How to set up elements in your story to build tension for maximum reader pay off and satisfaction

I keep wanting to try to pull together a writing essay about order of information and how you can use it to build tension, but I keep failing so let’s try again, here goes:

– Most writers have heard of Chekhov’s Gun, the principle in playwriting that a gun that is shown on the mantlepiece in Act 1 must go off before the end of the play. 

– But did you know you can do this with pretty much everything in your story? 

– And that by doing so, you can raise reader engagement and satisfaction as elements which are introduced become relevant again later? 

– This is sort of related to a principle my writing teacher referred to as “the causal chain” which I still struggle with but let me see if I can sum it up here: each action in your story should lead to the next one in an unbroken chain of logical cause and effect. When you do so, the tension builds in your story because your reader can follow the cause and effect, and this allows them to make predictions and have theories about what’s going to happen next. 

When something comes out of left field in books and movies, we feel cheated because all of the information we have about the world of your story lies in what you, the author, give us. So if it’s a slasher movie with one killer in it, and a second killer comes out of nowhere and kills everyone ( “rocks fall, everyone dies”) we’re gonna be pissed off because we didn’t get the chance to predict that would happen, because the author didn’t give us that information in the first place. 

– Another example is Little Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood is kind of a bad story from a craft angle, because it breaks the causal chain when the woodsman appears out of nowhere at the end to save Red from the wolf, basically as a “deus ex machine”. If the story were re-written to be tighter, we’d meet the Woodsman back when Red first heads out to Grandma’s house, and for example he’d say he’s going to check up on Red later to make sure she got there safe. That would raise suspense for us of whether the Woodsman will save the day in time, and allow that story element to not come out of nowhere.

(A quick note on endings: It’s worth noting that setting up these elements can be seen as giving away your ending, but that’s only if you stuck yourself with a scenario that “A” will happen or “B” will happen, something you want to avoid as a writer. Will Red live, or will she be eaten by the wolf? Actually, what happens is “C” – Red is eaten by the Wolf, but the Woodsman comes in time to kill the Wolf and free her from its belly. Option “C” should always be surprising, but inevitable in retrospect. It should follow the cause and effect of the story you’ve built to that point, but also introduce a “yes, but moreover…” of an additional fun/cool/surprising-but-logical addition that excites the reader and raises their enjoyment. Setting up the ending early on is how you satisfy the reader, not how you bore or disappoint them, because cognitive engagement (the reader thinking about “how” is this going to end??) keeps them excited and invested in your story.)

– Going back to cause and effect –  when you stack character introductions, story elements, even emotional beats and personal tics as relevant to your story, your reader becomes more wrapped up in the story because you’re giving them mastery of the story elements. For example, if you introduce that your love interest has trouble with emotionally opening up, as typified by being reluctant to hold hands with your protagonist, and then after a moment of connection sometime in the story, or after they’ve saved the day together, etc etc, have the love interest take your protagonist’s hand, boom! your reader knows what that means! This little gesture is now packed with meaning that you baked in at the beginning of the story. The reader could anticipate that hand holding might come back again as a relevant display of character relationship development. They can hope and pray that at some point your characters will hold hands, if they’re invested in the relationship as you’ve built it. They’re cheering when the proverbial gun that was placed on the mantlepiece in Act 1 (love interest is reluctant to hold hands) finally goes off (they held hands!). 

– I use this as an example because Chekhov’s Gun as a writerly technique is sometimes overly used to mean some sort of weapon or plot resolving doomsday device, when really that’s just one way the technique can be used. The more interlocking set-up/pay-off elements and details you put into your story, the more complex it can become (sometimes necessitating an outline, as outlines are often required when trying to build a more complex story).  

This sense of deliberateness can also be useful in winning your readers’ trust, because it shows you are in control and assured in the elements of your story, and that there aren’t accidents or extraneous elements that are irrelevant to the story and to their experience. You win it further the more these elements pay off, as should make sense to you the more you think back on stories that were dissatisfying, usually when they failed to close out relevant story elements (*coughLostcough*).

A lot of this may be obvious to writers out there, but it was something I struggled with and that I’m actively working on now to make my stories tighter and more complex, so I hope they will be helpful and useful for you!