There was a chapter titled "Tension" and one of my favorites sections is called "avoiding tennis-match dialogue." It's when you have a character say something and someone else responds with that perfect, witty comeback. And he said things like that kill tension so it never accumulates. He said to use evasive dialogue or miscommunications because those are ways to increase tension.
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📖 Notes & analysis
Tennis-match dialogue kills tension because a perfect comeback resolves the exchange right there in the scene. The reader's mind closes the loop and moves on, so nothing carries forward. Evasive dialogue keeps the loop open. Say your character asks, "Where were you last night?" Instead of a clean, clever answer, the other person changes the subject, answers a different question than the one asked, or gives a half-truth that raises more questions than it settles. That gap is what readers keep chewing on between scenes.
The caution: if every character dodges every question, the story turns frustrating rather than tense, and readers stop trusting that answers exist at all. Let some things land honestly, so the evasions you do use actually mean something.
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