2014 Frasier Award Finalists!

Congratulations to the 2014 My Book Therapy Frasier Award Finalists!

Join us on September 26th in St. Louis, MO at the 2014 ACFW Conference/My Book Therapy Frasier Award and Pizza Party to discover the winner!

(Click on Read the Rest to discover the finalists!)

Extreme Book Makeover: 7 Key Ingredients to Creating Powerful Scene Tension

I watched the season finale of Once Upon a Time last night (*warning! Spoilers!*) and it was one of the best episodes in the series. Why? The tension! The plot was simple – the heroine, who’d finally found her happy ending with her family, accidentally fell back into time, and thwarted the epic, historical meeting of her parents. She pulled a “Back to the Future” and erased her future.

What does she want? To return home and live happily with her family. Her goal – make sure her parents met, somehow. Why? Because after a horrible childhood, she’s finally found a home. What’s at stake? Her life – and her son’s life.

And…standing in her way is the Evil Queen (as well as the lack of magic needed to open the time portal.)

Great set up for the episode – and even better, it makes for exactly the right ingredients to talk about how to create powerful tension in a story – and especially how to keep your Act 2 tension from saggy by creating tension in every scene.

Let’s start a definition of tension. Obstacles and Activity are not Tension. Tension is derived from a sympathetic character, who wants something, for a good reason, and who has something to lose, who then creates a specific, identifiable goal, only to run up against compelling, powerful obstacles, which then creates the realistic fear of failure.

In other words, the MBT Scene Tension Equation.

Extreme Book Makeover: 7 Twists and Turns to add to your novel!

A great story is plotted by looking inside your character, figuring out what his lie is – and how this journey will somehow set him free – and then putting him in situations that make him confront his lies, his flaws and his weaknesses until he takes a good look at himself, figures out what he wants, and charges forward into a new future.

I know, that’s a bit oversimplified, but a story, boiled down, is simply about a character’s inner change, brought about by the external circumstances.
However, how do we make those circumstances intriguing enough to keep our readers’ attention?

At My Book Therapy, we have a character change chart/questions that helps us generate ideas on this journey. However, if you’ve already plotted this journey, and are still stuck, here are 7 ways to add more “trouble” or Twists and Turns into your plot.

Extreme Book Makeover: The Secret of turning your POV character into a HERO.

Does the ACT 2 of your novel feel saggy? Maybe you’ve run out of great ideas to liven the plot? In this episode of Extreme Book Makeover, we’re going to talk about ACTS of HEROISM to add some twists and turns to your story.

Acts of Heroism

Remember – the key to a great character is to develop his story (and all the story pieces) off the page, so he walks onto the page fully formed. (That includes your character’s Lie, Wound, the Greatest Fears and Dream, as well as the Stakes of the story)

Now, let’s employ the concept of ACTS of HEROISM. Acts of Heroism are those character-change actions that take your character from an everyday Joe to a hero.

It’s not the grand gestures, the great sacrifices . . . Acts of Heroism are the choices your character makes that push him beyond himself beyond his comfort zone and changes him.

These choices will not only make your reader love him just a little bit more – but also cause new problems for your hero.