In a post on Killzone, James Scott Bell offers advice on bringing the heat to your writing. His tips include:
- Fire Up Your Openings. “Give us some heat from the get-go,” Scott says. “It doesn’t have to be high heat. Just something that disturbs the Lead’s ordinary world. A portent of things to come.” If your story’s beginning seems slow, jump to the first line of dialogue and see if you can actually start there. If that doesn’t work, cut your first chapter entirely and see how the novel reads with Chapter 2 in the lead-off position. You can save the more important exposition from Chapter 1 for later scenes.
- Fan the Flames of Emotion. “When you come to a particularly emotional scene, overwrite it,” Bell says. “You can always tone it down later if you want.” Bell recommends opening a separate document and writing in your character’s voice for a page or two, dumping all the relevant emotion there. Come back later to find the best phrases and images.
- Combust the Conflict. Every character needs an agenda in every scene where they appear, and those agendas should conflict. Make them disagree.
- Enflame the Philosophy. Bell says that great protagonists have opinions. Characters shouldn’t get preachy on the page, but they should care strongly about something, not merely their personal goal. Bell advises using dialogue to bring out these philosophies.
