The Red Room

There are many ways in which we can create tension whilst writing a story. Some of the techniques used to create tension whilst writing a story are: short sentences, dialogue, using verbs to describe what the characters are doing in the story. Another way of creating tension in a story is using descriptive words. H.G Wills uses many of these techniques whilst writing ‘The Red Room’, I will be listing these techniques and explaining their effects during this essay.
The title ‘The Red Room’ gives the story a scary image immediately. The word ‘The’ gives the impression that this room is unique which makes the story tense from the beginning because it makes the readers think why is it called ‘The red room’ rather than ‘A red room’. The alliteration in the title also gives it tension because of the word ‘Red’ which is the colour we usually associate with blood.
Tension is immediately created at the beginning of the story because there is dialogue used at the beginning. ‘I can assure you,’ said I. ‘that it will atke a very tangible ghost to frighten me.’ And I stood up before the fire with the glass in my hand.’ This is where the tension is created at the beginning of the story because the story begins in mid-conversation which gives the story a sense of mystery.
‘It’s your own choosing,’ said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance.’ The character in this sentence ‘the man with the withered arm’ also creates a sense of mystery because it makes us think that the man could have withered his arm in ‘the red room’. The dialogue also creates tension and a sense of mystery because it makes us want to know more about what they are talknig about and makes us want to hear the beginning of the conversatin to make it more clear.
‘The old woman sat staring hard into the fire’ this line creates a sense of mystery and scariness because of the characters desctiption ‘The old woman’ this is another technique which we can create tension by using because it gives a scary picture to the story. ‘Staring hard into the fire.’ This also brings a sense of scariness into the story because it gives the image that the woman is abit odd because she isn’t looking at who she is talking to, she is still staring into the fire.
The characters in this story have no names. The characters are only vaguely described which brings even more tension to the story because we do not know how these characters realistically look.
‘It’s your own choosing,’ this line by the man with the withered arm shows that he appears to know something that we don’t. Which makes it out as if they know that something is going to happen to the man who is going to spend the night in the red room. The fact that the man has a ‘withered arm’ makes it seem as if something has happened to him in the past, this brings questions to thought because it makes us ask whether it happened in the red room.

‘I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside, and the door creaked on its second hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first.’ This creates tension because it is, again a vague description of the new character which brings many questions to mind. ‘More aged even than the first’ gives more tension because it brings a spooky kind of atmosphere to the story with the ‘aged’ characters. When the new character arrives the old women stays with her eyes fixed on the fire. ‘With her eyes fixed steadily on the fire’ this shows that she is not at all interested in the fact that someone has walked in. This could mean that her mind is fixed on the previous conversation or could also mean many other things.
‘The long draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and a candle flared and made the shadows cower and shiver’ this brings some tension into the situation because of the adjectives which are used in the sentence. ‘draughty’ gives a cold presence to the story which brings more tension into the story because usually when a story has a cold feeling to it, it turns out to be scary.
‘for the moon light’ this brings tension to the story because it makes it seem as if the only light in the tunnel is the moonlight which is scary because the moon light usually represents a scary incident about to happen.
‘pallid silence’ brings tension to the story because of the word that is used to describe the silence, ‘pallid’. The word pallid/pail gives the silence a much darker feeling to it which gives the story a lot more tension because we usually associate darkness with bad things.
‘My revolver ready to hand’ this brings tension to the situation because it seem as if the man is uneven to what is going to happen. This also makes it rather scary because if he is considering his gun then he is expecting that something threatening could happen to him. This also builds tension because at the beginning of the story the man was making it out as if he was brave and wasn’t scared of anything, now that he is in the room he has a gun in case of a threat, this shows that he changes his mind now that he is in the red room.
‘Although to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition’ tension is created here because the man knows that there is nothing there that should be putting him into this condition, but it seems as if there is something about being in the red room that makes him nervous.
‘For the same reason I abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting’. This brings tension because it shows a sign of madness which is making the story a little more scary.
‘It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there’ This incident brings more tension to the story because the whole room was lit up at one point and the man felt completely secure when there were no shadows in the room. I think that he would feel as if it is less secure there now that the candle has gone out leaving some darkness in the room.