Note From KMW: Whenever I’m browsing a new book in a bookstore or reading a sample online, I’m always aware of how little I can actually know at the start. I can’t yet see if the plot will hold together or if the structure will land. I don’t know how the Climactic Moment will pay off or whether the character arcs will come full circle. But there’s one thing I can tell almost immediately. And that is whether or not the microtension in the writing is doing its job.
Within a page or two, I can feel whether the prose has energy. I can tell whether there’s a sense of control in the writing itself. When an author understands how to handle tension at the sentence level, it shows. When it’s there, I trust them enough to buy the book and keep reading. Even before I know where the story is going, I’m willing to follow—because the experience of reading already feels alive.
I talk a lot about the big picture of story—structure, character arcs, theme. But all of that ultimately has to live on the page, in the intimate moments of the prose.
So what makes that work?
Today, I’m sharing a post from C.S. Lakin, a familiar voice here and a respected writing teacher. In today’s post, she’s exploring this idea of microtension in writing—the subtle choices in language, imagery, and contrast that create that sense of energy readers feel right away. Microtension is a small-scale craft element that has an irreplaceably powerful effect on how your story is experienced.
***
Microtension is one of the most important elements of masterful fiction writing, but few writers have heard of the term or know what it means. Talented writers infuse their stories with microtension even if they’ve never known to call it that.
So, what is microtension? Just as the prefix suggests, it’s tension on a micro level—small bits of creative wording and imagery that heighten your prose. I liken it to adding a few pinches of strong, flavorful spices to a bland stew.
Your big plot twists and reversals provide macrotension, and those are crucial. But microtension is what keeps readers engaged with every sentence. You need both to write powerful fiction.
Too often, writers focus on plot and overlook the smallest building blocks of story: words. Yet every word carries weight. Microtension blooms in the phrasing, the imagery, and the subtle contradictions or incongruencies that make a reader pause and pay attention.
I refer to microtension as “sticky bits” on the page—those surprising or evocative turns of phrase that make you stop and think, Wait, what? When those moments accumulate, your prose gains energy and momentum.
The result? Readers feel curiosity, anticipation, even unease. And that feeling is what keeps them turning pages.
2 Powerful Ways to Create Microtension in Writing
Masterful writers will draw from a myriad of literary devices to carve pathways for microtension, but let’s take a look at two interesting ones in this post.
1. How to Use Metaphor to Create Microtension in Writing
Most of us are familiar with metaphors and similes. A metaphor describes something as some other thing (e.g., “he’s an open book”), whereas a simile is a comparison, usually using the word like (e.g., “her voice was like a mouse’s—high and squeaky”).
Linguistic Metaphors: Creating Microtension Through Language
For example, in the short story “The Fix” by Percival Everett, Sherman has an uncanny gift for fixing anything. It’s a brilliant story full of understatement and microtension. Notice the brief foray into metaphor:
“You have to be careful about what you fix. If you fix the valves in an engine, but the bearings are shot, you’ll get more compression, but the engine will still burn up.” Sherman looked at Douglas’s puzzled face. “If you irrigate a desert, you might empty a sea. It’s a complicated business, fixing things.”
Douglas said, “So, what do we do now?”
Sherman was now weeping, tears streaming down his face and curving just under his chin before falling to the open collar of his light blue shirt. Douglas watched him, not believing that he was seeing the same man who had fixed so many machines and so many relationships and so many businesses and concerns and even fixed a dead woman.
Sherman raised his tear-filled eyes to Douglas. “I am the empty sea,” he said.
Visual Metaphors: Revealing Character Through Imagery
In Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, the opening scene ends with a visual (i.e., not linguistic) metaphor. Nick is plagued with guilt when he wakes, and the sun streaming through his window is an angry eye (metaphor) watching him. He goes downstairs to find his wife, Amy, making breakfast, but he’s engulfed in dread.
Before Nick hurries out of his house, we learn that he borrowed a lot of money from Amy to open a bar in town, and he’s feeling guilty about this. He’s determined to make it a success, and off he heads to work. Here’s the high moment at the end, where the unease and microtension ratchet up ten notches:
As I walked toward the bar across the concrete-and-weed parking lot, I looked straight down the road and saw the river … The river wasn’t swollen now, but it was running urgently, in strong ropy currents. Moving apace with the river was a long single-file line of men, eyes aimed at their feet, shoulders tense, walking steadfastly nowhere. As I watched them, one suddenly looked up at me, his face in shadow, an oval blackness. I turned away.
I felt an immediate, intense need to get inside. By the time I’d gone twenty feet, my neck bubbled with sweat. The sun was still an angry eye in the sky. You have been seen.
My gut twisted, and I moved quicker. I needed a drink.
Here we see, as Nick heads to his bar, not a pretty garden of colorful flowers but a “concrete-and-weed parking lot” and a river running “urgently” with strong “ropy currents.” These are deliberate images and word choices by the author meant to reflect Nick’s mindset and mood.
Concrete and weeds conjure up hard, ugly things. The river isn’t gaily rippling or gently flowing; it’s described in a way that we subconsciously sense Nick is feeling—some sense of urgency and distress, and ropy currents make readers picture ropes, which are constricting, even violent. Strong ropes evoke images of people or things tied up, restrained, or perhaps whipped or beaten. Nothing there implies joy, peace, beauty, contentment, or happiness.
