The Best Technique for Building Tension in a Story: Part 1

What is the Best Technique for Building Tension in a Story?

In storytelling, tension serves as the invisible force that captivates readers, fueling their emotions, curiosity, and imagination. Without it, stories fall flat, lacking the vital spark that keeps readers engaged until the very end.

Tension is the beating heart of a narrative. It injects excitement, suspense, and urgency, propelling the story forward with purpose. Imagine the tension of your story as slowly stretching an elastic band.

As the band stretches wider, the tension builds until eventually the elastic band snaps and whips the poor person holding it. In a story that elastic band is the reader's emotions, and you are pulling at them as far as you can until it breaks at the end with the final climax and (hopefully) catharsis.

There are many literary techniques for creating tension.

But, in my decently educated opinion, there is only one that rules them all. Enter the crucible—a technique that encapsulates intensity and conflict like no other.

The best technique for building tension in a story is by incorporating a crucible—a severe trial or test—into the narrative. Placing characters in high-stakes situations that they have no escape from where their desires, values, and motivations clash creates intense conflicts. This forces them to confront their fears, make critical choices, and undergo transformative journeys.

This technique forces characters into high-stakes situations, where they must confront their fears, face internal and external conflicts, and make life-altering choices. It unveils their true nature, generating an unsettling atmosphere of anticipation that draws in readers who sit enthralled, craving the next twist.

In this blog post, we will explore the unparalleled power of the crucible as a writing technique for creating tension.

We will delve into its core elements, impact on character development, and strategies for seamless integration. By the end, you will possess the tools to forge narratives that grip readers' hearts.

However, this is a big topic. And when I set out to write this article, I soon discovered I could go on and on about it until I heard cow bells in the distance (you know, cows coming home...keep up).

So I have split this post into two. In the first installment, I will talk about the first two ways to introduce a crucible into your story: through environments and through relationships.

In part 2, we will look at two less common integrations of a crucible, but still very effective: through tasks and through symbolism.

What is a Crucible?

Maybe I should give a little bit of background for those of you who have never heard of the term crucible before.

Side note: Not THE Crucible, but the concept of a physical and figurative crucible.

A crucible is being stuck in a place you cannot leave while being forced to confront a masked serial killer.

It's being trapped in an abusive relationship, afraid that the person you are with will harm your children if you leave.

It's having to carve a shape into a sugar disk before time runs out or you get a bullet in the head.

A crucible is a technique used in storytelling where characters are placed in intense, high-stakes situations that test their values, desires, and motivations.

A crucible is a situation in which people are forced to deal with extreme stress and pressure. This can be physical, like being stuck in a burning building, or psychological, like being interrogated by the Gestapo. Crucibles can also be social, like being the only Edward Scissor Hands in a suburb of weirdos.

No matter their form, crucibles have one thing in common: they push people to their limits and force them to confront their deepest fears and flaws. In the process, they often reveal hidden strengths and resilience.

The literal meaning of 'crucible' is a "ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures."

So, there's something important to point out here:

A crucible is a vessel that contains heat. In writing, you are creating a "container" that will keep the tension of your plot from seeping out, causing it to increase exponentially until your characters are at their breaking point.

In his book, Stein on Writing (seriously recommended for writers and developmental editors), Sol Stein explains how to write a crucible story like this: "They're in it till the end. The key to the crucible is that the motivation of the characters to continue opposing each other is greater than their motivation to run away."

Unless, of course, they CAN'T go anywhere because the door is locked.

It's great for creating tension around monsters, ghouls, serial killers, or to explore the deterioration of the human psyche because it pushes your characters to the furthest reaches of stress and emotional or even physical pain.

It can be used to push the narrative tension of literally any story your little imagination can muster.

Get it? Good.

So I guess the next question is: how to write a crucible into your book?

How to Write a Crucible Story?

In fiction, one of the most fascinating things you can do is explore what happens to humanity when it's pushed into a corner. That could be literal, as in a meek person locked up in a violent prison, or figurative, as in a story about a a couple of men who hate boring office jobs (Office Space). But when done well, it can produce some intense and thought-provoking tales.

A great example of this is Stephen King's The Shining

The story is about a man who slowly goes insane while isolated in a hotel during a snowstorm. But what makes The Shining so effective is that it's not just about the man's descent into madness. It's also about how his family members are affected by his tyranny in the past and present.

But in no book has the crucible been written more masterfully than in José Saramago's Blindness. In my opinion, there is no better teacher for learning how to write a crucible into a story than him.

Blindness follows a group of people after a strange illness wipes over the nation (possibly further), which makes everyone completely blind: everyone but the protagonist, the "doctor's wife," who is immune for some reason.

These people are taken from their homes and placed in an old mental hospital set up as quarantine by the army. As the building fills with more blind people, they are quickly abandoned to fend for themselves. But none may leave or else receive a bullet.

The best way to learn how to write a crucible story is the same best way to learn anything in writing: to read.

So read the book, but also this post is going to be set up as a case study of Blindness just in case you're too lazy to read the book. This book has successfully incorporated all 4 types of crucible that we will talk about in these two posts.

So, let's get into it and learn how to write a crucible already.

How to Create Tension with an Environmental Crucible.

A closed environment is a physical crucible. There is nowhere for your characters to go. They must defeat the monster that is chasing them. They must confront their weaknesses or perish. They must find common ground with their enemy, etc. This is the most popular way to create tension through a crucible.

