We all want to make our writing interesting, right? Interesting writing needs a source of interest, to hold the reader's... interest. Without that, it's uninteresting. Very much like this paragraph!
There are many sources of interest: characters, setting, and plot mostly. In genre fiction, interest might take forms like, "Hey, that's a cool sword," or "Ooooh, aliens!" Interest can come from great prose and strong images, or from the ideas and themes. I'm not going to talk about any of that stuff here.
Tension
I'm going to talk about tension, which is a rather interesting source of interest. Tension is something slightly uneasy or unsettling that creates interest and reader engagement. Sometimes this is obvious conflict that keeps your reader turning pages until the conflict is resolved, or sometimes it's more subtle, like a character's inner conflict, a tense, eerie atmosphere, or an intellectual tension created by uncomfortable ideas. Whatever the source, if your story goes very long without tension, it falls flat and you lose the reader's interest. But tension, unlike other interest, is not entirely pleasant, and if you have too much of it, or the wrong type, or it comes at the wrong time, you can also lose your readers. (Hence: "Walking the tightrope", the title of this post.)
You're probably already thinking about tension between characters in the story. That's the obvious kind: some kind of conflicting goals between two or more characters. Our hero drops into a den of villains and must swashbuckle their way out. The protagonist's coworker is angling for the same promotion they're after. One character is trying to hide information from another during dramatic dialog. Or it could be conflict between a character and the environment: defusing that ticking bomb, surviving another night on the icy cliff, not knowing if help is on the way.
Information-Based Tension
I'm sure I could write a blog post about that kind of conflict-based tension, but probably we all understand it pretty well already, even if we haven't attached the label "tension" to it. I want to talk about tension not within the story, but between the story and the reader. Or you could think about this—and I suggest you do—as tension between the author and the reader. This kind of tension almost always involves some kind of information asymmetry—the reader knows something characters in the story do not, or conversely the characters know something the reader does not.
This type of tension, specifically the reader lacking information, is essential to the thriller and mystery genres, and a key component of many other genres. But it's at play in every story in every genre, to a greater or lesser extent, whether the author thought about it explicitly or not. In some modern literary fiction, it seems like the entire point of the game is to withhold fundamental information about things like basic plot elements and character motivation—even the protagonist's motivation—from the reader, and then figuring out what the heck the story is even about is what keeps readers reading. (Hey, don't look at me like that; some of us are into that sort of thing.)
But it doesn't have to be extreme. A smaller dose can add interest to any story. Imagine you've done a great job developing the character and backstory of your protagonist. Everything the character does is well-supported by that characterization, and the reader is nodding along all the way with every action and decision. But what if the character then does something unexpected? That's tension between the reader and the story. The reader doesn't understand the character as well as they thought they did, and now they're interested in the character again. Or maybe in your straight fiction story, all of a sudden something that seems supernatural happens, something surreal. Maybe there's a main character—the protagonist even—that is steadfastly mysterious to the reader in certain ways, with an unexplained backstory, ambiguous capabilities (or "powers" if working in genre fiction), complex or unclear motivations. There's definitely a "less is more" effect here that can pique the reader's interest.
First Build Trust with a Strong Foundation
But be careful, tension is a tightrope, remember? If the reader doesn't trust the author, they might just think this is bad writing. If you're posting your work for critique, there's a good chance you'll get comments about it from reviewers who say it's out of character, unbelievable, confusing, or something along those lines. This is the nature of critique, to distrust the author. But normal readers might not be so quick to jump to that conclusion, particularly if your writing is otherwise strong and confident, so that you've given them reason to trust you. Maybe you're a famous author, and readers trust you already, but if you're reading this blog post, then probably you need your writing to reach people who have never heard of you and have no reason to trust you. So before you pull something risky with this kind of tension, make sure the foundations of your writing are bulletproof: spelling, punctuation, grammar, prose, dialog. Only when those are solid can you start to take bigger risks with reader-vs-story tension (which is, again, also reader-vs-author tension).
Dramatic Irony
Mostly above I've talked about tension where the reader lacks information, but the opposite, where the reader knows more than the characters, is so important it has a name: dramatic irony. In Romeo and Juliet, we know Juliet is not really dead, but Romeo believes she is, and therefore kills himself. What would that scene be without the reader knowing the truth? Well it would still be pretty good, but there's a reason Shakespeare is famous, and it's not for writing "pretty good" scenes. Or imagine the story shows a conversation between a woman and her friend, in which the woman says she thinks diamonds are overpriced and gaudy and thinks the tradition of engagement rings is stupid and anachronistic. And then next we see the protagonist spending his life savings on a diamond engagement ring for her. Or, we know that satchel contains a vial of the Unobtainium that would solve all the protagonist's problems, but she doesn't, and she leaves it behind.
Again, don't overuse dramatic irony, because unlike some subtler sorts of tension, this one is obvious and in-your-face: your reader knows you're doing this to get a rise out of them. As will all tension, it's a tightrope. But it's another tool you can use to add color and drama to your story, in moderated doses. It can increase the impact of otherwise mundane parts of the story.
Summary
Once your fundamentals are good, start thinking about reader-vs-story tension. Keep in mind where less might be more in how deeply you explain your characters and their motivations, and use this sparingly—after gaining the reader's trust.
In the end, I can't tell you how to walk the tightrope; this kind of thing takes practice. So go practice! Put some reader-vs-story tension in your next story. Resist the urge to over-explain, over-describe, and fully justify every action by every character. And remember, not every critique comment you get complaining about ambiguous character motivation or missing backstory is one you need to act on.
Splash image by Danilo Batista via Unsplash