Three Minutes to Better Writing: Tension

Tension is the key element in storytelling.  Without it, a story has no urgency or suspense.  Tension is what keeps the reader up past their bedtime, flipping pages. According to Gary Provost, tension is "a cord or series of cords that stretch across every paragraph you write".  

Tension is produced by the conflict in your story.  How?  Because conflict creates uncertainty for your characters.  Will the young soldier die trying to save his comrade? Will the lady lose her reputation? How will an unemployed single mother take care of her children?  Tension is the "anticipation and dread" factor that readers want.  Your readers will anticipate the outcome of a character’s actions and dread what this will mean for the character as the story continues.  Also, creating tension means having strong opposition to your main character.  Strong enough so that the reader will be interested in how your hero finally wins.

The stakes for your characters must be high to create tension.  The higher the stakes, the more tension you create. Personally, I think life and love are the two most powerful “high stakes” because everyone can relate to them and those two are used most often in fiction.  Love at stake is universal in romances. You can have characters whose home is at stake, success is at stake, health is at stake, etc.  You can combine stakes but whatever is at stake for your main character, it must be significant to that character in order to produce tension.

Once you have your strong characters and your high stakes woven into your plot, look to your own writing to help create tension.  Use “tense” words.  Gary Provost suggests going through your manuscript and looking for places you can create tension by using:  Words of delay.  Words that imply fear.  Words of danger.  Words of urgency.

Below is an example using Provost’s word choice suggestions:

Original: "She stopped at the sight of the broken gate, its rusty hinges damaged.  His shoe had left a print in the soft earth.  He had come this way. Had he found the vault? She hurried past the broken gate and moved into the shadows. It was important she reach the vault before he learned the truth about her."

Revision: "She froze at the sight of the broken gate, its rusty hinges ripped loose. His shoe had left a deep print in the dark earth.  He had come this way. Had he found the vault? She rushed past the broken gate and stole into the shadows. It was critical she reach the vault before he discovered the truth about her.

To summarize, heroes/heroines with high stakes at risk, facing stronger opposition and continued conflict will create the kind of tension that will keep your readers holding their breath as they turn the page.

Thanks to Anna for having me today and thank you for stopping by.   If you're looking for a short fun read with a tall, dark and handsome rancher, a dazzling heroine, a few famous outlaws, a heartless bad guy, some steamy scenes and some suspenseful moments, you'll enjoy Almost An Outlaw! Links are on my blog.

Saturday's Salacious Suggestions

Marie Higgins

There's a new hero in town . . .

When Summer Bennett returns to Richfield after a five-year stint at her aunt’s finishing school, she discovers a lot has changed. Her father has suffered a crippling injury, and Summer is desperate to get the money to pay for surgery that could allow him to walk again. She hears of a reward offered for the capture of a cunning gang of bank robbers, and her years of etiquette training fall by the dusty roadside.

What Summer doesn’t count on in her quest to capture the bandits is the competition from her family’s longtime friend, Jesse Slade. Now a deputy marshal and local hero, Jesse keeps thwarting Summer’s plans, just like he did when she wore pigtails. She would like nothing more than to use Jesse’s head for a slingshot target, but soon Summer finds her aim shifting from his head to his heart. Problem is, Jesse is engaged to her sister Violet.

For seven years, little Summer Bennett was the burr under Jesse’s saddle. Now he feels a different irritation as Summer is always on his mind—whether he wants her to be or not. But Summer’s father expects him to marry Violet, and he won’t let him down. So why does Jesse find himself encouraging Summer’s attentions, and why do sparks fly every time they are together?

Available at your local bookstore, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

Marie Higgins
http://mariehiggins84302.blogspot.com/

I'm Guest Blogging

I'm guest blogging all over the place today!

Join me at Joanna Aislinn's blog. I posted about the different methods to back up your files

Check out Skhye Moncrief's blog. I'm talking about Writing and Recipes.

I'm also at Sweethearts of the West, discussing Frontier Teachers.

I'm giving away copies of A GIFT BEYOND ALL MEASURE and its companion cookbook at Joanna's and Skhye's blogs.  At Sweethearts of the West, I'm giving away a 2011 Studs and Spurs calendar.  Just leave a message to be eligible for the drawings!