Then, strangely, Nick sees a line of men walking single file beside the river, which evokes a prison gang, with eyes fixed on the ground, their bodies tense. And they are walking “steadfastly nowhere.” How in the world does he know that? Why are they in this scene? Why would Nick look at them? It appears surreal, for why would there actually be a line of men like this walking on the waterfront? It’s almost like a vision or projection in Nick’s mind.
And it’s all very intriguing, giving us the feeling that Nick is reading into them what he is presently feeling—trapped, imprisoned, made to “toe the line” as a dutifully faithful husband, tense, but wandering nowhere, as if being pulled by an invisible current against his will … all because of something he’s done that we have yet to discover.
His pressing need to go into his bar creates more microtension, as does his neck bubbling (an interesting choice of words to tie in with the river water) with sweat. He notices the angry eye of the sun and is reminded that he’s been seen, prompting his gut to twist and need a drink—first thing in the morning.
We are now really itching to know: What has Nick done that has made him so tense and fearful? The use of this visual metaphor infuses the moment with microtension.
One-Line Metaphors: Small Details That Carry Weight
You don’t need to get complex with metaphors. They can be a simple phrase to convey creative imagery. Here are some examples:
Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind:
A grand stone staircase led up from a palatial courtyard to a ghostly network of passageways and reading rooms … I glided up to the first floor, blessing the blades of a fan that swirled above the sleepy readers melting like ice cubes over their books.
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (affiliate link)
Maggie Stiefvater’s Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception:
Delia was an overbearing cake with condescending frosting, and frankly, I was on a diet.
Lament by Maggie Stiefvater (affiliate link)
John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars:
The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light. My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (affiliate link)
Frances Hardinge’s A Face Like Glass:
Wishes are thorns, he told himself sharply. They do us no good, just stick into our skin and hurt us.
A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge (affiliate link)
It’s important to be strategic with metaphors and not go overboard with them. Think about your character’s mood or mindset in an important moment, and consider inventing an apropos metaphor to convey that.
2. How to Use Similes to Add Microtension to Your Writing
Similes are varied and common in fiction and an easy pathway for microtension, but they, too, can be overused or uncreative.
In my novel Conundrum, Lisa’s mother is forcing her to vacate her house, and the beauty of roses is contrasted with the taint of her mother’s cruelty. Pain and outrage are likened to stench in a fleabag motel. (Notice also that the word pairings of smell, scent, and stench have alliteration and opposition, which adds another layer of lyricism.)
The thought of starting over, of a new beginning for me and Jeremy, softened my anxiety. That’s what we needed. This would be good for us, I reminded myself. Everything here on this property carried a taint on it now. Tainted by my mother’s cruelty.
I placed the vases throughout the house, splashing color into every room, every corner, filling the house with the smell of beauty, a scent strong enough to mask the permeating pain, disappointment, and outrage that seeped from the walls as potent as the stench of a fleabag motel room.
Conundrum C.S. Lakin (affiliate link)
Here’s a brief example of a simile from Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry:
It wasn’t until Elizabeth noticed that Madeline’s clothes began to hang on her bony frame like bad drapes that she began to wonder what was going on.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (affiliate link)
James Lee Burke, in The House of the Rising Sun, uses similes in fresh, evocative ways:
Death was bad only when it was degrading, when it caught you sick and alone and lying on sheets soiled with your smell, your fears assembling around you like specters in the darkness.
The inside of the courtroom smelled of cigars and unemptied cuspidors. The judge wore a gray-streaked black chin beard and had a large, deeply pitted veined nose on which his spectacles perched like magnifying glasses on an owl. Hackberry could not stop staring at the strange optical effect created by the magnification. The judge’s eyes reminded Hackberry of giant bugs trying to swim underwater.
House of the Rising Sun James Lee Burke (affiliate link)
Metaphors and similes aren’t decorative flourishes (or, at least, they shouldn’t be). They are precise tools writers can use to add microtension to their scenes. Utilizing a simple but creative image through metaphor or simile adds depth to our writing and sparks readers’ imaginations.
Regardless of the genre you’re writing in, there will be places for these literary devices. Watch for them in the novels you read, observe the effect they have on you as a reader, then apply these techniques in your own stories. These bits of microtension will add richness to your prose and delight your readers.
Want More?
Masterful Microtension by C.S. LakinM (affiliate link)
If this idea of microtension is clicking into place for you, then C.S. Lakin’s new book Masterful Microtension: The Essential Element of Powerful Fiction is a valuable next step.
In this book, she dives into what microtension really looks like on the page and how it operates through contradiction, subtext, symbolism, and the subtle friction between what characters think, say, and experience. She zooms all the way in to explore how word choices, motifs, and imagery shape the emotional energy of every scene. If you’ve ever felt like your story should be working, but something still feels flat, microtension is often the missing piece.
The book not only breaks down the many pathways of microtension, but also offers practical techniques and exercises to help you apply them in your own writing. The result is prose that pulls readers in, sentence by sentence and line by line.
Available in paperback and e-book.
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How are you currently using microtension in writing—or where do you feel it might be missing from your scenes? Tell us in the comments!
The post Microtension in Writing Explained: How Small Details Create Big Tension appeared first on Helping Writers Become Authors.
Go to Source
Author: C.S. Lakin | @cslakin