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

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 Masterful Microtension – Part 4 appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

Editing is where manuscripts are made or broken, and it’s also where most first-time authors unknowingly make mistakes that cost them readers, reviews, and credibility. The good news? Every single one of these mistakes is avoidable if you know what to look for.

Here are the ten most common editing mistakes first-time authors make, and what you can do instead.

Mistake #1: Editing Your Own Work Too Soon (or Not At All)

Finishing your draft and immediately diving into edits is one of the most common traps new authors fall into. When you’re too close to your work, your brain fills in gaps, corrects errors automatically, and sees what it intended to write rather than what’s actually on the page.

Recommendation: Put your manuscript aside for at least a few weeks before revisiting it. Taking a break from your writing will give you a fresh set of eyes over your work and will help you pick up on issues you may not have spotted before.

Mistake #2: Not Knowing Which Type of Editing You Actually Need

Developmental editing, Copyediting, Line editing, or Proofreading.  If those terms mean very little to you, you’re not alone, and you’re not behind. Most first-time authors have no idea that editing isn’t a single service but a multi-stage process, each addressing something different in your manuscript.

Recommendation: This confusion is one of the most common reasons new authors either skip editing entirely or invest in the wrong service at the wrong stage. Taking time to research each editing type before you begin will save you time, money, and frustration.

Mistake #3: Relying Solely on Grammar Tools

Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and similar tools have their place, but they are not editors. They catch spelling errors and flag passive voice, but they cannot tell you whether your plot holds together, whether your protagonist is compelling, or whether your opening chapter will make a reader want to turn the page.

Recommendation:   Think of grammar tools as a spell-check on steroids: useful, but nowhere near sufficient for preparing a manuscript for publication. There is a reason traditional publishers use editors to finalise authors’ manuscripts before publication.

Mistake #4: Ignoring Pacing and Story Structure

A story can have beautiful prose and vivid characters and still lose readers if the pacing is off. A slow middle, a rushed ending, or a weak opening chapter are among the most common structural problems in debut manuscripts and among the most damaging.

Recommendation: Readers who lose momentum put books down. Ensure you pay attention to your story’s pacing and structure, as the invisible architecture of your story deserves as much attention as your prose.

Mistake #5: Inconsistent Character Voice and Point of View

Accidentally slipping into another character’s perspective or writing your protagonist in a voice that shifts from chapter to chapter are mistakes that pull readers out of the story. Readers may not always be able to identify why something feels off, but they’ll feel it.

Recommendation: Make a list of the chapters and which character’s point of view is being used in each. Ensuring consistency in voice and point of view will build readers’ trust. Losing it, even subtly, can unravel an otherwise strong manuscript.

Mistake #6: Overwriting and Underwriting

Too much description in scenes can slow your story to a crawl. Too little description leaves readers emotionally disconnected. First-time authors can often lean strongly in one direction, either over-explaining every scene or leaving key emotional moments frustratingly thin.

Recommendation: Try to find the right balance based on your selected genre, your audience, and your authorial voice. The goal is for every scene to earn its place on the page, no more, no less.

Mistake #7: Skipping the Developmental Edit and Going Straight to Proofreading

Proofreading is the final stage of editing, but it’s not the only stage. It’s the final barrier against spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes, but it does nothing for plot holes, structural issues, or unclear character motivations. Proofreading a manuscript that hasn’t been developmentally edited or copyedited is like repainting a house with cracks. It looks better, but the underlying issues remain.

Recommendation: Ensure you edit your manuscript in the right order. Publishing a structurally flawed manuscript, however technically clean it may be, is a mistake that’s very difficult to recover from once your book is in readers’ hands.

Mistake #8: Dismissing Reader Experience in Favour of Personal Vision

Your story is personal, and that’s what makes it worth telling. But there’s an important distinction between protecting your authorial voice and ignoring feedback that signals genuine reader confusion.

Recommendation:   Listen to your audience. When an editor or beta reader flags something, it’s worth asking: Is this a deliberate creative choice, or is this something that will genuinely lose my reader? That distinction matters more than most first-time authors realise.

Mistake #9: Leaving Continuity Errors Unchecked

Your character’s eyes are brown in chapter two and green in chapter fourteen. A key event happens on a Tuesday in one scene and on a Thursday two chapters later. These are continuity errors, and they’re remarkably easy to miss when you’ve been living inside a manuscript for months.

Recommendation: Create a list of all the key aspects of the characters and events in the story and refer to it when revisiting information in later chapters. Readers do notice, and when they do, it breaks the spell and your credibility along with it.

