How to Build Scene Tension in Any Novel

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only thing that keeps readers turning page after page of a novel is tension. Tension must be relieved eventually, and the only ways readers can relieve it is to keep reading or close the book. As important as tension is, it’s difficult to teach to new writers. So below are some tips on how to build scene tension in any novel.

Develop characters who add tension.

Creating characters who have conflicting qualities or personalities that don’t mesh is the easiest way to inject tension in a scene. Analyze your cast of characters. Is everyone of them kind, thoughtful, and unselfish? Are they all introverts or extroverts? Are they all neat or slobs? Are they same age or come from the same socio-economic, racial, or ethnic backgrounds? Differences automatically create tension.

If you find that too many of your characters act and talk the same, dig into how to make them different from each other. The mellow mom and her uptight daughter would conflict in certain situations. The outgoing brother and his reserve brother. The friend who’s a rule-follower and the friend who sees rules as suggestions. These characters with opposite qualities are the raw material from which to mine tension.

Develop internal conflict within your protagonists.

Let’s say I’m writing a teen novel. My main character is a seventeen-year-old girl in her senior year of high school. She dreams of going to college, but she takes care of her home and younger siblings since her mom was disabled in a car accident. She doesn’t want to ditch her family, but she doesn’t want to ditch college either.

When a protagonist has two desires that appear mutually exclusive, you have gold for adding tension to your novel.

Develop conflict with the setting.

Any setting or situation that is outside the comfort zone of the protagonist holds a lot of potential for creating tension in a scene. I write about using uncomfortable settings here.

Remember that not all tension is the same.

There’s a major difference in tension between a middle-aged woman losing patience with her elderly mother who keeps chatting with people on a shopping trip, and a cop who is furious at his rule-following superior because he believes the superior is allowing a criminal to escape justice.

Use a variety of tensions to keep readers hooked. I find this easy to do when I write mysteries. Some suspects my amateur sleuth talks to will be happy to share information. Other will be secretive–but is it because they are guilty or is something else going on in their lives? Some suspects will be plain hostile. Those differences in characters create different levels of tension, keeping the storytelling interesting.

Here are more tips on writing with tension.

What are some of the best tense scenes you’ve read?

August 20, 2026 0

Book Recs for Finding Names for Characters

One of my favorite things about writing, and the least stressful, is naming characters. While you can google names all you want, I prefer consulting books, and recently, I discovered two books I’d recccomend for finding names for characters.

The Best Gender-Neutral Baby Name Book: The Ultimate Collection of Unique Unisex Names by Melanie Mannarino

I stumbled across this book at the library and loved how it got me to broaden my view of names. Many of the names don’t seem gender-neutral to me, but the books provides many lists of unusual names for authors who want their characters to stand out from the crowd.

First Name Reverse Dictionary by Yvonne Navarro

Another library find. This book was published in 1993, (the link is for an updated edition) but well worth tracking down if you want a different way of finding names. The title says it all. The meanings of names are listed in alphabetical order. For example, the definition “warrior” is listed under “W”. The definition “peaceful” is listed under “P”. Under the entry for “warrior”, the author lists many names from various languages that all mean “warrior”.

You could use this book for a fantasy novel in which everyone’s name reflects something about their personalities. Or you could create a family within in any genre that has an unusual naming tradition. Such as in a cozy mystery, the main suspects are a family in which the mother named her children based on the mood she was in when she delivered them. You could create some very memorable names from that kind of set up.

I’ve reviewed a newer reverse name dictionary here. And I highly recommend getting a copy of The Character Naming Sourcebook.

Writers, what books do you like to use for finding names for characters?

August 13, 2026 0

How to Introduce Characters in Your Novel Without Ruining the Pace

Introducing characters at the beginning of your story can be tricky. If not done well, it will sink your narrative before it’s had a chance to take off. Here’s how to introduce characters in your novel without ruining the pace.

Introduce Characters in Small Batches

The novels in my mystery series, Rae Riley Mysteries, have a lot of characters. My amateur sleuth Rae lives in a county not only full of suspects but also relatives and friends. So I don’t overwhelm readers, I work hard to introduce characters in small groups. Two or three per a chapter is ideal. I also insert family trees in the front matter of my novels. Family relationships are critically important to my stories, so having the family trees which readers can flip to at any time is helpful. I also have a roster of characters, titled “Citizens and Visitors of Marlin County Ohio”, in the front for quick reference for characters who aren’t part of the family trees.

How Much Character Description?

New writers make the mistake of dumping all description of characters and a lot of their backstory into the beginning. Not only does this slow the story or grind it to a halt, it also removes most of the interest in the characters. Readers like to get to know characters over the course of the story.

I’ve also found the opposite problem in current novels. Authors provide little or no descriptions of major characters. Readers are supposed to build what they look like from their actions and dialogue.

I need descriptions to relate to the characters. I began a romantic suspense novel that opened with three male and three female characters. The author provided names and that was it. Their actions were standard cop scenarios. Because my imagination had so little to go on, the characters were either fuzzy or kept morphing. Because I couldn’t see them, I couldn’t care about them, and since I didn’t care, I quit reading.

So how do we hit the Goldilock’s spot when introducing characters–providing enough information for readers to get to know them without killing the pace?

Use Real Life as Guide for Introducing Characters

What do you notice about a person when you first meet him or her? I pick up on the obvious, such as gender, skin tone, hair color and style, and build. As I speak to him or her, I noticed smaller details like eye color, facial features and idiosyncrasies of speech and mannerisms.

Now I can’t include all of that for every characters. Talk about ruining the pace. So when I introduce a major character, I select the two to three most important features of the character, especially those features that will set him or her apart from other characters. Then, if I can come up with it, I try to include a vivid comparison that sums up the character’s appearance.

