Actually, there are two things: plot holes and characters doing things they would never do. You know the kind of scene. A character suddenly makes a ridiculous choice simply because the author needs the plot to move in a certain direction. Or a supposedly intelligent character overlooks something obvious. Or an event occurs that feels so contrived you can almost see the author’s hand reaching into the story.

When that happens, the fictional world shatters for me.

One example that has always stayed with me is The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. Near the end of the novel, Tom Booker, the gifted horse trainer who has helped heal both Grace and her horse, Pilgrim, falls deeply in love with Annie Graves. Annie eventually decides she wants a future with Tom. But … rather than allow her to choose between him and her estranged husband, Tom deliberately confronts a dangerous wild stallion, essentially engineering circumstances that result in his death.

Seriously? I don’t know how the publisher thought that worked. And when Robert Redford produced the movie version, he was smart enough to know viewers would have panned the film if he kept that. Instead, he created a perfectly believable ending (worth watching).

Whether readers view the act as noble, tragic, or romantic, many found it difficult to reconcile with the character the novel had spent hundreds of pages establishing. Here’s the reason: Tom is portrayed throughout the story as wise, emotionally intelligent, patient, and deeply respectful of others. Yet in the climax, he effectively makes Annie’s choice for her by removing himself from the equation. For many readers, the ending feels less like an inevitable outcome and more like a contrivance designed to create a bittersweet conclusion.

That illustrates an important principle of storytelling: readers don’t necessarily reject the improbable. They reject what feels wrong.

Believability is not about realism. It’s about emotional and narrative truth. Readers will happily accept dragons, time travel, magical powers, alien invasions, and impossible coincidences. What they won’t accept are events that violate the internal logic of the story or the established nature of the characters.

So how do you make readers believe the improbable?

1. Ground Everything in Emotional Truth

The more extraordinary the external event, the more authentic the emotional response must be. Readers may never have discovered a portal to another dimension or survived a zombie apocalypse, but they understand fear, grief, hope, love, shame, and desperation. Those emotions create the bridge between the reader and the impossible event.

Consider The Martian by Andy Weir. The premise is highly unlikely: an astronaut is accidentally left behind on Mars and must survive alone for years without hardly any food. Yet readers buy into the story because Mark Watney’s reactions feel genuine. His humor, frustration, determination, and loneliness make the impossible situation feel real (and the science is very well researched and plausible). When emotional truth is strong, readers stop questioning the premise.

2. Build a Chain of Cause and Effect

One mistake writers make is jumping directly to the improbable event. Instead, create a chain of escalating consequences in which each development naturally grows out of the one before it.

Think of it as the “Yes, But” method. Yes, this happened, but because of that, something else happened. And because of that, another consequence followed. Each step feels reasonable, even if the final destination would have seemed absurd at the beginning of the story.

Readers are far more willing to accept an unlikely outcome when they can see how each event logically led to the next. Momentum creates believability.

3. Establish the Rules Early

Readers need to understand the rules of your fictional world. If magic exists, establish it early. If advanced technology exists, establish it early. If supernatural events are possible, readers need to know that before they become essential to solving the plot.

Problems arise when writers introduce new rules only when they need them. This is one reason readers often complain about deus ex machina endings. The solution appears from nowhere because the groundwork wasn’t laid beforehand.

No matter how strange your world may be, readers will accept almost anything if the rules remain consistent. Consistency matters far more than realism.

4. Ground the Extraordinary in Consequences

A character discovers a magical artifact, but it comes with a terrible cost. A detective finds the crucial clue but now becomes the killer’s next target. A hero gains tremendous power but loses something equally valuable in return.

The improbable becomes believable when it carries consequences. Readers instinctively distrust stories in which miraculous solutions arrive without creating new problems.

5. Keep the Story Moving

Readers analyze less when they are emotionally invested. One reason thrillers often succeed despite highly improbable plots is pacing. The story moves so quickly that readers focus on what happens next rather than stopping to scrutinize every detail.

This doesn’t mean you should distract readers with nonstop action. It means maintaining narrative momentum. Questions lead to answers. Answers generate new questions. Conflict drives the story forward.

When readers are fully engaged in the outcome, they become much more willing to accept unusual circumstances.

6. Make Character Flaws Cause the Problem

One of the best ways to make unlikely events feel earned is to connect them directly to character flaws. A stubborn character refuses help. An arrogant character underestimates an opponent. A greedy character takes an unnecessary risk. A fearful character hides the truth.

The resulting disaster no longer feels random because it emerged naturally from the character’s established behavior. Readers may not believe coincidence, but they readily believe human weakness.

7. Challenge Every Unbelievable Moment

Here’s an exercise I’ve used during revision. Ask yourself: What is the single-most improbable thing that happens in my novel? Then make a list of every reason readers might not believe it.

Not one or two reasons. Ten reasons. Twenty if necessary.

When I was writing Conundrum, one scene worried me. My protagonist, Lisa, rushes to her brother’s office after learning he plans to take his own life. She arrives and ultimately talks him down. The scene felt dangerously close to a plot convenience, so I started listing objections like these:

A determined person usually isn’t persuaded by a single conversation. Someone in severe emotional distress may not even listen. Words don’t cure depression. She wouldn’t necessarily arrive at exactly the right moment. He wouldn’t instantly feel better. She wouldn’t magically know the perfect thing to say. Simply discovering a truth doesn’t erase a mental illness.

The more objections I listed, the clearer the weaknesses became.

Then I addressed them one by one. For every objection, I asked, “Usually that’s true—but in this case, why is it different?” If I couldn’t come up with a convincing answer, I knew I had a story problem. But I believe I made the scene work well because I addressed these potential problems.

That’s a difficult exercise because sometimes it reveals flaws in the premise, scene, or plot. But that’s exactly why it’s valuable. Sometimes the solution isn’t better prose. Sometimes the solution is changing the story itself.

One other super helpful thing to do in a situation in which your reader might question the believability is to have the POV character himself ask the questions and show doubt. In other words, have the character voice the reader’s doubts either out loud or in his head.

For example, I might have Lisa think, It’s stupid to think that I’ll be able to save my brother with words. And, situationally, she might think, I can’t believe I got here in time. Fate or some higher power must be on my side, because usually my timing sucks. Or maybe my brother, in his heart of hearts, hesitated because he really wanted me to stop him from killing himself.

Play around with your character’s thoughts regarding these potential issues and see if they can help make the action more believable.

Final Thoughts

Believability is one of the most important elements in fiction, and, ironically, it has very little to do with realism. Readers will believe almost anything if the story remains emotionally authentic, internally consistent, and true to character. They will accept dragons, miracles, impossible coincidences, and astonishing plot twists.

What they won’t accept is a story that breaks its own promises.

When readers stop believing, it’s usually not because the event was too improbable. It’s because the author failed to make it feel inevitable. The goal is not realism for its own sake. The goal is creating a story in which even the most extraordinary events feel as though they could not have happened any other way.

That’s believability.

Featured Photo by Markus Laanisto on Unsplash

The post 7 Ways to Make Readers Believe the Improbable in Fiction appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

I first became enamored with this concept after reading Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. How often are we our own “unreliable narrator,” telling ourselves lies, misinterpreting events and things we’ve heard, not being honest or forthcoming with the truth—all for various reasons.

