I’m so excited to announce that my NEW COLUMN with the Christian Fiction Online Magazine is up! It’s called From the Big Screen to Your Scene, and takes popular movies and teaches writing techniques from it…. Here’s a sample from this month’s issue…. Can you hear it? August Rush Asks a Question Listen, can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind; In the air; In the light; It’s all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up; All you have to do is listen. These are the opening lines of last fall’s delightful movie, August Rush, delivered in the haunting, delicate voice of amazing young actor Freddie Highmore. The story opens with young Evan, a so-called orphan, leading a symphony […]
Read the RestTag Archives | Susan May Warren
Make them fall in love!
(Note: I thought I posted this on Tuesday, but it didn’t show up for some reason…so you’re getting it today. *g*) I spent the weekend driving again – to camp to drop off my sons this time. I saw my daughter looking cute and directing traffic (she’s working at camp for the summer), and stole a few moments with her and her girlfriend (delivering home-made cookies, of course!). The first thing out of her friends’ mouth was…. “I met a boy.” And then I saw it…that sparkle in her eyes, the glow in her expression, the way she hunched her shoulders and giggled. Oh…she met a BOY. I love to fall in love. (and when you’re married, you get to do it over and over again *g*). And I love […]
Read the RestNo, no, it can’t end this way!
Every romance has to have that moment when we as the reader jump up from our chairs and are tempted to throw the book against the wall, furious that these two can’t be together. In other words – it has to have a BLACK MOMENT. Your black moment is where everything goes south. It’s when the hero loses the heroine, maybe he finds out some truth about her and turns his back, or maybe she finds out something about him and runs away. Maybe the external obstacles become so large that they can’t be overcome and both turn away. But you need to force these two apart, and you need to make miserable. Really despairing, so that they are in a worse place emotionally than they were before […]
Read the RestLove me Tender
“Christian Romance, is there such a thing?” Wow, I sure hope so! But you have no idea how often I’ve heard those words from nice, church-going folks who I know are married and once fell in love. Today we’re going to take a look, real quickly, at Sexual Tension in a romance. No, no, no, our Christian books don’t have sex in them. But it doesn’t mean our characters are made of cardboard! You don’t have to say the s-word to create sexual tension. The author can focus it on eyes and lips and thinking about kissing or holding someone…because this is a natural response to the deepening affection characters have for one another. This is a very normal part of their relationship – it’s how far they pursue this […]
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