She catches her breath and bandages her wounds and lies down to get some much-needed sleep. To escape from the bull, she crawls into a narrow cave. Outside, there’s bright light, clean air, the scents of meadow flowers. By the time the heroine faces the snake, the reader scarcely cares anymore.įinally, he retires for the night, and the pain ceases. To get away from the bull, she crawls into a narrow cave where she is immediately attacked by a snake.
(peak)Īs soon as she’s outside, she gets pursued by a charging bull. She escapes by scaling the dungeon walls. The heroine gets tortured by the villain. Here’s what the scary part of your story might look like if it consisted only of peaks, and how a skilled writer might handle it by alternating peaks and troughs. If you’re writing a horror, thriller, paranormal or fantasy novel, some of the tension stems from the reader fearing for the main character’s safety. During this brief relaxation of the tension, your reader’s heartbeat returns to normal – so it can accelerate again. Your job as writer is to create not just the peaks, but the troughs which make the peaks look high.Īllow your protagonist to relax and get her breath back before throwing her into the next frightening experience experience. If there were only continuous peaks without any troughs, the sea would be flat. It’s like the waves on a stormy sea: the peaks are only high because of the troughs between them. The readers can’t sustain continuous scared excitement, and after a while, instead of roused, they become bored.
However, constant high tension soon gets dull.
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