Tag Archives: scene tension

Technique

Upping your tension, scene-by-scene

In my presentation on structural self-editing, I mention that one column of the scene chart in particular helped to make my story better: the tension column. So when I stumbled across a post on how to use that tension column in my archives, I knew I had to share!

When you’re editing yourself, it can be hard to see which of your scenes are low in tension. For tension, a scene-level edit is a definite must. For each scene, ask yourself:

  • Character’s goal: Is it clearly stated or irrefutably implied? (That scene goal in the scene chart thing? Yep. Plus, a scene chart and/or spreadsheet is a really convenient here.)
  • Bring on the conflict: Can/should I cut to where the conflict for that goal starts? Is that the worst conflict I could use here?
  • Bring out the conflict: Have I stated why this is a difficult/delicate situation?
  • Length: Is the scene an appropriate length for its significance? (That applies to both word count and the passage of time in the scene.)
  • Setting: Could another setting lend more tension to this scene?
  • Purpose: Does this move the story forward? Is my reason for having this scene good enough to justify this scene, or any scene at all?
  • Ending: Does the scene end with a disaster for my POV character’s goal? Do we cut away at the worst possible moment, something that will induce the reader to find out what happens next?
  • Finally, rating: as Noah Lukeman recommends in The Plot Thickens, rate the scene tension on a scale of 1 to 10.

Another method here is to read the story backwards, scene-by-scene. Or, I guess, you could jump around as long as you made sure you covered everything. That way, you know each scene will stand on its own—but if you change anything important, especially near the beginning, you’ll just have to go through and fix all that again. (Which can cut both ways, of course.)

Of course, this whole method requires brutal honesty. No rating a scene higher because your heroine gets off a few zingers, no keeping a scene that doesn’t serve any real purpose because it has that beautiful paragraph that it took you a month to write. Cut and paste your favorite parts (or the whole scene) into another document and you never have to actually “lose” anything.

Finding and fixing low tension scenes is just the beginning of making sure your story keeps your readers hooked. Tomorrow we’ll look at finding problems with the overarching suspense in your story. (Gulp!)

What do you think? What do you look for to find low-tension scenes?

Photo credit: Samuraijohnny

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Technique

Varying the tension level to keep your readers’ interest

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This entry is part 25 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

Or, How writing is like spicy mac

A couple weeks ago, my family went out to lunch. We got a side of macaroni and cheese that was advertised, correctly, as having a little kick to it. The spice was too much for the kids, so my husband and I ended up eating almost all of the macaroni and cheese.

Macaroni and Cheese @ Seersucker RestaurantThe first few bites were really tasty (and I’m really picky about mac’n’cheese). Within a few bites, the spice began to set in. It wasn’t too spicy—no tears, no runny noses—but I could see why my kids needed water.

But once we were halfway through our meal, my husband and I both realized that we weren’t really tasting the mac or the cheese. After a while, all you could taste was the spice.

Early on in our writing, we usually learn early on that we need tension and conflict in our scenes. Tension, suspense and conflict are vital, and few people will read fiction without that “spice.”

However, sometimes it’s easy to go overboard on this vital element. At the climax, we’ll probably have a long passage of high-tension scenes, but if every scene of the book features world! threatening! consequences!, all you can taste is the spice—and the book feels just as one-note as if every scene had no tension at all.

Spice isn’t the spice of life—it’s variety. So change up the tension levels in your scenes.

Ten ways to change up the tension in your scenes

Flatline1. Use humor. A joke can reduce the tension in a scene, or just give the readers a break from unremitting THE WHOLE PLANET WILL DIE!!! drama.

2. Switch storylines. Changing to another group of characters doing something else often helps to vary the tension level. This also works in reverse—if the tension gets too low in one storyline, switch to another, then change back to a point where something more interesting is happening.

3. Bump up your character’s proactivity. Maybe your characters aren’t facing chase scene after chase scene, but they’ve been kidnapped and they’re being dragged around the country, and they’re freaking out the whole time. That level of tension, that helpless response, makes the tension (and the characters!) seem one-note. Don’t let your characters just wring their hands and whine. Do something!

4. Change your character’s goal. If we’ve had five scenes in a row of your characters trying to do the exact same thing, and encountering the same problem, or the same level of problems, something’s got to change. (You know what they say about the definition of insanity?)