Reasons. That’s the key. It’s the character’s motivation that lies underneath the unreliability. Fear, pain, anger, betrayal—any or all can move someone to prevaricate (I’ve always wanted to find a place to use this word!).

Other things can cause that unreliability, such as drugs, alcohol, lack of sleep, and trauma. How often do we misremember things, only to learn or realize later what really happened?

I’ve been playing around with a plot idea for years that features an unreliable narrator, but I hadn’t explored the nuances and technique to create one. Hence, this post.

If you’ve never written a story using an unreliable narrator, why not consider it? When used well, such a narrator can generate psychological tension, deepen characterization, and deliver unforgettable plot twists.

However, when used poorly, readers feel cheated and manipulated. The difference lies in execution.

Let’s look at how unreliable narrators work and how to use them effectively in your fiction.

What Is an Unreliable Narrator?

Let’s first clearly define this term. An unreliable narrator is a point-of-view character whose account of events cannot be fully trusted. The narrator may lie, deceive, misinterpret reality, or withhold important information. As a result, the reader’s understanding of the story becomes distorted.

The key is that readers don’t initially realize this distortion exists. Instead, they gradually discover that the narrator’s version of reality is incomplete—or perhaps entirely false.

Why Writers (and Readers) Love Unreliable Narrators

Writers return to this technique again and again because it offers several powerful storytelling advantages.

• It Creates Memorable Plot Twists

When readers discover they’ve been viewing events through a distorted lens, the revelation can be electrifying. Suddenly, scenes take on new meaning, assumptions collapse, and seemingly insignificant details become important.

A contemporary example is The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. The novel carefully shapes reader assumptions before revealing information that completely recontextualizes the story. The best twists don’t come out of nowhere. They feel both surprising and inevitable.

• It Deepens Psychological Complexity

An unreliable narrator allows readers to experience a character’s inner world firsthand. Instead of simply observing a character’s flaws, readers inhabit them.

This forces readers to look beyond the narrator’s words and uncover hidden fears, guilt, trauma, or self-deception. In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro creates a narrator who cannot fully confront painful truths about his own life. The result is a deeply moving portrait of denial and regret.

• It Creates Reader Engagement

An unreliable narrator turns readers into detectives. Rather than passively consuming information, they begin analyzing inconsistencies, questioning assumptions, and searching for clues. The result is a more immersive reading experience because readers become active participants in uncovering the truth.

Four Common Types of Unreliable Narrators

Not all unreliable narrators operate in the same way. Understanding the different forms of deception can help you choose the right approach for your story.

1. The Deliberate Liar

This narrator knows the truth but intentionally misleads the reader. Their motivation may be self-preservation, shame, manipulation, pride, or outright malice.

A classic example is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, whose narrator carefully constructs a version of events designed to justify his behavior. The challenge with this type of narrator is maintaining reader trust while concealing the truth.

2. The Self-Deceived Narrator

These characters genuinely believe their own version of reality. Their unreliability stems from denial, emotional blindness, or psychological defense mechanisms rather than intentional deception.

In The Remains of the Day, Stevens repeatedly rationalizes decisions and relationships that readers can see more clearly than he can. This type of narrator often creates powerful emotional resonance because readers recognize truths the narrator cannot.

3. The Withholder

This narrator doesn’t necessarily lie. Instead, they strategically omit information, telling the truth but not the whole truth. Many mystery and thriller novels employ this technique. The narrator may avoid discussing a crucial event, relationship, or secret until later in the story. While effective, withholding information must be handled carefully to avoid feeling manipulative.

4. The Impaired or Naive Narrator

Sometimes a narrator’s perspective is distorted because they lack understanding. The cause may be youth, trauma, limited experience, memory issues, or an incomplete grasp of events.

In Room by Emma Donoghue, young Jack narrates the story through a child’s limited understanding of a horrifying situation. Readers perceive far more than he does, creating a compelling gap between perception and reality (very cool!).

Contemporary Examples of Unreliable Narrators

Many best-selling novels have successfully employed this technique in recent years.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides uses narrative misdirection to support a major revelation. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart gradually reveals the truth behind the narrator’s fractured memories. Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney openly signals unreliability from the title itself, challenging readers to determine what is true. And The Maid by Nita Prose uses a socially atypical narrator whose interpretations of events differ significantly from those around her.

Each novel demonstrates that there is no single formula for creating an unreliable narrator.

How to Play Fair With Readers

This is where many writers stumble. The goal is to deceive readers without making them feel deceived. The best unreliable narrators don’t hide the truth completely. Instead, they leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

When you’re in a character’s head (POV), it’s absolutely wrong and unfair to lie to your reader unless the character has some mental condition that makes this plausible. The things she thinks and sees and experiences are going to manifest in her thoughts. It’s one thing to not show that character thinking about a particular matter in order to create surprise later on. But that’s different than the author “pretending” a character doesn’t know what she knows and “tricking” the reader into believing something that isn’t true.

This is why many successful unreliable narrators operate through self-deception, omission, distorted perception, or retrospective narration. The narrator may be recounting events from a later point in time, giving them reason to shape the story in a particular way. The more justified the deception, the more willing readers are to accept it.

• Leave Clues

A character’s actions may contradict their stated beliefs. Their physical reactions may reveal emotions they deny. Small inconsistencies may appear in their version of events.

These clues allow readers to recognize, in hindsight, that the truth was present all along. The reveal feels earned because the evidence was always there.

• Give the Deception a Purpose (a Good One!)

Ask yourself why the narrator is unreliable. The answer should connect to character, theme, or plot.

A narrator who lies simply to create a shocking twist often feels gimmicky. A narrator who lies because they’re protecting themselves from painful truth feels human. The deception should reveal character, not merely conceal information.

• Earn the Revelation

The final reveal should illuminate the entire story. Readers should be able to mentally revisit earlier scenes and see how the clues fit together. That’s what transforms a twist from a trick into a satisfying narrative payoff.

Final Thoughts

An unreliable narrator is one of fiction’s most powerful tools because it allows writers to create mystery, psychological depth, and unforgettable revelations. But the technique requires precision.

Readers want to be surprised, not cheated. The best unreliable narrators walk that fine line beautifully. They mislead us just enough to keep us guessing while quietly leaving clues that make us realize the truth was there all along.

The narrator may lie. Our story shouldn’t.

Featured Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash

The post The Unreliable Narrator: How to Deceive Readers Without Losing Their Trust appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

Upon realizing that no books have been written on this crucial topic, I set out to collate all I have learned on the subject. I heard of the term about ten years ago at Donald Maass’s Breakout Novel workshop in Oregon. Ever since, I’ve been writing and teaching about microtension. And recently I taught a few master classes with small groups, helping them learn the various microtension pathways and infuse their pages with this “sticky stuff.”

I cover a full chapter on literary devices, because I’ve found they are the most important and powerful pathway for microtension. Here are just some of the many literary devices you can use. I’m going to share an excerpt from my book, but there is so much more writers need to know about microtension and how to wield it in their fiction. I hope you will see why so many writers are super excited about this book and what they’re learning from it (just read the reviews on Amazon!).

Other Literary Devices

Here are some brief lines that demonstrate some other common (and not-so-common) literary devices. You don’t have to memorize all these terms, but become familiar with what they are and how they work in a sentence so you can use them in appropriate ways for strong effect.

