5 Tips for a Riveting Novel: How to Add Suspense and Tension to Your Story

Ever get that feeling that your writing Today, author and designer Derek Murphy shares his advice on how to turn a messy work-in-progress into a polished draft in November:

For several years I’ve helped authors with plotting, including a previous post on 9 steps to build a strong plot and a more recent 24 step chapter outline template. But it’s not enough! Having the right turning points will help keep the momentum in your story tight, but may not hold readers’ attention.

Why do readers get bored or stop reading?

There are several reasons, but the easiest to fix are conflict and tension.

In this article I’m going to suggest some clear and easy guidelines that will help you increase the tension and conflict in your novel.

First, a quick and useful definition of the terms:

Conflict = what DOES happen.

Tension = what COULD happen.

Readers won’t care what happens in your story unless you have sympathy and conflict (readers have to like your characters, and your characters must be oppressed, and the stakes must be real). Conflict is about the challenges, difficulties and problems your characters will face on their quest or goal or adventure.

As a general rule, I like to have three types of conflict in every scene.

External Conflict – nature, the antagonist’s forces, rules and regulations, world limits, etc. These are active or passive forces that prevent the protagonist from easily taking action. Every time you figure out what your character needs to do next, throw some roadblocks in the way.

Internal Conflict – your character’s fears, doubts or insecurities; or their difficult choices. Give them beliefs, opinions or desires that are thwarted and challenged. They shouldn’t dwell on their doubts all the time, but slow scenes especially can be spiced up by poking at the source of conflict and having them feel the weight of their challenges.

“Friendly Fire” – your other main characters that are friends or allies should also be sources of conflict; figure out a way to make them upset. Maybe their opinions or beliefs contrast your protagonist’s. Maybe they get their feelings hurt or your protagonist is forced to betray them, or vice versa. Even if the “good guys” are all in a room discussing plans, it shouldn’t be amicable.

It’s not all fight scenes and bad guys; the slow, moody chapters where your characters reveal vulnerabilities matter also. They can’t be the whole thing — something real must change in every chapter that allows the plot to move forward — but adding in different kinds of conflict to every scene will make your book much more satisfying and keep readers hooked. 

Two more useful rules for narrative suspense: 

1. All conflict is unplanned. 

Something happens. Who, what, where, why, how? The protagonist doesn’t have answers at first, which leads to fear, uncertainty, doubt. She makes a plan to figure / answer/ discover some of these grey areas. She forms a goal, but is nervous and reflects on story questions. How will I do this, what if this happens, what’s the worst that could happen (and it should be bad). 

Then show her worst fears being realized.

Show it HAPPENING. 

Don’t let her just do the thing easily, and don’t let the thing happen “off-stage” and be reported back. Let the worst thing happen, make it visceral.

Smart protagonists rarely plan real conflict. They plan to avoid conflict. Conflict resists their best efforts. The plan goes wrong because something or someone opposes the plan, and resists her inquiry, which creates conflict. 

As soon as she figures out one thing, something else happens, and it’s a surprise.

Don’t have your characters ask leading question or guess the surprise you’re going to reveal much later. It won’t be a twist or surprise unless it’s unexpected: not something the character has already wondered about. It has to never cross their mind. You can plant enough subtle clues to make it plausible, but don’t make it expected.

2. Dialogue is the enemy of tension.

Tension is created by the resistance of confrontation. As soon as two players get in a room together and discuss their thoughts and feelings with an honest conversation, all the tension (mystery) is gone. You need characters to constantly get interrupted, misunderstood, or make snap judgements and storm out of the room (conflict) and leave your main character to wonder about what’s really going on (tension).

So never let a conversation finish. Never give out the full truth or circumstances, at least until much later in the book. By the midpoint they may know the enemy, or at least guess enough to take action. But there should still be a twist or two revealed during or after the final battle, and twists are caused by incomplete information and the shock of a sudden reveal.

You need to string the bow, and keep pulling it tighter and tighter, without releasing it. The longer you’ve built up the tension, the more impact it will have when you release it. Don’t go too long without your characters musing on the main story questions. The stakes should be pressing enough that the characters can’t simply forget about them for several chapters or be distracted by trivial things. But also don’t give them much time to sit around thinking; for the first half of the book they should be reacting to conflict, for the second half they should be taking action based on incomplete information that puts them into greater conflict (so they can feel guilty about it).

“What happens” is the story, but “why it matters” is the beating heart of your novel that will keep readers turning pages until they get to the satisfying conclusion.

If these tips are useful, make sure to download my 24-chapter novel outline, or my checklist of crucial things you need in every scene, so you hit your NaNoWriMo word counts without getting stuck.

Derek Murphy travels full-time writing fiction and nonfiction, and dreams of castles, cabins, cats and coffee. He hopes to someday build a wilderness commune of creative geniuses in the Pacific Northwest, and in the meantime occasionally blogs at www.creativindie.com.

Top photo by João Silas on Unsplash.