How to Make Your Audience Uncomfortable (Tension Writing Advice)

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Want to keep your audience gripped? Make them uncomfortable. Today I'll share three easy techniques for creating tension in your stories.
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3 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 96

@gao1812 2 года назад

From Lord of The Flies: the Hunters, a bunch of kids, just casually having a barbecue after murdering Piggy by splitting his head open with a big ass boulder.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Yeah, when I read the book, I wasn't sure I was reading it correctly. Nasty scene for sure.

@Ayyavazi13 2 года назад

Great examples. Discomfort has a lot of moving parts from a writing perspective, and this video covered many of them.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Thanks man! And thanks for keeping me honest with that request for more text-based examples

@tattoodude8946 Год назад

Silence of the Lambs was great for tension. Every scene with Clarice and Hannibal had you sitting on the sedge of your seat. And the last scene with Clarice being blind as the Buffalo Bill stalks her with night vision goggles on - chills!

@fragwagon 2 года назад

You hit the nail with Kubrick. He's a master of this. In literature I've found Flannery O'Connor to be a master of discomfort, and always with a specific purpose. A surgical sense of purpose.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Eyes Wide Shut is another VERY uncomfortable movie of his. Been a while since I read Flannery, but I remember "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" having some uncomfortable moments

@egoautemaddeum5472 Год назад

the entirety of the movie “Mother!” is nothing but being uncomfortable and stressed out

@WriterBrandonMcNulty Год назад

Haven't seen it. I'll have to check it out

@dawnkravagna3200 7 месяцев назад

The Seinfeld pizza episode came immediately to mind, so glad you included it. Being a clean person, I could empathize with Jerry’s horror.

@yapdog 2 года назад

Man, I love how you dig deeper in your videos. Great work 👍

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Thank you!

@yoboibeerus1387 2 года назад

Very well made. Thank you.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Thanks!

@Dark_Peace 2 года назад

Nice, i'd love to see more vidéos about how to make your audience feel a certain way !

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Sure, let me know if there are other emotions you'd like to hit

@SolMuun 9 месяцев назад

There's several: Urotsukidoji, Deliverance, The Basketball Diaries, American Me, Natural Born Killers, Shawshank Redemption, Miller's Crossing, Silent Night, Alien 3, (and a book) Wizard's First Rule.

@coffeecreateconnect 2 месяца назад

This is a great topic. I remember the first time my husband read the original version of my novel. He said, "well there should be a glimmer of hope"...." I wrote, note to self: Glimmer of hope." For some reason I found this absolutely hilarious - and every time I saw that note to myself I laughed. I did end up editing the novel for publication purposes, but I am still enjoying the original version, and it's "no glimmer of hope" perspective 👀😂

@daytime2189 Год назад

Making people uncomfortable is way easier in real life than with writing

@AlextheENTP 10 месяцев назад

Let real life guide you then, and your scenes will be the best worst things your readers have seen!

@truenemesisprime550 Год назад

Props for mentioning Terrifier its a real throwback. A movie that made me very unfomfortable was "Subconscious cruelty". I watched it when I had just gotten into study of the subconscious mind and subliminal messaging etc, it made me paranoid. A movie that a friend of mine can't watch is "EraserHead" and he is a hardcore horror fan, it just disturbs him.

@posebukse 11 месяцев назад

It's interesting how some techniques can contradict each other, while work for certain genres. The Seinfeld example is one that I -HATE- about a lot of "comedy" (something you've mentioned in other videos), forced misunderstandings. Yes, some social difficulties would come from having to tell your date her dad didn't wash his hands, but the entire scene is built on forced cringe. I know a lot of comedy is built on that and that a lot of people love it, but I find it cheap and can't stand it. It's like watching Friends - they're all basically a bunch of sociopaths and narcissist mistreating each other.

