Tension is an important part of a story. If we’re not on the edge of our seat wondering how it’s all going to turn out, we might as well be painting our nails or watching the grass grow.
This week, I’m inviting you to share a passage where you ratchet up the tension. It might be dramatic tension, romantic tension, suspenseful tension, comedic tension–your choice. Mine is from To Wed a Proper Lady, and is set in the aftermath of a duel between my hero’s brother and his loathsome cousin.
“Good shooting, brother,” James said, clapping Drew on the shoulder.
“Idiot would have been fine if he hadn’t moved,” Drew grumbled. Weasel had shot before the final count and missed. When Drew had taken his turn, he had announced his intention of removing Weasel’s watch fob from the chain that drooped across his waist, and ordered the man to stand still.
At the other end of the field, Weasel was carrying on as if death were imminent. His second, the Marquis of Aldridge, after a brief examination, gave the Winderfield men a thumbs up before leaving Weasel to the ministrations of the doctor. Aldridge was now giving orders to the servants by the carriage that had brought him and Weasel to the duelling grounds.
“Breakfast?” James suggested.
“Good idea,” Drew said. “Let’s collect Yousef and…”
As if his name had conjured him up, their father’s lieutenant appeared from the trees and stalked towards them. Something about his posture brought James to full alert, and Drew sensed it too, stiffening beside him.
“Trouble?” James asked, as soon as Yousef was close enough.
“An assassin in the woods, armed with a pistol like these.” He gestured to the gun that Drew had replaced in its case until he had time to clean it. “You were not meant to walk from this field, Andraos Bey.”
Amateur writing, not any romance fir these chars, but I need to finish before NaNo. Lead’s partner was arrested by an old enemy but my heroine set legal wheels in motion the much older coworker free.
Hillgil led me at a quick pace through public areas of the modernized castle first, but we climbed levels slightly as the man told me bits of the castle’s history. Nothing that required much talk from me.
Some sound I didn’t hear, and I dove into tackling Hillgil.
I landed in livid pain trying not to touch the rods sticking out of his back.
What in the hell was that? Rods? Pencil thick sticks sticking out his back and a horrible noise he was making, the pain drowning my senses.
I realized I’d been slightly behind him.
In shock and possibly pinned like some butterfly. I heard his death rattle, the last breath of someone choking on their own blood. I could offer no consolation, Pain threatened to pop my eyeballs.
My vision was greying.
Being moved pulled me out of my stupor, whatever it was didn’t care about additional damage. Once my eyes cleared again, I was in a new room that smelled both sterile and earthy. I started to struggle and got walloped in the head.
My vision was blurry with light edges on objects some time later. I wasn’t going to be as entertaining as Ben as all I wanted to do was swear.
It took me until now to realize I was stuck inside my own head, bound and feeling like shit. I could not see my injuries. Probably good, as staying calm and not thrashing around would let me clot and scab. Denial was much easier too.
Nobody came in what felt like forever and the pain dulled, I went deep into my head, waiting. Wet skin had grown cold and even sticky when I heard something beyond an occasional shifty and scaley sound.
“Can we talk about this?” I wasn’t sure how loud my whisper carried, but my family tradition demanded I piss them off,
“No.” the Countess said, her jaw clenched that same way that great aunts and grandmothers did when they were angry. “You made this necessary as soon as you didn’t yield Yan to justice. If you’d been a sensible peacemaker, you would have let him rot.”
I had to snort, which hurt so I caught my breath for a second. “You want vengeance… which cannot be justified in an open court, not justice. Why else include poor Hillgil in the collateral for this scheme?”
“He must be proven to one and all as a threat so they withdraw their protections for his worthless hide. No one will find you in this deathtrap of a wing where he would disappear for hours and days with his ‘guests.’ We never could clear it out, people died gruesomely trying. Just one more dead to his name, a legacy I will end.”
“I am sorry for your grief.”
“That is meaningless. This is his laboratory where he brought prisoners. When he’s escaped he will do the same to his keeper who was stupid enough to take him to his seat of power. Enough bodies were disposed of from here to make that believable. Even if you do not die on your own, you will as soon as he gets loose.
“I don’t expect it to take long for the sneaky bastard to escape.” The old woman’s lips compressed into a cruel smile. “Pull out one of the quills, T5, and rattle another after I leave. Either she becomes a lump of mindless flesh or she dies Yan’s prisoner like all the others. No one will stick their necks out again for him. Then we can execute him, the Senate won’t care.”
Steadying my breathing, I waited for her to laugh and finish her monologing, but the bitch on violent-eat-face crazy drugs swept away.
I wanted to speak clearly. “T5, halt and conduct diagnostics.”
The robot moved toward me anyway. Shit.
Wow! Good tension building
Thank you! I’ve been trying to make my villains more, more everything. That there’s more to them than ‘grr! arr! Die![ This story’s a bit og juggling with three couples in different stages, If can finish another WIP, I’m allowed to start one. I just have too many unfinished works and RL hurdles this year. *sigh*
Tell me about it! I have five works in progress and have just started another. But discipline! I need to finish the novella for Authors of Main Street and the novel of the Common Elements Project, as well as take the next Belles’ novella through editing, and I can’t work on anything else. Even if I crave it.
Want the other side of that tension? This is the mentioned partner’s scene after the previous scene> (Note he’s an older man on a redemption arc. There hero’s off in a space battle, lucky him)
“You will find no kindness here, you whoreson. Your games and spoor you left in your wake killed… murdered good people. My people. People who did nothing to you. But that woman and those arrogant… force themselves on my sovereign world. That won’t matter long with all the deaths you keep leaving in your wake.”
Resisting to glare was a challenge. “So you are going to frame me, in some kind of scheme to kill without repercussions?”
Her smile was smug and as satisfied as a spoiled cat. “You won’t be able to talk your way out of this one, Yan, if your little pawn dies in your lab after you escape. Everyone here knows how many died in there. What’s one more?”
I wanted to reach out and choke her right now, I felt granules of sheer power just out of reach.
“If her death is not enough to prove your evil, the brats’ will do.”
“You do not know what you trifle with, crone. They are not as corrupt as I believed.”
She laughed. “You will provide all the evidence I need to expose you to your remaining supporters. All I need do is wait. Your temper is legend, even among the rats still on your dung heap.
My anger was throbbing in my head, and I bit my tongue enough to draw blood to restist shouting. Kill her first or break free? I wanted to choke the crone with my bare hands, and didn’t feel any strains from my restraints. My anger was a storm in and around me I could not touch.
Her brittle and mocking laughter was tipping the scale. Kill first.
With grimace and a facial tic, she told the droid, “Now, T5.” As it brought out a vibrablade, she grinned as she stepped back. “If I could, I would carve your limbs off in many little pieces while you watched.”
“Konstanza! Do not…”
I watched as the blade slid right through my arm slowly.
I reached for the eager power clawing for any connection using my pain.
This is great. Keep writing, Marie.
TY! The next section is both unwritten and going to be too long to excerpt, a bit of coming of age for th.e mentioned teen twins playing detective. I don’t usually have cliffhangers this close together but this is the penultimate climax thread. The hero’s in the final arc…
I want to read this book! My mind is working on all sorts of possibilities for the story.
🙂 Makes me happy to hear, Sue.