How to Add Tension to Your Writing

How to Add or Increase Tension in Your Scenes

Tension is meant to fluctuate throughout your story, but what we don't want is for it to unintentionally drop off and then you lose the attention of your audience. We'll be talking about why tension is important and how you can add it to your scenes so that you can make sure that each scene you're writing contains some tension and therefore keeps your audience engaged.

What is Tension and Why is it Important?

Tension is what holds your reader's (or watcher's) attention throughout the story. When we start with a rounded character with a strong goal, we immediately have some tension as the audience hopes that they will succeed, and fears that they will fail. Hope and Fear is the key to tension. Our main tension usually stems from the character's want and need (or their goal and character arc), but there is also varying tension throughout the story as we fear they will get hurt or will run into a setback, and hope they can overcome obstacles or score points with the one they like.

Without this hope and fear throughout the story, there isn't much holding the audience in their seat. Even stories that lack a strong character goal use this to hold their audiences attention, creating intricate situations and relationships which we hold anticipation for and start to gather hopes and fears as the characters interact.

Stakes vs. Tension

Stakes are a part of tension, for sure. Without stakes, the hope and fear wouldn't be present through the most important parts of the story. When I think of stakes, I'm usually thinking of the overall stakes surrounding the main character's goal. I ask, "What happens if they succeed/fail?" -- and those are my character's stakes. And because something good happens if they succeed and something bad happens if they fail, we then have that hope and fear surrounding the goal, because we know it means something. There can also be stakes for individual scenes which helps create tension as well.

How to Add Tension

There are so many ways that you can add tension to your story, but we're going to highlight a few that should be helpful :) I'm sure that you often naturally create scenes that have plenty of tension in them, but it's important to know how to identify in case you run into scenes without much tension and you're not sure how to fix it.

Conflict Between Characters

Conflict between characters can look like so many things. Often, when I say this, the first thing that people think about is big, explosive fights (whether verbal or physical). Sometimes, fights like that can be very intense and rightfully placed in a story, but too often writer's are trying to create tension by being loud instead of being meaningful.

The core of conflict between characters is when they want opposing things. This could be as simple as one character wanting to walk outside and the other wanting to talk. Or, as intense as one character wanting to set prisoners free and the other trying to stop them. The conflict can be internal or external, but the key is that the wants are clashing and that the wants mean something to the characters. If what they want means something, then the conflict now means something as well.

I think we've all witnessed a scene where not much is going on physically or verbally but somehow we can feel so much tension. And this is typically because the writer has done a great job at revealing what the characters want and what it means to them and have put them in a situation where it is now threatened.

Obstacle to the Goal

The tension from putting an obstacle in the way of a character working towards a goal comes from the fact that we care about the character and what they want. If we care about the character and what they want, then we care whether they succeed or fail. And when they are faced with challenging obstacles, we now have hope that they can overcome this obstacle and fear that the obstacle will set them back, hurt them, or cause them to fail.

Obstacles can be other characters, logistics, physical, mental, or emotional. You can face the character with two good choices or two bad choices. You can test their morals and pride. You can see what (or who) they're willing to sacrifice for what they want. With the character and their goal in mind, ask questions about what you can put in their way, what's going to be hardest for them to face, and how these obstacles can challenge them to grow.

Exploit Fears and Flaws

To be able to exploit your characters fears and flaws you first have to know your character well. Make sure that you've taken the time to explore who they are, what their past is, and the good and bad points of their personality. This fear or flaw that they have could be connected to their need (the main thing that the character must learn or overcome to grow through their character arc), or it could be something else.

If your audience knows that your character has a fear of heights, they're going to feel the tension as the character has to face that challenge. If the audience knows that the character explodes every time that they get slightly insulted, they're going to feel the tension when they have to keep their cool to succeed in their goal. Get to know your character, help you audience get to know your character, and then make their life difficult by putting them in situations that force them to face their fears and flaws. (Up the tension further by making sure that it's something they can't walk away from).

Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something that one or more of the characters in the scene do not know. This has potential for lots of different types of tension. If we know that a character cheated and they're now in the room with their partner, we're going to feel the tension. If we know that someone just died and none of the characters are away yet, we're going to feel the tension. If we see the killer in the background and the character is unaware, we're going to feel the tension.

The simplest example of this is in any sort of superhero movie. They typically have a secret identity which the audience knows but many other characters (including the villain) do not. We feel tension any time their secret identity is almost revealed.

Play around with what information you reveal to the characters and the audience at what point in the story.

Anticipation

Anticipation is all about creating expectations and this is managed by how you set things up in your story. This could look like making your audience ask questions ("What is the character going to do about this problem?", "Who is the murderer?" "Are these two characters going to get together?) Or, giving a timeline and consequences that we're waiting for ("If they don't fix this problem by X time then Y is going to happen."). 

Anticipation has a lot to do with plantings and payoffs, you plant an object/prop, or a characteristic, a line of dialogue, a character action, a happening or situation that then later needs a payoff. The audience expects a payoff. And sometimes they know what that payoff will be, other times they are guessing or hoping.

In general, the want and need (aka goal and character arc) create anticipation, but you can also create it in individual scenes (EX: watching a character getting increasingly angry and anticipating an outburst), or within smaller arc in your story.

Time Limit

The time limit is an underrated, simple, and easy way to add tension to your plot or scenes. Keep in mind though that if you only have a time limit, that's not gonna do much for ya. This is an add-on if you already have some tension. 

So, lets say that your character wants to bake a cake (goal) for their daughter's birthday (why we care) and they're terrible at baking (what makes it hard/obstacle). Now add a time limit. They only have 1 hour! It just helps to up the ante and, in some cases, gives an 'endless' goal a place to end so that we have something to look forward to.

Conclusion

Remember to take a look at your scenes and make sure that they're not just meandering conversations and/or have no purpose. One thing that I like to ask is, "What has changed by the end of this scene?" If the scene served the plot in some way, then something should have changed, even if it is just inside the character. But, also remember that just because the story has moved forward doesn't necessarily mean that your scene has tension. Make sure that you're not just feeding the audience exposition in a flat and boring explanatory scene. Get that tension in there! Make it interesting!

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Happy writing!