Creating Story Tension In Your Novel

by Mary Kole | Former literary agent, now a freelance editor, writing teacher, and IP/story developer for major publishers and creators.

When it comes to creating story tension, you need to think about raising the stakes of your plot. Stakes are vital to any novel, and building stakes into your storytelling ensures that readers will be captivated throughout. Story tension comes from the answers to the questions: Why does this matter to the character? Why does this matter to the reader? And? So?

Stakes for Story Tension

Why does a specific character matter for story tension? A specific event? A new plot development? Information that’s dropped by another character? You need to have an answer to these questions for most of the main elements of your story, or you aren’t creating conflict or enough story tension.

Many stories stumble due to a lack of thought put toward constructing stakes for their characters, or by not adequately incorporating tension into their plot. Allow us to succinctly explain the meanings of both of these terms.

Tension is a lurking sensation that provokes feelings of unease and dread. To keep readers engaged, this sense of unease should run through every paragraph, every page, every scene, and every chapter. (Especially in categories like mystery, thriller, and suspense.) It's the story tension in characters and relationships that ties the plot together and adds to the bigger dramatic arc.

If you want to write using story tension and to keep your readers on their toes, it is essential to understand the concept of high stakes. Stakes are the risks, dangers, and potential losses that your characters will face in the story. The higher the stakes, the higher the story tension. Without thinking about stakes, you risk creating a tale where story tension is low.

Engineering Story Tension

So, how do we create stakes that will make our readers feel as if their characters’ choices matter and that they are in danger more often than not? Let's explore the concept of story tension a little further.

If a character has an intense desire for something, they must have enough drive to go after their character objective. If they do, the character achieving their desire (or not) will become important to the reader as well. When the character encounters obstacles, the reader will be equally disappointed to see the character stopped.

Furthermore, the protagonist should face setbacks—nobody wants to read a story in which the protagonist gets whatever they want with ease. There’s no story tension involved there. If they struggle, though, the reader will start to feel for them. We will then want to see the character succeed.

Story Tension, Characters, and Relationships

Readers want to follow characters who make choices—choices that may not always be wise. Sometimes, a character’s choices will result in ramifications. In your narrative, every choice must be followed by a logical and realistic consequence.

Characters can’t make nice, safe choices if you want story tension. Bridges must be burned, laws broken, friendships ruined … you get the picture. Of course, readers will admire characters who make good choices, but it's important to show a bad one every now and again. Nobody is perfect, and flawed characters tend to be more believable characters.

Relationships between people are never stagnant or consistent, either. They constantly ebb and flow, adding a sense of story tension to most longform manuscripts. Characters derive their stakes from the nature of the relationships they have with others. When we introduce friendships, relationships, families, rivalries, and enemies, the story tension escalates.

Let your imagination run wild to uncover the potential for conflict in relationships, objectives, and character need in every scene. When two people come together, the stakes should rise because someone is going to leave the scene dissatisfied—maybe even your protagonist.

Now that your understanding of stakes has expanded, let us look into what creates story tension and why it should be kept at a high level.

Playing With Story Tension

Begin your novel in the midst of action—that's the key to a great novel opening. Immerse the reader into a scene or situation that grabs their attention and puts them in the thick of things. Forget the descriptive details and character sketches, weave those in later if necessary. Consider the balance of action and information in your story pacing and don’t bog it down with heavy information at the very beginning.

Crowds of people come together, each harboring a variety of wants, needs, goals, desires, and outlooks on their worlds and situations. As your characters bump into one another, you can create a level of story tension and suspense. Keep in mind that conflict can be quiet, too. You don’t need a ton of melodramatic writing on every page. Sometimes story tension can be more subtle, like the longing of an empty marriage. Dialogue and action can convey to a reader how a character really feels. If your scene leaves you feeling pleasant, then you know it isn't doing its job. Subtle or overt, story tension needs to be your primary concern.

Every chapter must advance the story and increase story tension. It ought to show readers something new about the characters and relationships. Readers’ understanding of the story must change from scene to scene, otherwise those elements aren’t doing their jobs.

Pulling the Story Tension Thread Through

Keep an eye on story tension as you end your chapters. If there’s no story tension at the end of a chapter, reads can wedge in their bookmarks and call it a day. Therefore, it is essential not to let your readers rest. You don’t want to end each chapter with an outrageous cliffhanger, because that’s going to hit the law of diminishing returns before long.

But you should be looking to amp up story tension. For example, will a character be defeated? Could a plot twist surface at an inopportune time? Can readers be surprised in some way—their expectations subverted or reversed? Does the underlying pressure of some larger event finally burst?

Fine-tuning your chapter endings is essential to crafting captivating story tension. Get to the point where you still feel the urge to read on, even if you know the plot inside and out. A novel comes alive from the combination of plot, character, and conflict. Make sure to keep these three elements in balance when you're editing and pulling the strings of story tension.