Finally we get to a genre specific issue. This is a distinct one I have yet to encounter on most writing sites or in classes, so maybe reading this will pay off.

You've created an amazing hero with incredible powers- and now here comes the villain to deliver a possible death blow, a tense moment to be sure. But there's a problem, your audience isn't feeling any of that tension. Even if people are celebrating your prose and like your characters, no one expresses surprise that your good guy won- worse yet, they're not surprised if your bad guy does either. What is going on?

Travis stepped forward, Carlos' eyes slowly wandering in his direction. "Unhand the child..." Travis warned the heavy set man. Carlos gave a side grin and yanked out his revolver, pulling the trigger four times the bullets tearing towards Travis and- scattering indifferent directions as Travis proceeded forward without even flinching.

Carlos was decked out in an assortment of weapons. Really this was the moment he had been waiting for, to prove himself against Travis, the strongest man in the world. Poor Bart, the five year old kid behind him, was just a pawn, if he lived or died meant nothing. Carlos had a satchel of explosives, an AT-4 slung over his shoulder and a heavy pulse cannon slung over his shoulder. "Stay and fight, and the boy can go..." Carlos said. Travis nodded.

The red haired child took off running.

Travis started towards Carlos, Carlos pulling three small sticky bombs out of his satchel and throwing them as he ran to the side. The bombs stuck to Travis' chest and one to his left arm. They exploded taking pieces of the man man's clothing but- nothing, the man's skin was completely un-phased. Travis raised an eyebrow. "You trying to tickle me or something?" Carlos shouldered the AT-4. "Oh... now we're talking." Travis grinned and opened his arms. Carlos fired.

The explosive force even forced Carlos himself to fall back despite being several meters back, Travis just standing there, not a single scratch anywhere on his body, not even moving back. Carlos then pulled out his pulse gun. He fired, the pulse just being absorbed by Travis' skin as he continued forward.

Carlos jumped back, the gun charging. He fired again- again nothing. He let the weapon charge even longer and fired- again nothing. Carlos kept letting the weapon charge for longer and longer as he kept backing away, each shot apparently not even phasing Travis.

The battery on Carlos' weapon was running low, Carlos nearing it's last charge. Five seconds more than the last charge- fire. "There's no way you'll survive every attack!" Carlos shouted. "This is the most powerful hand held weapon in the world!"

Travis chuckled, knowing this was the last pulse. Carlos fired. The pulse ripped through Travis' chest entirely, the man dropping to the ground a massive hole in his chest.

Bart looked back, tears in his eyes, the hero had lost.

I'm guessing that wasn't too bad, but after a while, something felt wrong. I'm guessing tension started to leave of the scene after theAT-4 was fired.

Here's why. The AT-4 was the most powerful weapon he had on him as far as the audience knew. The pulse gun was a complete unknown as those don't exist in the real world. We were able to gauge that Carlos attacks were becoming more and more powerful, but none of them were doing ANYTHING and we had no reason to believe they ever would. Then suddenly one shot not only works, it kills Travis and rips a hole in his chest- because. The fact that it worked is more mysterious than tragic. There was no reason at all to believe Travis was in danger, in fact the protagonist sort of shifted to Carlos, him starting to feel like the underdog as the conflict went on. Bart's tears fall completely on deaf ears.

Let's see if we can fix this.

Travis stepped forward, Carlos' eyes slowly wandering in his direction. "Unhand the child..." Travis warned the heavy set man. Carlos gave a side grin and yanked out his revolver, pulling the trigger four times the bullets tearing towards Travis and- scattering indifferent directions as Travis proceeded forward without even flinching.

Carlos was decked out in an assortment of weapons. Really this was the moment he had been waiting for, to prove himself against Travis, the strongest man in the world. Poor Bart, the five year old kid behind him, was just a pawn, if he lived or died meant nothing. Carlos had a satchel of explosives, an AT-4 slung over his shoulder and a heavy pulse cannon slung over his other shoulder. "Stay and fight, and the boy can go..." Carlos said. Travis nodded.

The red haired child took off running.

Travis started towards Carlos, Carlos pulling three small sticky bombs out of his satchel throwing them as he ran to the side. The bombs stuck to Travis' chest and one to his left arm and exploded taking pieces of the man man's clothing but- nothing, the man's skin was completely un-phased. Travis was pushed back however, and so he raised an eyebrow. "You trying to tickle me or something?" Carlos shouldered the AT-4. Travis grinned and leaned down putting his right arm in front of his face, bracing for impact. Carlos fired. The explosion ripped out, Travis' shoes digging into the pavement leaving grooves, him finally tripping and falling back being tossed a few feet. The man pulled himself back up, his lip bleeding and a large burn mark on his right arm. Travis grinned. "Now we're talkin'."

Travis ran forward, Carlos having to roll to the side to evade a left hook. He ran to the left and pulled out his pulse gun. He fired, Travis moving his head just as the pulse rang out, the energy racing by his head. A single seat park bench behind him however was not so lucky. The wood of the seat was shredded only the metal frame left intact, though charred and twisted.

