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.

Rachel Hauck

The Heart of the Matter: Finding Your Character’s True Desire

As wonderful as craft books are, a lot of times, our best teacher is life and our keen observance of it.

I read a book awhile ago called Live a Praying Life by Jennifer Kennedy Dean. I wasn’t reading it to improve my writing. I was reading it to better understand God’s design for prayer.

But as writers, we usually have that third eye (or ear) open and observant and aware. Ready to soak up some juicy insight. Some truth, some reflection of the human condition that we can apply to our characters and our stories.

So when I came upon this, I immediately switched into writing mode:

Jennifer writes, “Usually, what we call ‘the desire of my heart’ is really a secondary desire orbiting around the true desire. Usually, what we think we desire is really the way we have imagined the true desire will be met.”

She goes on to say, “We think we are asking for the desire of our hearts, but we are really asking for the desire of the moment. Often, in order to give you the desire of your heart, God will withhold the desire of the moment. He only says no as a prelude to a higher yes.”

Social Media Minute—The Basics for Building a Strong Platform through Social Media

Anyone who reads this blog knows I believe it’s possible to build a strong platform through social media. I should, I did it. Beyond that, I’ve helped hundreds of other writers do the same things.

But with all the posts I’ve shared over the years, I haven’t lately laid out all the basic building blocks, at one time—in one place. Today I’m going to do just that.

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.

Rachel Hauck, Princess Ever After, royals, royalty

The Solution of Tension

We’ve also been watching the TV show Nashville on iTunes. It’s a night time soap opera set around country music.

Hubby and I make a game of “calling it.” What’s going to go wrong, when and how.

It’s almost NOT fun to watch TV shows where you know, just know, someone is going to do something stupid to mess up a budding romance or promising job.

Husband hates it. He doesn’t want to watch people be so stupid.

I get why the TV show writers do this… to drag the viewers along. To create a “Oh no, what’s going to happen?” curiosity.

In television, the writing goes from episode to episode and the writing is “episodic.”

Meaning from week to week, the tension and threads change to fit that show while carrying story threads forward.

For example, twenty years after they first toured together, country great Rayna James and Luke Wheeler get together. They’ve been married to other people and have children.