This chapter is going to be devoted entirely to one of the most important fundamental lessons that I've learned. And I think it's probably easier to start with this. This is a rubber band. It's an old, brittle, kind of terrible rubber band that I found at the bottom of my drawer just now. And it hasn't really been stretched in a long time. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to trust that this thing is not going to snap, and I'm going to keep pulling, and pulling and pulling and pray that I don't regret this.

Okay, what was that? The second most fundamental lesson of storytelling is tension. What is tension? We use it in sentences all the time, but many of us can't really define it. tension is the act of being stretched tight. In other words, you have to have two opposing forces at least.

So you're pulling on something, the act being stretched tight. Now. Tension really means anytime you can create a question, a hope, an expectation or a doubt in your audience. In other words, it's anytime they don't know the answer to a question that you do or another character does. That creates tension. So in other words, it creates the interest in knowing more, it gets you excited about discovery about what will happen.

Now, why is tension important? The more tension you have, the higher your engagement will be. This is just a fact. Especially in digital storytelling, engagement is everything, not just views, not just likes, but are people really engaging with your content? Are they sticking with it? are they watching till the end?

Are they staying in their seats in the theater? Are they reading till the last chapter? engagement means we stay in it because we don't know the answers and we can't wait to find out what happens. So if you want higher, engaging You need to manufacture tension into your story. It doesn't matter if it's a presentation or a toast or a screenplay. It gives your audience no choice but to pay attention when you've manufactured tension into your story.

Tension means two opposing forces, right? So why is that compelling? because anytime you can create questions or hope or expectation or doubt in your audience's mind, you're hooking them into your story whether they want to be or not. Now, if I say Knock, knock, you inherently think who's there. You're now part of this joke whether you want to be or not, because you want to know what I'm going to say next. Because you know, the stupid format of this joke style.

Now, I might say Interrupting cow, and you say, Interrupting cow and I just say Moo. Now, that's the whole joke. It's the dumbest joke of all time. But if I just started with Interrupting cow, Interrupting cow, what intercut Moo like it doesn't work. It doesn't work without the setup. tension is anticipation.

It's that question, hope, expectation or doubt that you're creating in your audience, and that's why it works. Now remember how I started with this entire, this entire thing up top I said, I promise you, you're gonna become a better storyteller. If you give me one hour of your time, that creates an expectation or a hope in your mind that you may be willing to give me an hour of your time in order to become a better storyteller. That's tension that's making a promise that you then again, as we learned in the last chapter, have to live up to so I'm actually dangling a carrot in front of your face, but I'm not just giving it all away, I'm not letting you grab it the carrot and run with it. I'm going to string out little bits of information that make you have to stick with me.

And wherever I can, I'm going to try to reposition you every single time to promise that the next chapter or the next lesson, or the thing I'm gonna do in 15 minutes, is going to be worth your time. I'll get to that in 15 minutes. Now you have something to look forward to. It's it's the same reason you come back from commercial breaks, you know, they always, they always end just before the commercial would like someone opens the door and have this big reaction and they cut to commercial and you're like, ah, who the hell did they see? Who did they like what is going on? And now you're like, dammit, now I have to come back and ask After the commercial, I'm going to come back and see who opened the door.

Now, they always come back from the commercial. And what do they do, they don't just open the door again and show who it was. They go to the B story and they tell the B story for about 10 minutes, and then they finally get back to who was at the door. That's how they keep you and just know that tension. Yes, two opposing forces at least. But if you create a B story, or you want to pull out your character and another way, you can create multiple points of tension that keep people really engaged in your story.

And that's the entire point, how long you can withhold that and not pay off who's at the door. Without dissatisfying, your audience, you're gonna really have people engaged in your story has been one of the most fundamental elements of storytelling since the dawn of time. Now, award winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has a great philosophy where he says every dramatic story has to start with intention and obstacle. That is the clothesline you have to hang every story off of and every storyline in that major story has to somehow support that main tension. And so if you look at any of his any of his stories, You can look at any of the screenplays. Every first scene usually sets that tone of what that intention is.

So if you've seen the social network, I'd highly recommend seeing it. Mark Zuckerberg starts that scene out with breaking up with his girlfriend rather, his girlfriend breaks up with him. And the intention is clear that Mark Zuckerberg wants to be popular. Now what is Mark Zuckerberg doing at the end of that movie? He's refreshing his Facebook page to find out if his ex has accepted his friend request. Is he popular yet?

Is he cool? So remember, tension is everything and the sooner you can set at least one hook in your audience pulling them this way, the more you can start off with the racist going that way, and it's setting that hook really well that keeps your audience needing to know more, but you have to make sure you don't just give away the punchline right away. Now, in the next lesson, I'm going to talk about the secret of tension. Now that you know what it is it's important that you don't break the rule of tension. Here comes