Creating a tense atmosphere in a story is a true skill, and in this guide, you’re going to learn how to build and create tension in writing.Can you think of a moment in a novel or story when you lost all awareness of your surroundings? The only thing that mattered was happening on the page, and then at the end, you come up for air and utter “damn.”We’ll also take a look at the purpose of tension and the impact it has on readers. To help build your understanding we’ll look at some examples and a very handy infographic too.
Key Takeaways On Tension In Writing
- Try to stretch out tension, but stretch it out too much and it’ll break, like an elastic band.
- Add steps or mini detours within scenes to prolong tension. Anything that keeps the end at bay.
- Use tension early on in a story to grab a hold of the reader’s emotions.
- Chilling language, dialogue, sentence structure, and conflicting or confrontational situations can all create tension. (Click here for dialogue writing examples)
What Is Tension In Writing?
Tension in writing is the emotional strain that keeps readers engaged. It arises from conflict, uncertainty, and unresolved issues, creating a sense of anticipation or anxiety about what will happen next. Effective tension makes readers eager to find out the resolution, maintaining their interest and investment in the story.
In reality, we don’t like a life full of tension. In fiction, however, the opposite is true. As readers we love stress and tension; we seek it out. When we read pages laden with tension a hormone is released into our bloodstream which stimulates the heart and increases blood pressure, in turn provoking an adrenal high. This excitable feeling is what readers crave.
But like most things, too much of it and you’ll get bored. That’s why, at this early point in the article, it’s important to set out the difference between suspense and tension. Suspense can span across chapters, an entire book even. Tension can last mere seconds or minutes.
Sol Stein in his book, On Writing, uses a good example to illustrate this. Think of tension as an elastic band. The more it’s stretched the looser and weaker it becomes until eventually, it snaps. Use too much tension and you’ll break the elastic band in your reader’s head.
Click Here To Learn More About Creating Suspense In Writing
What Is The Purpose Of Creating Tension In A Story?
You may ask yourself what the purpose of creating tension in a story is. As we’ve seen in the section above, tension helps writers draw their readers deeper into the story, to hook them to the page and story.
Tension can also help readers build an emotional connection with the story. If a likeable character is in danger, for instance, they’ll want to know how they fare. Tension can flow through all aspects of storytelling, from character and plot to the theme or premise. One of the best ways of creating tension in writing is to introduce conflicts, which we’ll explore next.
Click Here To Learn More About How To Plot A Story
How To Create Tension In Writing
The best way to create tension in writing is to introduce conflicts or obstacles for your characters. These obstacles could be other characters, such as your villain or antagonist. They could also be internal conflicts or mental health problems. Or they could be physical conflicts like a blood-thirsty dragon. Foreshadowing this conflict is a key part of building tension. Dropping hints of what may come can hook the reader and keep them wanting more.Let’s look at some specific examples of how you can build up tension:
One way is to include strange, mysterious, or chilling facts. Sol Stein takes an excellent example from The Day of the Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth, which demonstrates how in one sentence tension can be conjured.
“It is cold at 6:40 in the morning of a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”
How did you feel reading this sentence? Did you want to know more? Did questions pop into your mind? Who is being executed? For what? Why that time of day? All of these questions create tension and encourage us to keep reading.
- Friction is another way to build tension. Situations which don’t go together, the clash of opposing forces.
- Dialogue is an effective method of creating tension. Confrontational dialogue can have readers turning pages faster than a man reading a magazine in an oncologist’s waiting room.
- Using tension early on in a book or story can allow the writer to take control of the reader’s emotions. You grip them with your words, and in exciting them they allow you to take them along on your adventure.
- One thing you can do to spark some tension is to move a specific sentence to another location. The purpose is to stretch out the tension as much as possible. Look at Stein’s example:
“I was heading over to Uncle Urek’s before I got your message. He in trouble again?”
A fog of silence descended. Nobody looked at anybody else. Finally, Feeney said, “She doesn’t know.”
How about moving one line?
“I was heading over to Uncle Urek’s before I got your message.”
A fog of silence descended. Nobody looked at anybody else.
“He in trouble again?”
