2 MORE Ways To Add Tension To Your Story's Intro

Part 2: Problems and Polarization

A dead body is a great way to start a thriller—but the tension that keeps an audience invested in a story really comes from an internal place: character motivations. What we really want to know when we watch a show like The White Lotus, Season 2 isn’t just who would kill one of the hotel’s wealthy guests but why.

Last time, we talked about how to use foreshadowing and mini-mysteries to create tension in the opening chapters of a story. Today we’ll look at the two best tools for keeping tensions high between characters: problems and polarization.

Give Each Character A Problem That Seems Impossible to Solve

As each character is introduced in the first episode of Season 2, we come to understand them in two ways:

1. What they want from their vacation and why they won’t get it (their problem)

2. How they are different from other characters (polarization)

Because we immediately understand that each character’s problem has no easy solution (and perhaps no solution at all), we know that conflict is inevitable. We also know that in a show like The White Lotus, characters are going to go to terrible lengths to solve their problems and will likely fail, which will lead to all kinds of exciting disaster.

Here are the problems several characters face right from the very first episode:

• Dominic hopes that his son will help him salvage his failing marriage; meanwhile, he can’t resist the opportunity to engage a sex worker while he’s far from home.

• Tanya wants to enact her fantasy of Italy, including riding a motorbike and looking “just like Monica Vitti,” but her husband is surly and distracted, perhaps even contemptuous of her.

• Portia is looking for adventure while she serves as Tanya’s assistant, but after Tanya’s husband objects to having her along on the trip, Tanya orders Portia to stay in her room, even for meals.

• Bert flirts openly with every woman he encounters, but his grandson insists he’s too old for sex.

• Harper wishes her husband was more attracted to her, even while she has to watch another, more glamorous couple, flirt endlessly with each other.

Each problem presents an opportunity for characters to do something desperate. Portia will rush into a romantic fling with a dangerous stranger. Harper will use questionable methods to make her husband jealous. Tanya will be swept away to a palazzo on a secluded island with a dark history.

And each of these acts of desperation will lead to even worse problems for our characters. As a result, the audience always feels off-balance, always ill at ease—always anxious to watch another episode to see how these problems will resolve (while knowing they won’t).

Max is rich and worldly while the heroine is utterly naive

Daphne Du Maurier introduces the main character of Rebecca in a similar way, by illustrating her impossible-to-solve-problem. After the book opens with a vision of a great house brought down to near-ruin (a great bit of foreshadowing that we discussed last time), it skips to a moment much earlier in time, during which the unnamed narrator shares a meal with her miserly employer, Mrs. Van Hopper. The narrator must dine on “dry, unappetizing” ham and tongue (uhhh… yuck) while ravioli sauce runs down Van Hopper’s chin.

And it’s not only our heroine’s employer who is always eager to put her in her place but also the servants who resent serving someone of their own class. There seems to be no hope her life will improve any time soon, either, since she has no money of her own and no family to help her. All of this is the focus of the heroine’s introduction, so that we get to know her through the lens of her burdensome situation.

Although we switch from a very dramatic scene of an abandoned mansion to a more ordinary scene at dinner, the tension remains high as we wonder how the narrator’s impossible-to-solve problem will motivate her. We’re eager to see whether she’ll make a desperate bid for the rich and worldly Mr. de Winter to rescue her, even while we’re sure that if he does, they’ll both end up facing the disaster we glimpsed in the opening paragraphs.

Polarize Your Cast

Conflict is inevitable among a polarized cast of characters. In The White Lotus, Season 2, each character’s problem is unsolvable because each character’s motivation is at odds with another character’s motivation.

We sense this polarization even before we know each character’s problem:

• Upon arriving at the hotel, fun-loving Daphne and Theo accept glasses and propose a toast, but practical Harper refuses a glass, claiming an unsteady stomach. Her husband, Ethan, tries to smooth things over, but it’s clear these two couples couldn’t be more different. Later, the difference in the level of romance and commitment between these couples will leave them playing a dangerous game of rivalry.

• Albie is a sweet, progressively-minded college grad disgusted with his father’s and grandfather’s outdated notions of romance. While the older men brush aside the consequences of their philandering, Albie insists on asking for a girl’s consent before doing so much as kissing her. Later, their inability to understand each other will make them targets for a sex worker who takes advantage of the older men’s lust and Albie’s naiveté.

• Portia and Tanya belong to very different social classes, made painfully evident by Portia’s tacky clothes. Tanya has all the power in the situation, but later, Tanya’s wealth and selfishness will put them in danger.

Portia and Tanya wear very different styles of clothing

In real life, people’s differences usually aren’t so perfectly polarized, but an exaggerated cast of characters makes for a lot of excitement. More than that, such polarization brings out important questions that explore a story’s themes. Is envy poisonous for relationships, or can it even bring lovers closer together? Is romance built on mutual understanding or on mystery? Can two people ever be equals when one has more money?

Issues of social class likewise play a role in Rebecca. Not only is the narrator at the whims of her disdainful employer, but marriage to the suave and wealthy Max doesn’t end her social problems. She quickly finds she has no idea how to run a household, how to give orders to servants, or how to host her own party without causing a humiliating scene. As each blunder increases the distance between her and Max, gothic forces find an opening to lead them down a nightmarish path.

Your Turn

• What kind of burden does my character face even before the story starts?

• How will the burden grow into a problem they’ll try to solve throughout the story?

• How can I exaggerate differences of class, education, politics, or experience between my characters?

• How will this polarization make each character’s problem harder to solve?

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