Lucienne DiverTension I’ve read a few submissions in the past couple of years that while beautifully written and psychologically or philosophically interesting were almost entirely without suspense. There was no tension driving the plot, no overarching conflict to keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat and turning those pages late into the night. In the end I had to decline representation, because I knew they wouldn’t sell, and if they did, it wouldn’t be in sufficient numbers to build a career.
So today I want to talk about that conflict and how you can pump it up. Whether you’re writing a romance where the primary tension is whether the hero and heroine’s issues will keep them from finding true love or a science fiction epic about the overthrow of an evil empire, a good novel needs three things. The reader must:
a) fear that the protagonists [...]
Continue reading Tension
