It’s rare that isolation occurs in a vacuum. If you’re enmeshed in some kind of physical conflict, for example, you’re also likely to feel misunderstood (mental conflict), as if no one cares (emotional conflict), and that there’s no hope (spiritual conflict). These reactions, of course, align with MacDonald’s three tension-providing drivers, plus my addition, and taken together, you’ve developed a path to utter isolation. The more a character is on his own, whether from physical isolation or social isolation, the more opportunity you have to create tension and suspense.

A character can be alone physically because he’s in prison, lost in the woods, or living off the grid. A character can be alone socially because she suffers from agoraphobia, feels bullied, and so withdraws, or lacks social skills, whether because she is somewhere on the autism spectrum or simply never learned how to communicate well in social settings.

In Chuck Hogan’s The Prince of Thieves, for instance, the protagonist Doug, is a young man who’s certain he’ll end up in prison or die young, as do so many of the men in his life. He’s isolated himself because he knows of no other way to escape.  The isolation is complex: it is emotional, spiritual, mental… it touches all the bases.

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