An Essential Element of Scene: Excitement (or Conflict, Tension, Suspense and/or Curiosity)

To engage your reader, especially in today's world filled with distractions, you must keep your story exciting. Excitement is created through dramatic action where a positive outcome for the protagonist is constantly threatened.

Without gorgeous writing, exciting action and/or compelling characters (preferably all three), a reader's mind wanders. A reader with a wandering mind detaches from the story, puts down the book and later, if she does pick the story up again, she'll not recognize where she left off because, though her eyes skimmed the words the first time, meaning didn't penetrate.

Because she has to go back to find where she last remembered reading consciously, any true connection to the story has been compromised and the reader may never fully commit to finishing your story.

Plot Tip:
Find a scene, passage, chapter, section that's boring to you? You can be sure the reader became bored even earlier in the story than you did. Now, rewrite the scene using extreme ideas, wild choices, any surprising elements you can pull in to create emotion and excitement, tension, heart and conflict. Brainstorm for all possible ideas to create more conflict and excitement and then hone them to fit your story.

Today I write.
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For more: Read my Plot Whisperer and Blockbuster Plots books for writers.

Conflict, Tension, Suspense and / or Curiosity

You introduced a broad view of the setting of your story in Prompt #2. In response to the first six prompts you created conflict, tension, suspense and / or curiosity in action scene(s) that involve an antagonist and a romance character, no backstory, and shows what the protagonist does when blocked from her short term goal. A bit of mystery draws the reader to want to know what's up. Without revealing answers and keeping the action moving forward now you can ground the story on a deeper and more intimate level in Prompt #7 without slowing down the story or losing the interest of your reader.

Today, I write.

The survey results from Twitter and Facebook are in. The confidence exudes from the many writers who love to write unabashedly and proudly, quietly and fiercely fills me with hope. The admission by other writers that they feel all three about writing feels real and raw and often tortured. 

Knowing what to write where in a story with a plot allows for a more loving relationship with your writing. If you falter, wondering what comes next or what to write next in your story, follow the prompts in The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing for that spot in a story with a plot.

If you're following along and wish to comment or ask questions, please use Twitter and be sure to include @plotwhisperer and #pwprompt to catch my attention.

The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing gives you the inspiration and motivation you need to finish every one of your writing projects. This book guides you through each stage of the writing process, from constructing compelling characters to establishing an unforgettable ending. The book also helps you get into the habit of writing creatively every day, with brand-new imaginative prompts for how to write a novel, memoir, screenplay with a plot. 

Join me here everyday as together we write our stories from page one and through all the prompts to the very end.

To familiarize yourself with the basic plot terms used here and in the PW Book of Prompts:
1) Watch the plot playlists on the Plot Whisperer Youtube channel.
2) Read The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master
3) Fill out the exercises in The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-by-Step Exercises to Help You Create Compelling Stories
4) Visit:
Blockbuster Plots for Writers
Plot Whisperer on Facebook
Plot Whisperer on Twitter

More on Emotion and Plot

Following the in-depth article Emotion Makes the Character with tips for creating emotion in your characters, I offer the following:

Use of the following behaviors, which impede effective communication, create conflict and tension and reveal character:

Walking away
Sarcasm
Blame
Short Temper
Withdrawal
Not listening
Talking over
Looking away
Shouting
Anger
Criticism
Intellectualizing
Debating the complaint
Threatening to leave
Counter-complaints

(List is thanks to my dear friend, Teresa LeYung Ryan, and Emillo Escudero. Thanks!)

Gotta run. More later....