Shivering with antici...

Stories need tension.

People often talk about how you can't have a story without conflict (which will need to be unpacked in its own post in the future), but sometimes I wonder if what they really mean is that you can't have a story without some sort of tension. We tell stories, firstly, to ask questions, and then to answer them, in due course, once the audience has had a chance to stew in antici...pation. If there are no questions posed, no unknowns for the recipient of our story to ponder over, there's no reason for them to care. So they won't. And they'll leave.

How, then, can you ensure the continued attention of your reader? There are no guarantees, of course, as there are many factors that go into a reader's decisions, but being able to manipulate tension is a great way to keep them engaged and wanting more. The amount and type of tension you'll want to aim for will be dependent on the genre and style you're writing in; think about the difference between rom-coms, which tend to be fairly formulaic and low-stakes, and psychological thrillers, in which high levels of tension are foundational.

There are many ways that tension can be generated, such as obscuring information...