Mistake #10: Rushing to Publish Before the Manuscript Is Ready

The pressure to publish, particularly in today’s fast-moving self-publishing landscape, is real. But publishing too soon is one of the most damaging decisions a first-time author can make. A one-star review citing poor editing follows your book long after you’ve learned from the mistake.

Recommendation:  Your first book sets the tone for your relationship with readers. Give it the time and attention it deserves before it reaches them. It will be worth it.

Final Thoughts

Every author makes mistakes on their first manuscript, but that’s just part of the process. What separates the authors who build a readership from those who struggle is often simply this: a willingness to slow down, seek feedback, and treat editing as an investment rather than an obstacle.

Your story deserves to be read. Make sure it’s ready.

Renée Smith is a fiction editor and proofreader based in Sydney, Australia, with a passion for helping indie authors transform their manuscripts into polished, publication-ready books and is a member of Australia’s Institute of Professional Editors. You can find more of her writing at her blog, Behind the Edit, or connect with her at her website.

Featured Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash

The post 10 Editing Mistakes First-Time Authors Make (That Could Cost You Readers) appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

Dialogue crackles when characters enter a conversation from fundamentally different perspectives. Not simply with opposing goals but with incompatible assumptions, mismatched status, and emotional temperaments that do not align. Microtension can be infused when two characters are not, in any meaningful sense, experiencing the same events in the same way.

When we generate tension by putting characters together whose moods, mindsets, motivations, and perspectives clash, each line of dialogue then carries friction and surprises readers. It feels as if every response slightly misses the mark.

Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry offers a masterful example of this dynamic. In the passage below, Elizabeth Zott—a brilliant chemist navigating a 1960s professional world that routinely dismisses women—confronts Walter Pine, a television producer accustomed to status, deference, and control. She wants one simple thing: for his daughter to stop eating her child’s lunch. He expects prestige, flattery, and a familiar script. What unfolds is a conversation where neither is speaking the same language. They are absolutely not on the same page.

Elizabeth Zott is direct to the point of abrasiveness and unimpressed by institutional power. Walter Pine is a successful television producer, socially confident within his own hierarchy, and clearly unaccustomed to being challenged—especially by a woman who refuses to defer.

“Mr. Pine,” Elizabeth said, sweeping into the local television studio and past a secretary on a Wednesday afternoon, “I’ve been calling you for three days, and not once have you managed the courtesy of a return call. My name is Elizabeth Zott. I am Madeline Zott’s mother—our children attend Woody Elementary together—and I’m here to tell you that your daughter is offering my daughter friendship under false pretenses.” And because he looked confused, she added, “Your daughter is eating my daughter’s lunch.”

“L-lunch?” Walter Pine managed, as he took in the woman who stood resplendent before him, her white lab coat casting an aura of holy light save for one detail: the initials “E.Z.” emblazoned in red just above the pocket.

“Your daughter, Amanda,” Elizabeth charged again, “eats my daughter’s lunch. Apparently, it’s been going on for months.”

Walter could only stare. Tall and angular, with hair the color of burnt buttered toast pulled back and secured with a pencil, she stood, hands on hips, her lips unapologetically red, her skin luminous, her nose straight. She looked down at him like a battlefield medic assessing whether or not he was worth saving.

“And the fact that she pretends to be Madeline’s friend to get her lunch,” she continued, “is absolutely reprehensible.”

“Wh-who are you again?” stammered Walter.

“Elizabeth Zott!” she barked back. “Madeline Zott’s mother!”

Walter nodded, trying to understand. As a longtime producer of afternoon television, he knew drama. But this? He continued to stare. She was stunning. He was literally stunned by her. Was she auditioning for something?

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “But all the nurse roles have been cast.”

“I beg your pardon?” she snapped.

There was a long pause.

“Amanda Pine,” she repeated.

He blinked. “My daughter? Oh,” he said, suddenly nervous. “What about her? Are you a doctor? Are you from the school?” He leapt to his feet.

“Good god, no,” Elizabeth replied. “I’m a chemist. I’ve come all the way over here from Hastings on my lunch hour because you’ve failed to return my calls.” And when he continued to look baffled, she clarified. “Hastings Research Institute? Where Groundbreaking Research Breaks Ground?” She exhaled at the vacuous tagline.

“The point is, I put a great amount of effort into making a nutritious lunch for Madeline—something that I’m sure you also strive to do for your child.” And when he continued to stare at her blankly, she added, “Because you care about Amanda’s cognitive and physical development. Because you know such development is reliant on offering the correct balance of vitamins and minerals.”

