Question 4
Hi mentors!
My question is about adding tension to your fiction. I keep hearing how important this is to do to write a strong manuscript. Can you suggest a few ways to increase tension at various places in a story?
Thank you!
You can find this mentor, Kate Dylan, here!
Wow. Okay. So tension—like pacing—can be quite a nebulous concept, but I like to think of it as adding unexploded bombs to your story. They’re dangerous because you never know exactly when they might go off.
Tension is the ever-present threat the reader KNOWS is going to come back and bite the MC in the ass. But not knowing WHEN that’s going to happen is what keeps them on the edge of their seat and turning the page.
So, you might signpost that your MC has a dark secret, for instance, or have them tell a lie. Maybe they’re afflicted with an illness they’re trying to conceal, or on the run from something. The source of your tension will very much depend on the story you’re telling, but you keep that tension up by:
A) periodically reminding your reader that [PROBLEM] exists
ex - oh no, I am secretly an exiled princess. I really hope no one finds out!
B) placing that [PROBLEM] at odds with what your MC wants
ex - oh no, it turns out this rugged rebel I’m slowly falling in love with thinks exiled princesses are evil. If he ever finds out who I really am he will kill/break up with me!
C) not resolving that problem too easily/early
ex - oh no, I’ve been lying to him for so long now it’ll be REALLY bad when the truth comes out (and then have the truth come out at a really inconvenient time that endangers them both)
In this scenario, trust me, the reader knows the MC’s secret is going to come out—they’re primed for it. But because they don’t know when or how it’s going to happen, there’s tension. It keeps them reading because they want to see the bomb explode.
Now, obviously, not every source of tension in your novel will be this grand or span the length of the whole book, but inserting little bombs into every stage of your plot will help you keep tension throughout. You want your characters to constantly be up against SOMETHING that could blow their lives up, so as you resolve one problem, make sure you’re adding another. Small problems as well as bigger ones. Bonus points for finding ways to make those smaller problems feed into the big overarching one.
ex - the lie the MC told at the very beginning, which we thought was resolved in act 2, comes back to haunt them during the climax.
I hope that helps!
