If your story is a little bland, spice it up with a dash of conflict/tension!
Let’s go over 8 ways to do that, with examples from awesome stories, and then write our own together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to add conflict/tension to a story.
You can watch the full video here to or scroll down for notes/highlights.
How to Add More Conflict/Tension to a Story
- When outlining/writing/editing your story, you might notice that it feels a little slow or boring in places
- And that’s a perfectly normal thing to happen in early drafts!
- One of the goals of later drafts is to add conflict/tension to the story to spice it up
- Conflict/tension are the fuel of your story, it’s what drives the plot and keeps the reader reading — if it runs out, they might stop reading
- Conflict is generally the obstacles that get in the way of your character getting what they want, and tension is the stress/anticipation that the reader feels when reading it
- Here’s 8 tips for how to increase the conflict/tension in your story, roughly in order from most to least important
#1. Make sure your main character is sympathetic/relatable
- If readers can’t cheer for your main character, it’s going to be hard for them to care what happens to them
- It doesn’t matter how much conflict/tension you have, nothing can save a boring/unlikeable protagonist
- They shouldn’t be perfect, but they shouldn’t be monsters either
- Ex: In the Hunger Games, Katniss could’ve just been chosen to go fight in the tournament, but instead the author made her more sympathetic by having her care for her family, and she took her sister’s place, heightening the tension
#2. Make sure you have at least three levels of conflict
- If your conflict feels like it’s being stretched thin or running out of steam, that might be because you’re focusing on one thing too much
- Ask yourself what conflicts could come before or after the main conflict, and then incorporate those into the story
- Ex: In Stephen King’s 11/22/63, the main conflict is the main character going into the past to kill Lee Harvey Oswald and stop the JFK assassination. But there’s an additional conflict before (his relationship with a woman in the past) and afterward (the ramifications of him changing the past.)
#3. Have a diversity of personalities
- Nothing is more boring than everyone agreeing and generally getting along
- It’s great in real life, but in stories it’s groan inducing
- Make sure that even if your characters have the same goals, they have different ideas of how to get there
- Ex: In Star Wars, both Luke and Han hate the Empire and they fight against it, but Luke is a starry-eyed idealist while Han is a self-focused realist. The tension between the two makes the story much better than if they just agreed on anything, and it heightens the eventual payoff of Han saving Luke.
#4. Be a terrible person to your characters
- Being nice is great in reality; being a psychopath is great in fiction — characters getting what they want is boring, not getting what they want is awesome
- What’s the worst thing that could happen to your character? Do it to them.
- Even when something good happens, make it not quite happen the way they want/expect. Always dangle success away from your characters just out of reach, until the very end of the story
- Ex: This happens all the time in Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. The main character Kvothe has his family killed and becomes an orphan with nothing, but he scraps together a few possessions and puts together a meager living, when he is then beaten up and robbed, so he manages to scrounge his way to a university, where he is immediately publicly whipped for showing off in class and his tuition goes up, so he has to enter an illegal blood-contract just to pay it, and when he finally plays his lute to try and earn some money to pay that back, the strings on the lute break
#5. Spice up the exposition scenes
- Having the occasional scene where a character simply explains something is okay, but you don’t want it to happen too often, or too many times in a row, or else your reader will fall asleep
- “The biggest difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.” People explain things for no reason all the time in real life, but in stories they have to feel immediately relevant to the plot
- The best way to make it feel relevant is by giving the exposition some conflict/tension
- Ex: In Harry Potter, the Diagon Alley scene has a ton of exposition spiced up. Rather than just getting money easily, the trip to Gringotts also has Hagrid pick up a “mysterious package.” Rather than just being told about the Hogwarts houses, Harry learns about them from snobby Draco while trying on robes. Rather than just getting a wand, we learn about his connection with Voldemort.
#6. Add an internal/external conflict
- Most stories are about an external conflict: bad guy comes to town, have to escape from a bad place, need to go on a quest to find the legendary whatever, etc.
- But you can increase the conflict/tension by adding an internal conflict too: the bad guy comes to town… but it’s the main character’s father, they have to escape from a bad place… but they have to choose which sibling to bring with them, they go on a quest to find the legendary whatever… but along the way they discover from people that the legendary thing can cause more damage than whatever they’re fighting against
- Similarly, if your story only has an internal conflict, consider adding an external one
- Ex: In Caroline Kepnes’s You, the main conflict is internal, with the main character wondering how he should pursue a girl he has a crush on, but then the tension heightens when the external conflict is added… of him kidnapping and killing his crush’s boyfriend
#7. Always raise the stakes, never lower them
- You want the tension/conflict in your story to be trending upward until the climax
- If you have a scene where the stakes are lower than a previous one, that will feel awkward to readers
- If your character just saved the world, don’t expect readers to believe your main character is worried about a bully
- Ex: Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One is a textbook example of raising the stakes. Throughout the story, everyone in the world, including Wade the main character, is looking for three hidden keys in a virtual world. For the first one the stakes are low when Wade finds it, then leading into the second one the stakes rise when the evil corporation blows up Wade’s real-life house, then leading into the third one the stakes rise even higher when Wade is captured by the evil corporation and forced into their work prison, then at the climax the stakes are the highest when it seems like the evil corporation is going to get the key for themselves, until all of the gaming world unites and fights against them in a giant battle.
