Avoiding Manufactured Tension for Narrative Effect
Launch library · evergreen read
A true story sometimes lacks the dramatic tension a writer instinctively wants, and the temptation to manufacture conflict where the evidence shows relative calm, or to overstate stakes that were genuinely modest, quietly trades accuracy for a more compelling read that the facts never actually supported.
This kind of manufactured tension is often subtle, a slightly stronger verb, a suggestive juxtaposition, a structural choice that implies more drama than the underlying record contains, rather than an outright fabrication that would be obvious and reasonably easy to catch on a careful, close reading.
Checking a draft specifically for this pattern, asking where tension was added rather than found in the evidence, catches a habit that can otherwise creep into a writer's style without ever being consciously chosen or noticed by the writer at the time. A second reader, less invested in the story's momentum, often spots this drift faster than the writer who has been living inside the material for weeks or months.