@xChikyx Год назад

there was a movie i watched a long ago where the main character was in a police station and dtried to flush away a letter with some kind of incriminating evidence about the plot, but the letter didnt flush away, and the toilet was extremely and disgustingly dirty, and then somone knocked on the door, and the MC had to take the letter and eat it to get rid of it. I literally had to pause the movie and take a brake to not throw up. First and only movie so far that has done that to me... Yet I can't remember the name

@WriterBrandonMcNulty Год назад

Yeah that would push me over the edge too haha

@antoinelachapelle3405 11 месяцев назад

Morgan Freeman voice : After this frightful day, the man never left home without a lighter, ever again.

@KutWrite Месяц назад

"52 Pick-Up" has some great discomfort scenes, such as when Bobby cleans and assembles his pistol as Alan patronizes him about his violent tendencies. Of course the blackmail videotape "part two" has us squirming in our seats as much as Cinny does in the video.

@in_worldofmyown 7 месяцев назад

You're right about Alien cause I find the tension throughout it all interesting but I'd have to go with every moment we share from both cinematic Pennywise iterations (particularly the first even when he does silly things). Another good example is the sixth episode of Squid Game where it's almost painful to just sit back and wait for one or the other in the two-person groups to get killed and I was very upset when we finally got there.

@flaksight 3 месяца назад

An example I've held dearly since I was a kid would be the scene from All Quiet on The Western Front (book or 1979 tv adaptation) where the protagonist, Paul, plays dead inside a foxhole during an evening where the opposing French troops charge over the top. Countless soldiers chaotically run just over the edge of above where he's laying, and one unlucky guy (armed to the teeth) jumps in and the protagonist cuts the act and stabs him several times in the gut. The man was left there to slowly bleed out, while unable to communicate, and fully sentient until sunrise hours later. Paul couldn't leave the hole without risking being shot, so he stayed there with the dying man even until the groans drove him mad. Unable to stay desensitized, he changed his approach and tried to help make the poor Frenchman more comfortable. When the man passed we get a LONG and somber period where Paul has nothing to do but reflect on what he'd done, and what the war has turned him into. After checking the man's belongings, he decides to plan to write to the man's wife and children - but gives up after sifting through his emotions some more.

@davidaleshire4292 3 месяца назад

Stag Night (2008) and Howl (2015) have some good moments of discomfort. Stag Night is loaded to the eyeballs.

@Anonymous-bp5ix 2 года назад

Dead Again (by Scott Frank). Has at least one uncomfortable scene: suicidal patient meets Grace in the elevator. Brandon, have you ever experimented with 'stream-of-consciousness' in any way? Whether finished product or just self exploration, or whatever?

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Back in college, yes. I wrote a lot of 1st Person stories back then and tried stream of consciousness. The problem was that my plots tended to go nowhere when I did. Somewhere in my mid-20s I decided it was best if "stuff happens" on every page.

@johncenter4858 8 месяцев назад

The Office UK version has tons of uncomfortable situations, so much that we want to hit the stop button.

@chasejones6164 6 месяцев назад

Glad I found this! I keep feeling like I'm overdoing it or making the antagonist too wierd to be taken seriously. Great tips for a psychological horror I think. Straw dogs does these pretty well. Like when the antagonists are fallowing the wife in a truck as she jogs is pretty unsettling and the more relatable uncomfortable part for me anyway was when the protagonist breaks the social contract by leaving church when he just moved to this tiny religious town and in the next scene gets confronted by the antagonists and side characters for it.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

What's one movie that made you uncomfortable? Let us know!

@vjan.1939 2 года назад

No country for old men

@mochiieekim 2 года назад

Euphoria 😭

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

@Denizen of The Depths I included examples from It Follows in the script for this video but ended up cutting them to keep the video tight. It Follows is a great example of dragging out tension because ANYBODY can be the ghost

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

@@mochiieekim Haven't seen it, but I just looked up the premise and I totally believe you

@stephvandykeozzy 2 года назад

For me, it was the horror movie, The Girl Next Door. I couldn't believe what I was watching and then I learned about the true story behind it. For two months, the movie and the real events were stuck in my head due to how shocked I was.

