I figured it was a good premise for a post, so I jotted it down along with, “Is your narrative thread taut enough?” Then I forgot all about it until I started scrounging for this week’s topic.

Good advice, I thought, considering the twin lines. But how to unpack it? The best way almost always is through literary examples, and one of my favorite teaching tools is flash prose. Fiction and nonfiction shorter than two pages has to be so concise and multi-layered that, when well written, it exemplifies many of the most important lessons in creative writing. Including the lesson of tension.

I have many go-to sources for flash prose. For memoir pieces, I rely on Brevity Magazine. But for this post— though memoir must be taut, too — I wanted to examine fiction, so I turned to Narrative Magazine. And there, to my delight, I discovered a short short by my former Bennington MFA classmate, Louise Jarvis Flynn. Perfect! I thought. And so it is.

Here, then, are some observations about Louise’s story to help you pay attention to tension in your own work.

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Narrative tension is something of a catchall phrase. It can refer to the emotional suspense that keeps readers turning pages; the tautness of phrasing that leads, like a tightrope, from thought to thought; the strategic delivery of meaning; the continuous stoking of intrigue by raising one new and significant question after another, while withholding critical answers; the management of subtext so the narrative has sufficient density to hold up from beginning to end.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that tension holds readers’ interest by keeping the screws of story turning. And “A Windfall” by Louise Jarvis Flynn illustrates three key aspects of tension that every story teller must attend to.

Emotional stakes

All stories are fueled by emotional stakes. Whether your characters are fictional, or figures from your past who populate your memoir, readers will only be interested if these people-on-the-page are at risk of gaining or losing something deeply meaningful and potentially life-changing. They need to care about these stakes, so that readers will care about the story. Characters need to feel uncertain about the outcome, so that readers will want to know what happens next. They need to feel the tension between caring and uncertainty that sparks just enough stress to make both characters and readers feel alive and engaged.

Here’s the opening of “A Windfall.” See how it makes you feel: