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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48285
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48285
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The problem with an act of patience is that it is just **waiting** for something else to happen.

One way I can think of to make that "exciting" is by making the wait a progression, so incrementally it is happening and the patient character is seeing things happen, and hoping they mean what she thinks they mean, and her imagination is fired up by these incremental advances.

An example would be, say, watching the playoffs and hoping your team wins the championship; every game gets analyzed to death before it happens, as it happens, and after it happens. What does it mean? To the next game? To the championship? Did we take an injury? Was there a killer play? Who on the team is the hero, who's in the dog house seeking redemption? But the fan is never doing more than waiting, they are not contributing to the success or failure of the team. They are sitting on the couch and watching what happens.

Another example is watching a compelling TV series; same thing. It can be exciting by firing up the imagination, with each episode, of what might happen next. There can be unexpected twists and turns, but the excited person is not **doing** anything to influence the outcome.

I believe in a story the reader stays engaged for a simple reason: They keep turning pages **to find out what happens next.**

You should strive to create about five overlapping tensions in your story:

- What happens in the next few pages. 
- How does this scene end?
- How does this chapter end?
- How does this Act end? (An Act is about 25% of the story).
- How does the book end?

The first two can go missing once in a while if the others are in place, but you need tension to carry the reader through the story. Now the easiest tension is indeed acts of daring. Why? Because they might not succeed.

Why does the TV series or sports match championship have tension? Because the outcome you are rooting for might not happen.

How do you give a story about an act of patience tension? Figure out how it might fail, or not work out. Don't make it a sure thing. It has twists and turns, things that look like failure but aren't. Unexpected consequences or occurrences that test her patience. Despair, and urges to give up. As well as positive signs and victories, so there are exciting moments when something wonderful comes to pass, that make our goal seem closer. They don't achieve the final goal but bring us hope that what we are waiting for will come to pass. So the reader is wonder, will she make it? That is the tension in the story.

If you can weave together these overlapping threads of tension, so the reader is always looking forward to see what happens, how she conquers the next challenge, then you have a story. It may not be a traditional plot, but it will be a story.

Original score: 16