Slow and Steady

Hi everyone,

Today’s post will be short.

I went back to my manuscript pages that I glossed over in my random draft where I gleefully (and erroneously) determined they didn’t need extra micro-tension. And my new method works.

To recap, my new method is: List all the emotions my POV character is experiencing and their conflicting partner—for example” frustration-hope—and ask myself, is she feeling any of these before determining if there is enough/any micro-tension on the page? This makes it much easier.

Some pages genuinely didn’t need any extra micro-tension—adding more would only slow the pace. But there were two obvious pages that required micro-tension and two pages where my POV character wasn’t present/involved enough. A few had 60-70% tension but I could immediately see a way to add more. A total of ten pages.

My lesson from this is that I absolutely can’t blitz a micro-tension draft. Slow and steady in this case, really does win the race.

I, also, read random pages from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and A Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I find it helpful to analyze pages I didn’t write. Both amazing books. And full of micro-tension. They are both masterclasses.

The Hunger Games is a masterclass in micro-tension and A Fault in Our Stars is a masterclass in emotion.

That’s it from me.

I’m exhausted from scrutinizing my pages.

Talk to you tomorrow,

Happy writing.

Joanne.