Story Sensei

by Ronie Kendig from Double Crit editing service My husband won a gift certificate to one of Dallas’ finest restaurants. They had a waiting list out the wazoo. We won’t mention the Lamborghinis or Ferraris at the valet parking (bet those attendants enjoyed their jobs!). Everything delivered to our table had the best presentation and garnishing, along with respect. All together, these finer elements made up the most impressive meal I’d ever had in my life. We need to learn from the restaurant industry. We want our readers to go away satisfied, ready and willing to trust us as writers when our next book comes out. So, how do you garnish your story? How do you impress a satisfying story upon your reader? You start with your character, having interviewed them and defined their personality, you add quirks, obsessions, or paralyzing fears. These garnishings make your character tangible to your reader. That’s the sprig of parsley on your $100 steak, the shaving of chocolate on your tira misu....

by Ronie Kendig from Double Crit editing service Last time, we wrote about ice cream and characterization. Did I make you hungry for more (pun obviously intended)? Well, let’s feed that hunger with some healthy sustenance. Psychology—the protein of solid characterization. No, seriously. You heard me right. In order to write compelling characters, you need to have strength in the way you ‘draw’ them. You need to understand that character. I understand people. Maybe it’s a gift, maybe it’s my degree. I’m often able to see past the action to the source that triggered the reaction. And that is exactly what we need to do in our writing. Scramble up some eggs, er emotion, and craft your character in a compelling way. Add some sausage (yeah, the artery-clogging stuff)—quirks—for flavor. Recently, I encountered a scene where I floundered, wondering what my heroine would do in response to a situation. Not knowing her well enough impeded the “feel” of that scene and made me realize I’d lost to...

by Ronie Kendig from Double Crit editing service I love ice cream. Not just any ice cream. I’m addicted to Cold Stone—and not their plain Jane flavors. Mix it up. Make it unique. Founder’s Favorite blend with cheesecake ice cream instead of regular. And I’m just as picky when it comes to my characters. James Scott Bell in his book Plot & Structure says not to let your character “plop into your plot like plain vanilla.” If your reader does not care about your character, they won’t finish the story, which means that great scene you have planned for page fifty-seven will never get read. The most important part of any story is the character. So, how do you make a Founder’s Favorite or a Strawberry-Banana Rendezvous? How does one get past blasé and thrill until the reader needs an oxygen mask? The key, of course, is your character. Have you interviewed your main character? Had a chat with her over a latte? Inquired about his relationship with his father over a juicy burger? No? Why not?...

I’ve had a couple people ask me about scene goals. Basically, your point of view character should have something they need to accomplish when they walk into that scene. It could have something to do with the character’s External Goal, or it could not. For example, Grissom needs to find Sarah, who’s been kidnapped by the psycho miniature killer (bear with me, I just watched the season premier of CSI). This is his External Goal. But when he goes into the interrogation room to question the suspect, his scene goal is to get the psycho killer to tell him where Sarah is. (For you CSI fans, you know he doesn’t get his information and he fails his scene goal, but he hasn’t failed his Story Goal. Yet.) Here’s an example from Single Sashimi , the third book in my Sushi series (I just turned in the macro edits for this puppy, so it’s fresh in my mind): My heroine Venus is on her way to her cousin’s house to indulge in chocolate truffles. Her determination to have chocolate within the next hour is...

I just got this message from my friend Randy Ingermanson. If you're an auditory learner, this is a fabulous writing series and a great deal: Today, September 27, 2007, I am running a rare event: a 24-Hour Special on my two top-selling products, Fiction 101 and Fiction 201. These are my flagship products. I've taught these courses at writing conferences across the country. Last year, I created them as software products that run in any web browser. They let you SEE my notes and HEAR me lecture. Fiction 101 and Fiction 201 are available on CD or as large electronic downloads. The reason for this 24-Hour Special is to celebrate freedom. Recently, I've outsourced the CD distribution to Kunaki.com. That means FREEDOM for me from the drudgery of packing CDs in envelopes and mailing them off. It saves me MONEY, which I can pass on to my customers in lower prices. I have already cut the price of the CDs by about 20%. To celebrate that FREEDOM, I'm slashing the price of a CD by A...

