In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Angela Ackerman says that prompting your reader to ask questions about your story and characters is the key to building tension.
Tension is different from conflict, she says. “Conflict is a force that stands between your characters and what they want most,” Ackerman explains. “Tension is the feeling of anticipation surrounding what will happen next.” When readers aren’t sure what will happen next – and are invested in the outcome – you’ve created narrative tension.
We can create that curiosity by building scenes that prompt questions. For example, if your protagonist has a secret, the threat of that secret being revealed creates tension. Of course, the reader has to know the secret and you need to write a scenario in which the secret could plausibly be revealed. “Strong tension follows a pattern of pull-and-release—meaning, you let the tension build until it reaches its peak then resolve it by answering some of those unspoken questions,” Ackerman explains.
Foreshadowing is another avenue for creating tension. Hinting at trouble for your protagonist creates more questions in your readers’ minds. Will things go bad for your protagonist? In what way? What new problems will that cause? “A new situation, threat, or obstacle appears, and provided something’s at stake, an unasked question hangs in the air: What comes next?” Ackerman says.
Tension can arise from all kinds of conflict, internal and external. The conflict might come from a lack of knowledge or inability to predict an outcome. When some element is unknown, you can exploit your protagonist’s – and your reader’s – ignorance to create tension, Ackerman writes.
