Don't Hold Back!

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A piece of writing advice I read years ago went something like this, "Don't hold back your greatest ideas until the next book you write. Use them now. You never know if that book of the future will get written, or even get published."

I've had to remind myself of this advice many times. A great idea pops into my head, but I think, "No, I'll wait 'til the next book for that one" or "I can't write that now---what if I can write it better in a couple years?"

Sure, if I'm doing things right, I'm always going to be writing better with each year that passes (I hope!). Maybe I will be able to tell the story better down the road. Or not. That's the issue. I don't want to hold onto my best ideas, because more good ideas will come later!

An example. In my first novel, Thicker Than Blood, I have a character who doesn't even show up in any scenes but was someone who got mentioned in the thoughts of another character. Her name's Abby. Now I liked the name Abby. Enough so that I didn't want to "use it up" for such a minor character. I tried changing it (she was going to be Nora, another name I like). It was a no go. This character had become Abby in my head. I felt like I wasted a good name! But as it turns out, as I wrote my second novel I had the wild idea to include this Abby character. And she took over the book! Which goes to show me the advice I heard was right. Don't hold back good ideas, or character names, for later.

Every book I write needs to be the very best it can be... right now. And this is good advice for life, too. Didn't Mark Twain say, "Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today?" Which goes hand-in-hand with Jesus' words about not worrying about tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough troubles of its own.

Let's live life to its fullest today, no matter our vocation!

Stretching the Tension by James Scott Bell (Part 4)

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And the conclusion of our Stretching the Tension series...

James Scott Bell has been a writing mentor to me. His novels, as well as his writing how-to articles and books, have taught me so many aspects of writing fiction.

Of those articles, "Stretching The Tension", is one I've turned to again and again as I write action scenes or scenes that really need to carry emotional depth. It first appeared in Writer's Digest magazine (and later was featured as a chapter in his book Plot & Structure). Jim has graciously given me permission to reprint that article here in four parts.

Stretching the Tension
by James Scott Bell
Part 4

Stretch the big and small

Think of tension stretching as an elongation of bad times. This can be on a large scale, as in Jeffery Deaver's A Maiden's Grave (Signet), a novel about a one-day hostage crisis. Each chapter is marked by a clock reading, such as 11:02 a.m. The chapters then give the full range of dramatic beats.

Tension also can be stretched on a microlevel. Usually these can be added when you're revising. You come across beats that pass a little too quickly for the rhythm you're trying to create.

In my one of my novels featuring an early 1900s Los Angeles lawyer, Kit Shannon, Kit shares a meal with the temperance champion, Carry Nation. The first draft of the scene read like this:

Their laughter was interrupted by the figure of the chief of police, Horace Allen. He stood at their table with one of his uniformed officers. Kit knew immediately this was not a social call.
"Kathleen Shannon." The chief's voice was thunderous.
"Good evening, Chief."

I felt the moment, for dramatic purposes, needed a little more time. I rewrote it adding more beats, such as the chief's voice causing all conversation to cease within the place:

Kit felt the silence, sensed the social opprobrium flowing her way from the gentile patrons. A pleasant evening was being rudely interrupted, and that was not why people came to the Imperial.

The best way to get the right amount of tension into your novel is to stretch it as much as possible in your first draft and then look at what you've got.

Go for it, and don't worry about overdoing it or wearing out the reader. You have that wonderful thing called revision to save you. If you write hot, packing scenes with physical and emotional tension, you always can revise cool, and scale back on rewrite. That's much easier to do than trying to heat things up the second time around.

Of course not every scene should be a big, suspenseful set piece. A novel can only sustain a few of those and you want them to stand out. But any scene can be stretched beyond its natural comfort zone. Get in the habit of finding the cracks and crevices where troubles lay and burrowing in to see what's there. You may strike gold. And your Readers will be thankful for the effort.

Read Part 1
Read Part 2 on Stretching the Physical
Read Part 3 on Stretching the Emotional

Find out more about James Scott Bell at his website, http://www.jamesscottbell.com

His novels include the Ty Buchanan mystery series, Presumed Guilty, The Whole Truth, No Legal Grounds, among others. His writing how-to books Plot & Structure as well as Revision and Self-Editing are invaluable resources.

Read my interviews with Jim: Interview #1, Interview #2 as well as reviews of: Presumed Guilty, No Legal Grounds, The Whole Truth, Try Dying, Try Darkness, and Revision & Self-Editing.

Stretching the Tension by James Scott Bell (Part 3)

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Another episode in The Stretching the Tension special...

James Scott Bell has been one of my writing mentors. His novels, as well as his writing how-to articles and books have taught me so many aspects of writing fiction.

Of those articles, "Stretching The Tension", is one I've turned to again and again as I write action scenes or scenes that really need to carry emotional depth. It first appeared in Writer's Digest magazine (and later was featured as a chapter in his book Plot & Structure). Jim has graciously given me permission to reprint that article here in four parts.

Stretching the Tension
by James Scott Bell
Part 3

Stretch the emotional

A scene does not have to involve physical peril to have tension worth stretching. Trouble can be emotional as well.