In the first chapter of A Riddle in the Lonesome October, twenty-year-old Rae is riding home from work with her dad, Sheriff Walter “Mal” Malinowski when her aunt Carrie calls. She’s head of security at a Halloween event and she’s caught a trespasser who wants to speak to the sheriff. As Rae and Mal talk about the attraction and the history of the trespasser, whom Mal has met before, I reveal details about Mal’s appearance.

“Dad adjusted his seat so his impressive, 6’6″ frame might be a little more comfortable in the patrol vehicle.”

“Dad’s boyish face turned thoughtful.”

I also include a feature of Carrie when she enters the scene.

“Taking off a black baseball hat that had “Security” printed on it, she ran her hand through her long, white-blonde hair.”

Then I sum up their appearances so readers can imagine them overall.

“With their athletic builds and serious expressions, they looked like Thor and Valkyrie preparing to battle a supervillain.”

Readers now have a few features to build a mental picture and can imagine how those features are linked to characters who could pass for the superheroes Thor and Valkyrie.

Here are more posts on writing descriptions.

How much description do you like when characters are introduce?

May 21, 2026 1

Dig Deeper to Write a Compelling Antagonist for Your Novel

Just like you have to investigate the history and psyche of your protagonist, you need to dig deeper to create a compelling antagonist for your novel. The biggest mistake I think rookie writers make when writing the antagonist, especially if he’s a villain, is …

He’s mean because he’s mean.

There is no more reason behind the antagonist’s dastardly actions than the writer needs him to do dastardly things. But that kind of shallow writing won’t create a compelling antagonist.

Build the antagonist like the protagonist.

Do you know her likes and dislikes? What personality type does he fit? Understanding your antagonist as well as your protagonist will make him come alive on the page. Below are a few points to keep in mind as you do your digging.

Make sure your antagonist is a worthy opponent. In a mystery, the antagonist has to be as clever as the protagonist or the protagonist will solve the mystery on page 10. Sometimes, writers make the protagonist so powerful or accomplished that the antagonist doesn’t stand a chance. Conversely, it’s all right to make an antagonist seem unbeatable. That will make readers root for your protagonist more. Just be sure that you create a believable trajectory for the protagonist to overcome a super-powerful antagonist.
If your antagonist is a villain, don’t glamorize the villainy. This can be easy for writers to do if they get carried away with wearing the black hat. You can have fun writing the villain, but within the novel, his evil actions should be treated by the other characters for what they are: evil.
If your antagonist is a villain, her backstory should explain, not excuse, her evil actions. Star Wars fans enjoy the prequel trilogy because it gives us the backstory of one of fiction’s greatest villains, Darth Vader. While these movies provide an explanation, they don’t offer the backstory as an excuse for Darth Vader subjecting the galaxy to terror and tyranny.

When I create the villain in one of my mystery novels–the character who has committed a crime and is trying to prevent anyone from discovering it was he or she–I ask myself a few questions:

Does the antagonist have a realistic motive to justify the crime? If my antagonist murders a man for stealing his lunch money in first grade, then I don’t have a realistic motive for murder.
Is the crime spur of the moment or planned? Certain personalities might commit a serious crime in the heat of the moment. Others definitely would not. I need to understand which camp my villain belongs to.
If the crime is planned, would the villain have the resources to do it? Does she have the intelligence to plot a locked room murder? To give herself an alibi? Is she deceptive enough not to give herself away to the police? How far will she go to protect herself from exposure to the authorities?

Here are all my tips and prompts this month on writing characters.

Who are some of your favorite antagonists? If you’ve created an antagonist, what are some problems you encountered while developing this character?

February 26, 2026 1

Three Tips for Creating an Antagonist for Your Novel

Creating an antagonist for your novel is as important as creating the protagonist or main character. Would Sherlock Holmes have achieved literary immortality if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hadn’t created the perfect nemesis in Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime? Below are three tips for creating an antagonist for your novel.

An antagonist does not have to be a villain.

Yes, you read that right. An antagonist is someone or something that prevents your protagonist for achieving the goal she is working toward in your novel. Let’s say your protagonist is a high school senior who wants to become a cop like her late father. Her mother is dead set against it because her father was killed in the line of duty. So Mom is the antagonist of the daughter without being a villain.

An antagonist does not have to be human.

If your novel is a story about how a family tries to survive on a mountainside when caught in a freak snowstorm while hiking, then nature itself is the antagonist. In a scene from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo and his crew from The Nautilus battle giant squids. In that scene the squids are the antagonists. If your protagonist is battling the oppression or corruption of a political system, then the characters advancing that system are the antagonists but the specific political system itself can be one too. That leads me to my next point …

Your novel can have more than one antagonist.

This concept is often used in mystery novels. A murder has taken place, so the antagonist is the murderer. But he may have a friend who is shielding him from the police. So you have a second antagonist.

My next example is a spoiler, but it’s from a very old novel, so I don’t mind divulging it.

In the novel, Too Many Women from the Nero Wolfe mystery series, a wealthy man commits two murders. He wants to prevent Nero Wolfe and his whip-smart assistant Archie Goodwin from catching him. Standard mystery antagonist. What makes this novel different is that the man’s wife is pretty sure she knows what he’s doing but says nothing because it would interfere with her luxurious lifestyle. To protect herself even further, she manipulates her husband into committing suicide. She’s antagonist #2 and I find her far more repellant than her obsessed husband.

Next week, we’ll dig deeper into creating an antagonist, just like we did when creating the protagonist.

Who are the antagonists that stand out in your experience?

February 19, 2026 1

Category: Characters