what exactly is dramatic tension?

Question

as it pertains to novels such as East of Eden and The Kite Runner

Answer 1

Dramatic tension, as it pertains to those books or any others, is what happens when the author manages to make something clear to the reader, but the hero doesn't see it and blunders on into a potentially dangerous situation. Mary Higgins Clark is the expert at this. Her novel "The Cradle Will Fall" has the heroine, who is anxious to have a baby, visiting a gynecologist who also happens to be a wacko and has murdered a number of women. By the time the climax is reached, you are sitting on the edge of your chair, ready to scream at her, "Don't go! Don't let them give you that IV transfusion!" But the heroine, of course, goes sailing into the clinic regardless of what you are mentally shouting to her.
That is dramatic tension.

Answer 2

Dramatic tension is tension between two characters. In the case of East of Eden, it could be tension between the brothers Caleb and Aaron or tension between Caleb and his father Charles or the tension between Cathy meeting her two sons Caleb and Aaron. Pax - C