tension

Tension is good, mostly. It is the pull that gives meaning to all art, and thus to life itself.Anyone who is never tense about anything ever, has no payoff to look forward to.Even the most easy-going happy movie, will employ various forms of tension-building to make the movie entertaining. Tension can be as blatant as introducing a problem that a character has to solve, or as subtle as giving the viewer the sense of, "Where is this going? What is going to happen next?"A good DJ is a master of managing the tension of the crowds. Have a crescendo too often, and the payoff is not satisfying. Hold the tension for too long, and you lose the crowd.Where tension fails is when it is building with no payoff in sight. Or if the payoff is fake, a total mirage, but you delude yourself into thinking there is a payoff.Tension can be played with in hundreds of ways, and a big part of creativity is taking this strange polymer and moulding it into various forms. Sometimes you can stretch tension for…