Finally, Feeney said, “She doesn’t know.”
Notice the difference? Simple and effective.
Here are some more handy tips for creating tension in stories in the form of a printable infographic.
The Importance Of Conflict And Foreshadowing
Once you’ve planted the seed of tension, it’s important to nurture it so that down the line, it blossoms wonderfully. When it comes to building that tension, focusing on foreshadowing the conflict to come is one of the most effective methods you can employ. In short, foreshadowing is the promise of conflict. It quite simply is all about teasing, intriguing and promising your readers that action is coming.Once that tension is there, you do not want to dispel it immediately. Dangle the resolution in front of the reader’s nose, always just out of reach. Think of an incident, in life or one you’ve read about, where a pressing situation arises, but all of a sudden it’s over and everyone returns to their normal routines—the tension gone.
Imagine this. You hear a noise in the next room, but you know you’re alone in the house. The keys of the piano jingle inside. Your heart freezes, but you toughen your resolve and pull open the door. And the cat runs out. Bit anti-climactic?
How could the tension be prolonged? Could the character get a phone call, one they must answer, or does someone knock on the front door? They want to uncover what’s going on in the room, but not just yet.
Click Here To Learn More About Foreshadowing Conflict
Examples Of Tension In Writing
To cement our understanding of tension in writing, here’s an example. It’s one I’ve made up, but it’s based on many similar scenes you may have seen or watched before.
The stone house sat alone on the coast, standing firm against the cold, buffeting wind. Darkness had long since fallen, the moon and stars hidden by cloud. In the gloom beyond the garden gate, a shadow shifted, circling the weathered wooden planks, seeking a way through. There, a broken beam. Not wide enough. Harder it pushes, wood snapping, cracking. The wind died with the sound. Orange light flooded over the sodden grass before the window of the house. A bespectacled face peered out with narrowed eyes and drops the cup she held loosely in her hand.
Hopefully, you could sense the tension building up as that paragraph goes on. And even toward the end, it’s built up further and further, with no end in sight. To help me achieve this I used key details to draw the reader in—it’s dark, cold, windy, isolated. I deliberately left out any detail of the “shifting shadow”. To do so right away gives the reader the answer way too soon. But we get a suggestion that it must be something horrifying when the person in the house drops their mug.
Examples Of Situations With Lots Of Tension
We’ve looked at a few examples of tension in writing above, but I wanted to share with you some examples of situations or scenes that could create tension:
- Dangerous work is involved. A soldier on the front line; a space engineer repairing the outside of a ship. When writing this kind of story or scene, exploring the tiny details of the type of work involved increases tension.
- A deadline is nearing. You’ve got twenty-four hours, or the girl gets it. Deadlines are used in many clever ways. James Barclay used one in Noonshade, where a portal to the realm of dragons is inching open and the heroes must race to close it before hordes of fire-breathing man-eaters invade Balaia.
- An unfortunate meeting occurs. Someone from a character’s past reappears, perhaps an old enemy or lover. Or running into the wrong person at the wrong time.
- An opponent trapped in a closed environment. Stein gives a wonderful example here, which I’ll paraphrase: A lion has escaped its enclosure and chased a woman into a cellar storeroom. The ageing zoo ranger is the only one onsite with a rifle. When he arrives at the scene a younger man offers to take the rifle and the old man gives him it. As the pair are about to descend into the cellar the younger man begins shaking, his handling of the weapon reeking of inexperience. The ranger offers to take it back, and the younger man hands it over. At the head of the cellar stairs, the ranger hears the lion below, but can’t see clearly. Holding the rifle with one hand he takes out a torch. He struggles to balance both the rifle and torch, tries to hold the latter in his mouth, but it’s too big. As he puts the torch down the crazed lion bounds up the cellar steps.
In this example, Stein keeps on increasing the tension, stretching it out. First, the old man hands over the rifle, then the younger man hands it back, then the old ranger struggles to see into the cellar, then struggles using both rifle and torch, until at last the lion leaps. Wouldn’t it be so much more boring if he arrived, looked into the cellar and the lion jumped at him?