#8. Add a tense subplot that connects to the main plot
- You want to make sure your main plot already has a good amount of conflict/tension before doing this
- But having a juicy subplot can often enhance the main plot by giving you more bad things to throw at the main character, such as: a crumbling relationship, a crush who ignores them, a family secret that’s been lingering in the background, etc.
- Just make sure that the subplot is still connected to the main plot and not disjointed from it
- Ex: In Neal Shusterman’s Unwind, the main story is about three kids running away from being “unwound,” having all of their organs harvested and transplanted into other people. But there is also a side plot of an admiral that the three kids meet, who is going around creepily “collecting” kids. He seems like a bad guy, until it’s revealed later that he was trying to assemble all the recipients of organs from his own son who was unwound, and bring them all together, momentarily bringing his son back to life again.
- You don’t have to do ALL of these in your story, in fact trying to do all of them might be too much
- But if you can incorporate some of them, particularly the early ones, then it will make your story more enjoyable for readers
After that, chat voted that we write a story using some of the eight points about this WikiHow topic: How to be goth.
Here’s what we came up with:
The four of us were standing outside the back entrance to the school, where the cafeteria food deliveries were made and it always smelled like a combination of bleach and baked beans.
Now that the day was over, it was abandoned, just us and the cracked asphalt beneath our black, belted boots.Morgana was dressed in a black corset dress with scarlet ribbons tying up the front, her long dark hair streaked with lines of red Manic Panic hair dye. Edgar wore a black blazer sliced to shreds all over over, his neon-green mohawk so tall he had to duck through doorways. That thing was more glue than hair at this point; it could not only take bullets, it’d ricochet them right back.
And then there was Hawk. His swirly black hair, spiked choker, black lipstick, and pointy goatee awoke something depraved within me. I’d counted all thirty-three piercings on his ears, lips and nose, and I couldn’t wait to taste them for myself.
Hawk looked around, making sure we were alone, then reached into his backpack for a plastic gold chalice and a Ziploc bag filled with dark red blood.
“Are you ready for this, baby bat?” Edgar asked, nodding his mohawk toward the cup.
Morgana put the palm of her leather, fingerless gloves on Hawk’s bare forearm. Seeing her touch him sent a hot wave of jealousy burning through me.
“I don’t know if Vanessa is ready,” she said to him. “She’s just goth in a box.”
Suddenly I felt embarrassed about my own outfit. My dress was just a gradient from gray to black, the one thing I could afford from the Salvation Army on my allowance. My hair was only mostly-dyed black with a few stubborn blonde strands sticking out at the tips. It was my first time doing it, and I had to be quick, but I managed to hide most of them by braiding it into pigtails. Still, I ended up just looking more the Wendy’s mascot than Wednesday Addams like I’d envisioned.
“She’s ready,” Hawk said, moving his arm away from Morgana. He unzipped the bag and poured the thick blood into the chalice. “We all drink it, and she will too.”
Without another word, Hawk handed me the chalice brimming with blood, expecting me to take it. When I’d first started hanging out with them, they’d warned me about this, calling it their Ceremonial Awakening. I’d thought they were just joking, trying to scare me away or something. But now it was in front of me, ready to be choked down.
I wrapped my fingers around the head of the cup, my black painted nails meeting Hawk’s for the briefest moment until he pulled away, leaving me alone with the offering.
Morgana sneered at me. “It doesn’t count if you throw it up, by the way. You gotta keep it down.”
I wanted Hawk to say some words of encouragement after that, but he was silent along with the others. All of their eyes were on me, watching, waiting to see what I do.
So I gave them a show.
“The blood is life!” I yelled, quoting from Dracula, one of Hawk’s favorite books, as I held the chalice high. “And it shall be mine!”
I poured the blood into my mouth from high above, streaming it down like a waterfall of bodily fluids that I lapped up with my tongue. It splashed over my face and chin and neck, spilling down and staining everything it slid over with its cold, fruity touch.
…wait, fruity?
I swallowed down the first gulp of blood, and it was surprisingly sweet. Bringing down the chalice so I could see what was left inside, it was clear and dark pink, like the remnants of raspberry juice.
“What the…?” I asked, staring at the other three. They immediately started bursting into laughter, Morgana holding herself as she doubled over, and Ethan slapping his black skinny jeans.