“The thing is, Mrs. Pine is—”

“Yes, I know. Missing in action. I tried to contact her but was told she lives in New York.”

“We’re divorced.”

“Sorry to hear, but divorce has little to do with lunch.”

“It might seem that way, but—”

“A man can make lunch, Mr. Pine. It is not biologically impossible.”

“Absolutely,” he agreed, fumbling with a chair. “Please, Mrs. Zott, please sit.”

“I have something in the cyclotron,” she said irritably, glancing at her watch. “Do we have an understanding or not?”

“Cyclo—”

“Subatomic particle accelerator.”

Elizabeth glanced at the walls. They were filled with framed posters advertising melodramatic soap operas and gimmicky game shows.

“My work,” Walter said, suddenly embarrassed by their crassness. “Maybe you’ve seen one?”

She turned back to face him. “Mr. Pine,” she said in a more conciliatory manner, “I’m sorry I don’t have the time or resources to make your daughter lunch. We both know food is the catalyst that unlocks our brains, binds our families, and determines our futures. And yet …” She trailed off, her eyes growing narrow as she took in a soap opera poster featuring a nurse giving a patient some unusual care. “Does anyone have the time to teach the entire nation to make food that matters? I wish I did, but I don’t. Do you?”

As she turned to leave, Pine, not wanting her to go or fully understanding what he was about to hatch, said quickly, “Wait, please just stop—please. What—what was that thing you just said? About teaching the whole nation how to make food that—that matters?”

Supper at Six debuted four weeks later. And while Elizabeth wasn’t entirely keen on the idea—she was a research chemist—she took the job for the usual reasons: it paid more and she had a child to support.

What makes this exchange so effective is not simply that Elizabeth dominates the conversation. It’s that she and Walter are operating under entirely different narrative assumptions. Elizabeth treats the encounter as a practical, urgent problem requiring an efficient solution. Walter interprets it through the lens of performance, power, and spectacle. Every time he tries to place her into a familiar category—nurse, doctor, auditioning actress—she rejects the designation entirely.

Misalignment

This is microtension born from misalignment. Walter keeps reaching for the social scripts that usually work for him, and they keep failing. Elizabeth, meanwhile, refuses to soften her language, slow her pace, or reassure his ego. Her bluntness isn’t just a personality trait; it’s a deliberate refusal to enter his hierarchy.

Notice how often Walter’s responses lag behind Elizabeth’s intent. He is confused where she is precise, flustered where she is focused, reactive where she is mission-driven. Even moments that might relieve tension—offering her a seat, attempting politeness—arrive too late or miss the point entirely. The reader feels the friction because the conversation never stabilizes. Pay attention to this brilliant technique.

Power and Status

Equally important is how power shifts mid-scene. Walter begins with institutional authority: the setting, the status, the expectation of control. Elizabeth dismantles this without raising her voice by refusing to recognize his prestige as relevant. By the time he notices the cheapness of his own posters, the hierarchy has already inverted.

Dialogue like this works because it isn’t about winning an argument; it’s about revealing incompatible worldviews in motion. The topic of lunch is merely the pretext. The real conflict lies in who gets to define reality in that room—and whose values will shape what comes next.

The final lines demonstrate how microtension can advance the plot. What begins as an uncomfortable conversation generates curiosity, then opportunity, then irreversible change. Walter’s last question isn’t just interest; it’s the first crack in his certainty. Elizabeth’s offhand remark, delivered without persuasion, alters the trajectory of both their lives.

When dialogue places two characters with conflicting moods, mindsets, motivations, and perspectives into direct contact—and refuses to reconcile them quickly—the result is a scene that vibrates with possibility. Readers stay engaged not because they know what will happen, but because they sense that something already has.

Consider Resistance

At its core, microtension in dialogue arises from resistance. One character resists being seen a certain way. Another resists relinquishing control. Even allies resist accepting what the other is saying because it threatens their self-image, priorities, or sense of safety. These forms of resistance don’t need to be announced. They surface through deflection, misinterpretation, over-politeness, sudden defensiveness, or lines of dialogue that contradict a character’s body language or true goals.

The most effective dialogue often features characters who are emotionally out of sync. One may be calm while the other is agitated, conciliatory while the other is aggressive, logical while the other is reactive. This imbalance creates uncertainty. The reader senses that the conversation could tilt in multiple directions, and that any small shift—a poorly chosen word, a pressed button, a moment of silence—might escalate the conflict. Silence itself becomes charged when one character is waiting for reassurance and the other is withholding it.