@fragwagon 2 года назад

Brandon, let me know if you have anything in your videos on getting back to writing after a long break. I've had a helluva time getting back on the horse after a very stressful move.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Here's a recent video I did on fighting procrastination: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AO8Tdj8Z-KE.html Hope it helps! Other than that the best advice I can give you is to examine the reason why you want to write. Remind yourself why writing matters to you. Then let that become your motivation. Also, remember that if you have time to write, you have to seize it. Here's another video that might help: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9nYlQ6YHOeM.html

@fragwagon 2 года назад

@@WriterBrandonMcNulty thank you for the thoughtful reply! You're amazing!

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

@@fragwagon No problem. Hope things work out for you!

@ridleyformk1244 7 месяцев назад

8:33: The movie is Misery. SPOILERS It's the moment when Annie knows that Paul has been going around the house by himself and gets a knife. She picks up a sledge hammer and breaks his legs. Seeing them pointing in such wrong ways makes me cringe, just like that chef not washing his hands. Keep up the good work, Brandon.

@blueflare3848 5 месяцев назад

I really enjoyed the book. Pretty disturbing. Though in the book she cuts his foot off rather than break his ankles.

@beckymccray4582 2 месяца назад

The Hereditary is without a doubt my number one pick for most uncomfortable moments. From the weird little figurines the mom made of her family life to the weird mouth clucking sound the daughter made combined with her bizarre appearance, to the last 30 minutes of the film... scary, yes! But the creepy-factor was off the hook, IMO.

@imadivergentandantinormiep7877 5 месяцев назад

One of the best example about this is the movie "May God save us" a movie from Spain. Three characters in this movie are very uncomfortable to watch, the 2 detectives and the serial killer, it's a true masterpiece

@AlextheENTP 10 месяцев назад

Seinfeld on the pizza date is perfect because the tension is hitting him from so many directions. There's the uncomfortable knowledge that his food is being prepared with dirty hands, but also the awkward dilemma of whether to tell his date as soon as he gets back to the table, because this isn't just a random stranger whom you'd instantly tell on, it's her father, so he can't bring himself to tell her something bad about her father. Then of course the tension is multiplied when she has the pizza in her mouth, because of course he can't tell her the reason he won't eat it NOW, he's already let her eat it! I can't wait to inflict this level of cringe on my characters. So odd, isn't it, that to make the characters believable, we have to be fully invested in them as real people - but to make the story believable, we have to take out a pen and torture the characters we love!

@zakosist 9 месяцев назад

I think he did something wrong by not telling her date, before she ate the pizza. Hes (halfway) the reason if she gets food poisoning. But yes its kinda awkward and somewhat intimidating to tell

@AlextheENTP 9 месяцев назад

@@zakosist I agree, the right thing would have been to tell her, but it's also totally understandable that it would be incredibly uncomfortable to do so!

@MajorMlgNoob 8 месяцев назад

Taxi Driver is absolutely full of social contract violations

@kenward1310 2 года назад

Curb Your Enthusiasm is great for this too. Just about every scene makes me cringe.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

Hahah blame Larry David. I really need to watch Curb. I watched the first episode years ago and enjoyed it, but then I got distracted with other things.

@kenward1310 2 года назад

@@WriterBrandonMcNulty Yeah, it's great. It's basically Seinfeld without the network restrictions, and Costanza turned up to 11. Sometimes the cringe is so strong I can't go more than a couple of episodes at a time.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty 2 года назад

@@kenward1310 Haha that sounds awesome. Costanza was always my favorite (I'm super cheap like he is haha) so I need to give Curb another shot

@saketh008 Год назад

Paul Thomas Anderson creates these perfectly that you won't get in any other movies, I think

@WriterBrandonMcNulty Год назад

I need to check out his movies. A buddy of mine swears by There Will Be Blood

@saketh008 Год назад

@@WriterBrandonMcNulty yeah, but I'll suggest punch drunk love for someone who starts to watch PTA, though twbb is my favourite because twbb is not everyone's film just like twilight

@WriterBrandonMcNulty Год назад

@@saketh008 Adding Punch Drunk Love to my list. Thanks!

