We don’t want our characters to get too comfortable as they go about saving the world. They should never be following the plot like it’s as simple as A-B-C , instead there should be complications and struggles along the way. There needs to be doubt, changes, and uncertainties along the way.
Basically instead of making it easy for our protagonist, we need to find ways to make it all go wrong.
This may be where authors get that reputation for loving to make their characters suffer 😉
Because we don’t want things to be too predictable or boring!
In case you’re having some trouble with causing trouble… here are four ways to introduce complications and make things generally harder for our characters.
Raising Tension: 4 Ways To Make It All Go Wrong
Bad luck
Giving our characters too much good luck is contrived and should be avoided, but bad luck (as long as it isn’t too overdone and obvious) can be an excellent method of making life difficult for our protagonists.
Maybe they can’t catch a break with the weather or the tree branch they’re climbing in to hide from the bad guys breaks and they fall to the ground. Or maybe traffic is bad when they really really need to be somewhere on time.
These bad luck moments are believable and relatable and they make things all the more complicated and difficult for our protagonist, thus upping the tension of the story. Bad luck for the win!
Mistakes
Our protagonist should be making mistakes. If they always get everything right and know all the answers then the story is fairly predictable and you’re falling into the Mary Sue trap of having a perfect (and perfectly boring) protagonist.
Having our characters fail is super important.
And this failure can often cause problems and make things worse! Not only plot complications- such as the hero messing up something important- but mistakes can also create hurt feelings or struggles with guilt if the hero is the one responsible for something going wrong.
These complications can add layers of emotion, tension, and difficulty to our story.
Friendly Fire
Whether because of a misunderstanding or from just having a different idea of how things should go, sometimes friends and allies can cause problems in the story.
There can be disagreements over which plan to follow to defeat the bad guys. There can be personality clashes during emotional moments or misunderstandings over how to relax after a big fight.
This tension between friends can add difficulty to the protagonist’s life as well as problems to overcome related to reaching their goals, plus it’s very honest.
Bad Guys Get Worse
Okay so we probably have a bad guy in our story.
But they shouldn’t just be off in their evil lair waiting for the hero to come and defeat them!
The villain should always be active and powerful, otherwise the story can seem somewhat fake and the tension isn’t real.
If the hero is getting comfortable and doing well, is there a way for the villain to disrupt their plans? What kind of trouble is the bad guy stirring up? Are we hearing reports of evil things happening or feeling the effects of their dastardly plans? Are they even more terrible than we thought?
Keeping the villain active forces the tensions to rise and can raise the stakes.
So there we have it, four ways to raise the tension and make things worse for our protagonists!
And the good news is that once they finally overcome the challenges, their win will be all the more satisfying and exciting for it 🙂
