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.

Solving the Problem of a Paralyzing Premise

I was thrilled my publisher wanted a third book from me – and just a bit proud that the pitch I’d worked so hard on had done just what I’d hoped it would do: grabbed my editors’ attention – and landed me another book contract.

But what’s that Proverb about stumbling over pride? Yep, I fell flat on my face a few months later. That oh-so intriguing one sentence pitch had me in a headlock and refused to give up and say “Uncle,” so that I could wrestle it into a synopsis, much less a real story.

Beyond that single sentence I had a whole lot of nothing.

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

Extreme Book Makeover: Widen your plot to keep your middle from sagging!

Do you feel like the tension in your story has started to sag?

That you are simply rehashing old plot problems? It can be a challenge in Act 2 to keep the reader caring, the story filled with enough tension to keep the pages turning.

I watched Saving Mr. Banks this weekend. Wanted to love it. But it had a few problems. The main character (Pamela) suffered from a fatal case of unlike ability, even with her backstory – and got redeemed too late. But that’s another topic. Bigger was the issue that, aside from Walt Disney wanting to keep a promise to his daughter (the stakes of the story), we simply stopped caring about the character, mostly due to her obsessive need to get the story right.

Thankfully, the story tension is resuscitated by the backstory, and the fear of young Pamela losing her father.

In other words, Peripheral Plotting saved the day.

If your story seems to be going in circles, or worse, dying…this trick just might give it the life it needs to hang on.

Peripheral Plotting is the technique of pulling in ancillary elements and using them to create more tension in your plot. Ideally, it will push your character along their journey, creating more sympathy for your character – and even motivation for their next choices.

How does Peripheral Plotting work?

Rachel Hauck

Extreme Book Makeover: Start with the End to craft the Beginning!

I love writing contests for unpublished authors. I got my own start with a writing contest, and I believe there is nothing better for a new author than entering a contest to see if they have what it takes to write a story. (by the way, here’s a shameless plug for our own contest, the Fraiser!) The feedback can be essential to helping an author strengthen and add shine to their story.

The problem with these contests, however is that an author can have a fantastic opening chapter, honing and crafting it to compelling brilliance….

And still have the book fall apart after that.

Why does this happen? Because it’s easy to get excited about the beginning of a story – but maintaining the momentum to the end is challenging. In our Extreme Book Makeover seires, we’re headed into ACT 2 – how to keep the middle from muddling. But the key to keep Act 2 momentum going starts with a look at the END…and hinting at it in the beginning.

Start with the End in Mind.