Using Contradictions to Create Masterful Microtension – Part 2
We’re continuing our look at microtension in fiction and how to use contradictions to craft it masterfully (click here to read the first post). If we keep in mind that microtension is about creating tiny tensions by using words, phrases, imagery, and similes/metaphors, we can drill down into our paragraphs and find key moments on every page that can benefit by drawing greater attention to them. (Microtension also deals with larger components threaded over many scenes or a whole book, but I’ll deal with that in another post.)
However, microtension shouldn’t be limited to just important moments. When writing sparks our imagination, gets us visualizing the scene’s action on multiple levels and to varying depths, it makes the writing richer.
Writers know they need their characters to struggle internally. Humans are often conflicted and experience a range of emotions. Rarely is any emotion simple and singular. Humans are—to borrow from Donkey in the Shrek movies—like onions: many-layered.
Whether our characters are thinking (which doesn’t only apply to direct lines of thoughts but all narrative that is presented in deep POV) or speaking out loud (dialogue), their interiority can reflect those complicated, complex layers of emotion, motivation, mood, and perspective.
This is most potent when characters are divided against themselves and when their words fail to align with their true motives. Inner conflict and dialogue are two of the richest places to embed contradiction, because they operate on the fault line between intention and behavior.
In this post, I want to focus on how contradictions in character interiority work together to generate microtension at the scene level. These techniques are especially powerful because they require no additional plot considerations. They can work in quiet scenes, transitional moments, and conversations that appear ordinary on the surface but are anything but.
Interiority: The Conflicted Self on the Page
Every compelling character is, at least occasionally, a contradiction. They want one thing and fear it. They believe one story about themselves and act out another. And this can change from moment to moment, day to day. Microtension emerges when the narrative homes in on that division rather than rushing past it.
Too often, interiority is written as explanation or justification: She was angry because … or He knew he had to … While clarity has its place, microtension thrives on uncertainty. When a character misunderstands her own emotions, resists acknowledging a desire, or acts against what she believes she wants, the reader leans in. We sense the story knows more than the character does.
Contradiction in interiority can take many forms. A character may feel relief at bad news and immediately feel ashamed of that relief. He may insist he doesn’t care while his attention betrays obsession. He may act decisively while internally doubting every step.
What matters is not resolving these contradictions too quickly but allowing them to coexist in the moment.
Sometimes all it takes is presenting an unexpected thought or reaction from the character. Consider this short passage from the first scene of the blockbuster psychological thriller Gone Girl. Nick is heading downstairs on his fifth wedding anniversary to find his wife, Amy, making breakfast. The tension has been rising inside Nick already, before seeing her.
I hovered in the doorway, watching my wife. Her yellow-butter hair was pulled up, the hank of ponytail swinging cheerful as a jump-rope, and she was sucking distractedly on a burnt fingertip, humming around it …
Amy peered at the crepe sizzling in the pan and licked something off her wrist. She looked triumphant, wifely. If I took her in my arms, she would smell like berries and powdered sugar.
When she spied me lurking there in grubby boxers, my hair in full Heat Miser spike, she leaned against the kitchen counter and said, “Well, hello, handsome.”
Bile and dread inched up my throat. I thought to myself: Okay, go.
The reader isn’t expecting his reaction. That’s compounded by the contrast of the choice of words that describe her. The things Nick notices and the cheerful words and imagery used give the impression he is feeling delight, joy, love, happiness. But … he’s feeling anything but.
Letting Emotion and Thought Disagree
One particularly effective form of microtension arises when emotion, thought, and behavior fail to line up. A character may tell herself she’s calm while her body reacts with tension. She may rationalize a choice even as an undercurrent of dread runs through the scene. These subtle mismatches signal that something is unresolved—and unresolved energy is narrative fuel.
Rather than naming the conflict outright, allow it to surface indirectly. Let characters latch on to irrelevant details to avoid confronting what truly matters. Let their internal monologues circle the truth without touching it. Readers are remarkably adept at recognizing avoidance, and they experience it as tension rather than confusion.
This is especially effective when the character’s self-perception is at stake. When who they think they are comes into quiet conflict with what they’re doing, microtension deepens into character development.
Acting against One’s Own Desire
Another potent form of microtension arises when characters act against what they want, even in small, seemingly inconsequential ways. These moments of self-betrayal often stem from fear, habit, or self-protection rather than logic. A character may reach for distance when they crave connection, soften their voice when they want to lash out, or make a choice that preserves the status quo while quietly resenting themselves for it. The contradiction between desire and action creates tension because the reader can see the cost even when the character cannot.
What makes these moments especially effective is their subtlety. The action itself may appear reasonable, polite, or even kind on the surface, but it carries an emotional undertow. Readers sense that the character has crossed an internal line, however faint, and that crossing it will echo later.
Microtension doesn’t require the character to make a disastrous decision—only one that feels wrong in a way they’re not ready to admit.
Misreading Emotion and Self-Deception
Characters rarely have perfect insight into their own emotions, and fiction becomes more compelling when writers resist giving them that clarity too soon. When a character mislabels fear as anger, desire as curiosity, or grief as indifference, the story gains friction.
This kind of emotional misinterpretation creates microtension because the reader recognizes the gap between what the character claims to feel and what the narrative evidence suggests is true.
Crucially, this misreading should not be treated as a flaw to correct immediately but as a pressure point to sustain. As long as the character remains invested in their false explanation, every thought and decision is slightly off balance. The reader becomes aware that the character is building conclusions on a faulty foundation. The longer the misinterpretation holds, the more tension accumulates—not through confusion but dramatic irony.
Microtension in interiority emerges not from heightened emotion but from friction within the self. When a character’s thoughts, emotions, desires, and actions fail to align, the narrative gains pressure without needing overt conflict or plot escalation. Contradictions—relief paired with guilt, decisiveness shadowed by doubt, desire masked as indifference—signal to the reader that something unresolved is at work beneath the surface. These moments are compelling precisely because they are unsettled.
By allowing emotion, perception, and behavior to disagree on the page, writers transform interiority from explanation into tension. Characters who misread their own feelings, act against what they want, or cling to comforting but false self-narratives generate suspense through uncertainty rather than surprise. The question driving the scene becomes not only what will happen next but which internal force will prevail—and at what cost. When interior contradictions are allowed to coexist rather than resolve too quickly, even quiet moments pulse with masterful microtension.
Featured Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