Adnomination: Repetition of words with the same root. The difference lies in one sound or letter. In that scene from my novel Intended for Harm in which Simon throws Joey off the roof, moments later his stepmother shows up:

“Where’s Joey?” she asked.

Simon sucked in a breath, started to answer. “He’s around—”

“Here, Mommy.”

Simon jerked up his head, watched Joey run over to Rachel on his unshattered legs, put his small unbroken bony arms around her, his unsmashed head leaning against her waist, his unbloodied hands on her hair.

The use of these “un” words—emphasizing that none of Joey’s bones broke in the fall—add weight via microtension to the shocking and unbelievable reality Simon is witnessing.

Merism: This is when people or objects are described by listing traits. Here’s a brief usage in Leave the World Behind by  Rumaan Alam. The author is also using motif by choosing words related to the beach they are heading to.

They wound into the empty parking lot (it was early) and paid five dollars to a khaki-uniformed teen who seemed himself made of sand— golden curls, freckles, browned skin, teeth like little shells.

Metonym: A figure of speech that uses a word or term to replace or represent another closely related word or term. From Lexicon by Max Barry:

Tom had wandered over to the magazine rack, where a man in a red-checked snow hat was staring suspiciously at shrink-wrapped women.

The shrink-wrapped women stand for women posed in men’s voyeuristic magazines, not literally women in shrink wrap!—notice also the bit of alliteration that adds a lyrical quality. Try saying shrink-wrapped women five times fast!

Allusion: Alluding to something familiar in comparison. This, frommy novel Conundrum:

Survival was paramount. If she remained, death was certain—if not literal, then emotional. She’d weighed choices over and over until they became too heavy to hold any longer. She had a fleeting opportunity, had to grab it with both hands or she would miss the golden ring; it would fly past her, irretrievable, and she would languish with longing, regret, the bitterness ebbing away at her until nothing remained.

The allusion to grabbing a gold ring evokes the 19th-century feature of some carousel mechanisms: a dispenser that presented rings (usually iron) on a horizontal arm as the mechanical horses passed. One of the rings was brass; grabbing it earned the rider a prize—commonly a free ride. It grew into a metaphor (figurative) for grabbing hold of an opportunity.

Personification: This is a popular microtension technique, one I love to use, especially when writing fantasy—though it’s easy to insert in any genre. Attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects, even just an adjective or verb here and there, can create wonderful sticky prose. Phrases like “the snarling wind” or “the stubborn door” may seem insignificant, but they aren’t. Once you start looking for them in great fiction, you’ll see them everywhere. Here are some examples from Lexicon (Barry’s novel is brimming over with these):

The driver’s window was half-cranked, letting in furious air.

His bindings loosened; he brought forward his arms against the protest of his muscles and rubbed his wrists.

They trudged through blackness and snow until Wil could no longer feel anything. His nerves retreated somewhere deep inside, where there was still warmth.

When the car exited the garage into bright sunshine, she closed her eyes. Somewhere in the snarl of streets, she fell asleep. [Notice the nice alliteration, too.]

I’m very fond of zeugmas. A zeugma is when you apply a single word or phrase to additional words but in creative ways. Here are some lines from Intended for Harm that use this literary device (also note the use of epiphora, with a grouping of verbs ending with fied, and adjectives ending in able, to give a lyrical feel):

She went into the bathroom, brushed her hair and washed her face, came out, checked her purse. She took out her prescription bottles; she wouldn’t need those happy pills anymore. Pills that mollified and simplified and verified and nullified.

She deposited her key ring on the little shelf. She wouldn’t need them anymore—those keys that opened doors and started engines and kept her world running on empty … She would not be able to lie to him that easily, but she would this one time, to stave off the inevitable, the unbearable, the unthinkable.

There are many more literary stylistic devices, though, and covering all of them would require volumes. Take the time to explore these and see if you might add them to your microtension toolbox to use at just the right moments in your scenes.

I hope this little foretaste gets you excited to read more!

New Release! Masterful Microtension

“I just finished studying Masterful Microtension. It’s simply breathtaking. An uninterrupted epiphany from page 1 until the end. For me, as an aspiring mystery and thriller writer, this is simply gold, something everybody who wants to engage any kind of reader should learn and master. What I can say … this is just absolutely brilliant and unique.” —Andrea Paglino

“I’ve purchased almost every craft book that C. S. Lakin has published, but I think Masterful Microtension is the most powerful thing she’s written yet. She defines the purpose of microtension as evoking a tiny spark of surprise. The thing that gives us that ‘Wait, what?’ moment. Just having a name for that is so helpful, then she goes on to show exactly how to create that moment in your manuscript. Amazing! Thank you!” —Marilyn T. Parker, author of The Struggle for Love

Learn how to masterfully craft microtension in your fiction. Microtension is the subtle but powerful element operating beneath the surface of a scene. It is created through contradiction, emotional friction, subtext, charged description, symbolism, and imaginative wordsmithing. When microtension is present, readers feel compelled to keep reading. When it’s missing, even well-plotted stories can feel flat.

Few writers have ever been taught about microtension in fiction and why it’s so important. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find any books, courses, videos, or articles on it. Yet … without it, your fiction can fall flat.

In Masterful Microtension: The Essential Element of Powerful Fiction, you’ll study how skilled fiction writers create tension at the micro level using masterful techniques such as word pairings, literary devices, motifs, and polarities.

Most books on fiction writing focus on structure, character arcs, and dramatic conflict. While those elements are crucial to a great story, they only address the big-picture elements. Microtension works at the word level, shaping the emotional energy between narrative, actions, and thoughts.

Regardless of what genre you write, Mastering Microtension will magnificently transform your prose. If you want to elevate your fiction from competent to compelling, from readable to unforgettable, microtension is the key.

Get your copy (ebook or paperback) on Amazon or any other outlet online! 

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Character emotion, when written well, links directly to reader empathy. Why? Because when the character’s feelings are authentic and clearly conveyed, readers respond to them. When a protagonist expresses grief, joy, anger, or fear, readers immediately relate because they’ve experienced those emotions personally. They’re pulled into the character’s experience. And that’s exactly where we want them.

But as we all know, characters don’t always cooperate. If they’re anything like real people (and they should be), at some point, they’re going to hide their feelings. Suppressed emotion makes them more realistic while also generating questions for readers that increase intrigue:

Why is she hiding how she feels? What does it mean?
Was she successful, or does the other person suspect the truth?
What’s at stake if they find out?

That intrigue is awesome because it pulls readers in deeper, keeping them hooked so they can find answers. But this only happens if the character’s suppressed emotion is written smoothly and realistically. So let’s talk about what that looks like with a universal feeling that should crop up multiple times in any story, no matter the genre.

Fear: A Primal Emotion

Fear isn’t just any old emotion; it’s hardwired into the psyche as a way of protecting us from real or perceived danger. As such, it’s hard to ignore. This means that most characters will be comfortable expressing it. When a friend grabs them in the dark, they startle or swear, and they’re okay with that.

But there are situations where a character may want to hide their fear:

• They’re with someone they want to impress.
• They’re with someone who views fear as a weakness.
• They don’t want people to know they’re afraid of a particular thing.
• They need to be strong for someone else.
• Hiding or denying the fear is necessary for survival.
• They want to maintain a power dynamic or the status quo in a tense situation.
• They’re avoiding or denying a past trauma.