It can be an environment full of stress and adversity, where people are pushed to their limits and forced to confront their fears. It can also be a place of intense creativity and growth, where new ideas are born, and old ones die.

Think of the Saw movies where Old Cancer Man, whose name I can't remember, places his victims in a crucible to test their resilience. He wants them to kill off their old, flawed self and reemerge as something new.

Cancer Man was correct that the crucible is a powerful engine for change, and once your characters figure their way out, by the end, it will have changed them forever.

It is the vehicle in horror in which our End Girl (or Boy) can shed their innocence and emerge blood-soaked after killing the monster or murderer, whatever it may be.

It is the island in Castaway where Chuck learns that he can't control everything.

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How to Write a Crucible into an Environment: Blindness Case Study.

The hospital turned horror-inducing quarantine prison is the physical crucible in the book. Throughout most of the novel, the characters must navigate this situation (without seeing, mind you).

The parts of Blindness set in this physical crucible are the most visceral. As time passes, things get worse for the characters to the point where they begin to lose their humanity and become worse than animals. The readers feels sicker to their stomach as they go because Saramago looks at how people would act in that situation honestly and with integrity.

That means he does not hold back, does not sugarcoat, and does not write plot points just because they are cool or would be exciting. The realism of the book is what makes it scary.

Blindness gets disturbing, it gets gross, and it gets violent. But it is never unbelievable. And now the world going blind or being trapped in a building with a mass of strangers is my worst nightmare.

Now this is an example involving the emotions of fear and disgust, but remember how I said tension is like stretching the elastic band of your readers emotions? This is readily done with any emotion, whether it be fear or anger or hope. You name it.

Just remember elastic bands snap in the opposite direction. You might not want to pull on hope unless the end goal is to destroy your poor reader's hope at the end.

Your story's environment can be one of the most effective ways to use this literary technique, but it is not the only way.

How to Create Tension with a Relationship Crucible.

A relationship crucible is a relationship that pushes people to their limits. It can be a romantic relationship, a friendship, or even a professional one. In a crucible, both parties are forced to confront their demons and come out changed for the better (or worse).

Crucibles are born out of conflict. This conflict can be anything from differing opinions to life-or-death stakes. What matters is that both parties are pushed to their absolute limit. In a crucible, there is no room for compromise; it's all or nothing.

This intensity can lead to some of the most profound bonding experiences imaginable. In a crucible, you genuinely get to know someone—their fears, hopes, and dreams. You learn what they're made of and whether or not you can trust them with your life.

Of course, not all crucibles are positive experiences. Some relationships crumble under pressure, while others turn toxic.

So how do you to write a crucible as relationship? Or maybe turn the relationship you already have written into a crucible?

Well, popular relationship crucibles include abusive domestic relationships, the terrible boss, the tyrannical parent, or the reckless friend/sibling.

But a relational crucible can also be what motivates the character to make it out of the other side of the test.

Remember the Stein quote at the beginning?

For a crucible to be successful, it needs not only to test your character's strength, but the motivation to suffer through has to be stronger than the motivation to give up or just take off and let someone else worry about it.

There has to be something at stake that matters to your character. Often this can be a relationship they are not willing to give up, or getting out of a relationship they know will kill them.

How to Write a Crucible Story into a Relationship: Blindness Case Study.

The main character in the book is the "doctor's wife."

(Yes, that's how she is referred to. There are no names, nor are there quotation marks or dialogue tags, and nary a line break to be seen.)

I wrote about these attributes specifically in Self-Editing Tips: Visual Breaks Part 2, but for today that doesn't matter, as you are here to find out how to write tension. (Though if you want to learn more about why José Saramago is a master of his craft, I recommend you check it out.)

Our nameless protagonist is what you'd assume from her title—the doctor's wife, "The Doctor" being another character. For some unknown reason, she is spared from the fate of everyone else, but when the army comes to quarantine her husband, she discovers she will not be allowed to go go along.

So, to stay with him, she pretends to be blind as well.

The book explores a series of terrible things that happen to these people. (I would give examples, but guess any horrible thing you can, and you probably have guessed right.) All it would take for her to leave that awful place, the environmental crucible, is to admit she can see. Because she is the only one in the group not actually bound by the environmental crucible, she could easily find a way to leave.

But she doesn't. She chooses to stay regardless of the terrible things that happen to her. She stays because she is stuck in a crucible of her own, just one that cannot be physically seen.

She is bound by love to stay with her husband. Her passion for him motivates her to endure the horror.

So if you want to learn how to write a crucible story into your novel, take a look at your protagonist's relationships and add not only conflict to them, but a reason for them to stick it out rather that take off.

The Best Writing Technique for Building Tension: Part 1 Conclusion

So today we learned how to write a crucible story in its first two and most popular forms. I didn't go into a step-by-step of each one because when learning how to write a crucible, you will discover there are a 1000 unique ways to do it.

Writing tension with this technique in these first two ways is all about conflict and making sure that your character has a believable reason to stay in that conflict. As the tension increases your "vessel" or crucible needs to be just as strong.

Next, in "The Best Technique for Building Tension in a Story: Part 2." We will discuss how to write a crucible into your story through something your character is forced to do, and through the symbolic themes that are threaded throughout.

So keep writing, but read part 2 first.

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Next: Building Tension Part 2