Victory is mine!

So I’m writing my current story, “To be Held,” finally! It’s been two to three weeks since I’ve been able to write, so I’m rather happy.

That being said, I posted last week about how complicated it is when your characters have secrets and you don’t want everything spilled at the same time That is why this story is so difficult for me actually, because it is a strongly secret and suspicion based story. But… well I did something and I think it worked out.

What I did was I wrote out all of my characters’ secrets, whose secret it was, and why it was important to the story. Then, with all the secrets written in front of me, I ordered the secrets based off of how I wanted they to be revealed.  With that, I could easily look at my newly-created cheat sheet and figure out what the next scene had to be about.

So, scene one I needed to create enough tension that would cause Carmen (the main character) to become suspicious of Edmond. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t want to give anything away. What’s even better is that I think I did it. Edmond gives her enough hints that he knows more than he’s saying.

Then, today, I surprised myself by being able to write scene two. This one had some surprises for myself, mostly that all of my characters wanted to talk at the exact instant and tell all of their secrets. And… I let them actually. Which I know, in a story based on suspicion and distrust, it doesn’t make sense, but it did actually. And I didn’t reveal everything. Just… most everything.

So I am very satisfied with myself to be quite honest. I’ve written ten pages in the past two days and I like how it is coming out thus far. However, I listened to the song it was based on today again and I discovered it is very loosely based on the song. Oh well. I still like the story a lot. (Have I ever written a summery? I’m not sure. I’ll have to check.)

Oh, and about editing Shad, I honestly don’t know what to do exactly. I have one more chapter to read through however, and then I’m done with that, but about writing a synopsis… that is just totally overwhelming. I’ll see. Next week I’ll (hopefully) get off.

what is in a story

One interesting fact is that since I started blogging, I’ve also been reading more blogs. I’m not good at finding them but when I find one that I pretty much like, I end up reading it off and on. It’s like a little world of mine on the internet where I can be a little braver than I am in real life.  (Introverts tend to be braver on the internet; did you know that?)

Anyway, the question came from Cassandra Jade about what is the most important element in a story. I bounced between characters, because characters that you cannot click with are just bad, and plot, because a good plot might make up for bad characters and support the characters. And I found out  last night I’m wrong. The answer is tension.

Tension can come from the plot and events or from the characters and their relationships.  It moves the plot forward, while keeping it interesting and exciting so that hardly anyone wants to put down the story. Always, the reader will be asking the question of, “What about this? How does this fit in? How can he get away with this?”  Because of these questions, he will keep reading.

When tension is added between characters, it creates arguments, distractions, and complications. Two stick figures can work as a team but what happens if one of the team members wants the other one dead because the latter flirted with the former’s sister? What happens if one of the team members is on this team because his brother died from it? Tension adds to characters just as much as it adds to plot.

The only sad thing is how difficult it is to create good tension in a story, especially in the plot. Out of all the other elements, tension is probably the hardest one to master but I think it is probably the most rewarding.

Now I just have to decide if I’m going to send my answer to her by the end of the day.