If any of these situations cause your character to downplay fear, their suppression will be subtle, possibly not even discernible to others. But readers need to see what they’re hiding. This means you’ll have to show the character’s muted response in the moment while indicating to readers that it’s a front, and fear is in play. Here’s how.

Body Language

 Characters who want to mask fear will downplay their physical cues. Basically, they act normal despite what’s happening on the inside.

“I’m afraid it’s not good news,” Ms. Bozeman said. “The judge has determined that for your mom to get better, she needs to be in a place that can best service her mental health challenges. But don’t worry—while she’s staying at Ravencrest, your dad’s agreed to take you in.”

Melody took a deep breath. “Okay.”

Here, readers see no outward sign that this news has rocked the character’s world. Melody’s response seems reasonable. Good thing she has a father to take care of her, right?

Visceral Responses

But this isn’t good news, and while she’s showing calm on the outside, inside, she’s fighting panic. Readers need to see that, so we show it through what’s happening internally.

“But don’t worry—while she’s staying at Ravencrest, your dad’s agreed to take you in.”

Melody’s stomach tightened. The air fled her lungs, and she had to remind herself to inhale. This couldn’t be happening. All the moving, starting over at new schools, avoiding social media—Mom had explained it all when she was still lucid.

They’d left him when Melody was little, and her few memories of that time were hazy and fear-tinged. But she did have a clear vision of him looming over her and relaying in terrifying detail what he’d do if she told anyone the truth about him.

She dragged her gaze up to Ms. Bozeman, who was watching her intently. It was too dangerous to say anything now that her father knew where she was. She’d have to try to get away before he came.

Melody took a deep breath and forced her fingers to loosen their death grip on her armrests. “Okay.”

If readers see only Melody’s physical cues, nothing seems amiss; her deep breath is an expected response for someone dealing pretty well with a hard reality. But her thoughts tell another story, and her internal visceral reactions (the tightening stomach and difficulty breathing) underscore the truth: Melody is terrified. Thanks to her mental process, we know she has good reason; we now have some context for her fear. The outward physical cues, thoughts, and visceral reactions work together to show readers Melody’s true emotional state, what caused it, and why she must hide it.

One note of warning for this technique: Include thoughts strategically so they don’t slow the pace. Show only as much as is needed, then move on to action.

Dialogue and Speech Changes

The character can alter their body language to hide fear, but it often is obvious in the voice because of fear’s physiological effect on the body. Increased muscle tension in the neck and vocal cords influence timbre and make it sound tight, husky, or brittle. Rapid, shallow breathing can impair breath control so the character’s words sound shaky and weak. Fear also commonly causes the voice to pitch higher.

Changes in the brain itself can cause dialogue shifts, mostly in the character’s speech patterns. Distraction leads to stammering and stuttering. High anxiety might make it hard for the character to find words at all. A talkative person might slip into flight mode and resort to one-word answers, or a reserved person could begin babbling nonstop.

When fear comes to visit, it often settles into the voice first. Show changes to voice and speech alongside any attempts to hide the fear so readers (and other characters) can see what’s really going on.

 Tells

 Most people aren’t totally comfortable lying, and their tics and tells give them away in moments of dishonesty. Melody might fiddle with an earring, pop her knuckles, or slouch to appear unconcerned. Maybe her voice betrays her as it rises in pitch or breaks, making her clear her throat. If your character often lies when they’re afraid, use their tell as a clue for readers.

Cracks in the Mask

One final thought about hiding fear: Very few characters will be one hundred percent successful in masking it. Certain changes naturally occur—for everyone—with the onset of fear. Trembling limbs, quicker breathing, eyes going wide … It’s hard to disguise all that. (Just look at the death grip Melody has on those armrests.) And the longer a character must suppress an emotion, the harder it is to keep it hidden. So unless they’re a deception expert, authenticity requires the mask to slip—and readers need to see it.

The beauty of these techniques is they work for all suppressed emotions—fear, yes, but also anger, jealousy, sadness, or even happiness. Let the character carry on their façade with the rest of the cast while you reveal the truth to readers in a way that keeps them turning pages.

Need more information about fear’s role in storytelling and how to show it effectively? Check out The Fear Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to What Holds Characters Back.

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and best-selling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and other resources for writers. Her books have sold over 1.4 million copies and are available in multiple languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online resource for authors that’s home to the Character Builder and Storyteller’s Roadmap tools.

Featured Photo by Ahtziri Lagarde on Unsplash

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By now, you’ve seen glimpses of how microtension operates through every pathway of fiction—through dialogue and interiority, through setting and description, through action, imagery, and even the smallest choices in language.

It isn’t confined to a single technique or even to a specific type of scene. It is a way of writing—a way of shaping every moment so that something is always at stake, always slightly unresolved or at odds. It uses metaphor, symbolism, similes, and images to spark your readers’ imaginations and deepen the meaning simmering under the action of every scene.

In essence, it’s what gives fiction its life. It’s the glue that holds the shape of your story. Often those “sticky bits” stick in readers’ memories for months, even decades. Microtension makes your big moments bigger, your emotional moments deeper and complex, and your characters unforgettable.

The more you become aware of microtension and practice using the pathways (they’re all presented in my book), the more you will begin to see it everywhere—in novels, plays, and short stories that hold you captive, in passages that stir your imagination, in lines or even phrases that linger long after you’ve turned the page.

This is how you take your fiction from good to great—by becoming a master of microtension.

Study Great Writers!

The most effective way to master microtension is to study the fiction of accomplished authors, as well as poetry. Not passively as a reader but actively—like a craftsman examining how something is made. When a scene grips you, pause and look closer. What is creating that effect? Is it contradiction in the character’s emotions? Subtext in the dialogue? A detail in the setting that doesn’t quite align with the mood? A single word or phrase that shifts the meaning of the sentence? Lyricism or creative use of literary devices?

Great writing is rarely accidental or merely intuitive. The authors who produce it understand, whether consciously or not, how to infuse microtension into their prose. By identifying the pathways they use, you begin to build your own awareness and expand your range.

You will start to notice how often expectations are disrupted, how frequently meaning is withheld, and how regularly characters are placed in moments of quiet but riveting conflict. You see how even the smallest details—a gesture, a pause, a word choice—can carry weight. And once you see it, you can begin to copy the technique.

As Hemingway said (as if it were easy!): “Find what gave you the emotion [when you read something that moves you] . . . Then write it down, making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling as you had.”

At first, this might feel daunting. You may find yourself slowing down, testing different word pairings, clustering words and phrases, exploring contradictions, or looking for ways to deepen a moment (or pull out a key stand-alone line). Over time, these techniques will become second nature, just as with anything you practice regularly.

Remember: it’s not about padding every page with random complexities or incongruencies. It’s about casting a light on the truth that human experience is rarely simple, rarely singular, and rarely resolved in a single moment. When you reflect that truth on the page—through contradiction, through nuance, through carefully chosen language—you create writing that feels alive.

And that is what readers respond to and delight in.

So as you move forward, don’t think of microtension as a checklist or a set of techniques to apply mechanically. Think of it as a lens—a way of seeing your scenes more clearly and shaping them more intentionally.

Try out the different pathways. Experiment with them. Combine them. Push them further.

Because the more you look for microtension, the more you will see it—and the more naturally it will start to wiggle its way into your writing.

