The most engaged I’ve ever seen a writing class was a course I taught on pacing and tension for the Write Hive Program. I’ve taught sessions in full corpse makeup and a bloodied, 1880-style ballgown, but I’ve never gotten the reactions, feedback, and retweets I received for that class, and I blame it all on one decisive factor:
Sexy milk.
Yes, sexy milk. The point I was trying to make is that what you say doesn’t matter nearly as much as how you say it (the same point I make without a hint of sarcasm, thank you very much, in my article, What You Say Probably Doesn’t Matter). Using voice, strategic descriptions, and purposeful cadence, you can make even the most mundane actions tense and/or “udderly” salacious:
“Mm.” She lifted the crystalline glass, her long, dark fingernails tinkling against the dainty embossments. The pucker of her pout spoke girlish innocence, but her side-eye told a different story.
She paused for a moment, the glass halfway to her perfectly pursed mouth. “If only I had a cookie.”
She licked her lips slowly—top, then bottom. Her green eyes blazed. An electric tremble wracked my shoulders.
With a nod of her chin, she tipped back the drink. Every swallow, every gulp, chased ripples down the supple skin of her neck.
Cold. Creamy. Delicious.
In that moment, I swore I could taste every drop.
Is this scene cheesy? Of course. Contrived, violet, and downright ridiculous? Absolutely. But I believe this example stuck with my students not only due to the silliness, but also because it illustrates the power of content-level tension.
What’s content-level tension? Well… it’s tension on the content editing level. That is, style, prose, rhythm—how you convey a message rather than simply the message itself.
While reading something engrossing, have you ever realized your heart was pounding? Your hands were sweating? Outside noises came distant and muffled, as if garbling at you from underwater? Has a book ever made you sigh? Cry? Scream or hurl something across the living room? (Not that I’d ever know what that’s like.)
As a voracious horror reader and a middle grade horror author, I’m fascinated when writers suspend my belief and commandeer my autonomic stress responses. It takes great skill to craft a written experience. Notice, I didn’t say “story”—I said experience.
Good writing isn’t just telling a story. It’s crafting an experience.
Skillful horror authors create tension at the content level by mirroring our autonomic fear responses back to us. How are they able to do this?
· Shorter, staccato sentences that both accelerate the pace and mimic our quickening pulses
· Narrowed, focused points of view (POV)—the same sensory contraction we experience in a fight, flight, or freeze response
· Panicked, run-on inner monologues that “startle” abruptly to external stimuli
By no means is this an exhaustive list, and these principles don’t just apply to horror. In the case of sexy milk, we don’t have to say that our narrator is bewitched by the milk drinker. We experience their ensorcellment through:
· Tunnel vision POV
· Winding, violet descriptions of the subject of our narrator’s fascination
· Shorter, reactionary sentences when the milk drinker drinks milk—as if our narrator’s lizard brain is locked on her every move
Tension isn’t about what we write. It’s about harnessing our readers’ emotions and serving them straight back.
So, yes. Sexy milk has been a memorable, if not unexpected teaching tool on pacing and content-level tension. Nearly five years later, I still find it particularly amoosing.
I swear, that’s my last cow joke.
And I’ll milk it for all it’s worth.
ABOUT HANNAH KATES
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Hannah Kates is an author, editor, and best-selling ghostwriter who also writes about ghosts. Ever since ending her short career as a pirate hunter/swordswoman, she’s moonlighted in a variety of vocations, including copywriter, character actress, governess in the Swiss Alps, and ghost tour guide in America’s most haunted mansion.
