Step 1: Create engaging and dynamic characters with opposing goals.
Step 2: Choose a conflict that is important to your characters. Their investment in the outcome will create investment in the reader.
Step 3: Keep raising the stakes: Your story needs several points where tension reaches a peak.
Step 4: Allow tension to ebb and flow: Don’t make it so relentless that readers don’t get a breather.
Step 5: Keep making the reader ask questions: Uncertainty and the need to know are powerful storytelling tools. See More . . .