: Re: How do I create tension around a threat which isn't immediately, personally harmful? I'm at the end of chapter 1 of my book, where the protagonist (a cyberterrorist) commits his first terror

@Carla500

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Make them care about the people affected by the attack in the same way as they would care if it happened to them or to a friend or family member.

Fictional situations that do not put anyone's life at threat can actually be more tense than life-threatening situations because (a) there is less reassurance to the reader from the conventions of fiction, and (b) unlike a life-or-death situation, they are within the experience of the vast majority of your readers.

Often one can guess with confidence that, yes, the hero will manage to deactivate the atomic bomb in the penultimate chapter, but one can't be nearly so sure that a sympathetic character in Chapter 2 won't have their hopes and ambitions dashed.

Terrorism is scary but will, I trust, touch very few of your readers' lives and so often doesn't feel quite real. However if your reader has shared the plant security manager's uneasy sense that something is not right and his worry about saying something when he has no proof (when management already think he's prone to panic after that false alarm last month), then they will really feel for him in the moment of dreadful realisation when the attack finally happens. He has to make a decision in haste which turns out to be wrong - that's happened to them. He can't immediately remember the correct emergency procedure - they've been there. He may not be under any fear of death in this attack, but he is terrified that after this he's going to lose his job and find it hard to get another to support his family - they can relate to that fear.

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