Tension, tension everywhere. That's what Maass continues to demand and continues to instruct as chapter eight rolls onward. It's 'transforming low-tension traps' today.
You know those moments your critique partners suggest you cut because they're bland and don't do anything for plot or character development.
In The Fire in Fiction, Maass often cites the extreme perils of 'weather' openings, but (thankfully) shows us when and how some authors make them work.
Here, as examples of low-tension traps, he states, "...the weather has an effect on us not because it is an outward portent but because it is tied to an inward storm."
Same goes for other types of low-action, observation sorts of passages in books and manuscripts that want to become books. It's not the lack of action or the prosaic notation of details that stands out or falls flat.
From reading The Fire in Fiction it's clear a reader sticks around and keeps turning pages when the author creates a need to know and understand what's going on inside the character.
To fully embrace, master, and appreciate this micro-tension chapter, you need to get your copy of The Fire in Fiction and work through these detailed exercises on your own.
Putting your manuscript under The Fire in Fiction microscope will strengthen your skills and take your creative writing to the next level. Just think of all the passages that won't end up as out takes if you can make them matter to the story and the reader.
It's simple time and efficiency stuff. As well as good author stuff.
I was amazed when I took a passage I'd previously dumped and put it through three of the four steps in the exercise related to this segment. (Step 4 is to find 20 other places in the manuscript to repeat steps one, two and three).
This gives me oodles of hope for salvaging several of my previously hope-less doorstops. Mainly because it's easy to go back and see how to fix my newbie errors in order to tell a compelling story.
To your best creative writing!
~Regan
Filed under Blog by on Apr 9th, 2010. 