New Release! Masterful Microtension

“I just finished studying Masterful Microtension. It’s simply breathtaking. An uninterrupted epiphany from page 1 until the end. For me, as an aspiring mystery and thriller writer, this is simply gold, something everybody who wants to engage any kind of reader should learn and master. What I can say … this is just absolutely brilliant and unique.” —Andrea Paglino

“I’ve purchased almost every craft book that C. S. Lakin has published, but I think Masterful Microtension is the most powerful thing she’s written yet. She defines the purpose of microtension as evoking a tiny spark of surprise. The thing that gives us that ‘Wait, what?’ moment. Just having a name for that is so helpful, then she goes on to show exactly how to create that moment in your manuscript. Amazing! Thank you!” —Marilyn T. Parker, author of The Struggle for Love

Learn how to masterfully craft microtension in your fiction. Microtension is the subtle but powerful element operating beneath the surface of a scene. It is created through contradiction, emotional friction, subtext, charged description, symbolism, and imaginative wordsmithing. When microtension is present, readers feel compelled to keep reading. When it’s missing, even well-plotted stories can feel flat.

Few writers have ever been taught about microtension in fiction and why it’s so important. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find any books, courses, videos, or articles on it. Yet … without it, your fiction can fall flat.

In Masterful Microtension: The Essential Element of Powerful Fiction, you’ll study how skilled fiction writers create tension at the micro level using masterful techniques such as word pairings, literary devices, motifs, and polarities.

Most books on fiction writing focus on structure, character arcs, and dramatic conflict. While those elements are crucial to a great story, they only address the big-picture elements. Microtension works at the word level, shaping the emotional energy between narrative, actions, and thoughts.

Regardless of what genre you write, Mastering Microtension will magnificently transform your prose. If you want to elevate your fiction from competent to compelling, from readable to unforgettable, microtension is the key.

Get your copy (ebook or paperback) on Amazon or any other outlet online!

Featured Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

The post Seeing Microtension Everywhere appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

I’ve mentioned how important (many times!) it is to consider your genre and audience. Every element of your story needs to work together to fit your genre (and this applies to genre mash-ups as well). That includes character voice, scene mechanics (length of scenes, sentences, and paragraphs, amount of white space, how punctuation is used), and word choice.

High fantasy is going to read a whole lot different that a rom-com. As with any element, such as emotion, sensory details, or creative imagery, your genre will dictate the amount and type. And, of course, within genres you’ll find a spectrum, not hard-and-fast rules. One thriller can be primarily a deep character study and journey, whereas another might be 95 percent high-octane action with little concern for the hero’s emotional journey.

That gives us writers a lot of leeway when it comes to the type and amount of microtension. It is only logical that, at this point, you may be thinking: I write action-adventure. These types of novels aren’t going to have gobs of incongruent emotions and contradictions in word choice.

That’s such an important point. A military thriller or a cozy romance may only have a few “sticky bits” per page—maybe a creative use of a verb or adjective, a simile, or an unexpected thought. That’s perfectly fine and apropos.

I always urge writers to do their homework: study current best sellers in their genre for every element, not just microtension. If you know, on average, how much emotion or description is shown per page in novels in your genre and close to your writing style, then you have a template of sorts.

Here’s an excerpt from The Ascent by Adam Plantinga, a thriller set in the milieu of a prison riot. Argento is a prisoner, but he used to be a cop. He’s concerned about a girl who is there on a tour and seems to be in a vulnerable position. Note the tight, engaging writing; strong deep POV; and simmering conflict. Only a bit of microtension is dropped in.

“You can relax, Samaritan,” the white trooper told Argento. “You don’t need to know who she is. She’s got all the help she needs. Now for the last time, walk. Or your head is where I’m gonna keep my bullets.”

Your head is where I’m gonna keep my bullets. It sounded like a line he’d stolen from some shitty gangster movie. The white trooper was close to Argento. Too close. And his arm was still fully extended instead of held snug to his body for proper tight quarters firearm retention. He was used to pointing guns at people and gaining compliance. Argento’s experience had been different as an officer in inner-city Detroit. He had pointed guns at hardened parolees who had laughed at him …

Argento put his hands up in resignation, but it was all for show. What he was going to do next required a supreme belief in his own abilities and no small amount of doubt in the abilities of the white trooper. The former he had. The latter was an educated guess. The trooper was full of bravado, and Argento was betting big on it not being earned. He had momentarily taken his eyes off Argento when Brown Suit had asked him a question, which was a tactical blunder. Plus he had a stupid mustache.

Argento had three more things going for him. The first was fast hands. The second was that the trooper’s finger was off the trigger of his firearm, as all police training dictated, because he hadn’t yet committed to shoot. And the third was that action beats reaction, every time.

Argento started backpedaling. Make ’em think you’re doing one thing. Then he moved forward. Then do the other. He stepped in close to the trooper, at a forty-five-degree angle. He took the Guardian out of his hand with a sharp twist of the trooper’s wrist and moved away, flush against the wall, the gun down at his side. It had been a risky move. The white trooper could have exceeded Argento’s expectations and lit him up when he tried for the gun. But Argento had never been risk averse. Especially not these days. In fact, at that moment, he didn’t care if he took a bullet. Getting shot might be a step up for him.

“If she has all the help she needs,” Argento said, “then why was that so easy?”

The tension here is in the action (hence, why thrillers are in the action/adventure genre). But we get nice bits of microtension with the stupid mustache and getting shot might be a step up for him (irony).

And, just to add to your list of literary devices, a charactonym is when you give someone a name based on a trait or action of that person—usually done in fiction when the POV character doesn’t know another’s name (Brown Suit in this passage).

Ken Follett’s novel Never is the kind of novel that isn’t going to be packed with literary devices and lyrical language. But, being a master thriller writer, Follett creates pathways for microtension in the way he opens the story cinematically with a car traversing the Sahara Desert, and the POV character likening the journey to being on the moon, clustering words and imagery to that end to set the appropriate mood.

Seen from a plane, the car would have looked like a slow beetle creeping across an endless beach, the sun glinting off its polished black armor. In fact it was doing thirty miles per hour, the maximum safe speed on a road that had unexpected potholes and cracks. No one wanted to get a flat tire in the Sahara Desert.

The road led north from N’Djamena, capital city of Chad, through the desert toward Lake Chad, the biggest oasis in the Sahara. The landscape was a long, flat vista of sand and rock with a few pale yellow dried-up bushes and a random scatter of large and small stones, everything the same shade of mid-tan, as bleak as a moonscape.

The desert was unnervingly like outer space, Tamara Levit thought, with the car as a rocket ship. If anything went wrong with her space suit she could die. The comparison was fanciful and made her smile. All the same she glanced into the back of the car, where there were two reassuringly large plastic demijohns of water, enough to keep them all alive in an emergency until help arrived, probably.

Here’s a cozy romance, about an older retired woman who moves from New York to Florida, where she runs into an old flame. The opening to The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman is sprinkled with a few choice bits of microtension, like in these three separate passages:

“You have been a very valuable member of this institution, Ms. Stern. It’s not my intention to coerce you in any way, but given your approaching milestone birthday, I was wondering whether you might be reconsidering retirement?”

For the briefest of moments, Augusta closed her eyes. The answer to the question came to her slowly, like a malted milkshake through a too-narrow straw.

