Tension and character and setting. Great characters are obviously excellent. But if they don't have tension inherently built into who they are, you might have a really boring story. Think about a fancy buzzword people like talking about complex characters. Walter White is a complex, fascinating character because he's a high school science teacher, a father and a drug kingpin. That's tension.

Those things don't usually coexist. How is that gonna all unfold? conflict is another buzzword of storytelling. And it's great conflict is awesome. But it can often be misconstrued to be taken literally, like, Oh, I need a battle scene, I need a confrontation and a blow up or a set piece or whatever can just create a huge splash potential can also be really subtle. It can be the desire to want that piece of cake in the middle of that meeting.

And that's what consumes you but you have to pay attention to the spreadsheets and the job reports. You really want to manufacture attention as easily and and subtly as you can. Tension can also be what we don't say. So I mean, imagine the guy who cheated On your main character, and suddenly she confronts him, does she say something? Or doesn't she not saying something is also fine too? What tension does is it creates active characters.

Now they need to make decisions. Really, you're setting up scenarios in which your character has to make a choice. Those are the best types of stories. So many poor screenplays are written with things happening around characters. But if your character actually gets put into a situation where they have a choice of at least one or two things, that's tension. Do I go to the ballgame with my buddies?

Or do I celebrate my anniversary like I was supposed to? These questions put onto your characters are going to make richer characters and stories that people want to watch. You don't want passive characters, you want active characters and what active characters do is they leave us wanting to know how they're going to react to a certain decision. That's where magic happens in your characters. Now in setting, tension can be in your setting as well. If it's important where your story is set, then it's important that your story is set in a place that has tension Now Fargo has tension it's freezing there and this comes to play throughout the story how cold it is there comes into play with every murder that happens.

The setting and rear window works in the same way. Jimmy Stewart is confined to a wheelchair stuck inside of his apartment with a camera. And what does he find? He finds that someone may have just committed a murder. This is where the story happens and it's based on the setting and it's so contained. It also ratchets up the stakes and the tension throughout the story when he's contained in his apartment with a broken leg.