Tempo, silence, and fear: utilizing principles of music theory to heighten tension-filled scenes

I will always remember a lesson about writing taught to me very early on, probably when I was in high school but, maybe when I still young enough to be practicing my cursive handwriting on that pale green paper with the sandwich lines – solid for bread and dotted for metaphors that fall apart as you craft them. That lesson is this: Poetry is all about sound and prose is all about rhythm.

The intention here, I believe, is to express an understanding that poetry is written to be read aloud and prose to be read in silence. This is an attempt to explain the craft that centers on the auditory experience of its end result. Now, full disclosure here, I don’t agree with this binary line of thinking any longer, so I’m going to push it one step further. I would argue instead that all reading is an auditory experience, be it aloud or in silence, poetry or prose, and that as writers, we should be engaging our craft as musicians whose instrument is words.

So, how do we do that?

1. Time Signature

Think of a favorite song or piece of music. There’s a good chance that, regardless of its tempo, it’s written in 4/4 time. That is to say that there are four beats per measure and that quarter notes are the basis for the count. In other words, it goes: one AND two AND three AND four AND one. . . and so on.

There’s a reason for this, and that reason is comfort. In western music especially, the 4/4 time signature is called “Common Time.” It meets a particular rhythm and cadence that, regardless of who you are or how much you know about music, just fits. You can follow it easily. You can tap along on your steering wheel when you’re caught in traffic. It’s pleasant. It makes sense. Most of all, it’s comfortable.

When we read, be it aloud or in silence, we tend to engage with the words in front of us in a rhythm and time that falls into this comfortable range. It’s not 4/4 time specifically – that would be very difficult to measure in sentences and paragraphs – but it's a natural rhythm that comes from our homeostatic state of being. Pay attention to this as you read book after book. You will arguably note that you have your own way of reading and, while some scenes will read faster than others (that’s tempo not time signature), you generally approach all reading the same way. This is not a bad thing. This is what we’d call our reading comfort zone.

How do we then, as writers, knock our readers out of their comfort zone to heighten the tension in scenes where we want to twist the knife a little more? We have to use words that force the reader’s natural reading rhythm to break. Try revising a fast-paced, tension filled scene in such a way that the entire thing is done with one-syllable words, for example.

It may not be picked up at the start but, one will no doubt find that the use of one beat words back-to-back for long strings of time with no break, not once, will grate on one’s nerves as it goes on. This will raise hairs and, by the end of the scene, one will find that they have gone tight and won’t know why.

I hope that you didn’t notice that the previous paragraph was written with entirely one-syllable words until now. If you had a sort of internalized reaction of frustration or unease while reading it, even better. This is just one way to break your reader’s natural reading time signature, and it won’t work on everyone the same way.

There are craft elements, normally reserved for poetic language, that you can incorporate into your prose to throw your reader off. Bro

ken

lines

are a great way to achieve

this ex

act

feat.

Tension is often the result of expectation not being met. In prose, western books are mostly read from left to right, top to bottom. There’s no reason to maintain that structure at all times – especially in kidlit, middle grade, and YA – so, mess up your lines. Do it with purpose and reason to create deeper or multiple interpretations and you won’t just disturb your reader’s natural eye movement across the page, but you may force them to reread passages over again, further breaking their natural rhythm and heightening an instinctive tension that comes both from your words on the page and your reader’s subconscious.

2. Phrases, Unresolved

Would you like to know a simple musician’s trick to make anyone uncomfortable really, really fast? Sing part of a phrase from a commonly known song aloud near them, but don’t finish it. Think “twinkle, twinkle little star” and then just stop. Take it a step further and cut it off sooner. “Twinkle, twinkle little.” I promise you that this makes people insane. The reason is because, just as 4/4 time is somewhat ingrained in our internal rhythm, so is the desire for resolution. Sing part of an unresolved phrase to someone and they’ll either have to finish it themselves or the song will get stuck in their heads all day or, even better, the broken phrase will get stuck in their heads and only YOU will be able to resolve it for them. There’s something about the original voice that started the whole mess being the one to resolve it that some people just. . . well, they need it. So, how do you do this with writing?

