Guest Post by Aubrie L. Nixon
Oh boy, do I love this subject. I have been told by many readers and a few friends that I am a wee bit, err…CRAZY. That the dark side of me comes out to play in my writing. Honestly? I wouldn’t argue with them. I like to torture and create the most delicious tension for my characters. Not only do I enjoy making them suffer physically and emotionally, but I am huge fan of sexual tension.
To create tension is to create a pace where your characters are suffering. For me, it is quite easy to do that. I have always found that the more you suffer the greater the reward. In the case of fictional characters, at least for my characters, it is the same. In order to grow and become who you need to become there needs to be tension, trials, etc… In the series I am working on now, there is a lot of strain put onto my characters and their relationships with one another. They are expected to accept what they have been assigned to do, and do it with ease. Now this lovely group of people are warriors and assassins. You can imagine what spending weeks with a group of killers that you don’t particularly like can do for the amount of tension in an already bleak situation.
To say it makes my dark heart sing would be an understatement (insert evil laugh).
Characters drive your story, to create more depth for them you need to see the struggle and grow. Tension, the dirty bastard that she is, can do that. My personal form of torture, I mean tension, is the big S. Sexual. It is perhaps the most fun to play around with. Especially when you have two characters who don’t particularly like one another. You can put them in the most ridiculous of situations, like having one tackle the other while they are arguing. They can stare at each other with anger, when we all know what they realllyyy want. You can create silly nicknames that one character gives another, that one doesn’t like. There can be beautiful banter, pranks and arguing. It will probably drive the other characters in your book batty, because everyone can what is happening but the two characters the tension is between. It is one of my favorite things, and I always get particularly giddy when I read it or write it. You always know how perfect it is going to be when they finally explode and just jump each others bones! Pure perfection.
No matter what kind of tension it is, I am a big fan! What about you?
What kind of tension do you like? What kind of tension makes you roll your eyes?
Aubrie is 24 years young. She plays mom to a cutest demon topside, and is married to the hottest man in the Air Force. When she isn’t writing she is daydreaming about hot brooding anti-heroes and sassy heroines. She loves Dragon Age, rewatching Game of Thrones and reading all things fantasy. She runs a local YA/NA bookclub with 3 chapters, and over 200 members. Her favorite thing to do is eat, and her thighs thank her graciously for it. If she could have dinner with anyone living or dead it would be Alan Rickman because his voice is the sexiest sound on earth. He could read the dictionary and she would be enthralled. Her current mission in life is to collect creepy taxidermy animals because she finds them cute and hilarious. She resides just outside of Washington DC.