When I first started writing, whenever I would reach a po...

When I first started writing, whenever I would reach a point of climax in the story, I'd break and recap in a new scene. Needless to say, none of those stories ever saw the light of publication. (Don't try this at home.)

It wasn't until I learned to press into crisis points that I produced a story worth publishing. DawnSinger, book one of my epic fantasy trilogy, Tales of Faeraven releases this fall.

Interestingly enough, when I received edits for DawnSinger, most of the notes calling for revision centered around, you guessed it, crisis scenes.  The next lesson I had to learn is that it wasn't enough to write my way through points of crisis. I had to birth them in a process of labor as gripping and demanding as childbirth.

Here's how:

Intensify: Consider the possibilities. What could happen in this scene that would take it up a notch?
Visualize: Close your eyes and let yourself "see" the scene unfold. What does your character see, hear, smell, taste, feel and understand? How can you make this scene gripping?
Clarify: Is there anything you've missed providing for the reader because you take it for granted?
Clean up Dialogue: Can you give dialogue a better flow by cutting out actions like "he nodded," "she shrugged," etcetera, you used instead of an attribution to identify a speaker?   
Remove Purple Prose: There are places in a story for lyricism, but if it impedes your scene's flow, cut it.
Adjust the Scene's Length: Decide how much "territory" the scene needs based on its importance to the overall story. Is it too long? Too short? Or just right?
Read the Scene for Pacing: Does it move fast enough but not so quickly it whizzes by before the reader can bathe in the experience?

Facing up to crisis scenes is both terrifying and exhilarating, like tightrope walking without a net or riding a bucking bronco. It takes "true grit," because the person looking down the literary "gun barrel" at you is yourself.  But when you do it, your story will come alive like never before.

© 2010 Janalyn Voigt

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