The characters are in charge

My next book features Autumn Whitcomb and Yuri Rachinskij, two characters developed by participants after two author presentations at two Upstate New York rural libraries. One library's patrons developed a female, the other a male. When their bios were developed by the patrons I realized these two characters could work well in a story. I've been working on this in fits and starts until recently when Autumn tapped me on the shoulder (kind of like that editor on your shoulder) and told me I needed to spend more time developing her back story. I was rushing the story too much without letting the reader know about her personality. The same was true of Yuri. At the start of the story he's the head archivist of the Ukrainian Archives. The country is under attack and the archives have undertaken a major digitization project to save the country's history and culture before it is destroyed. Listening to Autumn, I'm now back at the beginning of the story making tweaks to the text to follow her advice. That's the life of a writer - the characters are in charge.

Incorporating Tension

Think of tension as a cord woven through every chapter, slowly pulling the reader towards the last scenes. Tension doesn’t need to be dramatic, like a serial killer who has broken into a house. For romance writers, it could be the question of whether the protagonist will choose his/her dream job, or stay with their new love? Tension can be emotional turmoil. Whatever genre you are writing, pack your scenes with some sort of tension with conflict within the character’s mind or with other characters. Put complications and conflicts into the character’s life and this can be accomplished through action, dialogue, description, and narrative. Draw out the scene with words that evoke emotion and keep raising the stakes. Remember the slowly woven cord. Alternate between action, thoughts, dialogue and description. Take your time. Make sure the scene is set up in earlier scenes so the reader knows what’s at stake, to keep their heart pounding and keep them turning the pages. Torture your protagonist with road blocks. It could be as simple as a weather event – like a blizzard when your protagonist has to be somewhere. A search engine is your friend in finding tension words. In the book Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, he suggests using a scale to rate the intensity of your scenes. The intensity scale is a good way for you to balance the scenes in your book. Determine which scenes are the big ones and rate their intensity, which should be in the 8-10 zone. Then balance those scenes with ones that are slower and more reflective in the 2 to 6 zone.