Tension

If you know where a story is going, you have the space to work out where to throw in those vital, nail biting twists and turns, and you can avoid the dreaded saggy middle. This has been a lesson I’ve needed to learn – I’m not a natural planner, I need to write my way into a story because how the characters develop dictates how the plot evolves. But if I don’t plan at all, the characters and their relationships take over to the detriment of pacing and plot! My fabulous agent, Juliet Mushens, recommended Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat to me as an aid to planning. I put together an outline where I establish the main turning points and twists, where the story begins and ends. It’s not prescriptive, I keep it flexible, so my characters have the freedom to develop but there’s enough structure to keep the pacing tight!

For me, a lot of the tension raising details get added at the second draft stage. The first draft is the bare bones of a book, it’s about getting the story down. Second draft is the fun draft – adding flesh to the bones, all the details to build up tension, to really bring the characters and story alive.