She had just spotted her sandals and bag on a chair when she heard a man calling to her from behind. “Goldie!” said the voice. “Is that you?”

Augusta froze solidly in place. Despite the heat and the sunshine, she shivered visibly in her swimsuit. Goldie? She hadn’t allowed anyone to call her that for more than sixty years.

Impossible, she told herself.

When she didn’t answer, the man spoke again. “Goldie? Goldie Stern?”

The voice was rough and much too loud, causing the other pool-goers to stare. Augusta felt all their eyes upon her as they looked up from their books and magazines. Even the women in the shade paused their card game to squint at the newcomer. There was nowhere now for Augusta to hide, nothing to do but turn around. Half-naked and on display, she felt like a cheap music box ballerina, forced into a clumsy spin.

The last time she’d seen him, she was eighteen years old—young and trusting and deeply in love. She was none of those things now. She removed his hand, took two steps back, and crossed her arms over her damp chest.

“Of course I remember,” she snapped.

“I thought you said you’d never leave New York.”

“And I thought you’d be dead by now.”

He threw his head back and barked out a laugh. “Still as sharp as ever,” he said. “What brings you to Rallentando Springs?”

“I moved here yesterday,” said Augusta. The whisper of panic in her head grew louder. “Don’t tell me you live here, too?”

The smile he gave transported her back to the first day they met in her father’s drugstore—back to a time when her heart was still soft, like overripe fruit left out in the sun. Back to when lines were still blurry, hope was abundant, and love did not seem so far out of reach.

Irving Rivkin winked at her slyly. “You’d better believe it,” he said.

We have the similes (the malted milk, the music box ballerina, the heart like overripe fruit), the snappy dialogue line (“I thought you’d be dead by now”), and the brief repetition for emphasis (back to a time; back to when lines). They add those nice bits of microtension that help give depth to this character.

Even with genres like these, if you look for key moments (anchor points) in the scene, you can slip in enough microtension to make your prose memorable and your story engaging.

Learning the fine art of microtension is going to help your prose rise from the mire of the mundane and catch readers’ attention. Imagine the thousands of sample chapters agents and acquisitions editors slog through to find that one “gem” among the pile of dull “rocks.” The more gems you can organically and masterfully insert into your pages, the more your book will stand out—regardless of the genre!

New Release! Masterful Microtension

Learn how to masterfully craft microtension in your fiction. Microtension is the subtle but powerful element operating beneath the surface of a scene. It is created through contradiction, emotional friction, subtext, charged description, symbolism, and imaginative wordsmithing. When microtension is present, readers feel compelled to keep reading. When it’s missing, even well-plotted stories can feel flat.

Few writers have ever been taught about microtension in fiction and why it’s so important. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find any books, courses, videos, or articles on it. Yet … without it, your fiction can fall flat.

In Masterful Microtension: The Essential Element of Powerful Fiction, you’ll study how skilled fiction writers create tension at the micro level using masterful techniques such as word pairings, literary devices, motifs, and polarities.

Most books on fiction writing focus on structure, character arcs, and dramatic conflict. While those elements are crucial to a great story, they only address the big-picture elements. Microtension works at the word level, shaping the emotional energy between narrative, actions, and thoughts.

Regardless of what genre you write, Mastering Microtension will magnificently transform your prose. If you want to elevate your fiction from competent to compelling, from readable to unforgettable, microtension is the key.

Get your copy (ebook or paperback) on Amazon or any other outlet online! (release date 4-28-2026)

Featured Photo by Robert Anderson on Unsplash

The post Microtension in Fiction by Degrees appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

This technique works by creating dissonance between what the environment suggests and what the POV character feels or perceives. The setting might be beautiful, peaceful, or inviting, yet the character experiences dread, resentment, suspicion, or unease. That mismatch keeps readers alert. Something doesn’t quite fit.

Writers can also create this kind of tension by connecting small environmental details to a character’s inner conflict. A description isn’t neutral—it’s filtered through the POV character’s perception (or, at least, it should be). When their emotions are unsettled, even ordinary surroundings can feel slightly off. A pleasant setting may contain small elements that disturb the mood, or the character may interpret otherwise harmless details as threatening.

Another effective variation is to give the character mixed feelings about the setting itself. They might be drawn to it and wary of it at the same time. This internal push-pull infuses otherwise quiet moments with tension.

A great example of this technique appears in The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry—one of my all-time favorite novels, which is chock-full of microtension. In this scene, Maddie decides to hightail it out of the city, where she recently noticed a disturbing man following her. Her friend Zar suggests they go to a peaceful lake house. The environment is idyllic, and her friends are carefree, but Maddie cannot fully shake her sense of danger.

Here is the last section of the scene:

Ahead, Jorge whooped and began to run. The trees were thinning, the earth turning gritty beneath Maddie’s feet, and she emerged into sunshine and bright sand. On either side, the water curved to promontories of dark rocks. Here, at last, were people, but only a few: a middle-aged couple walking barefoot on the sand; a family with a dog; teenagers exploring the rocks. Jorge sprinted toward a sun-bleached pier that was spackled with ancient bird shit, leaped off the end, and disappeared. Water fountained.

Zar let go of Maddie’s hand and ran, passing Liam, who was still on the sand. At the end of the pier, she jumped, her hair trailing in a long black streak.

Maddie and Liam followed at a walk. A board creaked beneath her foot. At the end of the pier, they found Jorge and Zar treading water.

“It’s so amazing,” Zar said.

Liam glanced at her, then launched into a fairly impressive cannonball. He came up and shook his head, flinging droplets.

Out of nowhere, the answer to the question that had been bugging Maddie popped into her head.

Oh, she thought. It’s a horror movie.

She’d been misled by the opening. Four happy young people; her brain had been searching for something upbeat. But the characters were always happy and overconfident as they headed off to their cabin in the woods, or their house on the lake. Only later did the tone change, when night fell.

“Maddie!” Zar shrieked. “Jump, you coward!”

Actually, it began even earlier than that, didn’t it? Before the road trip, there was a prologue to establish a sense of danger. Usually something creepy involving the lead. A close encounter, to establish the idea that she was marked.

“Maddie!”

Below her, the water sparkled like knives. She felt cold, as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun … [But] she was not in a movie. She was not an imperious Southern lady fallen on hard times. She was twenty-two, on a pier, in a cute bikini. She forced a smile and jumped.

On the surface, the setting is peaceful and inviting. Sunshine, bright sand, and sparkling water suggest relaxation and fun. Families stroll the beach. Friends laugh and leap from the pier. Everything about the environment says safety.

But Maddie’s thoughts contradict the appearance of things.

Her mind reframes the entire situation as the beginning of a horror movie: four carefree young people heading to a cabin by a lake before the danger begins. This internal interpretation undermines the idyllic setting as readers, knowing what horrific things are about to happen, want to scream out a warning to her.

Even small details contribute to the unease. The pier is “spackled with ancient bird shit.” The water “sparkled like knives.” These images subtly contaminate the beauty of the setting. Nothing overtly dangerous happens, yet the descriptions tilt the mood just enough to suggest that something is very wrong.

Notice also how Maddie’s physical response mirrors her emotional tension. She suddenly feels cold, as though the sun has disappeared behind a cloud. The environment itself hasn’t changed; her perception of it has. The setting becomes unsettling because of her shifted perspective.