@iosyntropy Год назад

you mentioned someone asking for more book examples rather than movie examples, so i wanted to say, dont think its a bad thing, to use a lot of movies for giving examples even though its about books. if you were going to change the amount of movie clips you use, use more! and little reaction gifs and memes from movies and shows that exhibit the example as well! media media media! even though this itself is about books, we connect with content that excites us and we only have 2 ways of being excited from audio visual, and its the visual part that we remember the most! just make a disclaimer or something, about movie examples doing better for a visual audience on a visual platform, its no different than showing a video of a make up artist because showing a video of a narration of the make up artist's process in more detail, even though truer fuller etc, is not better. the only difference in screen plays and novels is a screen play literally tells everything and a novel shows it, so if you have footage of the screen play being acted out, its a book, its showing whats happening even though all the movie did was actually tell what happened. some writer saw an oppourtunity to be pretentious and made that comment about there not being enough book examples. man if someone wants more recitations of recitations they can read a book about it instead of watch a video haha. use more movies not less i tell you!

@WriterBrandonMcNulty Год назад

Thank you! Really appreciate this. It's easier to work with movie clips because (A) they add to the visual aspect of my videos and (B) I have an easier time recalling moments from movies than I do recalling specific passages from books.

@iosyntropy Год назад

@@WriterBrandonMcNulty definitely! even just because a one minute scene can cover like three full typed pages of the same scene in the novel.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty Год назад

@@iosyntropy Yeah, that was always my thinking because I like to keep my videos as short as possible

@georgiapayne2945 8 месяцев назад

Nothing ever makes me uncomfortable, but the one thing that did was the horror film Human Centipede. Most of it was so disgusting I couldn't watch the other ones and I love horror films lol 😅 I don't even flinch

@JuanFelipeCalle 11 месяцев назад

There's a scene in Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin in which a Nazi, after the war, is ordered to kill his old commander, and he goes to his commander, catches up with him, chats with him, and asks him if he were ordered to kill someone, even someone he liked and admired, would he do it? The old commander tells him, "Of course!" So he does. I loved the tension in that scene. You know he's going to kill the commander, but the way it's stretched out. And Shakespeare was a master of this. Hamlet has so much tension, and the humor in it just adds to the tension.

@jesusromanpadro3853 3 месяца назад

2003 movie Oldboy.

@chains4715 6 месяцев назад

No movie made me more uncomfortable than Vivarium, the way the world was perfect in a sickening way, and the boy, the way he acted and talked, he sounded more like a creature wearing a kids skin than an actual child, chilling

@velocitor3792 Год назад

That boiled rabbit in "Fatal Attraction!"

@williamalexander7481 10 месяцев назад

A clockwork orange.

@PresidentHotdog Год назад

King is fantastic at the unsettling. Gasher from the Dark Tower easily makes me the most uncomfortable. The way he wipes gunk from his eye socket makes me gag. Blaine the mono from the same book is just as unsettling for entirely different reasons.