Carlos jumped back, the gun charging, Travis' eyes wide as he looked at the bench. Carlos allowed the weapon to charge for a few seconds for the next charge, then took aim at his shocked foe. Travis quickly turned as Carlos pulled the trigger, the pulse hitting Travis in the shoulder and forcing him to spin in the air. The pulse ripped through the large metal swing set behind Travis continuing into the large metal spider frame jungle gym ripping it apart leaving the only metal intact that less than two feet above the ground.

Carlos grinned, Travis glaring as he held his right shoulder, a large burn slowly settling. Carlos allowed another charge, this time just a little longer, capitalizing on Travis recovering from the last shot. He aimed, but this time Travis had already dodged right before he fired again the pulse flying off into the sun set. Travis ran forward, Carlos running away, allowing his gun to charge as he went.

Carlos looked down. On the gun was a charge meter with ten lights. The meter was completely dark save for the last two glowing red lights. Carlos clenched his teeth, looking back to see Travis gaining.

Travis pulled his left fist back screaming as he went in. Carlos spun around and fired, the pulse hitting Travis and throwing him back, dirt and sand around him firing into the air. Carlos fell on his right, the force of the blast tossing him so hard he landed with a sickening squelch, his right shoulder cracking.

Carlos looked up, sighing in relief at the smoke. He breathed heavily.

Bart looked on, dropping to his knees, his hero, the man he cheered on TV so many times, the smile that comforted him when he slept, it kept the monsters away... he knew his hero was gone.

Carlos stood up, dropping his pulse gun.

The smoke was pretty thick, Carlos staying in place, wanting the pleasure of seeing his opponent one last time. He was not denied- Travis' furious glare in an instant inches away from Carlos' shocked face.

Carlos looked down the man's form, seeing the mangled and twisted left arm, blood pouring out and a chunk of meat and bone missing from the shoulder. Travis raised his other fist.

It was the last thing Carlos would ever see.

Travis ran out of the smoke, Bart's eyes filled with disbelief. Bart's hero gently placed a hand on his head. He would have dried the boy's tears, but he couldn't move his other arm...

Different huh? Not just the length, but if you didn't scroll prematurely, the ending may have surprised you. The surprise existed first because you expected me to just repeat the essentials of the first instance, which I could have just as easily and it would have worked fine. The second reason it likely occurred is you realized early on that this was a fight Travis could easily lose, in fact Travis felt like the underdog here despite his massive physical advantage over his opponent.

There were many key differences in this scene. And no, sheer length was not a key difference, nor was the victory of the"good guy", those factors were meaningless to the experience of tension.

Two major points- first, eliminating unknowns and second dynamic movement.

There are a number of unknowns in this fight, beyond that we just met the characters. How strong is Travis? How tough is Travis? How powerful is the pulse cannon? At what point is Carlos actually a threat?

With each of these, we were subtly shown a know factor. Assuming Travis's muscles had something to do with him being able to stay in place, the first few attacks served to let us know how much resistance those muscles had against sudden impact. When he was finally hit with the AT-4 he was overwhelmed, but the bullets and explosives couldn't do that, even if the explosives could effect him marginally. The explosives let us known physical laws were at play here and the AT-4 let us know Travis' resistance to a sudden impact had it's limits, even if the example was a tad impractical. (That's were suspension of disbelief ACTUALLY comes in. You probably didn't think about the fact that explosions don't work that way as the story sort of just asserted they do and the series of events seemed practical... maybe we'll go more into that later.) That resistance, even if limited, was very high so he had to be pretty strong.

The first two volleys were also from weapons a given reader may have marginal knowledge of. When we noted their different effects, several things fell into place. First off, we had it confirmed in case it wasn't clear, yes, the AT-4 was the more powerful of the two weapons. Second, Travis's toughness had a threshold around the level of an AT-4's rocket.

When the pulse cannon was fired, the first charged missed. "Wouldn't that decrease tension?" Not really. You see, the audience had no idea how powerful the pulse was. We have a little understanding of how tough Travis is, so if it just hit him we might be able to do some reverse math there, but having another known element to interact with likely helped tremendously. The weapon likely had the impact the reader assumed was about the same or greater than the AT-4. The second shot was very apparently even more powerful, even though it also failed its direct mission in story- it definitely succeeded in it's mission of telling us something was at stake. That blast was WAY beyond an AT-4 (probably but there's suspension of disbelief again even you know otherwise). By that point, we KNEW if one of those shots, charged to that point or beyond, if it landed directly on Travis, would very likely injure or even kill him. This wasn't something we guessed, we KNEW that would happen. Travis was at a disadvantage and we KNEW it.

In the first iteration we were TOLD how powerful the weapon was, but we had no idea what it meant. This time we were SHOWN and we knew exactly what it meant.

When Carlos said his was the most powerful hand held weapon, we believed him, he said so after all- though we had no idea what that meant. "If you say so", is what you say when someone says something and you guess they know what they're talking about, but you sure don't and you're just humoring them. Humoring an author isn't fun- or it could be, but not as fun and really understanding the stakes.