Hey guys, I'll be traveling and at the ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) conference for the next couple weeks. I'll try to blog writing tips I hear at the conference, but no guarantees. I should be back in business on Friday, September 28th for sure. Camy

When I start a novel, I give the author about three chapters for me to like the main character. I’m actually pretty generous—in a bookstore, your average book buyer reads the first page, maybe the second. Usually not more than that. Depending on how fast they read, the first page or two takes approximately twenty seconds. That’s it. You need to hook your reader into the story and give them a character they can like within those first few pages. In Writing for Emotional Impact , Karl Iglesias lists these three “categories of appeal”: * We care about victims—characters we feel sorry for * We care about characters with humanistic values * We like character with desirable qualities Victims—You don’t have to just think stalker victim here. Don’t we love the underdog? The downtrodden? The kid who gets beat up in the schoolyard? The man without enough money to pay for coffee? The woman beat up by her husband? The teenager who can’t read? Humanistic values—Show your character doing something n...

Okay, we talked about brand. Now buzz. Internet marketing is like regular marketing, there's really no way to know if it's doing a whole lot of good. But it's stupid not to do internet marketing because it's so easy and cheap. Website—This is a non-negotiable. All writers must have a website, whether you’re published or not. It’s your business card on the web. Keep it updated once a month. Blog—Only blog if you enjoy blogging. Too many people blog who don't really like it, and I think that a bad blog is worse than none at all. If you don't like blogging, don't let anybody make you feel guilty for not blogging. Only do what you like doing, because life's too short to waste on stuff you don't want to do. Email loops and forum boards—This is something unpublished writers need to start doing early. And I'm not talking just writers loops and boards, but non-writing loops and boards. And if the loop topic touches on your brand, all the better. ...

Marketing is two things for an author: brand and buzz. Brand: This is where you decide as an author what to write so that you stand out in the market. Jenny Crusie is the queen of real-life snark. Tom Clancy is spy action. John Grisham is legal thrillers. I am Asian Christian chick lit. Robin Caroll is Cajun/Southern romantic suspense. Cheryl Wyatt is military action romances. Deeanne Gist is slightly edgy historical romances. Brandilyn Collins is small town suspense. Colleen Coble is small town romantic suspense with animals. Donna Fleisher is angsty military women's fiction. This is the hardest part for writers to figure out. You may have to actually tweak your writing so that your books will stand out from all the other pitches editors hear. If you have a solid brand, editors are much happier to read your stuff because you're classified in a certain file in their heads. They can sell you easier to the VP of Sales and VP of Marketing because you're brand...

When you start a book or any new scene, you’re setting your reader down in a completely new place, often in a new time, sometimes with a new character. Make your point of view character, time, and place obvious in the first couple paragraphs. You don’t need long descriptions of the new room the heroine is in, or to tell the reader that we’re now in the hero’s head, or to let the reader know that six months have passed. These things can be conveyed with a well-chosen phrase that immediately triggers a certain picture in the reader’s head. For example, say the previous scene ended at night in the hero’s POV. ### A girl could choke on the cholesterol in the air. She stood in the doorway to the diner, cringing beneath the sticky cloud of bacon grease mingled with the perfume of over-cooked eggs and maple syrup. The reader immediately knows it’s (a) the heroine, (b) a greasy diner, and (c) the next morning. Go through your manuscript and look at scene openings. Can you add a well-chosen sen...

