Nobody wants to read a book of fiction that lacks tension. My immediate efforts as I prepare my latest in my Urban Fantasy series - MAZE (Book #2) - involve setting up central and peripheral tensions. I want to have both internal and external conflicts mapped out (outlined), and then freewriting can help determine what happens when the characters actually come up against one another. Sometimes you have relationship stuff (eros) and sometimes you have survival stuff (thanatos), I see Eros as the love or sex drive, whereby characters are wanting to merge with other characters. Thanatos is the death drive, whereby characters are wanting to eliminate anyone who threatens their survival. My central character, Ame, is falling in love in Book 2. She is also learning to hunt down humans, not to kill them, because they have something she wants and knows how to extract. Her internal conflict, in basic terms, involves her relationship with herself. In psychology this is called 'ego-dystonic' (as opposed to ego-syntonic): parts of yourself you are not comfortable with. Ame is learning to hunt to survive, and has been taught by her native people, the 'Delux' (Latin for 'of light'), how to master this art. It can be violent and can result in human death, but not always. Ame was adopted and raised by humans, so she is about to experience an identity crisis of sorts (which will carry on far beyond Book #2). She does not want to see harm come to humans, but at the same time there is a thirst and an appetite for destruction in her with which she must contend.