Wednesday's Chow - Italian Vegetable Soup

Note: This first appeared on my blog in 2008. But it actually FROZE in Houston last night, so I decided I needed to pull out this recipe and share it with you all again:

I've had this recipe for about 20 years now. One day I received a magazine in the mail "The Farmer's Wife" or some such title. It included all these hints on how to can or freeze food, work the farm and had several recipes, too.I think someone sent it to me by mistake, believing I was domesticated!
I have a couple of the other recipes that were in it, but this is really the only one I make. It's pretty simple, once you get all the vegetables chopped. And it's yummy, good for you and filling. You may want to add water (or red wine) to it when you put in the macaroni, because that really soaks it up. Oh, and I usually don't add the green beans, but I think that's because I have canned, since I hate frozen green beans. I do get fresh sometimes, so maybe the next time I make this, I'll add fresh ones.

Italian Vegetable Soup

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
1 cup diced onion
1 cup sliced celery
1 cup sliced carrots
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (16 oz) tomatoes
1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce
1 can (15 oz) red kidney beans, undrained
2 cups water
5 teaspoons beef bouillon granules or five bouillon cubes
1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon sweet basil
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups shredded cabbage
1 cup frozen or fresh green beans, in 1-in pieces (optional)
½ cup small elbow macaroni
Parmesan cheese, grated
Directions:

Brown beef in large heavy kettle; drain off fat. Add all the ingredients except cabbage, green beans and macaroni. Bring to a boil. Lower heat; cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Add cabbage, green beans and macaroni; bring to a boil and simmer until vegetables are tender (about 10 minutes). If you prefer a thinner soup, add additional water. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese before serving.

Anna Kathryn Lanier
http://www.aklanier.com/

Getting Noticed in the Publishing World

Hello, and first off, I’d like to thank Anna Kathryn for the invitation to guest blog. 

My name is Carol Dunford, and in ‘real life’ I write scripts for televised government training.  Trying to make subjects like Government Pension Offset or Medicare Part D interesting enough to keep a captive televised audience awake takes a certain amount of creativity.  My scripts have to be factual, but I also try to keep people awake.

Like many of you, I’ve been writing fiction for a while and have yet to be published.  Life has sometimes intervened, and I decided to return to school for several years, but I’m back in the fiction-writing saddle again.  I’ve often been asked about various ways to improve the “odds” of getting published.  While there’s certainly no magic bullet, there are a few things ANY writer can do to move closer to a contract, and also make herself poised and ready to critically evaluate an offer to publish.

The very first thing is to become an outstanding practitioner of the English language.  I can’t stress this enough.  The days of an editor fixing your spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes are long gone.  Your manuscript has to be picture perfect when it lands in the hands of an editor.  The ONLY time grammar, spelling or punctuation mistakes are admissible are in dialogue.  Your cowboy with an eighth-grade education might say something like “I reckon it ain’t no problem.”  You, however, are not allowed to write things like ‘Large, puffy, bulky curtains was hung by the tiny, dark mullioned, windows’.  If you want to brush up your skills, try sites like Smashing Magazine’s 50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills or Mahalo’s How To Improve Your Writing. Also, the more you read, the more you’ll recognize and internalize good writing.

Write for others.  Try bidding for work on sites like Guru.com, elance.com, or others.  Warning:  you will not get rich.  But you will be able to build a resume of published work that you can reference in a query letter.  For example, I’ve written short articles for RV Trader Online, for a dental reference website, and for both British and Australian-based companies regarding specific subjects.  Freelancing will also teach you how much you can take on, how to meet deadlines, and how to deal with requested revisions.

Focus tightly on the Goal, Motivation, and Conflict for your book and for each of the main characters.  I can’t tell you how many contest entries I’ve judged where I can’t figure out a reason for what the characters are doing.  Classic example: heroine is investigating [insert event here].  Hero comes along, and she drops everything to have a hormone attack.  Why?  If solving the mystery is her goal, she’s going to see the hero as an impediment to that goal.  She’ll have to deal with the impediment, and in so doing will develop a relationship (probably adversarial) with the hero, and things will go from there.  But give your people goals!  Your reader wants to cheer these folks toward something, but they have to know what that something is.  Every scene needs a goal, and the entire story needs an overarching goal. For example, in the historical wip I’m working on, my heroine wants to get released from an insane asylum (goal for about the first half of the book), BECAUSE (motivation) she wants to free herself from her marriage and can’t do that if she’s considered mad, BUT (conflict) she has to get the hero (asylum superintendent) to sign the papers to free her, and his perceptions are colored by the fact that she’s in the asylum in the first place. Focus on the goals, and let the relationship between the two characters develop naturally. If you haven’t read Deb Dixon’s ‘Goal, Motivation and Conflict’ book, I urge you to do so.