5. Change the source of the threat. Maybe your last eight scenes have been at a 7 on the tension scale. You might be able to bump some of them up

6. Use dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows something the characters don’t, usually something that will pull the rug from under the characters. If you have scenes from the antagonist’s POV, for example, you can set up dramatic irony (and switch to that storyline to intercut the tension).

7. Have your characters reach a goal. Throughout the book, we mostly try to frustrate our characters’ goals because it increases the suspense and tension. To change things up, have them accomplish something—it could be something small, like retrieving an important artifact, or it could be something major, like defeating the bad guy (who turns out to be only a minor villain).

8. Give us a campfire scene. Let the characters celebrate and relax, if only for a minute. Especially good after a victory that turns out to be false.

9. Use a sequel. You may not have the time or place to have a celebration scene right now, but if your character has a minute, he or she might be able to go through the stages of an emotional reaction to the action, naturally a bit lower in tension.

10. Show the recovery. You’ve got hearts racing, stomachs clenching and palms sweating (dude, gesture clichés). But do your characters ever stop doing those things? Do they strive to (or just naturally) get their visceral responses under control? Take a deep breath, take a look around, take a minute to reorient your goals before you plunge in again.

Again, tension is absolutely vital to a novel—but having all your scenes with equally high tension is just as stultifying as all scenes with low tension. We don’t want every bite of our meal to taste like plain noodle or like plain spice. Vary the tension of your stories to create a truly engaging taste reading experience.

How else can you vary the tension in your scenes?

Photo credits
Macaroni and cheese by David Berkowitz
Flatline by Myles Grant
both via Flickr/CC

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Technique

Secret sauce: tension check

This entry is part 9 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

THIS is what made the real leap to publishability for me more than any other ingredient in the secret sauce! (Naturally, this will vary from writer to writer and manuscript to manuscript, but it really made a difference for me!)

An actual envelope factory. Love it.I firmly believe that tension is necessary in every scene. That doesn’t mean every scene has to be a nail-biter or a fistfight or an argument—but there does need to be some source of tension, some uncertainty, something to compel the reader to find. out. what. happens.

I use these steps (still!) to figure out if I have that in my scenes and my story.

Step 1: Assess the current tension

I like to use that handy-dandy scene chart to do this! As I mentioned before, for each scene, I list the POV character’s goal. Scene goals aren’t just for the beginning and end of scenes. You can use The goal can be the source of tension—and if there’s no goal, there’s often no tension.

One way to look at this visually is to use a numerical tension rating in your scene chart. In most spreadsheet software, you can create a line graph from that column of data—Kaye Dacus calls this an “EKG” for your story (you know, an electrocardiogram? Like a heartbeat chart?).

Also in the scene chart, I like to devote a column to writing out what the source of tension is supposed to be in the scene. Is it hoping the character achieves the scene goal? Is it the fact that she’s undercover? Is it the romantic tension?

Step 2: Identify problem scenes and sections

While there are also good uses for parallels, scenes with the same character goal are often a sign that the character isn’t making enough progress. While we definitely don’t want to make things easy for our characters, watching a character fail repeatedly at the same thing wears down the suspense. We may begin not to care whether they’re going to succeed or not, unless each scene has high tension—or the character goal can be refined to relate to the specific events, conflict and disaster for that scene.

But probably most important in the EKG are the sections where the tension level doesn’t change or varies only slightly for several scenes in a row. In Writing Mysteries, one writer shared some advice from an editor: “I must not try to keep everything at high pitch all the way through a story. Excitement, if too steady, can be as boring as having nothing at all happening” (109).

Naturally, at the climax of a book, the tension will be quite high, probably for several scenes. But is the tension flat in there? Are there other “plateaus” or “plains”? Does the tension start out much higher than it ends?

If the end isn’t satisfying because it doesn’t match the tension of the rest of the book, don’t lower the suspense! Fix the end!! Change things up in plains and plateaus—if you can, add what looks like a reprieve, or a rest for a little bit before plunging them back into danger, and keep the danger or at least the tension going until as close to the end of the book as you can. Find another source of tension for those wrap up chapters if you have to. (This is where I STILL need work on early drafts!)

Step 3: Fix!

