As I’ve aged, I’ve gotten thin-skinned. I mean that literally. As a result of my stroke in 2012 and subsequent episodes of atrial fibrillation, I take an adult-strength aspirin every day to keep blood clots from forming. Now, when I bump or scrape an arm or a leg, I’m more prone to bruise, developing ugly blood spots that spread just beneath the skin that gets thinner the older I get. “You’re not an old man,” my PCP said to me recently, “but you’re not a young man either.”

I choose to see the upside of that statement. I’m still running four miles every other day and working with weights the other days. I feel I’m not doing too badly for someone who’s now seventy. Still, it pains me to see these blood spots. I have one on my wrist from where our cat, Stanley, accidentally caught me with a claw and a particularly ugly one on my knee from where a patio chair bumped me when I was carrying it to our basement. In fact, this is the first time I’ve written about any of this; that’s how embarrassing I find it. I guess I’m not only physically thin-skinned, but emotionally as well.

Sometimes I hear from writers that they don’t know how to give tension to a narrative. When they try, they end up focusing on large actions that can sometimes be sensational. I encourage them to look for the smaller moments that resonate because they’re deeply connected to the people involved. When that’s the case, any sharp word, any snide remark, any poorly timed joke can touch sore spots which are often there because of characters’ shared histories that have led to certain resentments. When we know one another for a long time, we know where to press to get a response. We know where to bump or scrape to bring the blood to the surface.

A prime example of such bloodletting is Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Long-married couple, George and Martha, spar in the company of their guests, Nick and Honey.  Fueled by alcohol and deep-seated resentments, they cut into each other with intention. They each know how to dig to wound. At one point, we encounter this exchange:

HONEY: (Apologetically, holding up her brandy bottle) I peel labels.

GEORGE: We all peel labels, sweetie; and when you get through the skin, all three layers, through the muscle, slosh aside the organs (An aside to NICK) them which is still sloshable–(Back to HONEY) and get down to bone…you know what you do then?

HONEY: (Terribly interested) No!

GEORGE: When you get down to bone, you haven’t got all the way, yet. There’s something inside the bone…the marrow…and that’s what you gotta get at. (A strange smile at MARTHA)

There you have it, the objective of all writing that matters. You’ve gotta get at the marrow. To do that, you have to know what wounds your characters carry with them. Then you let them cut through the layers until they’re down to the bones and they crack them and get at the marrow, and no one will ever be the same. You don’t have to create some sort of sensational action—no hurricanes, no axe murderers, no house fires. All you need is the swirling, building storm of wounded people who don’t hesitate to go at the sore spots.

Try it. Give your characters their own wounds—maybe infidelity, maybe the death of a child, anything that they’ve tried to forget but can’t. Give them a scene of dialogue where one of them crosses a line by saying something they shouldn’t. There’s your tension. See what it creates. Let the tension escalate until the narrative reaches a resolution. Do yourself a favor and read plays. Read Albee. Read Harold Pinter. Read Beth Henley. Read the masters of dialogue. See what they have to teach you about tension and menace and absurdity, and how the slightest word, if it’s the right word, can bring old wounds to the surface.