Crafting tension, suspense, and how we either ratchet up or release it, is probably my favourite thing about writing a story. It's the undercurrent of uncertainty, the magnetic pull that keeps us engaged, anxious, and eager for what comes next.
I won’t pretend I’m a master at this, but I’m a good student of it! So: this is the collected set of notes I’ve gathered around conflict and tension over the last little while.
There are three types of conflict
In The Story Grid, Shawn Coyne outlines that there are three types of conflict a character can experience. All three types of conflict are important in a story for driving the plot forward:
Inner conflict —1 happens inside your protagonists mind, alone or with other characters present that they might be attempting to hide their inner conflict from, and helps to humanise them and make them relatable.
Inter-personal conflict — happens in dialogue and body language in scenes with other characters, creating friction, intrigue, and perhaps even forcing your protagonist to reconsider their beliefs/approaches/goals.
Extra-personal conflict — happens in action and dialogue as your protagonist clashes with forces beyond their immediate circle.
Might be societal — they stand against societal norms, laws, or expectations, and have the threat of ostracisation, whether from society as a whole or from their family or found family.
Might be verses nature — they might struggle against a natural disaster like a hurricane, flood, or the worst winter of all time, and the indifference and unpredictability of nature adds to the tension.
Might be verses a ‘monster’ — they might be trying to overcome a monster of supernatural origins, and here unpredictability is also adding to the tension, but also the monster is usually an allegory for a societal norm (so play into that, too).
How conflict drives the plot
Gustav Freytag, a 19th-century German playwright and novelist, dissected the five-part structure of classical drama, and one of the most vital parts of his structure is the rising action, where tension builds, and the story’s conflict takes shape.
According to Coyne, there are two techniques that escalate the rising action. If we accept that rising action builds the conflict, then these are conflict building techniques, and as we move through the three conflict types we can alternate these techniques to create even more tension.
Unexpected character action — a character behaves in a way that surprises the reader AND other characters.
Unexpected revelation — crucial information is revealed that changes the understanding of the story or a character.
Character choices that drive conflict
When it comes to character action of any kind, you can also ramp up the tension in the way you present options to them.
Torn between 2 mutually exclusive good choices — offer them two things they want really badly, but choosing one means giving up the other forever.
Torn between the best of 2 bad choices — offer them two equally terrible options, where they’ve having to really assess which one is going to do the least damage.
Plot devices that drive conflict
Professor Jennifer Lynne Barnes studies theory of mind in fiction, and based on her work, we can extrapolate that there are two main ways to drive conflict with plot devices:
Things in opposition — diverse beliefs/worldviews, diverse desires/objectives, betrayal, a ticking clock.
Things that are hidden — not everyone has access to the same knowledge/information, hidden emotion, secrets and lies, suppressed memory/amnesia, unreliable narrator, false identity, false victory.
Change — anything unsettling is going to drive conflict: a new setting/location with new challenges, a change in alliances, time jump, reversal of fortune.
Betrayal, specifically
I’m not going to deep-dive into all of those, but betrayal is an interesting conflict plot device for me, because it can be betrayal of another character (inter-personal conflict) or it can be a self-betrayal (inner conflict).
Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of things that motivate betrayal:
Resources — either greed, need, or loss aversion (and the resource can be money, power, building materials, influence, seeds/food, water, dragons)
Ideology — siding with a long-held belief or misplaced loyalty over something/someone else, even if it’s the wrong choice (the ideology is not necessarily always bad. It might be a quest for the truth, for example, that leads to putting a whole lot of people in danger).
Compromise/Blackmail — forced/trapped into a betrayal in order to protect or safeguard something/someone.
Ego — self-importance, arrogance, revenge for a wounded ego, or a belief that they can get away with it. I’d also put a romantic affair as betrayal in this category.
Please no one come at me for these em-dashes, they are the best punctuation mark for this form of writing. I will die on this hill!