Rise and Fall of Tension (Question)

Since I've finished my rough and icky first draft of my novel, I've been spending most of my time rethinking character arcs and trying to replot/structure my novel. I'm not looking for anything specific, just for something that works. I had one person read this rough draft, and though they liked it, they said a lot of the stuff that happens is all too sudden, all at once. I should take some time to have falls of conflict/tension (or rest/reflection periods for my character), instead of constant, aggravating tension. Of course, this doesn't mean a removal of all tension, but any good novel has a rise and fall of tension, moments where the reader can breathe, where the main character(s) isn't in some major risky situation.

I just seem really bad at coordinating them? When I was first plotting my novel, I was trying to come up with every major conflicting, tension causing thing I could think of so my story would be boring. And they're all good ones. Not only am I keeping everyone one, I'm developing them a bit further than I had in the first draft. The only problem is, I was always high tension, always conflict. There aren't many moments of pause.

So I'm wondering, how do you go about creating those moments of falls in conflict? Some people have told me to add in reflection moments for my characters, but I get frustrated if my characters are just sitting around, doing nearly nothing. And so will my reader.

One thing I've done to try and add in some extra, not-so-high-tension conflict is to further develop the emotional desires and conflicts of each of my characters. I'm hoping to flesh out character arcs better as well. But either way, I'm not sure it will add up to enough falls to cancel out the overwhelming rise. I still need to take is slower.

It's kind of hard to give any concrete advice without seeing the draft, but what I've found is really effective for controlling pacing and tension is word choice. The way you phrase an action or series of actions can make it more tense or pause-like, fast or slow. Also, weaving in your characters' thoughts and observations on the situation as part of the narrative can act as reflection moments even as your characters are taking action in them.

For example:

Tisha fell back to size up her opponent: professional fighter, long reach, experienced. The blade of his sword gleamed with a faint sheen of oil, and all his gear was well cared for. Even as Tisha circled around the man, gauging him, her opponent was doing the same, his gaze focused upon her torso. This would not be an easy fight, Tisha knew. Just one mistake and...

Well, she'd just have to not make any mistakes, Tisha decided as she dodged the man's lunge, countering with a swipe of her dagger. It didn't connect. She hadn't expected it to.

As Tisha and her opponent separated and started circling each other again, Tisha felt confident the she had the advantage of speed and stamina. There were only so many times a person could swing a sword, after all, so it was just a matter of playing keep away, tiring the man until he gave her the opportunity to strike...

Since this is more of a drawn-out fight, there's more room for description and character musings, but (if I did my work right) there should still be a feeling of building tension. Though things may be calm(ish) now, there's an explosion of action building up that's foreshadowed via Tisha's plan. Tisha's observations on her opponent and the fight also work to build up tension as they set the fight up to be a difficult one, however they double duty to slow down the pace enough for the reader to digest exactly what's going on.

There's also the sentence structure and word choice to take into consideration. The descriptions are concise and very bare. The sentences tend to be on the terse but flowing side, especially those containing Tisha's thoughts, with the terse concision helping add to the tension, while the flow makes the action easy to follow.

Depending on how you draw out events, and how much emphasis you place upon the details of them, you can draw out tension to the point where it almost breaks, or condense it so that your readers are left stunned by the speed of events. When drawing tension out, it's a good idea to include significant details that the reader can dwell on for a moment before moving on, which act as the pause. With condensed tension, it's best to have a pause afterwards where the events are explained/made sense of, to give them significance. When everything happens all at once, it's easy to lose track of what's going on and why it's important. Having these pauses after particularly violent bursts of events is more realistic as people naturally will pause to try and digest just what the heck happened to them, and it will also give the readers time to digest along with the characters.

But I think I'm rambling now, so... >.> I hope that made at least some sense.

Subplots and pre-existing situations are also really good for rotating tension. If you have an event that has to happen, with hints of a couple other subplots in there, then you can just have the characters focus on different things. There's no real "reflection" on other events, although they might have the odd aside about what just happened as they try to put it all together, but the pauses aren't long and something else can come in. This something else can be calmer (like, a crush) especially in comparison to the tension going on.

Take a one-shot, character-driven detective story. When the case starts going cold, bring in something from the detective's personal life to provide a calm spot while still having stuff going on. Then as that dies down, the case picks back up. And, of course, the personal-life bit doesn't go away so it can flair up again at the most dramatic time to make the situation worse.

Also, reflecting scenes are tricky unless done in certain ways. Like, if it's a regroup after a major battle, yes, please regroup so readers know what's going on. If it was just one major event happening to one character, I agree there's no real point in having the character sit around and do nothing. The trick is to either interrupt them if they start sitting around and thinking (so they no longer have time to think), or just change out what's going on to have them think about multiple things at once.

I don't have many suggestions, but I would suggest reading Dan Brown. He has a really good balance of tension and relief.

Hm... I guess you could also do things where one problem seems to be solved, but either things change and the problem resurfaces (plug a leak with tape and the tape rips off), or a new problem arises. And emotional things are good too... tension builds, a character dies, and it slows while others grieve. Two characters face death, but in a quick moment to themselves they realize they love each other. Things like that.

~JFW1415

I agree with the "rotating tension" idea. If you have multiple subplots (realistically, there's going to be more than one thing going on at once for the average person/family/group of friends), when one is more relaxed something could arise with another plot.

Another thing is to have "down time" while it is still tense. For example, instead of retreating to an underground bunker to debrief on the battle, the characters could do it while in a relatively quiet place, but where there is still a risk of attack. Interrupting any conversations with things like them checking for danger will keep the scene more interesting. Be careful with "debriefing" scenes though -- they can be useful, especially in one-point-of-view stories, to find out what happened to other characters in the preceding battle, but make sure it's not just people repeating what happened in the last scene.