Take a cue from the popularity of exposees and tabloids: the best way for readers to escape the problems and concerns of their own lives is to delve into the messy dramas surrounding others. This sort of fixation is not unique to modern culture, either. The ancient Greek tragedians believed that the more suffering they enacted onstage the greater the resultant pleasure and sense of release would be for their audience. There's a lesson here for writers. Within every chapter, paragraph - within every sentence, when possible - exploit the tension.

Your readers may long for peace and contentment in their own lives, but they want conflict in the fiction that they read. For as long as you can sustain the tension, and insinuate that resolution might lie just around the corner, they'll keep turning pages.

Now, this ambition may seem feasible enough if you're planning a novel or short story rife with action. But what about those interludes between the plot twists, the downtime after one conflict has been resolved and the next is just brewing?

If little action is taking place in the present moment you're writing about, this is a good opportunity to explore INNER conflicts. Your protagonist might ponder his or her fears and misgivings about the road ahead; or, if this is speculative fiction, perhaps some larger existential dilemma. If a group of characters are together then examine the dynamics between them. Is there distrust, miscommunication, lingering resentment, sexual tension?

During quiet moments you can also use dialogue - or inner monologue - to provide intimations of danger lying just beyond the seeming tranquility of the present. I'll draw an example from an early, peaceful interlude within my first novel:

"The Smokawa call this Wapicho, the Smoke-Road," Enofor told his young charge, "because from here they can see the smoke of my chimney and know that they're drawing near a place of rest and reflection." He inclined his head, seeming to catch an unwonted scent upon the dawn's light breeze, and frowned. "It is strange that none have come this winter, no starving vagabonds seeking the generosity of Manwate."

If you've earned your readers' trust thus far, they'll realize that you're not just carelessly dropping information. This conversation must have relevance to some impending event. They'll eagerly await the moment when the meaning is finally disclosed. This literary device stirs anticipation - another form of tension.

In a sense, the conflicts that exist within fiction are an affirmation of a basic fact of human existence: our lives are precarious, and mortality casts its shadow over all that we do and hope for and dream of in this world. Respect this tenet, and never give the impression that you're just "walking through" a scene in your novel or short story. All your characters could die within the next couple of paragraphs. We're all mortal, and our time is short.

Therefore, every moment of life (and fiction) is precious.

Seth Mullins is the author of "Song of an Untamed Land", a novel of speculative fantasy in lawless frontier territory. Visit Seth at http://authorsden.com/sethtmullins.