Isolation, by its nature, places the focus on one single person, and how that person copes or struggles with the condition can lead to riveting suspense. Some people are terrified. Others become enraged. Some rise to the occasion and escape or manage the stress well. Others freeze or panic. Some people have heart attacks and die. Others weep, overwhelmed with grief or self-pity. Still others disappear into the diaspora of lonely souls.

Which brings us back to the four dimensions of conflict. Think about all the ways you could end up utterly alone and how conflict figures into the story—perhaps you’ve been kidnapped and imprisoned in a deserted, windowless warehouse (physical isolation). Maybe you suffer from social anxiety so severe it’s led to agoraphobia (social isolation). Imagine the multi-layered conflict these situations might inspire from physical to mental and from emotional to spiritual. And that’s the stuff of “I-can’t-put-it-down” books. To write credible scenes of isolation, however, you have to know the ins and outs of both physical and social isolation.

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