Presenter: Welcome to Ask the Author, the podcast where kids get to ask published authors how they create their stories.
Presenter: Today we’re talking to Jenny McLachlan. We’re asking her about tension and pace, and how she hooks her readers into a story.
Jenny: Hi, my name’s Jenny McLachlan and I write funny, adventurous books for children like you. And today I’m going to talk about how I create tension when I write my books.
Presenter: Jenny told us that she tries to create tension from the very first sentence.
Jenny: I like to begin my books with, if possible, a sentence that will make it almost impossible for the reader to put it down. So that sentence has to create tension and interest in the reader. So I’m going to read the first sentence from The Lost Dragon of Roar and it’s actually a text message that the twins get from their grandad while they’re sitting in the car driving round to his house. And the text message says… “Hurry up. There’s something very scary in my kitchen that you’ve got to see.” And he’s followed that up with about ten scared faces and one nerd face in the middle, which he did by accident. What the twins discover in their granddad’s kitchen is their headteacher sitting there. But their headteacher has travelled from another world to see them. “‘You missed the start of term’, Bonaventure glares across the table. Pipsqueak the baby dragon is draped around her shoulders like a plump, scaly scarf. ‘Sorry about that’, says Rose, but we had commitments here. Bonaventure looks out of the window and narrows her eyes. ‘Where am I exactly?’. ‘Home’, says Wyn. ‘Isn’t it great?’. ‘It is wet and grey’. ‘Not always’, says Grandad. ‘Hmm, well, I’m afraid you must leave the land of home immediately and report tomorrow at dawn to DRAC’. ‘What’s DRAC?’, says Grandad, confused. ‘Dragon Rider Academy’, I say. ‘Remember the school we told you about? DRAC is the premier dragon training academy in all of Roar’, says Bonaventure. ‘And when the children arrive tomorrow, I will give them their mission briefing. They can catch up on the lessons they’ve missed before setting off to complete their challenge’. Grandad frowned and scratches his beard, ‘I’m all up for children having adventures and getting stuck into nature, but this mission isn’t dangerous, is it?’”.
Presenter: We’ve got questions for Jenny about how she writes stories to make them tense. So let’s Ask the Author!
Presenter: What does tension actually mean in the story?
Jenny: I think tension in a story is when you, the writer, have put a question into the reader’s mind, that the reader has to know the answer to. That might be a big question that runs through the whole book. So, for example, in my first book, The Land of Roar, it’s ‘Where is Grandad? Can the children save him?’ But it also might be little moments in the story, like what’s made those footstep sounds? Or who’s behind the door? So you have big moments of tension and little tiny moments of tension dotted throughout the chapters, or even the sentences. I love books filled with tension.
Presenter: How do you decide when to speed up a story or slow it down?
Jenny: That’s a great question! I think because I like all of my story, I want to tell every moment of it, but that’s actually quite boring for the reader. You don’t need to know everything because you want to imagine a lot of it yourself. The way I used to do this: I would get my husband to read the book out loud to my children, and I would sit in the room and I could tell when they were getting bored and when they wanted it to move faster. And nearly always it was when I was describing things in too much detail, and it was because I was trying to control what you, the reader, were seeing in your mind. But actually… I think readers like imagining loads of things themselves. They like to make the story happen themselves. So sometimes you do need to give quite a lot of detail, maybe when you introduce a new character. But after that, I think it’s a great idea to trust your reader to create the story in their minds.
Presenter: How do you know when to put the exciting parts in a book? And then cool it off and have something that’s not so exciting, and then wait for a little bit and put something really exciting in again.
Jenny: I think because I plan my book before I begin writing, I know what the most exciting moment in the whole book is going to be. So I know that I can’t get that exciting before that point. So I have to wait and be patient and put in dramatic moments, but nothing as dramatic as the big finale. It’s a bit like if you go and watch fireworks. They build up, they have mini-finales where you think, oh, this is it, the firework show’s ending. No, it’s not, it’s carrying on, and that’s really exciting because you know something even bigger is coming. But then when the real finale happens, if you’ve done it well, the reader is satisfied and you’re ready for the ending.
Presenter: How do you stop readers getting bored?
Jenny: I think a lot about readers getting bored. And I used to be a teacher. And when I was a teacher, I would think about it a lot too. How can I make sure my class doesn’t get bored? No matter what I’m teaching them, how can they not be bored? So it’s the same thing with my writing. When I write books, I try not to think about what I want to do in the story. And I try and think really hard about the reader who is going to be reading my book and what they want. That’s quite hard, obviously, because I’m a bit different to my readers. I’m 49 years old, and I like things like lots of similes and metaphors and description, but I know my readers might not like that, and this book is for them, not for me. So I keep reminding myself of who is reading my book, and I think, will they like this?
Presenter: Thanks so much, Jenny. We just have one final question for you.
Presenter: Do you have a top tip for us about how we can create tension and excitement in our stories?
Jenny: To create tension, I suggest you try and add a lot of hooks to your writing. Let me explain what a hook is. A hook is anything that puts a question in the reader’s mind. So it could be really, really big. Like you might start your piece of writing with something like there’s something scary in the kitchen. What is that scary thing? But you might have a really little hook as well. So it could be something like it had been a particularly bad day for me today. So why? Why has it been a bad day for you? And think you’re going to find out. So do a piece of writing, a paragraph, and count how many times the person reading your paragraph is going to ask themselves a question. And if it’s only once or twice, see if you can add a lot more hooks to it on purpose.
Presenter: Today we learned about how an author builds tension and paces her stories.
Presenter: And knowing when to speed up or slow down keeps readers hooked.
Presenter: I’m going to think about adding some hooks into my stories.
Presenter: There’s lots more Ask the Author episodes waiting for you on the BBC Bitesize website. Just head to BBC Bitesize Primary English to find them. Thanks for listening.
Description
In this episode of Ask the Author, Jenny McLachlan answers pupils’ questions about tension, pace and how writers keep readers hooked.
Jenny shares how she grabs attention from the very first sentence and uses hooks to make readers want to find out what happens next.
She explains how exciting moments and quieter parts work together, why stories sometimes need to speed up or slow down.
Listen for Jenny’s top tip on how to create tension in your story!
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