For low tension scenes (in fact, for my “secret sauce” manuscript, I did this for EVERY scene), I look back at that “source of tension” column in my scene chart. I look for ways to incorporate that source of tension more:

  • Refer back to the scene goal. By reminding the readers what the character is after—and showing the growing disparity between her goal and reality—we can draw the reader along through the scene.
  • Remind the reader of the stakes or impending doom.
  • Add or increase an emotional response from the POV character to the source of tension
  • If that’s not possible—say, if the source of tension is something that the reader knows but the POV character doesn’t—have another character highlight or allude to the source of tension
  • Again, if the source of the tension is something that the reader knows that the POV character doesn’t, see if you can add another scene (usually immediately before this one) to remind the reader of the dramatic irony (yay 9th grade English!)
  • Highlight the source of the tension in a few character actions and thoughts throughout the scene. The exact number depends on the length of the scene, but it’s always good to hit on it near the beginning, and at least twice more in an average-length scene (whatever that might be for you).

On the other hand, sometimes that’s just not enough. If the source of tension is non-existent or insufficient, I look for ways to increase the tension, usually by asking myself questions like these:

  • What is the character’s goal for this scene?
  • How can things get worse?
  • How can I raise the stakes?
  • What is the source of conflict in this scene and how can I make the conflict bigger?
  • How can I weave in the antagonist, the plot, a subplot or a character turning point?
  • Who is the worst person who could walk in right now?
  • What would happen if this scene took place somewhere else?
  • What is the character feeling and have I shown it enough on the page?

Janice Hardy also offers a list of things to look at to help make your scenes matter (and there’s some overlap, but I wrote out my mental list before reading her post):

  • What is your protag doing?
  • Where does this scene take place (setting)?
  • Who else is in the scene?
  • Where structurally does this scene take place (act one, midpoint, act two, etc)?
  • What happens right before this scene?
  • What happens right after this scene?
  • What’s your theme?
  • What are the stakes?

Sometimes, it’s less the scene itself and more the context it’s in—either the spikes in your EKG are too sharp, or you’ve got a major plateau. My critique partner, Emily Gray Clawson, wrote a great post on keeping up the tension in your story by switching between types of tension or storylines.

Finally, I have a whole series on Tension, Suspense and Surprise with 35 pages on the importance of those elements in your story—and dozens of ways to fix them if they’re off—now available as a free PDF.

What do you think? Have you checked your tension lately? How do you fix low-tension scenes?

Photo credits: tension envelopes—Chris Murphy; question mark—Alexander Drachmann; high-tension wires—Redvers

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Technique

Secret sauce: scene goals

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This entry is part 8 of 16 in the series Spilling the secret sauce

I learned the concept of scene goals when I read Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure. Simply, a scene goal is the character’s immediate goal at the outset of a scene. But it’s amazing how this very simple concept can strengthen your fiction.

Finding scene goals

We mentioned scene goals last week in scene charts. As I forced myself to write out the character’s immediate goal at the outset of the scene, I found that sometimes the character didn’t know what his or her immediate purpose was. The scenes that lacked a goal for the character (or a unique goal, as opposed to one that the character’s had four times now) were often the unfocused scenes I needed the most work on—or to be cut altogether.

The goal of a scene should be very, very obvious to the writer, the reader and the character. In fact, in Scene & Structure, Jack Bickham says that our POV characters should state their goals for that scene fairly early on.

The prototypical scene begins with the most important character—invariably the viewpoint character—walking into a simulation with a definite, clear-cut, specific goal which appears to be immediately attainable. This goal represents an important step in the character’s game plan—something to be obtained or achieved which will move him one big step closer to the attainment of his major story goal. . . . (24)

The scene begins with a stated, clear-cut goal. (25)

Scene goals are fantastic for structuring fiction at this level because they tell us, the writers, what needs to happen. Our character arrives at the car dealership with the mission to buy a car/talk to his ex-girlfriend/flirt with the new salesguy. (It sets up the “scene question,” if you will: will s/he get this goal?) The character works toward that goal, until the disaster, as Bickham calls it. We answer the scene question with, most likely, a “no” or a “yes, but [complication].” (Just plain yesses should be reserved for false victories, lulling characters into a sense of security, and, of course, the finale.)