Stephanie Kuehn achieves this is her novel Complicit, using a relentless repetition of the protagonist’s call to action. Without spoiling the story if you haven’t read it (you should), Kuehn utilizes the first person and informs us that our narrator has an unsteady relationship with his sister – his sister who just got out of juvie and who may be heading home – his sister who may be a violent sociopath who likes to set fires – his sister who may have taken the blame for him because he’s a violent sociopath who likes to set fires. As chapter after chapter ends with our narrator reminding us that his sister is now out of juvie, and as chapter after chapter ends without her appearing on the page, Kuehn’s narrator makes his anxiety our anxiety. While much of that has to do with the voice, a big part of why this book gets under the reader’s skin is because its structure is like an unresolved musical phrase. We are very accustomed, when we read prose fiction, to a certain story structure. Kuehn effectively starts us on the journey and, instead of resolving the way forward, forces us to repeat and repeat. “Twinkle, twinkle little star. Twinkle, twinkle little star. Twinkle, twinkle little.” Of course, she does ultimately resolve and move forward with the hero’s journey, but by the time she does, anxiety has taken such hold that the reader isn’t sure if they should exhale or hide behind their chair. You can use this method in your own writing. Try it out.

3. Movements

You don’t see it much in pop music, but many famous classical pieces are written in movements; passages that are thematically related while structurally dramatically different. Now, the musician part of me wants to take this opportunity to remind you not to clap between movements when you attend classical concerts, even if the people around you started it. We are still discussing writing, however, so I digress.

Using the idea of movements in a story can be done a lot of ways. Be it time jumps or a shift in the POV character, you’ve probably encountered some form of movement in writing before. But, how do you use it specifically to create tension?

One fine example comes from Kenzaburo Oe’s award winning Nip The Buds, Shoot The Kids, in which Oe’s narrator is caught off guard by a sudden paradigm shift roughly one-third of the way through the novel. This results in a new call to action and abandonment of a great deal, but not all (and that’s key), of the motivation and concrete desire that both the narrator and the reader had signed on to. The change is cleverly hinted at, but never expressly pointed at until it explodes onto the page. Think of John Carpenter’s original Halloween film from 1978. If you watch it carefully, you’ll see that Carpenter hides (often in plain sight) the killer, Michael Meyers, on the fringes of the background – where your eyes don’t go – and the result instills an inexplicable dread in the viewer before anything too crazy starts happening. This is what Oe does in his book. His narrator notes little things that seemingly don’t matter until they do, until the whole story changes and its characters – along with the reader – are left bewildered and terrified of what comes next.

4. Encore

At last, fellow word musicians, we arrive at the end. Go and challenge your works in progress with strange time signatures, unresolved phrases, and movement structures. Read your work aloud. Read it quietly to yourself. Note the differences in the experience and your instinctive emotional responses. Forget that poetry is loud and prose is silence. It’s all music in the end. Your manuscript is the concert. A great ending can either provide solace or a haunting tension that your reader will struggle to shake.

But if there’s one thing about concerts and endings that I think we can all agree on, it’s that everyone loves a good encore. Whether it’s the perfect epilogue or just that inescapable desire for more when the final page has been read, remember that it’s the voice of your characters that, like a great song, lingers in the mind of your reader when everything is done. I think there’s a natural want of delay. You could drag it out. You could just keep typing. You could, instead, finely tune your ending to be just the right amount of catharsis. Something peaceful. Or you could leave a bit of tension and just

stop.

David Fey brings his love of alternative style to Angelella Editorial. If 'left-of-the-dial' is where your frequency lies, David would love to work with you to take your work-in-progress to new heights. Find out more about David and his services by clicking here.