DON’T CREATE SCENE BREAKS JUST SO YOU CAN CHANGE POVS BACK AND FORTH. Yes, I’m yelling. I’ve seen this done often in both contest entries and even in published books—the writer will insert a scene break, continue the scene in the second character’s POV for a page or two, then insert another scene break and continue the scene back in the first character’s POV. Here’s an extreme example: Eat and leave. That’s all she had to do. If Grandma didn’t kill her first for being late. Lex Sakai raced through the open doorway to the Chinese restaurant and was immediately immersed in conversation, babies’ wails, clashing perfumes, and stale sesame oil. She tripped over the threshold and almost turned her ankle. Stupid pumps. Man, she hated wearing heels. Her cousin Chester sat behind a small table next to the open doorway. “Hey Chester.” ### “Oooh, you’re late.” As usual , but Chester wasn’t about to actually say that to his cousin. She might bop him in the nose. “Grandma isn’t going to be happy. ...

Angie Breidenbach over at F.A.I.T.H. blog posted a great article on dressing professionally at conferences. She's talking specifically about the ACFW conference coming up in September, but her advice is great for any writing conference with the exception of the more casual ones like Mount Hermon and Oregon Christian Writers Conference, which are on campgrounds in the woods. Many other conferences, like ACFW and RWA, are set in hotels, and Angie's article is exactly the advice you need for how to dress. ACFW Conference Wear

Switch character point of views at scene changes, not within a scene. While it’s not technically wrong to do one POV switch in a scene, it is very jarring to the modern-day reader. Readers ten years ago probably wouldn’t care as much, but the trend these days in publishing is one POV per scene. As a reader yourself, notice if there’s a POV change in the middle of a scene. Does it jar you, even just a little? You absolutely don’t want to pull the reader out of the story world even a little. Eat and leave. That’s all she had to do. If Grandma didn’t kill her first for being late. Lex Sakai raced through the open doorway to the Chinese restaurant and was immediately immersed in conversation, babies’ wails, clashing perfumes, and stale sesame oil. She tripped over the threshold and almost turned her ankle. Stupid pumps. Man, she hated wearing heels. Her cousin Chester sat behind a small table next to the open doorway. “Hey Chester.” “Oooh, you’re late.” As usual , but Chester wasn’t about...

I’m a big proponent of Dwight Swain’s Scene and Sequel concept because I’m a psychology major, and I’ve read a few books that explained why Scene and Sequel works so well psychologically in readers. It all makes sense to me that our brains are geared a certain way, and Scene and Sequel resonate with most people psychologically, which is why they’re so effective. However, when you transition to a Sequel, make sure you keep up some type of conflict or tension in the scene. This is something Swain doesn’t mention, but Donald Maass recommends constant tension and conflict in order to keep the reader reading, and that applies to the more reflective Sequels in your novel. The conflict or tension doesn’t have to be something major, but just something minor as a thread throughout the scene. It can even help form that rise at the end of the Sequel. For example, in chapter three of Sushi for One , Lex has a Scene where she finally is able to ask this guy out on a date. In the following Sequel i...

End each scene/chapter with a hook sentence or paragraph, just like your opening. This is sometimes referred to as a “rise.” If you are using good scene structure (which you should be doing like a good writer), you’ll be following Dwight Swain’s Scene and Sequel pattern, which naturally gives you a rise at the end of every scene or sequel. This keeps the reader reading, because it presents something surprising or curious at the end of the scene, and they want to find out what happens next! “Just a few more pages …” Aaaah, music to a writer’s ears. “It’s gonna be okay, Mom.” She wrapped her arms around her son. As far as she was concerned, things couldn’t get much worse. Then a beam of light sliced through the darkness as someone pushed the front door open. Nowhere to Hide by Debby Giusti Back out on the porch, she lifted the shotgun and said, “Come any closer and I’ll shoot you.” Buried Secrets by Margaret Daley I glanced out the [plane] window a final time. Saginaw, M...