The second thing that made the scene work better was "dynamic motion". In a real fight actions have consequences. When we see those consequences in fiction and have a sense that they are consistent with some form of reality, a fight feels more real to us.

The bombs didn't interact with Travis doing "nothing"-that's not consistent with how things really work. The AT-4 was even worse as Travis went out of his way to show there were no rules in the fight, he didn't even brace and again, the effect "nothing". By this point our minds have either written this off as non-sense, as SOMETHING needed to happen (toughness doesn't explain a full cancellation of kinetic energy), or we've started to see Travis as ridiculously beyond the pale- either way, all tension just left the scene.

The bloody lip, the grooves in the ground, the burn mark and Travis tripping all clued us in that this was a "real" fight. We knew we were in for a rumble. When the pulse actually sent Travis spinning later, there was a sense that the rules had stayed intact as that was an expected reaction from all that came before (if a tad less injurious than we might have expected).

When Travis actually ran at Carlos, we got the sense both people were involved in the fight. When before Travis just walked towards Carlos tanking one shot after another- he stopped being an under dog altogether. You can make a character beyond the pale- just remember that's what he is then.

The final blast we knew was powerful in the second instance and we fully knew it could kill Travis. We had this opinion further informed by Travis actively dodging the other attacks. We felt a little of his own fear of mortality perhaps. When in the first instance the final blast worked... that probably didn't register as "right" at all. If each pulse was fired five seconds apart, one would expect a gradual escalation of effectiveness. What we got instead was a spontaneous event that probably left a few people rolling their eyes while other's had a reaction of "well... if the story says so...".

I suppose there is also a lesson about consistency here. If a weapon can hurt your character- it can hurt them. It isn't meaningless until its "powerful enough".

Finally... I told a bit of a fib. Length DOES matter... well not so much length itself. However when a new unknown element is introduced to a story, if you expect tension to be effective with it, you NEED to have it interact with known elements. "Known elements" are either things that exist in the real world or things your reader likely understands the properties of by this point.

Now, be aware, there is a limit to all of this. Anyone who has watched Dragon Ball Z is aware, at least subconsciously, of an issue related to this, the "escalation problem". This is another factor of that problem.

In the dragon ball series, until the end of the Frieza saga, characters would blow up massive chunks of earth to show how powerful they were. Rock was the known element. This was marginally effective. However... not so much once Goku tanked a blast stated to be powerful enough to destroy the entire planet. Yes, he was "super sayian" and that clued us in that that was a VERY powerful form, but from that point on, destroying stone meant absolutely nothing to the audience. The animators however just kept using the trick...filling up time and having fun drawing explosions I guess because it did nothing to inform the audience.

By the time Cell saga was in full swing, attacks supposedly kept getting stronger, but heck if the audience had any idea what was supposed to be effective or how much so, beyond the characters blatantly stating "that should have worked". "If you says so." Tension was slowly leaving the series.

The audience knew in theory the amount of power each character had in "super sayian" form, so there was a little left. However that form was eventually completely surpassed by the end of the saga.

The next saga... was doomed. A main character even sacrificed himself in full super sayain form, unleashing an explosion that killed himself in the process, while holding the antagonist. The resulting explosion made a mile long crater and- likely even the children in the audience weren't "surprised" that didn't work. Vegeta had already surpassed the plateau of tanking a planet buster bomb, if his opponent was tougher than that a big crater meant nothing. Stakes had to be blatantly stated, the audience only able to nod and go along. Not surprisingly, and I think partially as a result of this, the Buu saga is know as the worst saga of Dragon Ball Z. The tension is almost completely gone.

The solution to this problem is what many writers before me have pointed out. Stop making your characters constantly more powerful- at least "vertically". Stop making them stronger and faster. Give them different abilities. Each opponent doesn't need to be "stronger" per say. They need an advantage, but anything can be an advantage. He could have hostages giving the hero a handicap as he can't attack directly. The villain could freeze time, control matter or have any number of gifts our hero can't just nullify despite all of his over sized muscles. He could even be a cheeky jerk who spams dirty tricks like dust, bright light and loud noises, throwing our hero for a loop- hey, skill is skill. Changing the angle the villain attacks from should work miracles to revive dead tension.

This is not an easy problem, I'd wager the best action writers wrestle with it all the time. How do you tell the audience how powerful a weapon without always having the villain miss and blowup the ground looking like he's a terrible shot? Get creative.

Just keep in mind these factors-

Known elements- use things the audience understands to demonstrate the abilities of an unknown element.

Dynamic motion- a fight that is fluid is leagues more fun to watch than one where one person just stands there and tanks attacks anyway. If we see both opponents in a battle actively participating we understand the stakes are high just by seeing it.

Change your angle- if your characters just keep getting stronger and stronger in a single direction, eventually you'll run out of known elements to demonstrate that power. Change the angle of the attack therefore. Stop making characters faster and faster, and have a character instead be able to just grab someone with his mind or reverse time, or use dirty tricks to get ahead. Now the solution can involve speed, but not only. The hero has to change his tactics as well and new growth is introduced.