Avoiding Direct Answers (and On-the-Nose Dialogue)

Dialogue-driven microtension also deepens when characters talk past each other rather than directly to each other. Each line answers a different question. Each response reveals a private agenda. In these moments, what is not said carries as much weight as what is spoken. A character may avoid a topic entirely, shut down an avenue of discussion, or fixate on a detail that allows them to dodge the issue at hand. The reader feels the strain because resolution is repeatedly deferred.

Put One Character on the Defensive

Finally, strong dialogue scenes often place one character subtly on the defensive—even when no attack has occurred. Another may push too hard, too fast, or with disproportionate intensity, exposing a vulnerability or backstory the reader doesn’t yet fully understand. These disproportionate reactions function like fault lines: hints of deeper conflict waiting to surface later. When dialogue does this work, it not only sustains tension within the scene but also seeds anticipation beyond the immediate exchange.

In Lessons in Chemistry, the brilliance of the scene lies in the fact that Elizabeth and Walter never fully align—not emotionally, not intellectually, not socially. Elizabeth refuses to enter Walter’s performance-driven world, and Walter cannot stop trying to frame her within it. Their dialogue works because it exposes incompatible realities colliding in real time.

The lunch is trivial, a device to reveal much about Elizabeth’s character, which the dialogue and the writer’s choice of words—not just what she says but what we see in the narrative—masterfully accomplishes.

Use these tips to examine all your dialogue sections in your story and think of ways to ramp up the disconnect between the characters. You’ll find that by adding microtension, the interactions will become snappier, tighter, and much more engaging.

Read part 4, the next post in this series, here.

Featured Photo by Cristina Gottardi 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 Masterful Microtension – Part 3 appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

However, microtension shouldn’t be limited to just important moments. When writing sparks our imagination, gets us visualizing the scene’s action on multiple levels and to varying depths, it makes the writing richer.

Writers know they need their characters to struggle internally. Humans are often conflicted and experience a range of emotions. Rarely is any emotion simple and singular. Humans are—to borrow from Donkey in the Shrek movies—like onions: many-layered.

Whether our characters are thinking (which doesn’t only apply to direct lines of thoughts but all narrative that is presented in deep POV) or speaking out loud (dialogue), their interiority can reflect those complicated, complex layers of emotion, motivation, mood, and perspective.

This is most potent when characters are divided against themselves and when their words fail to align with their true motives. Inner conflict and dialogue are two of the richest places to embed contradiction, because they operate on the fault line between intention and behavior.

In this post, I want to focus on how contradictions in character interiority work together to generate microtension at the scene level. These techniques are especially powerful because they require no additional plot considerations. They can work in quiet scenes, transitional moments, and conversations that appear ordinary on the surface but are anything but.

Interiority: The Conflicted Self on the Page

Every compelling character is, at least occasionally, a contradiction. They want one thing and fear it. They believe one story about themselves and act out another. And this can change from moment to moment, day to day. Microtension emerges when the narrative homes in on that division rather than rushing past it.

Too often, interiority is written as explanation or justification: She was angry because … or He knew he had to … While clarity has its place, microtension thrives on uncertainty. When a character misunderstands her own emotions, resists acknowledging a desire, or acts against what she believes she wants, the reader leans in. We sense the story knows more than the character does.

Contradiction in interiority can take many forms. A character may feel relief at bad news and immediately feel ashamed of that relief. He may insist he doesn’t care while his attention betrays obsession. He may act decisively while internally doubting every step.

What matters is not resolving these contradictions too quickly but allowing them to coexist in the moment.

Sometimes all it takes is presenting an unexpected thought or reaction from the character. Consider this short passage from the first scene of the blockbuster psychological thriller Gone Girl. Nick is heading downstairs on his fifth wedding anniversary to find his wife, Amy, making breakfast. The tension has been rising inside Nick already, before seeing her.

I hovered in the doorway, watching my wife. Her yellow-butter hair was pulled up, the hank of ponytail swinging cheerful as a jump-rope, and she was sucking distractedly on a burnt fingertip, hum­ming around it …

Amy peered at the crepe sizzling in the pan and licked something off her wrist. She looked triumphant, wifely. If I took her in my arms, she would smell like berries and powdered sugar.

When she spied me lurking there in grubby boxers, my hair in full Heat Miser spike, she leaned against the kitchen counter and said, “Well, hello, handsome.”

