How to Build Narrative Tension
I’ve talked a lot about tension recently on Project Published. And there’s a reason. Narrative tension is what compels us as readers. It’s what keeps us turning pages.
It’s the one thing that should be present, in one form or another, on every page.
But building narrative tension comes down to more than crafting a string of random scenes with tense emotions or internal struggles.
It’s about escalating the emotionality until it reaches a peak in the climax.
That task can seem a little daunting, though. After all, sometimes it’s hard enough to come up with one layer of tension.
Sometimes it’s even a pretty intense layer: “The hero’s life is already at stake,” you may be thinking, “what more am I supposed to do?”
In this post, I’m going to discuss 6 different ways to continue building narrative tension throughout your entire novel. I’ll be drawing examples from the recent movie, Air. I saw it this past weekend with Keith (my husband), and, let me just say, it was a masterclass in how to build tension.
Let’s talk about how and why.
But first, let’s get your story set up for success.
3 Steps to Establish Narrative Tension
Steps 1 & 2: Establish the Desire and Motivation
The first thing you need to do in order to create juicy tension in your story is to give your protagonist a clear desire and compelling motivation behind that desire.
In Air, Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) is the basketball talent scout for Nike. When the story begins, he is trying to help figure out how to allocate Nike’s yearly budget for their basketball shoe division between rookie NBA players. Shortly into the story, he decides that what he wants, more than anything, is to make Michael Jordan their spokesperson. He wants this so badly that he decides to try and convince everyone to spend their entire budget on just Jordan. An unheard of precedent at that time.
Boom. There’s a desire.
But why is it important to him?
Because he’s the basketball guru. This is the unofficial title he’s been given, but people are starting to doubt whether or not he can actually live up to it. After all, Nike’s basketball shoe division is on the brink of being shut down. He hasn’t landed a particularly good spokesperson in a long time. And Sonny believes in Michael Jordan. He believes he is a generational talent. He believes he’s worth whatever it takes to land him.
And boom again. Suddenly, Sonny has something to prove. Something to live up to.
Once the desire and motivation are established, the next thing to make clear are the overall sweeping stakes at risk. What happens if the desire is not achieved. In this case:
What happens if Sonny doesn’t land a solid spokesperson?
Step 3: Establish the Stakes
Stakes are another widely discussed plot element. For good reason. Why should we care about whether or not a protagonist gets what they want if there are no consequences at stake?
Sure, once we get to know a character, we might like them and relate to them enough that we want them to achieve their goals for the sake of it. Just because we are invested in their ultimate success. This is good. In fact, I would argue that it’s crucial.
But in the beginning of your story, it’s not good enough.
We don’t know your character yet. So how do we feel that tension right away—before we get to understand what a wonderful/unique/interesting/misunderstood character we’re dealing with?
The fastest way is by establishing stakes.
Early on in Air, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike, pulls Sonny into his office to discuss their goal of finding a spokesperson for the basketball shoe division. In that interaction, it is made extremely clear in an extremely short amount of time that if Sonny fails to get this done, there’s a good chance the entire division will be shut down. Not only Sonny, but dozens of others will lose their jobs.
Okay. So we’ve set things up. We know who the protagonist is, what they want, why they want it, and what will happen if they fail to get it.
Now what? Is that enough tension to carry the story all the way through to the end?
Nope.
There’s a reason you’ve seen story diagrams that look like this (see graph on the right).
This is because the idea is to continue building tension all the way through until the climax. It’s what keeps a reader on the edge of their seat. It’s what brings surprise and emotion to the journey.
But how do you do it?
Let’s go over 6 different ways to continue layering new tension. To keep that narrative tension building until the very end. With each method, I’m going to highlight an example from Air that utilized it well.
So be aware, there will be spoilers ahead.
1A | Add Narrative Tension with Plans That Go Wrong
On the way to the larger goal, there will inevitably be smaller plans/goals. These are necessary mile markers that show that progress is happening in your story.
BUT, all of these plans can’t all go perfectly smoothly. What’s interesting about that? In fact, sometimes these plans will go awry, and that will mean added consequences, added time, or added obstacles on the way to your protagonist’s larger desire.
For example:
Sonny tries to set up a meeting with Michael Jordan and his parents so that Nike can make their bid. He talks to Jordan’s agent, David Falk. But Falk blocks the meeting. He informs Sonny that Michael Jordan wants to partner with Adidas, with Converse as a second choice. He’s not even willing to meet with Nike.