Enter contests.  This can be a great way to support your local chapter if they sponsor a writing contest.  Otherwise, look for contests with final-round judges to whom you’d like to submit, and ones that offer written feedback or critiques of your story.  You can also circumvent the “I won’t look at you unless you’re agented” hurdle with contests if you make the finals. Contests aren’t free, so you can’t enter all of them, but this will also help you deal with deadlines and proper formatting of your manuscript.

Finally, find a trusted critique partner or group.  You want honest feedback, and you’ll want it on both the “big picture” things like GMC, as well as small things like repeated words or phrases, mis-matched eye colors, misspellings, and the like.  Finding the right person or group takes time and effort, but it’s well worth it.

If you can accomplish all this and keep writing while you’re at it, your craft will improve.  None of these will guarantee a contract in today’s super-competitive market, but they’ll definitely help you get a leg up on the competition.

I hope these tips help you move closer to your publishing goals.  It's a new year, so it's time to get going!

Saturday’s Salacious Suggestions

Ginger Simpson

Here's a new addition to my blog....suggestions for your reading pleasure.  I really don't do very good reviews.  Reviews, in my opinion, are like blurbs and I really suck at blurbs.  While I may give an opinion once in a while on a friend's book, mostly, I'll just be letting you know about the releases that my friends have out or are about to have released.  So, to get us started, here's a video of books available or about to be released by my friend Ginger Simpson.



Ginger

SPICE UP YOUR LIFE WITH GINGER
http://www.gingersimpson.com/
http://mizging.blogspot.com/

I'm guest blogging

Join me on Rachel Bimble's blog.  I'm promoting my new story, and discussing how a panster does (or doesn't) set goals for the new year.  Come give your opinion and you could win a copy of my new story and its companion cookbook.

Anna Kathryn
http://www.aklaniner.com/

Wednesday's Chow - Cream of Broccoli Soup

Here's a warm recipe for those cold nights.  Add some cheddar cheese and melt through if you want Broccoli Cheese soup.

Cream of Broccoli Soup


Ingredients:

1 lg onion, chopped
¼ cup butter
1 cup water
1 tsp salt
2 (10-oz) pkg frozen chopped broccoli
¼ cup parsley, chopped
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup water
1 cup milk
Salt and pepper
Butter

Directions:

Sauté onion in butter, add water, 1 teaspoon salt and broccoli. Cook until tender. Add parsley.

Cool and puree in a blender. Place in a soup pot, add milks, and water. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Heat through. Do not boil.

Add a pat of butter in each bowl of soup.

Satruday's Salacious Suggestions

Blood Hunter - The Beginning

by Robin Badillo

For thirty years, Raven Prince has lived just fine with no mate and no hassles. The carefree vampire, happy to be the odd-girl-out in a small, close-knit coven, lusts for one thing and one thing only—human blood. The more handsome the snack, the happier she is.



Thorne Abbott, on the other hand, only has a taste for the blood of the vampire that savagely murdered his father eleven years before. The determined human won’t rest until that craving is satisfied, even if it means getting himself killed in the process.


A sexy game of pool in a small town bar throws a wrench in both of their plans and ignites a flame so hot, neither could have extinguished even if they wanted to.


The hunter and the hunted battle with themselves and each other as passion, love and a quest for truth sends them on a deadly mission that’s sure to either destroy them…or set them free.


Can lovers from different worlds manage to see past their differences, or are there good reasons why the two species should never unite?


Will it be friend or foe that goes bump in the night?

Available now at Devine Destinies.

Sometimes love’s journey begins with a glance,

sometimes with a kiss, but some journeys begin with a bite.

Robin Badillo

http://www.robinbadillo.com/

December Winner

Congratulations to Robyn L, she won the December drawing for a handmade western style bracelet and bookmark.

I'll put up the January prize, soon.....just gotta think of what that will be.

Anna Kathryn