Tension is a core element of any great story and learning how to harness it in your writing is a crucial skill that you must have. Here are some of the top tricks you can use to add excitement and high stakes to your narrative in 2023.
Whether you are writing for a book, film, TV, video games, or anything else, your goal will be to keep an audience enthralled in your narrative. Doing this is no easy feat, but along with a great plot idea, original characters, and clever dialogue, adding meaningful tension to a story will give your work a good chance of resonating with others.
But what does it mean to add tension, and what are the best and most subtle ways of approaching this task? We’re going to look at some techniques that some of the biggest franchises and best-selling books have adopted, and how you can use them in your own stories and writing.
Tips for adding tension to a story
Hook your audience
Let’s start with the obvious, the beginning of any story is your first chance at reeling in an audience and getting them to buy into whatever journey or adventure you have planned for your main characters. To goal in the opening of your story should be to hook your audience.
You will want to put together an attention-grabbing sequence of events that intrigues viewers about the characters but also about their potential development and what the overall plot could include. The goal here is to get viewers to relate to a situation and put themselves in the character’s shoes, so they emotionally invest in what happens to them.
This opening hook should connect with, and be relevant to, the rest of the story and it should also be a catalyst or an important point in your character’s journeys. To write a hook that will add tension to your story, consider the characters you want an audience to root for and how to draw an empathetic reaction. Techniques will also vary depending on your genre, so be sure to study other stories for great approaches in your specific type of narrative.
Vary your pacing
Changing the pacing and tempo of your characters’ actions and environment is another way to get across the tension in a situation. From slight facial expressions and body movements to rapid dialogue and action sequences, what you describe can be indicative of how tense a character might be.
Slower movements and drawn-out dialogue are usually a sign that the setting is more relaxed and that there is less tension, whereas quick-time conversations and snappy arguments are often featured during heated moments. In writing, using short and sharp sentences is the preferred technique for getting tension across.
When trying to command the pacing of your own story it is important to slowly build tension along with the stakes of a moment. Don’t unnecessarily add high-tension moments where they are not really needed. This is another element that can be genre specific but by following the general principles you should be able to pace your story effectively.
Create conflict
We see the word “conflict” and often think of a spectacular action sequence or a dramatic duel of sorts when in reality, conflict can be as simple as a disagreement on where to go eat between two characters. Anything that can provoke an element of tension or uncertainty about how things will pan out is a vehicle for great storytelling and putting together exhilarating dramatic moments.
Of course, if you want to include a grand fighting scene between two rival characters, there is no problem with that either. But the conflict you create should be rational and believable to your viewers. If you try to create over-the-top tension for a conflict that isn’t worth the effort, it can take an audience out of a story.
Try to put yourself in the position of your character and imagine exactly how they should feel when something doesn’t go their way, they are faced with obstacles when they are questioned by others or any other type of tension-evoking scenario. Even in comedy writing or less dramatic genres, having your characters react, in a consistent manner with their personality, is key to writing an intense conflict.
Raise the stakes
What is a loss without consequences? If your character can immediately try again, does it matter if they succeed or fail? Many great stories are often centered around some grand event that only takes place every year or so, giving your heroes one opportunity to get things right. Writing situations where there are only brief windows for success is a way to stress high stakes for your characters.
While this is most evident in war stories, where the consequence is death, the same is true for sporting events, competitions, job interviews, and a lot more. In many industries, you only have one first impression and that could determine your chances of becoming a star or falling to the wayside, in place of someone fresh and filled with potential.
A key to raising the stakes and adding tension for your character is to highlight, and keep present in readers’ minds, what the consequences of failure will bring. Whether it is the extinction of our species and destruction of our planet, or a teenager failing to get the girl, in your character’s eyes, it needs to be the most important thing to them at that time. The consequences will vary drastically depending on your story, but it would help to be something soul-crushing for your protagonist, that an audience can relate to.
Foreshadow tense sequences
Another way to add tension to a story is to drop hints and clues about what might come for your character later down the line. There are many approaches you can take when foreshadowing events but we’re going to focus on some of the most common practices that apply to all genres.
Making use of symbolism to warn the characters and audience that the story is going to take a tense twist is one of the classic options. Whether you have harsh weather, like a lightning storm, moving into the final act of Shakespeare’s King Lear, or something as small as a character noticing a black cat in The Matrix. There are plenty of universally known symbols that can indicate danger or tension approaching.
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Tactical misdirection and repetition of phrases or symbols in your characters’ environment can help as well. Also, the use of dramatic irony, when readers know something the character has yet to discover, is another great way of foreshadowing a tense moment. Readers will be looking forward, waiting to see exactly how a character will react and they will have an added layer of context going into a revealing moment that simply adds to the overall tension.
These hints can be subtle or blatantly obvious, it all comes down to your preferred style. But, readers tend to enjoy it when, what seems like, a throwaway line seems to tie in with everything at the end. This layered storytelling will usually elicit a positive reaction toward your writing skills, as it suggests the story was well thought out and polished before publishing.