This stumbling block to Sonny’s ultimate desire builds on the tension already established. And we’re left wondering how in the world Sonny is going to overcome this obstacle.
As a result, we’ll feel tension as we wonder whether or not Sonny will be able to achieve his goal.
Or, possibly, in whether he’ll undertake unethical means to get there…
1B | Add Narrative Tension with Plans That Go Right (But Result in Negative Consequences)
…which is exactly what Sonny does. He comes up with another, arguably unethical plan to present Nike’s bid to Michael Jordan: he’ll fly out to North Carolina and make an appeal directly to Jordan’s parents.
Air builds the tension leading up to this plan in a straightforward, clever way. One that’s easily applicable to any story.
In essence, it establishes why the plan is so horrendously bad. And it does so over and over again.
Before the plan goes down, Sonny presents it to a colleague.
The colleague explains to Sonny why it would be a terrible idea. You never go around the agent, he says. You’re asking for trouble, he says.
So Sonny asks someone else, and receives the same response. It would be career suicide, he’s told. The agent would take his revenge.
And yet, while we as the audience are slowly feeling the tension build, we watch as Sonny refuses to back down from his terrible plan. We watch as he asks one more person.
And we watch as, once again, the stakes are reiterated for what would likely happen if Sonny went through with this reckless plan. Nike would be blacklisted, Sonny.
Through each of these interactions, the tension continues to build.
And then, what happens?
He goes through with the plan.
And this time, his plan works. He is able to meet with Jordan’s parents and say his peace. He’s not blocked. He doesn’t have to come up with a different strategy.
But we know by now that a smooth plan is uninteresting. There’s no real tension in a plan that goes well, right?
Wrong.
Sometimes plans go right in the moment—but they result in negative consequences.
In this case, Sonny successfully carries out his plan and flies home. It’s only once he’s back in the office that he receives a very agitated phone call from Michael Jordan’s agent, David Falk. Falk is angry. Very. Angry. He proceeds to threaten Sonny’s livelihood, health, career, and anything else he can think of in the moment.
But the consequences don’t end there. Sonny is then called to his boss’s office, where Philip Knight berates him, condemning the stupidity and recklessness of his actions.
All of these interactions further build the narrative tension. Was it worth it? Will he actually be able to achieve his desire?
We don’t know. But we do feel that steep incline, propelling us toward the climax. The tension is building, investing us more as the story goes.
1C | Add Narrative Tension with Plans that Stumble
Let’s return to plans for a moment.
We discussed when plans go wrong. And we discussed when plans go right, but result in negative consequences.
What about when plans go right…for the most part?
In preparation for their big meeting with the Jordans, Sonny and his colleagues go over every step of their pitch meeting plan. They decide where the meeting will be held, who will be there, what will be said, etc.
But once again, smooth plans make for uninteresting (and certainly un-tense) stories.
So what about a plan that stumbles?
That’s exactly the next tension-building tool Air utilizes.
In their meeting with the Jordans, someone important shows up late, the CEO stumbles over his words, and the Jordans seem disinterested in the video the department has prepared.
With each of these, we feel a little spike in tension, and, even more importantly, we get to see the resourcefulness as each character overcomes their stumble and gets back on track.
These are important moments that help us to better understand the heroes in a story: who they are, how they handle adversity, and what they’re willing to do in order to achieve their desire.
2 | Add Narrative Tension with a Ticking Clock
The truth is, Sonny’s plan was reckless and inconsiderate—but it worked. The Jordans officially agree to meet with Nike and hear their pitch.
But Nike only has 3 days to get ready.
And suddenly we have one of the most widely used and effective tension-builders: the ticking clock.
Ticking clocks are a classic tension-builder for a reason. They work. We can all relate to time pressure. Personally, it’s one of my most common reoccurring dreams. I frequently dream that I need to leave for an important event—NOW. The problem is, I’m still in my pajamas, with unbrushed hair and stinky breath. I have minutes to get ready to look my best. It’s stressful. And it never fails to make me tense, even when I’m safely dreaming in my bed.
Is there a moment in your story where you can add a ticking clock? It might be for a single scene, or it might stretch the entirety of your novel.
