One thing I’ve been noticing more and more when reading early drafts is how often tension and conflict get blurred together, and how that ends up affecting the pacing in ways the writer doesn’t always notice.
A lot of scenes have clear activity on the surface. Characters are exchanging information, moving from place to place, uncovering pieces of the world. But underneath that, there’s no real resistance. No one is being meaningfully challenged, no expectation is being disrupted, and no decision carries immediate weight. So even though the scene is doing “work,” it doesn’t create much pull.
I think part of the issue is that conflict is often treated as something big and delayed — a major event, a reveal, a turning point later in the story. But on a smaller scale, conflict can exist in almost any interaction: mismatched goals, withheld information, emotional misalignment, even something as subtle as one character wanting a conversation to end while the other is trying to prolong it.
Tension, on the other hand, doesn’t require open disagreement, but it does require pressure. It’s that sense that something is unresolved, that something could shift, or that the scene is leaning toward an outcome that hasn’t fully landed yet.
When neither of these is present, scenes can end up feeling like transitions, even when they’re important for setup or worldbuilding. And I think that’s why some otherwise well-written openings feel slower than they actually are.
Curious if this is something others have run into in their own drafts or while reading.