In last week’s post, I wrote about how building tension brings dimension to your character development and interactions. This is critical when it comes to engaging your readers.
We readers fall in love with novels because we like and care about the characters the author has created. That doesn’t mean that the characters necessarily have to be nice. That’s not what draws us in. We like multi-dimensional characters who experience conflict because of internal struggles. That’s something we can relate to. Now put those characters into tense, difficult situations and we suddenly need to know what happens.
Can you say page turner?
We tend to think of conflict as confrontation, but creating conflict in a book boils down to making sure that life isn’t easy for your protagonist. Your main character must experience challenge after challenge. Not little challenges. Serious challenges with serious consequences. (Could that explain why the Harry Potter series became such a runaway hit as much with kids as with adults?) By the end of your novel, overcoming all these challenges changes your protagonist and creates your character arc as well as your narrative arc.
Tension in fiction is critical. So when you’re developing your characters and plotting out your novel, don’t forget your secret sauce. Think in terms of inner and outer conflict.
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