“You didn’t think we’d actually make you drink blood, did you?” Hawk asked.
My face burned redder than whatever it is I just drank. “Uh, I guess not. No.”
“Where would we even get real blood?” Morgana asked, her black mascara streaking.
“Although I do have to admit,” Hawk said. “The Dracula quote was a nice touch.”
Hearing him say that made it all worth it. I wiped my face as best I could and smiled back, hoping that I didn’t look like too much of a crazy person.
“Knowing your parents,” Edgar said, elbowing Hawk, “they probably wouldn’t even care if you did bring blood in a bag to school.”
Hawk shrugged, and even though he laughed, there was something about it that felt forced.
“Yeah,” he said. “My mom saw me pouring the raspberry juice into the bag this morning, and she didn’t even say a word.”
I can’t help but feel a little bit jealous of Hawk. If my parents caught me putting anything into a Ziploc bag besides a mayonnaise and bologna sandwich for lunch, they would go full inquisition on me. The only way I got to dye my hair was to do it when they were both out of the house, so that they didn’t have a choice but to live with it afterward. Ever since, though, all my showers have to be scheduled and approved by them in advance. Otherwise, I don’t get hot water. Hooray for me.
“I hereby baptize you with your new name,” Hawk announced. “Your old name is dead, and you will henceforth be known as… Victoria Thorn!”
Morgana and Edgar repeated the name, then they clapped for me and for the first time that I can remember I felt like a part of an actual family and not a prisoner of one.
“What the hell are you kids doing back here!” yelled someone from the door to the cafeteria. It was one of the janitors, and he did not look happy to see us. Especially not the puddle of redness all around my feet.
“Meet at the park tomorrow,” Hawk said. “Double ramp area. See ya later, guys!”
With that, all of us sprinted away home, the janitor still yelling from the door, shaking his mop angrily.
For a few minutes, everything felt great. I passed the test, even got to touch Hawk’s fingertips for a sweet second. And now, tomorrow, I’ll be seeing them again. I can’t wait to see what we do next.
But as school got further behind me and home got closer ahead, the dread started to set in. Even though mom and dad wouldn’t be home from work for another two hours, I had a lot of work to do in that short time.
I needed to clean my dress, hide it, and then spend whatever leftover minutes I had listening to some of the music that Hawk sent me the other day. No headphones were allowed at home, so I haven’t been able to check it out yet. I want to tell him what I think of it tomorrow. I know I’ll love it, for sure.
I wonder if there’s a goth love song that I can give him to explain how I feel? I’ll have to do some sneaky, silent research online.
My only other hope for going home is my little project that I have going on in secret. Behind the posters for Care Bears and Veggie Tales that my parents have forced me to have in my room since I was five years old, I’ve been slowly giving the walls a makeover. A little container of black paint that I managed to pick up without them knowing, that I smear into whatever the heck I want. Cool lyrics or quotes like “You don’t know me at all” or “The world is just an illusion.” I get to tear down the posters for just a little while, sit there, and enjoy myself surrounded by things that I actually like.
But as I rounded the corner to my home street, something was off. The first thing I noticed was that there were two cars in the driveway, both mom and dad’s. Sometimes mom comes home early from managing the box factory, but dad was never home before six on the dot. Part of me wanted to run home because there must be some sort of emergency, but another part of me wanted to take it as slow as possible because that emergency might have something to do with me.
I took the middle ground and awkwardly stumbled up to the front door, gently pushing it open since it wasn’t even locked. There was no one in the living room, and I didn’t hear voices or crying. I guess that meant grandma didn’t die or anything?
Slowly, I crept down the hall, looking in each room, my heart pounding as I expected to see mom and dad pop out at any point and start lashing me about my hair, my outfit, and the spilled juice all over me.
But by the time I made it to my door, there was still no sign of them. Confused, I gripped the handle and open it up.
To the most horrifying sight I could possibly imagine.
My mom and dad were both in my room, wearing painters’ outfits, sprinkled with pink flecks all over them. As soon as I stepped in, both of them stopped, put down their rollers, and beamed straight at me.
“Hello there, Vanessa!” Mom said. “You’re just in time to help.”
“You wouldn’t believe these awful things your mother found on the wall behind your sweet posters,” Dad said. “She called me down here, and we’ve both been working for hours to clean up that mess.”
All I can do was stare in shock at the massacre laid before me. My walls, the few small parts of it that had an actual piece of me painted onto it, were now covered in the brightest, most Pepto Bismol-infused vomit pink you can possibly imagine.
“We have an extra outfit for you,” Mom said, holding up a pristine white painter’s smock. “Go put it on. I hope you don’t expect us to do all this work for you!”
That’s when I started to scream.
Be sure to check out the video for the specific ways we used conflict/tension in the story, other ways the story could’ve gone, and a dramatic reading!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso (1, 2)