@mystak3n Год назад

None of you are gonna take me seriously if I say where this comes from but there was a pretty clever tension tactic that got me again and again in something I read recently. Also not saying in the interest of not spoiling in case you are already reading it, because it’s pretty spoiler-sensitive. Pretty much, someone adopts a child who is basically an exact copy on a physical level to a monstrous tyrant that the world will not forget. If her secret gets out, which the child herself doesn’t even know, the now-mother of someone who may be a reincarnation of this tyrant fears others will shun and maybe even effectively kill this innocent-seeming child. However, the mother also has in the back of her mind this fear as well which she cannot shake, this mistrust in the child’s actions which then gets passed on to the reader. Constantly I was asking “oh no, is this it? Is this the time she awakens to her true nature? Is this when everyone finds out?” And then nothing happens. Literally nothing, even when a bunch of things go wrong, even when she makes mistakes which are foreshadowed to reveal her, everything is fine and you realized that you, the reader, cannot just say “I wouldn’t act like the mother is.” Because you just did. This goes on for an entire half of the book. Once you get around the halfway point, you’ve gotten used to the antics of the writer and start to realize that maybe, just maybe things are alright. Then it’s revealed that all the things you thought weren’t going wrong all along were gradually tipping everyone off to the child’s secret and it hits you like a pallet of bricks. Utterly genius. I yearn to see more things like this.

@irenslife 2 месяца назад

I don't remember the movie name, but it was abiut a man who cheated on his wife and the mistress turns into a complete psycho: becomes friends with his wife, shows up to his work, breaks into his house multiple times and so on. it was very uncomfortable, but very interesting to watch

@badasscomedy5126 4 месяца назад

Every Stanley Kubrick movie known to man. That guy could do no wrong

@lizxu322 3 месяца назад

Sorry but that Stephen king salems lot example is not the best example. Partly because it is a thriller/horror, the supernatural elements actually makes that scene less awkward and uncomfortable as readers would be EXPECTING something like that to happen sooner or later. What is a much better example is when the camp boss lady scratches the camp warden's face with her poisoned fingernails in HOLES. Both readers and audiences would find it much more awkward cos a) this js Stanley Yelnats and the audiences first time seeing the lady act like this, even if dodgy things happen at camp nobody had straight up ass*ulted anyone before 2) will she do the same to him and what else is she capable of 3) will the camp warden begin to hate Stanley as he may see it as his fault he was punished and he gunning for him on top of everything else. Man i love Holes.

@Carpatouille Год назад

Not in the way you're describing in this video, but anytime a story tries too hard to have diversity at the expense of the story's quality, and/or tries to force progressist ideas onto me, in a world that ends up way too unrealistic to get into. It's not only uncomfortable but quite bothering, boring and frustrating aswell. In other words, you could say "preachism" as a term I've seen in one of your other videos to describe it

@WriterBrandonMcNulty Год назад

Diversity can be done well in stories and it can also be done poorly when it's tacked on or used to preach. I remember watching a review of Ghostbusters 2016 that compared scenes from the 2016 movie to similar scenes in the original. Ultimately the review showed how lazy and uninspired the writing was in the 2016 version (it relied heavily on slapstick humor and brainless solutions to problems), but the big draw with the movie leading up to release was the all-female main cast. Nobody seemed to care whether the movie would be well-written or not. You can have a great movie with an all-female main cast (the 2018 movie Widows comes to mind) but you need a great writing to have a great story, plain and simple.

@Carpatouille Год назад

@@WriterBrandonMcNulty I agree with you. The only example of a show that does it right that comes to my mind, is ironically a cartoon, Steven Universe. While I disagree with the messages conveyed, and while the first seasons lack any depth, the later seasons of the show are of quality, and it would be disingenuous to say otherwise. But sadly, too many times the will to preach at all costs and do propaganda damages and ruin a lot of potentially good shows and stories, including in videogames, nowadays. Which ironically in my opinion also damages their ideas, in addition to the final product.

@WriterBrandonMcNulty Год назад

@@Carpatouille I haven't watched Steven Universe, so I can't comment on it, but I started watching The Boys recently, and that one does a great job with introducing a variety of characters from different backgrounds without feeling preachy.

@MiikaKontio Год назад

Mother! made me very uncomfortable for many reasons. It has a lot of breaking the social contract and weird stuff happening. Aronofsky is a master of uncomfortable movies. The Whale also very discomforting

@MajorMlgNoob 8 месяцев назад

Requiem is extremely unsettling