Setting up the Tension

It's raining as I write this post. Heavy thunderstorms, lightning, the whole works. The sky is gray and everything is bleak. It's perfect weather for something scary or foreboding.

The world around our characters does more than just provide nice scenery. It can be a great opportunity to create mood and even up the tension. But it doesn't have to be as "knock you over the head obvious" as a thunderstorm that foreshadows something bad on the way.

Next time your protag is skipping along, think about their mental state and what they're trying to do in that scene. Just as I talked about using past fears the other day, these moments are perfect ways to add in those fears. What setting details you describe will go a long way to either upping that tension, or stealing the scary right out of it.

Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights is a great example of this. The park is done up with haunted houses and scary things all over, and they have folks in costumes (and chainsaws) lurking and jumping out at you. They are trained in who to pick when they jump out to maximize the scare factor. They target younger women in groups, because they scream the loudest, and screams are contagious. One group starts screaming, it makes everyone around them nervous, and then the other costumed folks can jump out and scare people that normally wouldn't be scared. Because the setting already had them on edge.

Let's go back to that dark street with our protag...

If all they do is worry about what might happen, you get X level of tension. That's good, but now toss in a strange noise, a shadow that shouldn't be there, a smell or sound that can't be identified. make the setting scary in small ways. Suddenly, your reader is tense, jumping along with your protag. Anything might happen, not just what the protag is worrying about. And the reader starts wondering if something is going to happen before the protag gets to wherever it is they were going. It's no longer just a trip to the "big event," it's something grabbing the reader and making them want to see what happens next. Because something really could happen.

But it doesn't have to be dark and scary to achieve this. A bright and sunny day can be just as worrisome if the protag starts seeing trouble in every flower. The stranger who smiles a little too long, the law officer whose uniform doesn't quite fit. If you're already nervous (like after hearing screams in the dark), then you'll start seeing things in a whole new light. A much scarier light.

Now imagine your protag is vacationing in Savannah, GA. She's staying at one of those restored Victorian mansions around the historic district. She's having dinner, when suddenly, zombies crash through the windows. As she's running through the house, a killer zombie right behind her, is she really going to notice the antique banisters or the lace curtains? Probably not. And if she does, does that make the scene feel scarier, or more like a tour by House and Garden? Chances are it kills the tension, because the focus isn't on the fear or the getaway, it's on details that mean nothing to the reader (but probably something to the author or they wouldn't have put them in)

However...

You can have her notice those things if they add to the tension or show an aspect of her personality that's important. She can watch the zombies claw through the lace and feel horrified. She can snarkily think about how all that blood and guts will never clean out of the carved wooden banister. (if you're going for humor) The lace can snag on her hands as she tries to use it as a rope, hindering her as she tries to flee the house.

So take a second look at your scenes and see if you can up the tension one more notch by using details that are reflective of your protag's mood. Or if you're killing the mood with description that just sits there.