Creating Tension Using The Crucible Technique
Coming up with the ideal situation that creates tension in a story can be tough. But there’s a plotting device that you can use called the Crucible that can help you narrow your focus.
In its simplest form, the Crucible plotting device seeks to place two characters in a situation not unlike being locked in a crucible. If you’re unfamiliar with what this is, it’s a ceramic or metal container used for melting metals at extremely high temperatures. In a writing context, it’s a situation in which you place two opposing characters—the protagonist and antagonist—and turn up the heat by introducing a whole load of conflict.
So for example, you could have a neo-nazi locked in an elevator with an Hasidic jew. We have two characters that fundamentally oppose each other, locked in a situation.
Click Here To Learn More About The Crucible
How Do You Build Tension In A Story?
We’ve looked at how to create tension in a story, but how do you build it up so it has maximum impact?
Building tension involves a combination of pacing, conflict, and sensory details to keep readers on the edge of their seats. You could start with a high-stakes scenario that threatens the protagonist. This makes clear what is at stake and how significant it is. Pacing is crucial too. Try using short, choppy sentences during climactic moments to accelerate the action and longer, descriptive passages to build suspense gradually.
You could also introduce obstacles and complications that thwart the protagonist’s goals, creating a sense of unpredictability. Character reactions to these challenges—such as nervous habits, rapid breathing, or inner turmoil—add emotional depth and make the tension palpable. Foreshadowing hints at looming dangers or secrets, keeping readers guessing about future developments.
Incorporate cliffhangers at the end of chapters or scenes to compel readers to continue. This is a technique known as architecural suspense and a very powerful device—one of my favourites.
How To Describe Tension In Writing
So we’ve looked a lot about how to create tension in our stories, but how do we describe these feelings and emotions in a story? For instance, our main character might be feeling a little tightly-wound.
Describing tension in writing involves engaging the reader’s 5 senses and emotions to convey a sense of unease or suspense. Use short, abrupt sentences to create a fast pace, reflecting the characters’ anxiety. For instance, “Her heart pounded. Sweat trickled down her back. Every creak of the floorboard sounded like a gunshot.”
Internal thoughts can reveal a character’s inner turmoil: “What if he found her? She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.”
Physical reactions also heighten tension: “His fists clenched, nails digging into his palms. The room felt suffocating, air thick and stale.”
Descriptive language can help set the mood too: “The oppressive silence hung in the air, broken only by the ticking clock.”
Unresolved conflicts and uncertainty keep readers on edge as well, such as: “She glanced at the door, half-expecting it to burst open. Time was running out.”
These are some quick tips, but they’re super easy to incorporate and can take your descriptions to the next level.
More Guides On Creative Writing
Before I leave you, I wanted to point you in the direction of some other writing guides on creating tension you may appreciate.
A chapter on building tension by Bryan Fry,; published by Washington State UniversityA guide on conflict in literature; Oregon State University
Thanks for reading this guide on how to create tension in writing.
Most nights you can find him up into the wee hours scribbling away or watching the NBA.
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This was an enjoyable read! When I first wrote An Ominous Book, I placed a very tense two chapters in the middle of the story to both move the story forward and to purposely injure the heroes (carrying consequences in later novels). The text was very exciting and fun to write although it required epic amounts of editing to flush out the action to make it nonstop.
A lot of people have told me it was their favorite part of the book. I personally like to create tension by having characters arguing at each other due to personality clashes. It’s something you see in real life all of the time. One thing I notice in a lot of YA novels is the typical geeky teenage male hero trying to conquer the girl he likes. If done well, it’s cute and endearing. If done wrong, it seems awkward and cliché. I’ve heard a lot of writers ask Beta readers to check these things for them to see if romance scenes seem natural or forced.
Reblogged this on Create. Communicate. Connect. and commented:
Raising the stakes – and sustaining the conflict and tension that result – is crucial to storytelling. Reblogging this great post from Richie Billing which gives solid guidance and tips about leveraging tension!
Thank you Mindy! I appreciate that a lot. I’m glad you found it helpful and thank you for sharing! Hopefully others will too!
Thank YOU! You provide great guidance and so many solid tips, it’s a wonderful resource.