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Saggy Scene Series: The ONE Easy Trick to creating Scene Tension

By on July 14, 2014 in 6. Search by Series:, b. Building a Scene, Extreme Book Makeover, How do I write Tension?, Saggy Scene Solutions, Susan May Warren, writing tension

Build in a Fear of Failure!

I am a closet SciFi junkie, and my current love affair is Falling Skies. I’ve been with them from the beginning and to be honest, I love the show not for the Sci-Fi, but for the characters. In short, I love the hero, and his three sons, and want them to survive.

I care about these Sympathetic Characters.

Which is why I found myself at the edge of my seat during last week’s episode. The hero, Tom Mason (played by Noah Wylie) and his oldest son, Ben, are trapped in a prison camp and need to escape. They’ve devised a wild plan to break through the electrical walls that holds everyone prisoner.

I realized the episode was fantastic when I found myself on my feet at the end of it.

Here’s the play of events – the hero has to distract the bad guys (skitters, or very large alien bugs) and get them to a building they’ve rigged to blow. In the meantime, Ben has to gather up all the prisoners and get them into the tunnels near their escape route. Finally, a third group, incidentally, a motley crew of soldiers who hate each other, has to climb over the wall with this homemade electric-repelling suit to get to the power supply and take down the electric wall.

If you are a fan and haven’t seen the episode, stop reading here.

The plan begins perfectly – Tom kills a guard, which brings out a horde of bugs, who chase him (he’s on a motorcycle) through the city, away from the escapees.

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Saggy Scene Solutions: 4 Ways to Make Your Reader Care

By on July 7, 2014 in 6. Search by Series:, b. Building a Scene, Extreme Book Makeover, How do I write Tension?, Saggy Scene Solutions, Susan May Warren

You know what’s NOT a great idea? Putting dinosaurs in a Transformer movie. But why, you ask, do dinosaurs show up in a Transformer’s move? Probably because someone was sitting in a meeting, looking at the script and said…”I dunno, something is missing…”

It’s not the dinosaurs. It’s the fact that yes, even on page 98 of the script, we still don’t really care about the main characters.

Yes, I’m talking about Transformers 4: Age of Extinction. Sure, I WANT to care about cute Mark Wahlberg (and frankly, still do, because I’m deeply concerned this movie is going to hurt his career. Mark, call me if you ever decide to do another movie with dinosaurs in it. Especially if it does not have the words, Jurassic Park anywhere in the titles.) And, I want to care about his daughter (aka, the long drink of water, Megan-Fox stand in, eye candy), but frankly, the most emotional dimension we get from her is a plump-limped, disbelieving look (really? there are transformers in my backyard?) on her close-uped face.

And don’t even get me started on Shane, the boyfriend – or rather, “Driver” (he’s introduced as a “driver” early in the movie – and that’s what he does the entire movie. Drives. Except, what kind of driver is he? Milk Truck Driver? Ice-road trucker? Go-cart? He is driving a souped up Aveo at the beginning so I’m leaning toward that one. But, Im still trying to figure that out.) I hated Shane from the moment he pulled out his “Romeo and Juliet” license to date Mark (aka. Cade’s) hot daughter. (since he was 20 and she was still – yeah, right – 17). I’m using the word “date” loosely.

If Mark truly wanted to make me care, he would have put one of those meaty fists into Shane’s beautiful, Irish-speaking face. (He’s from Texas, so the Irish accent TOTALLY makes sense.)

But, I’m veering away from the point. Which is – if you don’t want people to fall asleep while your dinosaurs are fighting machine-aliens in Beijing, you have to make your characters LIKEABLE and if not that, at least SYMPATHETIC.

Again, it starts with a wide-angle look at the story. Let’s go back to Transformers 4 for a few more moments of pain.

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Extreme Book Makeover: Keep your Scenes from Sagging!

By on June 16, 2014 in 6. Search by Series:, Extreme Book Makeover, Saggy Scene Solutions, Susan May Warren

Ah, contest season. Love it! I just finished judging 1,385,643 contest entries. Okay, maybe it only felt that way. But I found a common issue in many entries – something that took me a few years as a writer to really understand. A scene has to have the right set up to create enough tension to draw a reader all the way to the end. Many writers fall into the trap of writing what I call, the police report. They simply tell us what happened/is happening, as if they are narrating the story, or letting the characters narrate what is happening. Sure, there are “things” that happen in the scene the might be interesting, but without the right set up, the scene is boring. It has nothing at stake, nothing […]

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

By on May 12, 2014 in 6. Search by Series:, b. Building a Scene, Editing Basics, Extreme Book Makeover, How do I write Tension?, Susan May Warren, writing 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.

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