Bile and dread inched up my throat. I thought to myself: Okay, go.

The reader isn’t expecting his reaction. That’s compounded by the contrast of the choice of words that describe her. The things Nick notices and the cheerful words and imagery used give the impression he is feeling delight, joy, love, happiness. But … he’s feeling anything but.

Letting Emotion and Thought Disagree

One particularly effective form of microtension arises when emotion, thought, and behavior fail to line up. A character may tell herself she’s calm while her body reacts with tension. She may rationalize a choice even as an undercurrent of dread runs through the scene. These subtle mismatches signal that something is unresolved—and unresolved energy is narrative fuel.

Rather than naming the conflict outright, allow it to surface indirectly. Let characters latch on to irrelevant details to avoid confronting what truly matters. Let their internal monologues circle the truth without touching it. Readers are remarkably adept at recognizing avoidance, and they experience it as tension rather than confusion.

This is especially effective when the character’s self-perception is at stake. When who they think they are comes into quiet conflict with what they’re doing, microtension deepens into character development.

Acting against One’s Own Desire

Another potent form of microtension arises when characters act against what they want, even in small, seemingly inconsequential ways. These moments of self-betrayal often stem from fear, habit, or self-protection rather than logic. A character may reach for distance when they crave connection, soften their voice when they want to lash out, or make a choice that preserves the status quo while quietly resenting themselves for it. The contradiction between desire and action creates tension because the reader can see the cost even when the character cannot.

What makes these moments especially effective is their subtlety. The action itself may appear reasonable, polite, or even kind on the surface, but it carries an emotional undertow. Readers sense that the character has crossed an internal line, however faint, and that crossing it will echo later.

Microtension doesn’t require the character to make a disastrous decision—only one that feels wrong in a way they’re not ready to admit.

Misreading Emotion and Self-Deception

Characters rarely have perfect insight into their own emotions, and fiction becomes more compelling when writers resist giving them that clarity too soon. When a character mislabels fear as anger, desire as curiosity, or grief as indifference, the story gains friction.

This kind of emotional misinterpretation creates microtension because the reader recognizes the gap between what the character claims to feel and what the narrative evidence suggests is true.

Crucially, this misreading should not be treated as a flaw to correct immediately but as a pressure point to sustain. As long as the character remains invested in their false explanation, every thought and decision is slightly off balance. The reader becomes aware that the character is building conclusions on a faulty foundation. The longer the misinterpretation holds, the more tension accumulates—not through confusion but dramatic irony.

Microtension in interiority emerges not from heightened emotion but from friction within the self. When a character’s thoughts, emotions, desires, and actions fail to align, the narrative gains pressure without needing overt conflict or plot escalation. Contradictions—relief paired with guilt, decisiveness shadowed by doubt, desire masked as indifference—signal to the reader that something unresolved is at work beneath the surface. These moments are compelling precisely because they are unsettled.

By allowing emotion, perception, and behavior to disagree on the page, writers transform interiority from explanation into tension. Characters who misread their own feelings, act against what they want, or cling to comforting but false self-narratives generate suspense through uncertainty rather than surprise. The question driving the scene becomes not only what will happen next but which internal force will prevail—and at what cost. When interior contradictions are allowed to coexist rather than resolve too quickly, even quiet moments pulse with masterful microtension.

Read part 3 in this series here.

Featured Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 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 Masterful Microtension – Part 2 appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

I’ve written enough about what microtension is (search my blog for those), but to put it simply: it’s tension at the word and phrase level. Microtension is conveyed, generally, in these six focuses (and which may be combined in various ways):

• Theme/Motif/Object/Symbol/repeated word
• Dialogue
• Emotions
• Mood/Setting/Descriptions
• Lyricism/Literary Devices
• Creative words

I’ll expand on all those in future posts, but in this post I want to emphasize how contradictions are at the heart of microtension. When we encounter words, phrases, or imagery that makes us perk up and pay attention, that’s microtension. I call these bits “sticky,” as they stand out and stick in your mind. You get snagged on them because they’re unexpected.

One of the most powerful—and underused—ways to generate microtension is through contradiction. When what is clashes with what should be, when beauty collides with dread, or when language itself pulls in opposite directions, the reader’s imagination is awakened. Contradictions destabilize certainty, and uncertainty creates tension (which is a good thing).

In this post, I want to focus on a few practical ways to craft contradictions that create microtension in fiction, particularly at the scene level. Rather than trying to apply every possible technique at once, let’s look closely at how setting and description, word choice, and a lightly woven motif or thematic echo can work together to deepen tension.