Fixing scene goals

Typically, if a scene lacks a scene goal, the scene is not as strong as it could be. (Occasionally, we’ll have something unexpected befall a character in a scene. The POV character may not always have a goal at the beginning of a scene like this—but try to use this technique sparingly, or your characters might seem directionless and as though they’re not taking charge in their life.)

To fix a weak or missing scene goal, ask what the character is trying to accomplish right now? Why did s/he come here, call this person, or take another action. Why does s/he need to do this now?

A weak scene goal can also be shored up by another, stronger goal. Look for connections or other plot lines that you can tie in to this scene. What are the antagonists doing? What can the protagonist do to try to counter them right now?

Once you’ve found the answer, state the goal flat-out close to the beginning of the scene. “I need to get Y.” “He had to make sure everything was going smoothly.” “You must go into the cave to face your inner fears.”

Can scene goals be too obvious? Possibly. From time to time, laying out the character’s entire plan for achieving a goal can actually decrease the tension. Janice Hardy covers this pitfall of overexplaining scene goals well.

Advanced scene goal techniques

Scene goals can be a really powerful tool! Here are a few ways to use them:

Goals and character sympathy

Another role that goals can play in fiction is to help develop character sympathy. How? When readers support a character’s goal, they want the character to succeed. They care.

What does it take to get our readers on board? According to James N. Frey, it takes a noble goal. They can be a really detestable person (Frey’s example is of a convict who wants to break out of prison), but giving them a goal that we can all believe in helps us to believe in the character, too (Frey’s example, IIRC, is that the convict wants to get out of prison to help a family member). And this really works: I felt it happen to me while watching a game show.

What’s noble? Something that’s self-sacrificing, something that benefits another person more than it does the main character, something that helps the general populace (but that can be too vague: helping one concrete person, such as the character’s child, can actually be more effective as a character goal than trying to better the whole world).

Goals and characterization

Our characters sometimes do have life goals other than the plot-level story goals—goals that may or not play into our story, and goals that may or may not be fulfilled in the course of the story. The bed-and-breakfast, a job at the FBI, the private island in the Bahamas.

While these might not really influence the plot, they can still have a great effect on the story: adding layers to your characters. Like real people, our characters can have life goals and dreams. These goals help demonstrate the character’s depth, to round them out.

These goals can manifest in little ways: the FBI job is one of my character’s ultimate goals that doesn’t play into the plot of the story. That goal manifests in her hobbies: spy movies and spy novels. They can also come in handy when they play into the character’s motivations. (I’ll spare you the convoluted explanation of how this happens in my story.)

The biggest caution here: make sure this goal doesn’t upstage the main plot.

Goals and foreshadowing

Foreshadowing or burying clues is all about framing: mentioning the object or information in plain sight, but in light of something more important so that the reader doesn’t think, “Ah, this is out of place/overly conspicuous/waaay too innocent looking—it must mean something.”

This is why it’s sometimes possible to make the wildest excursions inside the conflict appear to have relevance: The viewpoint character will inevitably interpret almost anything as relating back to the goal; you can show his line of thinking in an internalization, and so drag the seeming excursion far afield back into apparent relevance.

When our characters are so focused on this goal, we can use that focus to help the character (and thus the reader) dismiss something that might obviously be a clue. “Oh, he’s just hanging around because he needs to get the assignment, too.”

The scene goal tempers how a character sees material clues. They can explain them away easily: “Oh, that paperwork is on her desk—good! She’s been busy. She hasn’t had a chance to look inside the folder.”

Or they can just barely notice them—just enough to warrant a mention, but we have a MISSION here, people, and we are not going to get sidetracked!

Next week, we’ll talk about one more important use of scene goals. Until then, read more on goals in fiction, making scenes matter, and framing scene goals to bury clues.

What do you think? Do you consciously use scene goals? How do they effect your writing?

Photo credits: Goal Setting (brainstorm web)—Angie Torres;
Resolutions and goals (list)—Ed Donahue; Goals (poster)—Robert Degennaro

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Technique

Suspense fix: Cliffhangers

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This entry is part 22 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

As I defined the terms at the beginning of this series, tension works within a scene to keep us reading, while suspense is the “suprascenic” feature that keeps us reading after a scene closes. So sometimes, the way to keep people reading is as simple as examining how you end each scene, and especially each chapter.

