The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 17— Increase Plot Tension With This Writing Technique

Have you had comments that your story is slow or characters are flat? What you might be missing isn't more plot or character development. What you might need to work on are hurdles and lulls!

Join Autumn as she dives into hurdles and lulls and how they can help build tension, develop characters, give you a chance to show off your world, and more!

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Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Autumn (13s):
Have you had reviews that said your story left action or character development or have you struggled with how to build tension in your work in progress or really bring out aspects of a character? Well, what you might be missing isn't how to write better action sequence or more character development. What you might need to work on is your hurdles in loans. If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is autumn and together with Yesper I run amwritingfantasy.com between the two of us, we've published more than 20 novels and our aim is to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors.

Autumn (52s):
Writing is it? No doubt, difficult, especially fantasy writing. You have to balance creating an awesome world without overwhelming the reader. With info dubs, you have to develop amazing characters and then share them with readers without telling them how really cool the character is. Instead, you need to show them and you have to have an exciting plot, but one that leaves room for the character to take the lead. If you've had comments that your story was too slow or your characters traits didn't shine, what you might need to focus on in your is your hurdles in laws if you struggled with writing them and then you are definitely in the right place because today we are going to look at what they are and more importantly how to use them to develop characters and they'll tension.

Autumn (1m 43s):
I remember writing my first novel and even though I knew all the steps and I've heard how to her all the tools like the seven steps of story structure like I've mentioned in one of my previous videos, sharing the world, the characters, following the plot idea I had and making it all exciting. What's a challenge? Hey and speaking of previous videos, if you like this one, shortness and our wonderful Patriot on Patrion for early access to these videos plus exclusive writing editing and marketing tips. The links isn't show notes below.

Autumn (2m 15s):
When I wrote that first manuscript, I would spend too much time sharing the world or spend so much time with the characters that a scene would be too slow. Then I'd rush ahead to, so action and all that explanation of how they actually got there and why the reader should actually care. The character was running for her. Life got lost. But Hey, the goal of the first draft is just to get, it does, it is meant to be rewritten, which I did three times and a lot of work was sorting out what should go where, how to build tension.

Autumn (2m 49s):
So the action scenes became more intense and how to get the reader to care about the characters, which may the tension all the Morwell tense. And a lot of all that comes down to how you use your hurdles and your levels. So what are hurdles in laws? Hurdles are not necessarily action scenes. By definition, they are obstacles. They can be plot obstacles or ideally obstacles keeping your character from getting something they really want and need. They could be anything from that stereotypical snowy mountain pass or storm that wrecks the sailing ship to your being character, needing to talk to someone.

Autumn (3m 27s):
But that person's just refusing to see them. And of course it can be as obvious as the Hawking dragon guarding the door. An obstacle is an exactly exciting. It is how your character reacts. The obstacle that gets the action going most likely your main character isn't going to give up and go home. They're going to go around or through and the obstacle and depending on how that unravels is how much tension you will build and your reader, even when facing an obstacle as obvious as a drag in the action, doesn't have to be immediate.

Autumn (4m 0s):
The characters can sneak a peek and discover the dragon and formulate a plan to get around it and of course the plane goes horribly wrong and they barely escaped and are possibly separated. Plus someone is injured scene. It's not as easy as walking into the dragon side though. That could work too and be a bit more comical. The formula with hurdles is that the main character discovers a problem or falls into it such as with storms and terrain obstacles. They react usually by coming up with a plan.

Autumn (4m 32s):
The plan goes wrong and they had to come up with something else really fast. To get through, which may make things worse or solve the problem. The cycle repeats until the character is dead, escapes or succeeds for big plot elements. The hurdle could be put aside for a new or a more immediate development such as if the person, the character needs to talk to is hundreds of miles away. So now the character either needs to get there so they good or focus on the people hunting her down and just escape the city and worry about finding them later.

Autumn (5m 4s):
So yes, based on that example, you can go from hurdle to hurdle, usually a small one to a bigger one. But be careful of this unless you are writing an action. Thriller hurdles are usually followed by locals and I wouldn't put more than two hurdles in a row. Other things you should know about hurdles is that the later they come in the novel, the more focused on the problem should be on stopping the main character from achieving their goal. In other words, if the antagonist is actively preventing the main character from succeeding instead of general challenges like storms or stomach flu or not being able to locate what they need at this point, they know the location, the magic gem, they've gone through the mountain pass to the ice castle to get it.

Autumn (5m 48s):
But now the snow dragon is controlled by the villain is you know, trying to eat them. And if you haven't guessed the final hurdles are more life-threatening or possibly being captured and stopping the whole point of the novel. The closer you are to that climax. So what about Lowell's models aren't boring. Thanks for chiming in a little bit. Grumpy. I was wondering when you show up to share your opinion, I can't imagine that we'd managed to somehow get rid of our unwanted cohost.

Autumn (6m 20s):
Now laws are not the boring bits. Well they shouldn't be.

Old McGrumpy (6m 24s):
Not going to happen. Just accept I am here to stay. There is no action in levels. So what good are they?

Autumn (6m 32s):
Well, laws are the perfect time to add in. Subplots focus a bit more on the world and spent a lot more time getting to know the characters.

Old McGrumpy (6m 41s):
See, it sounds boring

Autumn (6m 44s):
if you don't write them well they can be. Have you ever noticed that a lot of action movies don't have great character development and instead they rely on lots of stereo or archetypes. That is because they don't slow down with laws that allow the character to really shine beyond some cheesy boilerplate laws. That is, and that is what we want to avoid.

Old McGrumpy (7m 7s):
I like action movies like that except that the hero always wins. You just need to change the ending, not had in levels,

Autumn (7m 16s):
you know make grumpy. I think you are the low of this video. I had a bit of boring one too. Why don't you go find that self-destruct code I embedded before the video and designed to activate as soon as you appeared here what and this is a good example of how to end a law. It should lead into the next hurdle like Mick grumpy needing to solve the problem of how to save himself while slowly being deleted from within.

Autumn (7m 46s):
Okay. I shouldn't be enjoying that as much as I do. The important thing is to remember is that laws are where the readers connect with your characters because in the action sequences, the things are getting heated really quickly in a lot of nuances of what makes a character realistic are skipped in order to keep the pace moving. Plus because things are slower, the point of the view of the character can take the time to look around now is the time to layer in the descriptions of the world and now is the time when the characters can interact.

Autumn (8m 21s):
Well, hurdle is usually involved tension which can fray friendships and burst into arguments, laws, or the time for resolving those conflicts and rebuilding character and relationships or at least trying to deeper character personalities can come to the fore as you build the scene. Speaking of scenes, what do you cover during rules? Laws should focus on the recovery or fall out from the previous hurdle. This can be a physical recovery, especially if someone was injured or it can be the emotional reaction to the previous hurdle if died or nearly did.

Autumn (8m 57s):
If the friendships unraveled or deception was uncovered, the law is the time to pull out the stops and have the characters deal with the pain and dashed hopes. Well, hurdles are often full of physical action. Laws are off to rife with emotional reaction. Not always though you don't have to go over the top end of the previous hurdle, wasn't dire. The emotional nuances can involve a couple falling in love scene subplots. Another tip is that laws don't have to be long.

Autumn (9m 30s):
They can be as short as a scene or as long as the full chapter. If the character just overcome a huge hurdle, a longer LOL is good. Think of a chest when the board is fairly empty. You might move your pieces faster when things are getting tense and there's a lot of pieces on in play on the board, you need a longer pause before launching the next step. So now you know what hurdles in laws are and how to use them. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.