By MARION UECKERMANN
“I couldn’t put the book down...”
That’s what all writers want to hear in
reviews, isn’t it?
So how do we keep readers reading?
‘O Happy Day’ it was when I came across a
formula by Dwight Swain that turned my critiquers’ comments from “...this is
where I’d stop reading,” to “...as a reader I loved the conflict which works
because often I was tired and needed to go to bed but I had to see the next sub
to know what happened.” And if my crit partners felt that way, readers certainly
would.
Fiction 101 is a course by Randy
Ingermanson that I purchased some years ago. There he teaches about Scenes and
Sequels, the two distinct types of scenes Dwight Swain identifies in his book Techniques of the Selling Writer. A
Scene and a Sequel are both made up of three parts:
· SCENE (action packed)
o
Goal (what does your Scene’s POV character want to
achieve within the Scene)
o
Conflict (without this the reader becomes bored!)
o
Disaster (do not let your POV character reach their
goal – this is your hook)
· SEQUEL (gives the reader time to catch their breath)
o
Reaction (the Sequel POV character’s reaction to the
Scene’s disaster - emotive)
o
Dilemma (no good options)
o
Decision (best choice under the circumstances –
becomes the goal for the next Scene)
Being a Pantser at heart, this method has
made me think about each chapter before I write it because I now plot out the
Scenes and Sequels first. It makes it easier to write, too. I do this by
keeping an Excel spreadsheet for each story, with a page for each chapter. I’m
sure there’s probably a way to do this easily in Scrivener, but I’ve not yet
mastered the Scrivener monster. I still hope to someday, but for now I choose
to remain old school with Word and Excel. So here’s where I plot what to write
in a chapter (see image below), where I go from Pantser to Plotser (my interpretation
of a Pantser / Plotter hybrid).
“...kept me reading long into the nights,”
formed part of a review of one of my latest releases. No doubt, I’ve Dwight
Swain and his Scene / Sequel formula to thank for that. Again.
Do you want to have readers reading long
into the night, too? Follow this formula. It will revolutionize your writing.
It did mine. The first story I applied this method to was contracted for
publication. And the second. And so on ...
______________________________________________________________
MARION UECKERMANN's passion for
writing was sparked when she moved to Ireland with her family. Her love of
travel has influenced her contemporary inspirational romances set in novel
places. Marion and her husband again live in South Africa, but with two
gorgeous grandsons hanging their hats at the house next door, their empty
nest’s no longer so empty. SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
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