Starting your Story with Tension
By far, the number one issue I see in manuscripts I’ve evaluated is the lack of consistent tension, especially at the beginning. You may hear feedback that your story doesn’t really start until page XX or that it starts in the wrong place. The place it should start is when the tension or conflict begins.
One of the most common mistakes aspiring novelists make is confusing setup with story. They spend the opening chapters introducing the protagonist’s hometown, explaining the magic system, describing the family dynamics, or walking readers through an ordinary day. The writing may be competent. The worldbuilding may even be interesting. But without tension, readers have no reason to keep turning pages.
Tension is what pulls readers forward through a story. It creates anticipation, uncertainty, curiosity, anxiety, excitement, or emotional investment. Importantly, tension does not require explosions, murders, or high-speed chases. A quiet literary novel can contain tremendous tension. So can a middle grade story, a romance, or contemporary YA.
Tension simply means that something feels unresolved.
A character wants something and may not get it.
A secret threatens to surface.
A relationship is fraying.
A conversation could go badly.
A choice looms.
Readers stay engaged because they subconsciously crave resolution.
Take a look at this example from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping."
All we know at this point is that there is something called the reaping, and it is bad enough to cause a child to have bad dreams. But the unanswered questions of what the reaping is and why it’s scaring her sister is enough to keep us reading.
Remember, the first pages of a novel are not just introducing characters and setting. They are making a promise about the emotional experience of the book. If the opening feels flat, readers assume the rest of the novel will feel flat too. In an age of streaming entertainment, social media, and endless distractions, novels cannot afford to drift for fifty pages before “getting interesting.” There will be time to weave in details of the setting, but there is only so much time to catch your reader’s interest.
The opening does not need nonstop action. But it does need friction.
Something should feel unstable from the very beginning.