I wrote an interrogation scene for my detective WIP that should have been dripping with tension, but it read like a giant infodump. No resistance. No stakes. Just the bland back-and-forth of information I wanted readers to know, and the whole scene just went splat.

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This is pretty common, especially in early drafts. We know what happens in our story and why, so we tend to skip over the uncertainty that creates that all-important story tension.

But without that uncertainty, scenes can feel like they’re just going through the motions.

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Will a secret be revealed? Will someone snap? Are things about to go horribly wrong? Such questions give a scene its edge, even when there’s no action at all, because it’s not about what’s happening, it’s about what might happen. A quiet conversation can be more riveting than a car chase if the stakes are high, the emotions raw, and the outcome is up in the air.

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So how do you add tension when your scene is dragging? Start by making someone squirm.