These elements are subtle, but when clustered intentionally, they do heavy lifting—often without the reader consciously noticing why a scene feels so charged.

Why Contradictions Work

At its core, story is about change—and change is born from opposition. Every meaningful narrative movement arises because something doesn’t line up: desire versus obstacle, belief versus reality, hope versus fear. Microtension is simply this principle operating at a smaller scale.

Contradictions keep readers alert because they suggest that the surface meaning of a scene is incomplete. If a setting is tranquil but the character feels unsettled, readers sense that tranquility won’t last. If the language is lush but the emotion is raw or ugly, we intuit that something is about to fracture. Contradictions create friction, and friction generates heat.

Pay attention to that!

Setting as Emotional Counterpoint

One of the most effective places to embed contradiction is in setting and description. Too often, writers default to harmony: a sad character in a gloomy place, a joyful character in a sunlit field. While this can work, it rarely surprises or piques a reader’s curiosity.

Microtension sharpens when the setting either mirrors the character’s internal state too perfectly—almost mockingly—or directly contradicts it.

Instead of defaulting to harmony, it helps to pause and interrogate the relationship between environment and emotion. Consider whether the setting reflects what the character feels or quietly challenges it. Ask whether there is beauty the character cannot accept, comfort they resent, or order that feels suffocating rather than soothing.

When a serene setting is paired with inner turmoil, readers instinctively sense that the calm is fragile. They may not articulate the question, but they feel it: Why does this place make things worse rather than better? That unease alone pulls them deeper into the scene.

In the excerpt below from my fantasy novel The Map across Time, the king has just lost his wife, who had slowly and agonizingly died despite all attempts to heal her. Unable to bear the grief at the empty dining table, he rushes outside. The courtyard, which was her peaceful sanctuary, is not merely beautiful—it is overwhelmingly, almost aggressively so. The setting does not soothe the king; it destroys him.

He threw down the napkin and stormed out the door. Servants backed quickly out of his way, dropping to their knees as he strode across room after room until he reached the library doors. Flinging them open he stood like a drowning man gasping for air, on the threshold of the courtyard. A slight breeze cooled his neck and forehead. He composed himself, straightened his clothing, and ran a sweaty hand through his matted hair. He knew he smelled rank. He had lost count of the days since he’d taken a proper bath.

Across the yard, the spring in the fountain bubbled softly. The orchard bloomed profusely with snowy bunches of flowers, giving off a thick perfume. There was something about the perfect beauty of the courtyard—the planters overflowing with hyacinth and narcissus; the sprawling, manicured lawn of deep green that flowed down the hill like a carpet; the fruit trees in their neat little rows, trimmed and bursting with life—that broke him utterly. The king fell to his knees and wept.

The contradiction is immediate and layered. His body is unclean while the courtyard is immaculate. He feels like he is drowning even as the fountain bubbles gently nearby. He is unraveling in a world that appears perfectly ordered. The setting doesn’t simply exist—it actively participates in the character’s collapse. The more beautiful the courtyard becomes, the more unbearable it feels, until its perfection itself becomes the force that breaks him. The more beautiful it is, the more unbearable it becomes.

Word Choice: Letting Language Pull in Opposite Directions

Contradiction isn’t only structural; it can live at the sentence level through deliberate word choice.

The prose reinforces this effect through opposing textures. Words such as rank, matted, and sweaty clash sharply with snowy, perfumed, and manicured. Violent, abrupt verbs like stormed, flinging, and gasping collide with the gentler rhythms of bubbled softly and bloomed profusely. Because the language itself refuses to settle into a single emotional register, it mirrors the king’s instability and keeps the reader suspended in unease.

One practical way to apply this at the line level is to distill your scene into a single dominant word—such as control, loss, hope, or desire. From there, brainstorm words and phrases that reinforce that emotional core, then search for words that oppose it.

When both sets of language appear together on the page, the prose resists emotional certainty. The reader feels the instability before they consciously recognize it, which is exactly where microtension thrives.

Weaving a Motif through Contradiction

Motifs are especially powerful when they carry inherent contradiction. Water, for example, can cleanse or drown. Light can reveal or expose. Order can protect or imprison.

In the excerpt, water appears in opposing forms that quietly reinforce this tension. The King stands on the threshold feeling like a drowning man, overwhelmed and desperate for air, while just beyond him the fountain bubbles softly in an image of calm containment. The motif echoes without resolving, suggesting both loss of control and the illusion of serenity. Rather than easing the moment, the repetition tightens it.