Start each scene/chapter with a hook sentence. You can also have a hook paragraph if the paragraph isn’t too long. This is not just for the opening sentence of a book—use this technique for the opening of every scene. Something mysterious, curious, dangerous, ominous. Grab the reader’s attention from the get-go. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen “Saints above, girl. What are you doing here?” the shackled man hissed. A Bride Most Begrudging by Deeanne Gist It was not the rock—it was never the rock; it was the air. In High Places by Tom Morrisey A dead man spoke to her from the shadows. The Dead Whisper On by T.L. Hines It was raining the night he found me. Demon: a Memoir by Tosca Lee “Move and you’re dead.” Buried Secrets by Margaret Daley Rule for Women Ministers No. 1: Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain on church premises—especially on the Monday morning after E...

Instead of just describing a person, you might want to think about integrating the description with the point of view character’s emotions in reaction. For example, rather than: The tall blonde walked into the room, a scarlet dress swirling around her long legs. A man near the bar turned to look at her. Charlene sat at her table and stared at the strange woman. You can instead write: Charlene started and sat up at her table as the tall woman swept into the room. The stranger tossed her blonde hair in a flirtatious gesture, calculated to make the men at the bar look at her. Hussy. She’d probably chosen that red dress because the side had a slit up to her hip, revealing more leg than was decent. Or Charlene looked up as the tall woman swept into the room. She had gorgeous blonde hair—Charlene would have killed for that long and heavy mass down her back. Her scarlet dress swirled around her body, giving tantalizing glimpses at long, slim legs that Charlene could never have no matter how ...

Hey guys, I lost power here on Friday night and I'm posting this from the library. We're not getting power back until Tuesday, and I'm traveling on Wednesday, so I'll resume my Story Sensei posts on Friday. Camy

Congratulations! Typing “The End” is one of the best achievements of a writer’s career! No first draft is perfect (except God’s first draft), so now’s the time for the revision process. If you haven’t yet read my first article, “I want to write a book and I have no clue what to do,” go back and skim through the resources listed there. There might be a few books, articles, or resources you haven’t seen yet, and they might be useful to you for tightening structure or deepening characterization. The following resources are for the revision and submission process. Do a little large-scale revision. Often, even the best manuscript needs some larger scale revision—shifting scenes, changing character goals, rewriting the climax. The one thing I notice the most in manuscripts that I do for freelance editing is a need for more conflict in the story. Most people avoid conflict in real life, but in fiction, conflict is what keeps a reader reading. The best books I read for figuring ou...

Congratulations! You’ve decided to take that wonderful, scary step and write that novel burning inside you. Writing is an art, just like music. A musician wouldn’t expect to sit down at a piano or take up a violin and immediately crank out a perfect rendition of Mozart. Good music requires learning and practice. Good writing is the same way, requiring learning and practice. Thanks to the internet, free and inexpensive resources are readily available to anyone who wants to write their first novel. This article lists some tips, books, articles, and websites that I found most useful when I started writing. Join a writing community. The best money I spent was in joining an online writing organization. Writing groups have informative discussion loops, workshop archives, and sometimes critique groups. Often, published authors are on the email loop to give advice that you can’t read in a book. I joined American Christian Fiction Writers , which is a large organization that has a liv...

My previous article on pitching to editors and agents was in informal settings. This is more targeted information about when you have an appointment to speak to an agent or editor. Because you have several minutes, the purpose of an agent/editor appointment at a conference is more than just pitching. It’s a chance for you to learn about the agent/editor’s personality, and if they’re someone you want to work with. This is very important. A business relationship is more than just professionalism—it’s how personalities work with each other, kind of like a marriage. Therefore, use your time wisely. I’m going to break this down into writer experience level, because I agree with Randy Ingermanson when he talks about Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior level writers . (If you haven’t read his article yet, please do so before continuing with this one, since I’ll be referring to it.) For Freshmen, Sophomores, early Juniors: My suggestion is not to officially pitch your story at all. I’ve h...

