: Re: How do I add tension to a story, when the reader knows the MC survives? To clarify: There are two parts to the book (or I might split them into separate books), one with my main protagonist,

@Lee1909368

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Tension is, technically, the struggle between protagonist and antagonist when they both want the same thing.

Readers will experience a variety of emotions, vicarious and sympathetic, when they become invested in the outcome of a story and its world.
As JM Straczynski put it, not knowing what happens later is a minor aspect of the drama in any story. It matters less whether the main characters will live, or whether they will discover the bomb and disarm it before it explodes, than how exactly they respond to the dilemma — how it affects them.

It matters more, to the reader, whether they — the reader themself — get caught up in the story each time they read it.
If your characters are vivid, and if their interactions and choices seem genuine, then the reader will enjoy each reread as much, or more, than the first read.
You have the novelty versus treasury trade–off, of course, but any good author of a story knows that novelty is cheap — really, I wish that they weren't called “novels” any more. If you expect it to be the chief attraction of your story, then in a few years your story will end up out–of–print and scattered throughout secondhand bookstores in the ten–dollars–a–bag cabinets.

To simplify at the loss of some accuracy: most readers, except those who don't really care to read at all, care more about the story itself than they do about the outcome of the story.
Most of that concern is earned on an emotional level, yes, but it can be done intellectually and aesthetically too.

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