When a character is in the throes of emotional turmoil, don't make things easy on her. We humans are a circus of doubts and anxieties. Play them up! Give us the whole show.

In the first chapter of The Deep End of the Ocean (Penguin) by Jacquelyn Mitchard, protagonist Beth's young son, Ben, disappears in a crowded hotel. The next 40 pages cover hours, not days. Emotional beat upon emotional beat is rendered as Beth experiences the various manifestations of shock, fear, grief and guilt.

For example, when the detective, Candy Bliss, suggests Beth lie down, Mitchard gives us this paragraph:

Beth supposed she should lie down; her throat kept filling with nastiness and her stomach roiled. But if she lay down, she wanted to explain to Candy Bliss, who was holding out her hand, it would be deserting Ben. Did Detective Bliss think Ben was lying down? If Beth ate, would he eat? She should not do anything Ben couldn't do or was being prevented from doing. Was he crying? Or wedged in a dangerous and airless place? If she lay down, if she rested, wouldn't Ben feel her relaxing, think she had decided to suspend her scramble toward him, the concentrated thrust of everything in her that she held out to him like a life preserver? Would he relax then, turn in sorrow toward a bad face, because his mama had let him down?

Notice how Mitchard uses physical descriptions that show rather than tell: "throat kept filling with nastiness"; "stomach roiled."

She places us in Beth's mind as her thoughts come one after another. Then Mitchard returns to the action of the scene. And so the beats continue.

To stretch inner tension, ask these questions to get your raw material:

*What is the worst thing from the inside that can happen to my character? This encompasses a whole universe of mental stakes. Hint: Look to the character's fears.

*What is the worst information my character can receive? Some secret from the past or fact that rocks her world can be stalking her through the scene.

*Have I sufficiently set up the depth of emotion for the readers before the scene? We need to care about your lead characters before we care about their problems.

Read Part 1
Read Part 2 on Stretching the Physical
Part 4: Stretch the Big & Small


Find out more about James Scott Bell at his website, http://www.jamesscottbell.com

His novels include the Ty Buchanan mystery series, Presumed Guilty, The Whole Truth, No Legal Grounds, among others. His writing how-to books Plot & Structure as well as Revision and Self-Editing are invaluable resources.

Read my interviews with Jim: Interview #1, Interview #2 as well as reviews of: Presumed Guilty, No Legal Grounds, The Whole Truth, Try Dying, Try Darkness, and Revision & Self-Editing.

Stretching the Tension by James Scott Bell (Part 1)

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James Scott Bell has been a writing mentor to me. His novels, as well as his writing how-to articles and books, have taught me so many aspects of writing fiction.

Of those articles, "Stretching The Tension", is one I've turned to again and again as I write action scenes or scenes that really need to carry emotional depth. It first appeared in Writer's Digest magazine (and later was featured as a chapter in his book Plot & Structure). Jim has graciously given me permission to reprint that article here in four parts.

Stretching the Tension
by James Scott Bell
Part 1

One of my great movie-going experiences was watching Psycho in high school in an auditorium during a storm. The place was packed. The mood was right. And from the shower scene on, people were screaming their heads off.

I'm glad my first exposure to the movie was not on television. I got to see it uncut, which is more than we can say for Janet Leigh after the shower scene. But more important, I got the full effect of the suspense without interruption.

The anticipation was unbearable. The surprise-twist-climax actually changed my body chemistry. I didn't sleep for a week.

Which demonstrates why Alfred Hitchcock was called the master of suspense. What he did better than any other director was stretch the tension. He never let a thrilling moment escape with a mere whimper. He played it for all it was worth.

And so should fiction writers. Learning how to stretch tension is one of the best ways to keep your readers flipping pages, losing sleep and buying your books.

Set up the tension

Before you can stretch anything, of course, you need raw material. You don't fashion a clay pot without clay. The clay for a novelist is trouble. The question you have to keep asking is this: What problem has the potential to lay some serious hurt on my character?

If your lead character has misplaced his pajamas, you could write several pages about it, throwing obstacle after obstacle in his path (a roller skate, a phone call, the postman ringing twice). But the hunt is unlikely to engage your readers. There isn't enough trouble at stake at the end of the line (unless, of course, your hero has hidden the mafia's money in the pajama bottoms and has five minutes to find it).

So the first rule is simple: Always make sure scenes of tension provide something to be tense about.

When you've got a handle on the trouble for your character in a given scene, you're ready to stretch it. You can do that with two aspects of your fiction---the physical and the emotional. Each presents an opportunity to transform your story from the mundane to the thrilling.

Part 2 on Stretching the Physical
Part 3 : Stretching the Emotional
Part 4: Stretch the Big & Small


Find out more about James Scott Bell at his website, http://www.jamesscottbell.com

His novels include the Ty Buchanan mystery series, Presumed Guilty, The Whole Truth, No Legal Grounds, among others. His writing how-to books Plot & Structure as well as Revision and Self-Editing are invaluable resources.

Read my interviews with Jim: Interview #1, Interview #2 as well as reviews of: Presumed Guilty, No Legal Grounds, The Whole Truth, Try Dying, Try Darkness, and Revision & Self-Editing.