I’ve made this part of the scene chart—a column where I indicate whether the scene ends on a hook, a segue or a note of closure. The “segue” means that it’s a lead-in to the next scene; the “closure” means that I wrap things up neatly for that character and situation—nothing more to see here, folks. Move along.

worried bride biting nailTo build suspense, avoid the closure ending—especially at chapter breaks, where a reader is most likely to set down your story. As author Katie Ganshert said the other day, End each chapter in a state of unbalance.”

Katie also listed a number of ways to do this:

We could stop in the middle of the action. Find an enticing hook. Foreshadow things to come. . . .

Consider cutting the last paragraph. The last line. The last page. Whatever you need to do to end each chapter on a note of unbalance. A sense that things aren’t well. Make your reader’s stomach squirm and propel them to the next page so they can slay the uncomfortable beast taking root in their bellies.

Related to this is cliffhangers within a scene or chapter. In Fiction First Aid, Ray Obstfeld calls this creating a “suspense pocket” (47). You set up a promise—like someone receiving a letter from someone unknown. Rather than fulfilling the promise immediately and have the character open it right away, try throwing in an event or two that delays that fulfillment. (This can also be characterization or setup, and can make readers pay attention to what would otherwise be a boring scene.)

One caveat: change up the kind of unbalance (and length, for the suspense pocket). Katie’s advice is absolutely excellent—but if we take it to mean that all of our chapter endings come in the middle of a scene, right before a major disaster, it’s going to feel repetitive and forced. Don’t always end in the middle of a scene, or end on a line of foreshadowing worthy of Howard-Shore-John-Williams-dramatic-music-swell (Little did we know, we’d never be the same at the end of every chapter).

Really—I read a book (four, actually, in a series) that did this on every chapter it seemed, and it was so obnoxious. Not just because I couldn’t stop reading in the middle of the chapter, but because it felt like the cheap trick it was. (Every chapter ended on a “hook” all right—one that was resolved in the first paragraph of the next chapter, because it was actually still part of the same scene.) Still liked the books, of course, but I’m still annoyed about that.

What do you think? How else can you end a scene on a note of unbalance?

Photo by spaceodissey

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Technique

Tension fix: Bring out internal conflicts

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This entry is part 17 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with the scene set up: we’ve put Mitch into a situation where he would be uncomfortable, unsure of himself, or required to perform a monumental feat. And yet somehow, the scene still doesn’t get the reception we want. Critique partners note that the scene—a turning point for the character—drags.

We need this scene—so now what? Can’t they see how this situation would be stressful and tense for Mitch? Doesn’t that automatically imbue the scene with tension?

Uh, no. Not if we didn’t put that there. Yeah, even though we’d all spent 300 pages together, if the feelings we know Mitch would have weren’t on the page, readers won’t see it.

Simply introducing more more tension—more conflict—through the narration can increase the tension in a scene. If Mitch just sits there and takes this pivotal situation, the readers won’t be engaged in his change—and it won’t be as believable.

Camy Tang wrote an article about this, taken Donald Maass’s “tension on every page” axiom to the next level—tension in every line. She used a great before and after comparison of a cut scene from one of her novels—one without the “tension commentary” and one with (going for tension with a humorous tone).

Weaving in your character’s emotions and observations—whether they’re a “why me” comedic effect, a “not me!” suspense effect or a “can I do this” character effect—can help to increase the tension in a turning point scene.

But don’t beat your readers over the head with it. If this is the fourth scene in a row where your protagonist is battling his Inner Demon, we readers are probably familiar enough that the conflict doesn’t have to be mentioned in every paragraph. In fact, if this is the fourth scene in a row with the same inner conflict, it might be a good time to see if all of those scenes are really necessary. Also, too much internal monologue can slow down the action of a scene, so try for a balance.

What do you think? How can you bring out your characters’ internal conflicts more?

Photo by Penguincakes

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Technique

Tension fix: Start with a bang

This entry is part 16 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

Yesterday, I said “if the character’s goal or purpose isn’t early in the scene, we can risk losing our readers.” I believe that’s true—but at the same time, I recognize that sometimes, it would make no sense for us to jump from the previous scene to the scene goal or start of the action without motivating the POV character properly.

