Often, it is necessary to have a double consonant in the Japanese language. There are no single consonant characters in Japanese other than N.
The system for writing double consonants then, is to write a small TSU before the character whose consonant needs to be doubled.
For example:

APPU (up):
BIGGUMAKKU (big-mac):
KISSU (kiss):
GOSHIKKU (gothic):

(to hear sound comparison between single and double consonants, see hiragana lesson 11)
The small tsu is used to double consonants except for before M. In order to double the M sound, precede it with N, just as in hiragana.

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