Feeling Tense? How to Create Successful Conflict

One of the most important elements of a story that keeps your reader's attention is tension. If things for the characters are hunky dory all the time, most readers will begin to get bored. We all experience conflict and contention in our own lives, and we love to read about the tension in the lives of others and see how they resolve that tension. But if there is no tension, nothing keeping the reader hanging on every word to see what will happen next, they will move onto something else - like another book. 

So how do you create tension, and how do you maintain it? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Don't be afraid to let your protagonist struggle or suffer. Let the readers feel their pain, feel the conflict. The more they empathize with the struggle, the more they will rejoice for the victory. 
2. Let your character relationships be complicated - let them disagree, or have negative emotions toward each other. No relationship in real life is perfect and positive all the time, so why should it be that way in your writing?
3. Don't be afraid to let conflict linger. Problems do not arise one and a time and neatly solve themselves before another issue comes along. And not all conflicts are the same level of severity. Don't be afraid to let conflicts overlap, varying the level of tension caused by each conflict.

Yes, conflict and tension make us uncomfortable, but that's what keeps your characters real and relatable. Plus, a little conflict in the journey makes the joyous resolution so much more satisfying.