Sunday, October 17, 2010

Useful cooperative inquiry

Wow--I got such great ideas from my fellow writers in the Eng. 44B class on how to increase the mood of suspense in our work. We are using a Cooperative Inquiry process, the same as I used with my dissertation group of women that produced Creating Juicy Tales (on Amazon.com now).

We came up with six ways to increase tension:

1. Fool the reader about the character’s consciousness state: Dreaming vs. reality.

2. Have the character wonder about another character’s desires and fear them.

3. Give access to the character’s worried thoughts and doubts over a secret.

4. Describe the character’s physical manifestations of worry.

5. Show the character make an assumption that the reader could see might be wrong.

6. Add in adverbs and adjectives used by professional writers in an effective suspense scene.

I used #s 2, 3, and 4 for a scene in Ch. 2, House of Cuts, that really kicked up the tension! Onward to prepare for next week's Novel Writer's Workshop in Moke Hill.

Great to see such a lot of Comments *:)

junebug...
Posted by at
Labels: ,

13 comments:

  1. Curate KarenOctober 17, 2010 at 4:04 PM

    Sounds good!

    ReplyDelete
  2. John AtkinsonOctober 17, 2010 at 5:34 PM

    Three gold stars for enthusiasm! Onward! You've got it going!

    ReplyDelete
  3. libby edwards warnerOctober 17, 2010 at 5:35 PM

    Okay, thanks for posting these ideas. Every little bit HELPS!! An aspiring WRITER:-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Chennette CleshaOctober 18, 2010 at 11:55 AM

    This is great stuff.Thanks for sharing. I will try to incorporate these great tension ideas in my short story for class.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Joe ElseyOctober 19, 2010 at 10:03 PM

    These are some great ideas. Especially 2,3 & 4. They seem as though they would make a character more easy to relate to.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nancy OchoaOctober 20, 2010 at 1:17 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Nancy OchoaOctober 20, 2010 at 1:27 PM

    Hello June,

    Im having little difficulty with this whole posting situation but i am a follower and hopefully soon will began my postings.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nancy OchoaOctober 20, 2010 at 2:29 PM

    Finally have my blogg up.... confusing but it's done (i think)

    ReplyDelete
  9. June Skalisky GillamOctober 20, 2010 at 6:08 PM

    Nancy, what is your URL for your blog?

    (the http:// address we can use to get to it)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Fabfivenumber5October 21, 2010 at 10:37 PM

    I like number 3 the best because whenever there's a secret that my characters hiding I can use it to my advantage to make the readers wonder what happened to them.

    Chelsea Layfield

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousOctober 21, 2010 at 11:40 PM

    This is great! I'm hoping I can try a few or all of these in my story.

    ReplyDelete
  12. June Skalisky GillamOctober 22, 2010 at 6:16 AM

    fabfivenumber5, yes a secret is a useful tool for building suspense, for sure!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Nancy OchoaOctober 27, 2010 at 2:56 PM

    Thanks for the ideas you posted. It helps me alot getting tips from other writter to make a story better.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)