When working with motif, it helps to identify the core idea the image or element represents, then explore how it might embody both promise and threat. Reintroducing that motif in altered emotional contexts allows it to accrue meaning without explanation. Rather than resolving tension, the motif deepens it, reminding the reader that the story’s central questions are still very much alive.

Reintroduce it in altered emotional contexts. Motifs gain power not through repetition alone but through variation and opposition.

During revision, it’s worth looking closely at moments that feel emotionally consistent or too neatly aligned. These are often opportunities for contradiction. Consider where the setting might resist the character rather than align with them, where a beautiful detail could become unbearable, or where something ugly or uncomfortable might offer an unexpected sense of relief. These small adjustments can transform a flat scene into one that quietly hums with tension.

Final Thoughts

Microtension doesn’t require explosions, arguments, or plot twists. It requires instability. Contradictions create that instability by refusing to let any moment settle into simplicity.

When setting, word choice, and motif all pull slightly against one another, scenes breathe—and strain—at the same time. The reader may not consciously identify the technique, but they will feel its effect.

And that feeling—the sense that something is off, unresolved, or about to break—is what masterful microtension looks like.

Featured Photo by Rob Wingate on Unsplash

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The post Using Contradictions to Create Masterful Microtension – Part 1 appeared first on C. S. Lakin.

Novelists can write stories that change lives and the world. The key to doing so involves employing tools and tactics proven to help nonfiction authors compose books that create transformation.

If you write fiction, also consider crossing over into nonfiction—or creative nonfiction. Your nonfiction books can provide support for your novels’ intention to create change.

Let’s explore how to do both—write fiction that inspires change and produce nonfiction that aligns with your sense of mission, purpose, or calling and, therefore, helps you promote a cause or start a movement.

The Hero’s Journey Inspires

Novelists are well acquainted with the Hero’s Journey, a universal story structure identified by Joseph Campbell. Yet, those who want to write for change need to pay particular attention to this familiar narrative story template.

Recall that stories told using this story structure include a hero who goes on an adventure, meets a guide, learns a lesson, wins a victory, and returns home transformed. When you write for change, craft your manuscript so readers easily put themselves in the protagonist’s shoes. When they relate to your protagonist on a deep, emotional level, they become the hero. They go on the same adventure, meet a guide, learn a lesson, and finish the book transformed.

When readers experience the story rather than just read it, the novel becomes their guide to change. When they closely identify with the protagonist, readers believe they can change in the same way.

If you write nonfiction, you also can employ the Hero’s Journey. Make the reader the hero going on a transformative journey. You become the reader’s guide. Through reading your book, the reader learns a lesson or lessons, begins the change process (victory), and completes the book transformed. The book provides the steps for the transformation that the reader can also complete afterward.

Nonfiction Tools to Help Novelists Write for Change

Fiction writers can employ a few tools commonly used by nonfiction writers to help readers move toward transformation.

Apply an Understanding of How People Change

Bolster your fiction craft by studying how people change. Then apply what you learn to create believable characters and move your readers to take new action.

Specifically, study the art of influence or persuasion. Also, learn about personal growth techniques. Educate yourself on successful sales tactics and habit formation strategies. Then use what you’ve discovered as you write your manuscript to influence both protagonist and reader in effective and believable ways.

Cause Readers to Hope for Something Better

Change-inspiring books are hopeful, encouraging, and shed light. Readers need to feel as if there is a chance for their own transformation, or they are unlikely to change.

As they read your story, help readers feel aspirations for something better and hope for change. Even better, get them to trust that change is possible through your protagonist’s transformation.

Focus on Adding Value

A book’s benefits equate to its value. Readers don’t care what your book is about as much as how reading it will benefit them—the what’s-in-it-for-me factor.

All novels can—and usually do—add value. However, if you level up the benefit of your book, your readers become more likely to read it and feel inspired or motivated to take new action.

Explore the back cover of any novel, and you will discover its benefits, which are apparent in the description or synopsis. For instance, Theo of Golden by Allen Levi is described as “a story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen.” Most people want to experience such benefits. It goes on to say the story is about “the power of creative generosity, the importance of wonder to a purposeful life, and the invisible threads of kindness that bind us to one another.” These are clear benefits for readers.

If a reader doesn’t currently have the benefit your book offers, they will want to discover how to get it. Your story can inspire and motivate them to take the action to create what they desire—even if it is not a personal benefit but a more global one.