(reprinted from Camy's Loft blog) The ACFW Conference is only a couple months away! I’m totally excited about the awards ceremony. Besides the Genesis contest winners, ACFW will also announce the Book of the Year winners, the Mentor of the Year, the Editor of the Year, and the Agent of the Year! Today I’m very happy to have my agent Wendy Lawton with me. Wendy is one of the nominees for Agent of the Year, and I heartily hope she wins it! Wendy Lawton, me, and Debbie Macomber You've attended various conferences over the years. In your opinion, what makes ACFW's conference stand out from the others? The content is focused entirely on fiction, the presenters are knowledgeable and approachable, the atmosphere is fun and friendly and the attendees are among the best prepared anywhere. Any advice you'd like to offer to a 1st time conference attendee? I'd love for attendees to remember that building a writing career is usually a slow process. It takes a number of meetings,...

I got this tip on backstory from Brandilyn Collins: Any knowledge you give to the reader has to cause the reader to ask more questions. Let me repeat that: Any knowledge you give to the reader has to cause the reader to ask more questions. What that means for you as the writer is that any narrative or backstory has to be very carefully chosen and given. Any narrative or backstory has to have a very specific purpose for the story, and that narrative or backstory should work to make the reader ask more questions about the character or storyline. You want to foster that sense of “What’s going on?” for the reader that will make the reader keep reading in order to find out. For example: He sidled up to Anna, two hundred pounds of male testosterone, smelling faintly of tobacco and whiskey. “Hey, good lookin’, want some company?” She saw through his rough-and-ready façade. He worked for the Evil Triumvirate. She had crossed three state lines to try to escape them, but they’d found her at la...

Flashbacks can be great things because they show backstory in real time, versus just narrative (which is “telling” rather than “showing”). However, they tend to slow the reading flow—either with the content of the flashback or the initial transition into the flashback. So you have to place and use flashbacks very judiciously. 1—Be careful about WHEN you go into flashback. Since the transition will slow the reading flow, specifically time your flashback for when you want to create a lull in the reading pace, maybe after a tense or conflicted scene. 2—Be careful about HOW you go into flashback. The best thing is to have the flashback triggered by a very significant event in the story. Don’t just morph into a flashback from a scene that’s already meandering, or else you could lose reader interest. 3—Make the flashback as CONFLICTED and TENSE as you can. The transition is already going to slow the reading pace, so make the flashback powerful and vivid to keep the reading flow going smoothl...

One great way to show emotion is with contrast. You can contrast the character’s emotions to another character, or maybe the surroundings. The man’s gaze didn’t waver, and she shivered in the hot noon sunlight. She turned away from the child’s sunshine smile, sodden and shivering from the thunderstorm in her heart. Contrast can both intensify the emotion and enable ways for you to be creative in your emotional writing. Don’t fall back on clichés (like I did in the first example above, although the second example isn’t too bad). Be original and richly emotional at the same time.

(Part One is here .) When I first started going to conferences, I had the Hello down pat, but couldn’t think of what to say after that. I had to learn the art of conversation, but I discovered it’s actually not that hard. More than a list of questions to remember—which you won’t remember when you’re nervous and meeting people—here are a few tips on how to keep the conversation going. Keep up with publishing news. This is useful for conversation with editors, agents, and even writers. You can ask editors questions about their publishing house based on information you might have read, or you can ask the agent questions about a certain genre market. For example, there were several personnel changes in a specific publishing house in a short period of time, and I had read about it. I chatted with an employee for that publishing house at a conference and asked her how things were going, if things had settled into a routine, if the personnel was replaced yet, etc. Keep yourself well informe...

I am not a natural extrovert, but I exert myself when I’m at a conference because I want to meet people. However, since I’m not naturally an extrovert, I had to teach myself how to meet people at a booksigning, or while walking the floor of ICRS, or when mingling with writers at a conference. These are a few tips for writers who are introverts like myself. Much of it is simply common sense or common politeness, but it’s good to reiterate here so you are aware of specific things to avoid doing, and specific things to exert yourself to do. DON’T go up to chat with someone you know if they’re talking with someone else. Be sensitive. They might be in an important conversation with their agent/editor/publicist/marketing director. If they wave hi to you but go on talking to the other person, definitely don’t crash their conversation—just keep walking past. However, if they pause the conversation to give you a hug or say a few words, then it’s fine for you to approach them. DON’T gush...