This is the essence of microtension created through setting contradictions: the environment promises one thing while the character experiences another.

When you’re writing your scenes, look for opportunities where setting and emotion can conflict rather than align. A beautiful location might fill a character with dread. A cozy room might make them feel trapped. A peaceful gathering might feel like the prelude to disaster.

And the opposite can work just as well—a chaotic or frightening development might reveal a character’s unexpected, incongruous response, one of calm serenity, confidence, or clarity. However, give your characters good (believable) reasons for feeling the way they do.

Those subtle contradictions quietly charge the scene with microtension—and keep readers turning the pages.

Want to learn how to craft powerful settings infused with microtension? Take my extensive online courses: Crafting Powerful Settings and 8 Weeks to Writing a Commercially Successful Novel!

Featured Photo by Eugene Triguba on Unsplash

New Release! Masterful Microtension

Learn how to masterfully craft microtension in your fiction. Microtension is the subtle but powerful element operating beneath the surface of a scene. It is created through contradiction, emotional friction, subtext, charged description, symbolism, and imaginative wordsmithing. When microtension is present, readers feel compelled to keep reading. When it’s missing, even well-plotted stories can feel flat.

Few writers have ever been taught about microtension in fiction and why it’s so important. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find any books, courses, videos, or articles on it. Yet … without it, your fiction can fall flat.

In Masterful Microtension: The Essential Element of Powerful Fiction, you’ll study how skilled fiction writers create tension at the micro level using masterful techniques such as word pairings, literary devices, motifs, and polarities.

Most books on fiction writing focus on structure, character arcs, and dramatic conflict. While those elements are crucial to a great story, they only address the big-picture elements. Microtension works at the word level, shaping the emotional energy between narrative, actions, and thoughts.

Regardless of what genre you write, Mastering Microtension will magnificently transform your prose. If you want to elevate your fiction from competent to compelling, from readable to unforgettable, microtension is the key.

Get your copy (ebook or paperback) on Amazon or any other outlet online! (release date 4-28-2026)

The post Using Contradictions to Create Microtension – Part 6 appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

There are many masterful ways to handle backstory in fiction, and what’s usually recommended (and I agree) is to avoid interrupting the present action of a scene with long passages of a character reflecting on some past event (in order to explain context to the reader). Often just a few brief paragraphs, if needed, will do the trick in helping readers understand a situation.

While the most powerful backstory moments are often dramatized as full scenes, many stories rely on brief summaries embedded within present action. For full “replays” of the past, a writer can use any of the many backstory tools we’ve been looking at, just as with a present action scene.

But let’s consider those brief summaries of backstory that are often needed in a scene. These moments benefit from precision—careful word choice, repetition, and motif/symbolism that connect the memory with the character’s current emotional state. When done well, even a short paragraph of backstory can resonate deeply and reinforce the scene’s tension.

To create great microtension, consider the parallels and contrasts of the past with the present. Characters who feel nothing about their past generate no friction. Characters who are conflicted by it—who regret, long for, resent, romanticize, or misremember it—carry tension into the present moment.

Microtension in backstory comes from contradiction. A character is never simply remembering. They are remembering from a different emotional state, a different level of knowledge, a different set of losses. The past is filtered through the present, and when those two perspectives don’t align, tension arises. The reader senses the gap between who the character was and who they are now, between what once seemed possible and what is now irrevocably closed.

A good example of this appears in Hugh Howey’s novel Wool, where a fleeting memory reveals the emotional core driving Holston’s desire to end his life. The passage is brief, but it carries enormous weight because it is not neutral recollection—it is memory sharpened by loss. The opening scene shows Sheriff Holston climbing the silo’s metal stairs to the top floor, where he plans to end his life. We learn through bits of backstory what has led him to this moment:

A child, ejected from the group like a comet, bumped into Holston’s knees. He looked down and moved to touch the kid—Susan’s boy—but just like a comet, the child was gone again, pulled squealing back into the orbit of the others.

Holston thought of the lottery he and Allison had won the year of her death. He still had the ticket; he carried it everywhere. One of these kids—maybe he or she would be two by now and tottering after the older children—could’ve been theirs. They had dreamed, like all parents do, of the double fortune of twins. They had tried, of course. Night after glorious night of attempting to redeem that ticket, other parents wishing them luck, other lottery hopefuls silently praying for an empty year to pass.

He and Allison looked for anything to help. Tricks like hanging garlic over the bed that supposedly increased fertility, two dimes under the mattress for twins, a pink ribbon in Allison’s hair, smudges of blue dye under Holston’s eyes—all of it ridiculous and desperate and fun. The only thing crazier would have been to not try everything, to leave some silly séance or tale untested.

But it wasn’t to be. Before their year was even out, the lottery had passed to another couple. It hadn’t been for a lack of trying; it had been a lack of time. A sudden lack of wife.

What makes this passage so effective is not the information it conveys but the way it is framed emotionally. The memory is triggered by a present sensory detail—a child colliding with Holston’s knees—and immediately becomes personal and painful. The contrast between what might have been and what is sharpens the reader’s understanding of Holston’s despair.

Notice how the repetition of the word lack does more than describe infertility. It echoes outward. At first, the lack is biological. Then it becomes temporal—a lack of time. Finally, devastatingly, it resolves into a lack of wife. In a few spare lines, the backstory collapses multiple losses into a single emotional truth. The repetition doesn’t explain Holston’s grief; it magnifies it.

This is microtension at work in summarized backstory. The memory reinforces the character’s present state of mind, and no doubt amplifies it. The past is not safely contained; it intrudes. It clarifies why the present feels unbearable. Readers don’t just learn what happened; they feel how the burden of that past.

Crucially, the tone of the memory contrasts with the tone of the present. The rituals Holston recalls were once hopeful, even joyful—“ridiculous and desperate and fun.” In the present, those same efforts are stripped of innocence. Time has altered their meaning. That emotional shift creates friction between past and present selves, deepening the scene’s impact without stalling the narrative.

When writers think of adding backstory, it’s useful to distill the past event into a phrase—a wound, a flaw, a desire—and then explore contradictory words. What once felt hopeful may now feel cruel. What once felt insignificant may now feel defining. By allowing the present-day character to be at odds with their past perspective, even briefly, the story gains depth and resonance.

Microtension in backstory doesn’t require long passages or elaborate flashbacks. Often, it’s enough to let the character remember from a place of altered understanding. The past stays the same. The meaning does not. Microtension can be used in those moments to drive home that shift in your character.

Featured Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash

New Release! Masterful Microtension

Learn how to masterfully craft microtension in your fiction. Microtension is the subtle but powerful element operating beneath the surface of a scene. It is created through contradiction, emotional friction, subtext, charged description, symbolism, and imaginative wordsmithing. When microtension is present, readers feel compelled to keep reading. When it’s missing, even well-plotted stories can feel flat.

Few writers have ever been taught about microtension in fiction and why it’s so important. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find any books, courses, videos, or articles on it. Yet … without it, your fiction can fall flat.

In Masterful Microtension: The Essential Element of Powerful Fiction, you’ll study how skilled fiction writers create tension at the micro level using masterful techniques such as word pairings, literary devices, motifs, and polarities.

Most books on fiction writing focus on structure, character arcs, and dramatic conflict. While those elements are crucial to a great story, they only address the big-picture elements. Microtension works at the word level, shaping the emotional energy between narrative, actions, and thoughts.