Include Research or Data

Many change-inspiring books include research or data. Even a novel can include such information.

For instance, the protagonist might come across research while surfing the internet. That research might cause him to take up a cause or feel called to a new mission. Readers may subsequently conduct more research and take similar action.

Use Persuasive Language Patterns

Long before Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) existed as a formal model, novelists used persuasive language. NLP simply named and systematized techniques that great writers were using intuitively, such as sensory language, pacing and leading, embedded commands, identity framing, metaphor, and emotional anchoring.

For instance, William Shakespeare’s work included embedded commands, rhythm-based persuasion, metaphor (to bypass resistance and speak directly to emotion), identity shifts, and commands embedded in advice.

George Orwell used techniques such as belief framing, reframing reality, meta-persuasion, and metaphor.

More recently, Paulo Coelho’s books demonstrate the use of affirmations, metaphors, and presupposed meaning, as well as the subtle installation of beliefs.

Even Dan Brown uses NLP in his books, including pacing, attention loops, belief provocation, certainty language, and authority framing while also keeping readers in a heightened state of curiosity and urgency.

Learn at least the basics of NLP to better understand how the brain processes words. With a little knowledge, you can start using NLP language patterns in your manuscripts and more effectively move your readers toward change.

And study a few nonfiction books that effectively use NLP language, like Shonda Rhimes’ A Year of Yes.

Create Contrast for Your Reader

Craft your novel so both the main character and readers see the contrast between their current circumstances and future desires. Remind your reader, “You are here but want to be there,” or “The world is this way, but you want it to be that way.”

As your protagonist makes decisions, show readers the choices, opportunities, and possibilities available. Raise their ambitions for a better future, but also ask them to see the deficits of the present. This makes them want to move from “here” to “there.”

Demonstrate a Clear Action Plan

Nonfiction books written to motivate change typically include specific steps or ways for readers to take different action. A plan helps readers believe they can change, which reduces resistance to doing something new.

Craft your novel around clear and repeatable steps your protagonist takes. Readers need to see your main character as a role model so they understand what to do next.

Write Nonfiction to Support Your Fiction’s Purpose

If your novel contains themes related to change you’d like to see in the world, and you have personal experience related to a cause or mission you’d like to foster, writing a memoir could be a powerful way to amplify your message. Switching from fiction to memoir, or creative nonfiction, can prove easy for novelists. After all, you already know how to tell a story.

Memoirs often are written to inspire and motivate change. Memoir shifts how readers think, gives voice to issues in underserved communities, and illuminates societal issues.

For example, Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom inspired global support for ending apartheid and reinforced ideas of reconciliation and justice. And Chanel Miller’s Know My Name changed public conversations about sexual assault and consent and influenced legal and cultural discussions around victim treatment.

However, you could also write a prescriptive nonfiction book that discusses the type of transformation experienced by your novel’s protagonist. Go into depth on how to achieve the same change. In such a book, offer a plan, include research and data, use NLP language, and employ the other nonfiction tools mentioned previously.

As a novelist, you also can write “straight” nonfiction that contains your personal message or story related to change. Many nonfiction books include personal anecdotes to support the information or steps provided. Novelists know how to write powerful personal stories that inspire and motivate readers to change.

Stories are relatable and effective mechanisms for connecting with and helping readers understand a message. It’s easy to forget about stories when writing prescriptive nonfiction, but they elicit an emotional response, thereby inspiring readers to action.

Of course, if you have expert status, authority, or experience, you become influential with your readers. When you have influence, it’s easier to persuade readers to take action. You may have used your expertise or experience when creating your novel’s protagonist, world, or themes. As a nonfiction writer, you can demonstrate that knowledge and give more credence to your novel.

Novelists can write for change successfully. However, by harnessing the power of nonfiction tools and crossing genre lines, they increase their ability to make a positive and meaningful difference with their words.

Do you write novels intended to inspire and motivate change? Tell me in a comment.

Nina Amir, the Inspiration to Creation Coach, is an Amazon bestselling hybrid author. Her most recent book, Change the World One Book at a Time: Make a Positive and Meaningful Difference with Your Words, was released on January 6, 2026, by Books that Save Lives. Previously, she wrote three traditionally published books for aspiring authors—How to Blog a Book, The Author Training Manual, and Creative Visualization for Writers.. She has had nineteen books on the Amazon Top 100 List. Discover more about Nina at https://ninaamir.com and find all her books at https://booksbyninaamir.com.

Featured Photo by Milan Ivanovic on Unsplash

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