Three Ways to Increase Tension in Your Story

Tension is the thing that keeps your reader reading. Conflict can help build tension, but there are other ways to do so as well. Here are just a few.

Raise the Stakes to Increase Tension

Ugh! I remember hearing this phrase as a beginning writer and being befuddled. What are stakes? How do you raise them? 

Easy peasy. Just think of it like this. Stakes are what your character has to lose. That’s all.

Your main character should always have a type of death at stake. I can be physical death, psychological, professional, etc. They need to be risking more than a hangnail. 

In order to get to this level, maybe we find out that the aliens attacking New York City have kidnapped the MC’s little sister. That makes it personal. That raises the stakes. 

If your heroine’s best friend is joining the army, and she then realizes that she is in love with him, that raises the stakes.

Make the story more personal and more complex. Make the possibility of ‘death’ more imminent. Raise the stakes.

Add Suspense to Increase Tension

Suspense is essentially a series of unanswered questions with a type of death at stake.

You can build tension in your story by layering in unanswered questions. Please be sure to answer those questions by the end of the story. We don’t need another ‘Lost’. 

As long as those questions have answers, have at it. Pile them one after the other.

Have you ever watched a soap opera? John is killed, but maybe not. Mary is pregnant, and maybe with John’s baby. Maybe not. John comes back from the dead. Or is it his long-lost twin brother? 

Sure, the plot lines get a bit cheesy and repetitive, but people keep coming back to find out the answers. It’s the unanswered questions that do it.

The suspense reaches maximum tension when those questions have a death stake in the balance. Each possible answer to the story question should have the ability to change everything forever.

Use Cliffhangers to Increase Tension

“Cliffhangers are one of the best suspense techniques you have”. -James Scott Bell, Conflict and Suspense 

How do you build a cliffhanger into a story? Easy, have something bad happen to your character. Even the threat of something bad can work. 

Do it like this: bad thing happens, end the chapter. Or, the characters find out that something bad might happen, and end the chapter. 

After the chapter ends, you have the option of switching the viewpoint character and letting the tension linger for a while.

Build in those cliffhangers. Just make sure to vary the type of cliffhanger and the intensity. You don’t want to make your reader feel manipulated (although we are manipulating them – they just shouldn’t be able to figure out how). Also, please clear up all of those cliffhangers by the end of the story. Don’t leave your reader hanging. Just keep them turning pages.

This should be plenty to get you started, and if you use only these techniques for your whole writing career, you’ll be able to keep your readers reading until they can’t read anymore.

Happy Writing!

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