When I first started writing fiction I embraced the school of scene and sequel. Meaning action and then building in a lull for the character to analyze and the reader to catch a breath.
Maass, in The Fire in Fiction declares these days over. "I do not believe in aftermath. The human brain moves faster…Mulling it over on the page doesn't add anything fresh."
Maass spends much of this chapter pleading with authors to learn how to beef up the writing – how to add tension – to avoid writing passages readers inevitably skim.
Unless of course, you learn to infuse that aftermath, the sequel part of the scene and sequel pattern, with micro-tension.
"…emotional conflict. Competing desires…" he writes. Not between characters, but within individual characters.
It's a challenge for the writer – but the reward is so worth the extra effort. And who wants to say they just threw a manuscript together willy-nilly? Who wants to degrade their hours of labor over the keyboard like that?
As I read this chapter, I was also reading a book by a favorite author of mine, Claudia Dain. Mr. Maasss' lessons about page turning tension being less about action and more about the character's internal conflict within those events are perfectly illustrated by Dain.
It was a wonderful reinforcement of both the writing skills necessary to succeed in this business and the pure enjoyment a reader can find when an author puts such skill to good use on the page.
To your best creative writing!
~Regan
Filed under Blog by on Apr 14th, 2010. 