This is one of those times where it’s vital to have a sequel—a “scene” where we focus on the character’s emotional reaction to the action of a scene. Most of the time, we tack these onto the end of the appropriate scene—but that’s not always going to work. Say, for example, we were in Jimmy’s head for the confession scene and his sequel—he tells Gina that they really can be together. Then we move on to Gina tearing up all his letters. Huh?

We need a sequel in Gina’s perspective to clarify her motivation. But starting her scene with half a page (or more) of her emotions and thoughts in reaction to the last action is . . . well, slow. (Especially if we just saw Jimmy’s emotions and thoughts on the same subject.)

So how do we make the reader understand? One great way to create tension is not to explain these actions—at first. The reader is taken aback by this interesting or inexplicable action—and they’re eager to not only find out what happens next, but to learn why this is happening now.

As James Scott Bell says in Revision And Self-Editing, you can “marble in” this sequel information through the beginning of the scene. As she rips up the letters, we have a natural reason for her to think about the last scene and to give us her response—and now we’re really compelled to find out.

This can be effective within scenes, too. I found a scene in my WIP where, halfway through, a minor character gave a two paragraph monologue to the hero to catch him (and us) up on her subplot. I’d interrupted the speech with the hero’s thought about the minor character’s habit to ramble, but still, the blocks of text were more than even I really wanted to read.

After she finished the speech, she went and retrieved a piece of evidence in a crime—a threat against her. I realized if I had the minor character hand him that evidence first, the readers would be pretty surprised—and now they want to know how she crossed the bad guys. Then her speech could keep the readers’ attention.

It can also be useful to pick up the pace (and increase suspense)—if a lot of our scenes are actually sequels, the story can slow down. If that’s not the appropriate pace for the story, ending scenes with disasters and combining sequels with the beginning of the next scene can also help speed up the action of the story.

Of course, this technique shouldn’t be used too often—we don’t want our readers to get whiplash from all those head-fakes. But it can be used to ramp up the tension at the beginning of a scene, and make the reader want to know about the emotional reaction that led the characters there.

What do you think? How do you handle necessary sequels? Do you use the “head-fake” explosion opening?

Photo by Rob

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Technique

Tension fix: Cut to the chase

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This entry is part 15 of 26 in the series Tension, suspense and surprise

One of the ways that I’ve found to increase tension as I’ve read a bunch of craft books and reread my WIP is to pull readers into scenes and create tension quickly.

Our scene openings are really key in establishing tension early on. Many times, however, we spend the beginning of the scene “warming up”—rehashing the last scene or sequel, running through mundane events, working up to a conflict (or even to a scene goal). Even after I’d edited specifically focused on making scene goals clear, I still found many scenes meandering near the beginning, wandering around until we found a conflict.

The first step is to make our POV character’s scene goal clear. Often, that will be stated explicitly: she’s waiting for her mystery date or he headed into the office to check on the Q4 numbers. (Thrilling—though I actually do know someone shopping an MG financial thriller, so maybe it could work.) Sometimes it’ll be pretty darn clear from the way we ended the previous scene: the couple just had a fight, and now he’s at a florist.

If the character’s goal or purpose isn’t early in the scene, we can risk losing our readers. And if we don’t get those characters to work on those scene goals, we can risk losing our readers. And if those characters don’t do something interesting—find a source of tension—pretty quick, we can risk losing our readers. (They’re just fickle like that.)

I’ve said before that conflict is at the heart of tension—just as conflict is at the heart of any fully-imagined scene.

Once we’ve established the character’s goal, explicitly or implicitly, we should bring on the conflict. Maybe he’s headed to the florist but—the elevator’s broken—the stairs are being painted. He twists his ankle getting down from the fire escape—the nearest florist is closed—he can’t get a cab—he gets hit by the bus he’s trying to catch. Notice that the conflict doesn’t have to start huge—he doesn’t have to jump straight to the disaster.

It doesn’t even have to be big—maybe the florist doesn’t carry her favorite kind of flowers, or after he pays, he remembers she’s allergic. But don’t just leave him in there, pondering over whether to get daffodils or dianthus.

Along with this, we can look at the whole scene to see what we can tighten. Eliminate unnecessary or redundant words and use powerful, fast-paced language instead. Check out this tightening checklist at the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood for help.

What do you think? Is there a time when we need long sections of thought between the goal and the conflict?

Photo by Matthias Rhomberg

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