3 | Add Narrative Tension Through Side Characters’ Emotional Stakes
Once the big-picture stakes are introduced in your story, the last thing we want is for the tension to flatten out. But we don’t always have to go wider in order to add tension. It’s not always about adding new wrinkles, threats, or points of outside pressure.
Sometimes it’s about going deeper. Emotionally.
One meaningful way to do this is by adding dimension to side characters. Ask yourself: what emotional stakes does character X have in the big-picture problem? Why would it be upsetting on an emotional level for things to go sideways for them?
For example:
While Sonny is preparing for the big pitch meeting, he has a conversation with marketing VP, Rob Strasser.
In this conversation, Strasser reveals that he is divorced, and part of the settlement dictates that he can only see his young daughter once a week when they meet at the park.
He also reveals that one of the reasons his daughter looks forward to this meeting is because he always brings her a new pair of Nike shoes. He says that if things go wrong and Nike closes the basketball shoe division, resulting in the loss of his job, he would start buying shoes so that he could continue to bring them to his daughter. It’s a part of their relationship he cherishes.
This moment adds depth to Strasser by giving us an insight into his backstory and personal stakes.
And it builds on the tension by allowing Sonny to see that his actions don’t just affect faceless people, they have real consequences for the friends he cares for.
4 | Add Narrative Tension with an Unexpected Wrinkle
Sometimes building narrative tension happens in small moments.
It might single line of dialogue that intuitively makes us feel more uneasy. It might be the reveal of a detail we hadn’t even considered up until that point.
For example, as Sonny and Rob are getting ready for their pitch with the Jordans, they have another conversation. They’re wondering what would happen if they fail and the division gets shut down.
In this moment, Sonny points out that Rob would find another job with no problem. His skills are obvious and marketable. But Sonny is a high school basketball talent scout. He realizes that his unique skillset is difficult to market, and might translate into difficulty landing a new job.
This simple added wrinkle eliminates an argument that we, as a viewer, might have been using to try and reassure ourselves. Before now, we may have been thinking, “It’s okay. Sure, people lose their jobs sometimes. But they find a new one and move on.”
But not necessarily Sonny. The consequences of failing to achieve his desire might be even further reaching than he first realized.
How can you make the potential consequences for your protagonist even worse than they first believed? What’s an added wrinkle that will extend the reach of the big-picture stakes, should the protagonist fail?
5 | Add Narrative Tension with Emotional Growth
Stories are about transformation. Transformation gives meaning to seemingly mundane things. And—
It builds tension.
In fact, it’s an excellent way to keep building the tension even after the main story conflict has ended.
It’s an excellent way to keep things interesting in that time between a big scene of action/conflict and the final resolution of the story. The in-between before we find out whether or not our hero has achieved their desire.
For example:
After Nike’s meeting with the Jordan’s, Sonny takes a moment to survey the people working around him in the office. The entire basketball shoe division is under threat of being eliminated, and it’s his fault. At the beginning of his journey, before his emotional growth, he didn’t care. He was willing to be reckless with the people around him. He was an established gambler. He didn’t take into consideration what was at stake because sometimes, he figured, life was worth the gamble.
But at this point in the story, he has learned that other people matter. That he doesn’t always understand what he’s putting at risk. That sometimes the full picture is out of his view.
It’s a small moment, but this insight into Sonny’s emotional growth does a good job of stretching that tension to the very end.
All we see is Sonny looking around the office at people he hadn’t noticed before. But we understand how much he wants his desire now, not just for himself, but for the people he unknowingly put at risk.
How can you add a small moment of emotional growth somewhere in your story? How can you use this to both highlight the transformation that has occurred for your hero, as well as to stretch the tension further?
Bonus: Regular Reminders of the Big-Picture Stakes
Lastly, I wanted to take a moment to stress the importance of regularly reminding readers of what’s at stake.
This is the most basic way to keep the narrative tension going. The other methods outlined above will help to build on the established tension, but regularly reminding your reader of what will happen if your protagonist fails is also necessary.
In Air, we don’t forget for a single moment that the basketball shoe division is under threat. Even as Sonny undertakes other, smaller goals. Even as we get to know the side characters. Even as his character arc pushes forward.
As another example, in Star Wars, we’re never given the opportunity to forget that Darth Vader is a problem for the Rebels. That big-picture threat is consistently brought to the foreground.
Regular reminders keep the ultimate big-picture story stakes top of mind, and stretch that tension through to the end.
