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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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Featured Fiction Friday: Beth Vogt

By on May 9, 2014 in Beth Vogt, Featured Book, Featured Fiction, Featured Fiction Fridays

Haley’s three-year marriage to Sam, an army medic, ends tragically when he’s killed in Afghanistan. Her attempts to create a new life for herself are ambushed when she arrives home one evening—and finds her husband waiting for her. Did the military make an unimaginable mistake when they told her Sam was killed?

Too late to make things right with his estranged twin brother, Stephen discovers Sam never told Haley about him. As Haley and Stephen navigate their fragile relation­ship, they are inexorably drawn to each other. How can they honor the memory of a man whose death brought them together—and whose ghost could drive them apart?

Somebody Like You is a beautifully rendered, affecting novel, reminding us that while we can’t change the past, we have the choice to change the future and start anew.

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