I'm at ICRS until late next week. Also, any particular writing craft or business topics you want me to cover on this Story Sensei blog? Camy

Sometimes a scene will seem flat. It might be because you need to add more emotion to the scene. The richness of physical description, character actions, dialogue, thoughts. In his book, Techniques of the Selling Writer , the very first thing Dwight Swain talks about is emotion , because it’s one of the important aspects of fiction writing. No matter if you write action, women’s fiction, suspense, or chick lit, emotion is the key factor in any scene. Whether it’s your hero’s dogged determination and rush of adrenaline as he runs from an exploding oil refinery, or it’s your heroine’s angst and frustration at her matchmaking, meddling mother. Emotion is what drives the character, and rivets the reader to the action or drama on the page. When you read your scene, what emotions do you feel? What emotions do you want to feel? Focus on the emotion and write it—write what matters to you, what you want the reader to care about. Ramp up the emotion in your scene to give it depth and vitality.

First person internal thoughts also tend to be a lot of backstory, which slows down the reading flow. It might be fun and quirky narrative, but it’s still a backstory dump however you look at it. Mom ran off years ago with the family lawyer, and while I can’t say Dad was all that great, the lawyer was worse. She finally clued in when she found him groping his admin in his office one day. Mom, being Mom, told him, “I have decided to seek new legal representation.” And then she walked out. Anyway, the entire incident has made her gunshy about hiring any lawyers, which is why she now bothers me to bother my boyfriend, who will give her free legal counsel without the inconvenience of actually paying for it. Gasp! The cure for this is the same as in third person POV: a) Give only snippets of backstory, not a whole bunch at once. b) Mention backstory only when it’s absolutely vital to the current action. c) Make a character absolutely need to know—that way your reader will also absolutely ne...

In first person POV, especially, writers have a great deal of narrative and internal thoughts. While that narrative tends to have some conflict in it, too much narrative means less movement in the scene. And you can’t really substitute true conflict (action and dialogue) with the conflict in a long paragraph of internal thought—the scene drags and meanders. I look at the call waiting. It’s my mother. Mom has this annoying habit of calling right when I’m about to watch CSI . Even though I’ve told her again and again that she can’t call on this particular night at this particular time, she blithely ignores me. I might as well be talking to the cat. And at least the cat answers with a polite meow. Mother barely acknowledges I’ve spoken, much less what I’ve said. All this narrative is more “telling” than “showing.” Instead of all this internal thought, why not show the information in action and dialogue? I look at the call waiting. It’s my mother. I stab the TALK button. “Mom, it’s CSI ni...

In a lot of the chick lit entries I judge in contests, first person POV is not done very well. Since the reader is reading first person, the reader should actually be in the character’s skin and experiencing the scene through them. People like writing first person POV because it’s easy—but it’s actually rather difficult to write with power and vibrancy. While each writer has different strengths and weakness, in general, the entries I judge lack enough conflict and action. Not much happens, and there isn’t a lot of tension. In first person POV, this is a common problem because it’s so easy to fall into internal thoughts and narrative instead. “Do you want a cookie?” I hand the plate to Amelia. She’s a size two. I wish I was a size two. I eye a couple of the chocolate-laden golden-brown goodies. Just one won’t hurt me. Amelia glances at the plate, then goes back to sorting through her charm collection. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.” Her charms fascinate me. She’s had some for generations...

Randy Ingermanson interviewed me for his Advanced Fiction Writing blog. Randy has done a wonderful service to all writers with his blog. His Advanced Fiction Writing ezine was already a terrific resource, but his blog is even better because he welcomes and answers questions from writers. He is a true writing mentor, in every sense of the word. His questions had mostly to do with branding, so if you’re a writer wondering about branding yourself, check it out!

