Conflict Part 3

I want to conclude my conflict mini-series on micro-tension. What is micro-tension? It's the trail of bead crumbs that your readers follow. It's the fish hook that you created that pulls them along the story. If you've done it well, the reader won't even know it.

Micro-tension is a combination of a few different things. It could be the change in tone and pace that signals the reader that something is about to happen. They'll want to know what. 

It's the unanswered questions that litter the end of your paragraphs, scenes and chapters. Your readers will want to know the answers. 

Micro-tension, in other words, is curiosity and desire. You want to leave your readers in a state of needing to know more. If done well, micro-tension will make your story a page-turner.

Here's a small example taken from one of my stories:

I looked at the passenger manifest, twice. Being a sea-faring man, I had my share of superstition. While this didn’t meet any known superstitions I could think of, the fact that Mr. Abernathy was listed on my passenger manifest left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. And that was enough to salt my drinking water. 

If I break this down, there are a couple instances found within the paragraph that I would consider examples of micro-tension. Here it is again with some sections colored differently to indicate what I think fit the category.

I looked at the passenger manifest, twice. Being a sea-faring man, I had my share of superstition. While this didn’t meet any known superstitions I could think of, the fact that Mr. Abernathy was listed on my passenger manifest left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. And that was enough to salt my drinking water. 

Hopefully, you want to know why Mr. Abernathy vexes the narrator. Why would his inclusion in the voyage be a problem?

I want to take this a step further and show you a short clip. It's from an adaptation of Stephen King's short story, "N." Watch below and then I'll point out some spots that I thought were great uses of micro-tension.

First off, there is a great slow build of tension overall. By the end of the clip, we want to know more. Some specific spots that jumped out to me were, when the narrator talked about spots where reality is thin. As a viewer, I wanted to see an example of this. So, with hopes high, we keep moving forward to hopefully share that example. Another spot, was when he talked about seeing the faces of beasts and monsters in the pillars. This alone is a good use of tension because we want to know more, then they take it a step further and add doubt to the equation by saying it could just be a trick of the light. Now, as a viewer, I want to know which side of the story is real. Are there faces in the pillars? Or is he just going crazy. Micro-tension continues as he introduces the dynamic of numbers and touching and doesn't explain it. Instantly, we need to find out what he's talking about, so we continue. Then, ending it on the possibility that he is diseased and it may be communicable is a great. It's hard to stop on a cliffhanger, so we naturally want to press forward.

That's how your writing needs to be. Don't end chapters with breaks where your characters are going to sleep, or the reader feels like they too can step away from the action. Leave a question unanswered. It doesn't have to be a world-shattering question, just something that the reader will want answered; something that will make them turn to the next page.