Three Ways to Add Tension to a Scene During Revisions

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week's Refresher Friday takes another look at ways to increase the tension in a scene. Enjoy!

Tension is vital to all stories, but let’s face it—we don’t always have it in every scene. I’ve written plenty of scenes that moved the plot along and conveyed the information I wanted to share, but were weak on tension, especially in a first draft. I’d guess a lot of first draft scenes lack tension because the focus in often on getting the story, setting, or characters down (or any combination of those).

Since writers usually know what is going to happen in a scene and why, it's easy to write all the tension out of a scene. That critical sense of uncertainty goes missing, or we might not write something because we know it won't affect the outcome of the scene, so why bother? But that potential outcome can raise the tension and make the reader wonder what might happen.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com