Clichés are not just in phrases (“he ran his fingers through is hair,” “her heart pounded”). Clichés can be larger scale—your characters, your setting, your plot premise. The problem is that often, these larger scale clichés are not so easily realized. For example, there are a LOT of pastor heroes in Inspirational romance. Editors were commenting that they’d like to see less stories with pastor heroes. However, as a writer, unless you heard the editor say this at a conference, you wouldn’t know. So how can you find these things out? You should be reading extensively in the genre in which you’re writing. Why? So you can discover what’s already been done in your genre, so you don’t repeat it. If you haven’t read many Inspirational romances, but you’re targeting Steeple Hill, you wouldn’t know that there have been a lot of pastor heroes in the past few years. However, if you’ve been reading Steeple Hill novels, you would know that. You don’t have to read every single title that comes out,...

Does your hero run his fingers through his hair? Does your heroine bite her bottom lip? Or maybe your hero squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose when he’s frustrated. Maybe your heroine’s gut clenches or she swallows hard when hearing bad news. Perhaps your hero clenches his jaw, or sees red. Perhaps your heroine feels ice water in her veins when she’s shocked, or a fluttering in her chest when she’s excited. Cliches—DON’T. Don’t use the same gestures or descriptions for your characters that you’ve read in dozens of other novels. BE ORIGINAL. The heroine’s heart doesn’t pound—it does a combination triple-axel double-lutz worthy of Michelle Kwan. The hero doesn’t feel his stomach drop—he’s a hanging victim with the clunk of the trapdoor ringing in his ears, waiting for his feet to register that he’s dangling in mid-air. A great resource for original descriptions is literary fiction (if you can read it). But don’t copy them—use it as a jumping off point for your own u...

One of the best things I got out of the seminar taught by New York agent Donald Maass is to add tension to absolutely every single sentence in your manuscript. I can see some of you gaping. Close your mouth. It’s true. He had us pick a random page in our manuscripts and then pick a random paragraph. We had to add some sort of tension to every sentence in the paragraph—whether internal or external. It changed the energy of the writing immediately. I could see that just from that one paragraph. I changed the tension in every sentence on the page, and the difference astounded me. The scene was so much more charged, crackling with energy and vitality. Basically, it increases the level of conflict in the scene, and conflict is what keeps a reader reading. Conflict keeps a reader’s interest. While we like to avoid conflict in real life, in fiction, it’s gold. You don’t have to remember to add tension to every sentence in your rough draft—just lay the words down. Don’t think too much or analy...

Your plot should have a definite inciting incident that signals when the story begins. In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, the inciting incident is when Mr. Bingley moves into the neighborhood. In Violet Dawn by Brandilyn Collins , the inciting incident is when the heroine discovers a dead body in her outdoor hot tub. In The Restorer by Sharon Hinck , the inciting incident is when the heroine is suddenly transported into an alternate fantasy world. In Over Her Head by Shelley Bates , the inciting incident is when the heroine discovers the body of a drowned young girl the same age as her own daughter. In Split Ends by Kristin Billerbeck , the inciting incident is when the heroine moves to Los Angeles to become a successful hairdresser. In The Reliance by M.L. Tyndall , the inciting incident is when the church is blown up and the hero believes his wife was killed, when in reality she’s been kidnapped by pirates. In each of the above examples, something has happened to change the...

Some synopses I read have a lot of conflict against the character, but not necessarily many obstacles against the character’s external goal. There’s a significant difference. The primary conflict and tension in a story should be things that work directly against the heroine’s external goal. They shouldn’t be just annoyances here and there. The conflict should be focused against what the heroine wants to accomplish in the story. For example, Sarah is a pop music singer whose external goal is to get her picture on the cover of Rolling Stone. Her mother’s getting married for the fourth time, and Sarah really doesn’t want to be involved in all the planning for something that will probably only last a year or two. Their strained relationship erupts in arguments every few weeks. Sarah’s dog is sick, and she has to go to the vet all the time. The bills are adding up. This new guy in town is cute, but Sarah’s interested in her career and not a relationship. In the above conflicts, none of them...