Regardless of what genre you write, Mastering Microtension will magnificently transform your prose. If you want to elevate your fiction from competent to compelling, from readable to unforgettable, microtension is the key.

Get your copy (ebook or paperback) on Amazon or any other outlet online! (release date 4-28-2026)

The post Using Contradictions to Create Microtension – Part 5 appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

What creates microtension is the internal experience of the POV character as action unfolds, stalls, or betrays them. The most compelling scenes are often not driven by explosive events but by moments when characters act in opposition to what they feel, know, or desperately want.

Microtension emerges when the body moves forward while the mind resists, hesitates, or recoils. A character may comply outwardly while screaming inwardly. They may follow habit when instinct demands intervention. In these moments, tension accrues not because something dramatic is happening but because something essential is failing to happen.

How many times have you told yourself to do something now and yet you hold back for some reason? Or the opposite: act when you are screaming inside to stop what you’re doing? I can attest I’ve experienced both many times. This harkens to the inner conflict we looked at in the previous post, but in this post we’re adding in the decision to act or refrain from acting.

Action is never neutral on the page. Even the smallest movements—sitting down, glancing away, checking the time—carry emotional weight depending on when they occur and what the character understands at that moment. When action aligns cleanly with desire, scenes often feel smooth and efficient.

When action contradicts inner knowledge or emotion, narrative friction builds, tightening the scene with every second that passes. This can also be done masterfully with bits of contradictory body movements (which are action also). When we show a character smiling while talking to her spouse but her teeth and fists are clenched, the incongruity creates that desired microtension.

Create Friction by Foreshadowing

One of the most effective ways to create this friction is by choosing actions that subtly foreshadow darker outcomes. These need not be dangerous or dramatic acts. Often they are ordinary, even comforting behaviors that occur at precisely the wrong time. Distraction replaces urgency. Routine overrides intuition. The character delays when speed matters most. The reader senses the wrongness of the moment even if the character does not, and that imbalance generates tension.

This effect is magnified when action is consistently paired with emotional context. Action without interior response feels flat. Interior response without action can feel static. Together, they create pressure. The writer’s task is not merely to show what the character does but how the character feels about doing it, about the fact that it is happening now, and about what it might mean if the moment passes unchanged.

Often, microtension arises when characters criticize themselves before acting, rationalize delay, latch onto irrelevant details, or feel pride or comfort where alarm should exist.

A devastating example of contradiction between action and inner experience appears in Recursion by Blake Crouch. In this scene, the POV character Barry has been sent back in time to prevent his daughter from being hit by a car and killed. After “dying” in a bizarre machine, he begins to feel he’s inside his younger body and has become his younger self, all the while knowing all of his life to date. This moment occurs partway through the scene as Barry adjusts to his new reality. His actions are in severe opposition to what he feels, creating intense tension and microtension with every second that passes as he fails to act. Here is a piece of this moment:

He wants out of his memory, but he can’t leave. All senses are fully engaged. Everything as clear and vivid as existence. Except he has no control. He can do nothing but stare through the eyes of his eleven-years younger self and listen to the last conversation he ever had with his daughter, feeling the vibration of his larynx, and then the movement of his mouth and lips forming words.

“You talked to Mom about this?” His voice doesn’t sound strange at all. It feels and sounds exactly the way it does when he speaks.

“No, I came to you.”

“Is your homework done?”

“No, that’s why I want to go.”

Barry feels his younger self leaning to see around Meghan as Todd Helton gets a piece of the next pitch. The third-base runner scores, but it’s a groundout for Helton.

“Dad, you’re not even listening to me.”

“I am listening to you.”

Now he’s looking at her again.

“Mindy is my lab partner, and we have this thing due next Wednesday.”

“For what?”

“Biology.”

“Who else is going to be there?”

“Oh my God, it’s me, Mindy, maybe Jacob, definitely Kevin and Sarah.”

Now he watches himself lift his left arm to glance at his watch—one he will lose when he moves out of this house ten months from now in the wake of Meghan’s death and the explosive decompression of his marriage.

It’s a hair past 8:30 p.m.

“So can I go?”

Say no.

Younger Barry watches the next Rockies player walking to the plate.

Say no!

“You’ll be back no later than ten?”

“Eleven.”

“Eleven is for weekends, you know that.”

“Ten thirty.”

“OK, forget it.”

“Fine, ten fifteen.”

“Are you kidding me with this?”

“It takes ten minutes to walk there. Unless you want to drive me.” Wow. He had repressed this moment because it was too painful. She had suggested he drive her, and he had refused. If he had, she would still be alive.

Yes! Drive her! Drive her, you idiot!

“Honey, I’m watching the game.”

“So ten thirty then?”

He feels his lips curling up in a smile, remembers acutely the long-lost feeling of losing a negotiation with his daughter. The annoyance, but also the pride that he was raising a woman of grit, who knew her own mind and fought for the things she wanted. Remembered hoping she would carry that fire into her adult life.

“Fine.” Meghan starts for the door. “But not a minute later. I have your word?”

Stop her.

Stop her!

“Yes, Dad.” Her last words. Now he remembers. Yes, Dad.

Barry’s younger self is staring at the television again, watching Brad Hawpe rifle a ball straight up the middle. He can hear Meghan’s footsteps moving away from him, and he’s screaming inside, but nothing’s happening. It’s as if he’s inhabiting a body over which he exerts no control.

His younger self isn’t even watching Meghan as she moves toward the door. Only cares about the game, and he doesn’t know he just looked into his daughter’s eyes for the last time, that he could stop this from happening with a word.

He hears the front door open and slam shut.

Then she’s gone, walking away from her house, from him, to her death. And he’s sitting in a recliner watching a baseball game.

What makes this scene devastating is not surprise but contradiction layered upon contradiction. Barry knows exactly what this moment means. He knows how fragile it is. And yet his actions—watching the game, negotiating curfews, smiling with pride—actively contradict that knowledge. His body behaves as it always has. His mind screams for intervention. The microtension lives second by second in that widening gap.

Crouch heightens microtension by clustering alternative outcomes that never occur. Barry can say no. He can drive her. He can stop her at the door. Each option is visible, reachable, and emotionally charged. Every second that passes without action becomes an act of violence against the inevitable future Barry is trying to prevent.

The ordinariness of the actions intensifies the dread. Sitting in a recliner. Watching baseball. Smiling at a child. These are not dangerous acts—but in this context, they are catastrophic. The reader senses the wrongness long before the door closes. By the time it does, the damage is already complete. However, Barry finally musters control over his actions and acts—preventing the tragedy at the last second.

This is the power of contradiction in action. Inaction becomes action. Habit becomes fate. The scene hurts not because something explodes but because nothing changes.

When writers deliberately craft scenes in which action contradicts inner experience, they invite the reader into a space of anticipation and dread. We feel tension not because we don’t know what will happen but because we know exactly what could happen—and watch it slip away.

Contradictions in action create microtension when characters act against their own knowledge, delay when urgency matters, or find comfort in choices that will later destroy them. Can you come up with important moments in your story to use contradictions in action to create microtension?

Read the next post in the series, part 5, HERE.

Featured Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

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The post Using Contradictions to Create Masterful Microtension – Part 4 appeared first on C. S. Lakin.