Drawing the conflict, emotion, and attention out of your novel

We’ve been discussing how to set up your novel, how to get things going within, and one of those things we’re focusing on is the outline and research being conducted.  Whether you are outlining your novel or not, the important thing to remember is how you will be drawing out those chapters.  In other words, you don’t want to have your reader knowing what is going to happen to your character before it’s written.

This is important. You want the reader’s attention and you’ll want to hold it, push them to turn the page, and not give everything at once.  Draw the suspense out; keep them hanging on to your every word until the end. In order to achieve this, the planning your conduct for your novel must be structured before you begin.  Some ways to do this are as follows:

• Think of your main conflict and write it down
  

• Give reactions to the main sense of conflict, but don’t let the reaction be something that could be guessed.  You want your character’s actions to stand out.  Don’t be afraid to write something completely out there.  In fact, make sure you do get it on paper.  But also write down the thought that first comes to mind. 
  

• Say for instance your novel is about bank robbers and a bank employee who is taken hostage.  Think on how your heroine (the employee) is going to react to that robber.  Depending on the genre it could be many different things.  Say for instance, it’s a thriller.  You could say the employee will end up killing the robber in his sleep.  It’s just an idea, and it may be out there, but write it down.  Understand that no idea is too far-fetched for your novel and in the industry now, you’re gonna need something that will catch the eye of an agent or editor.
  

• Make sure as you go throughout your day, as you’re experiencing things that you capture those emotions.  Angry at your boss for a chewing out session?  Capture what you feel at the time of its occurrence.  Ecstatic over a piece of good news?  Get it on paper.  Hung-over?  Yup, that’s important to catch too.  
  

The basic moral of this post is to make sure that you are not only relaying the true emotions of your characters, opening them up for your reader to understand – but also making the story something that will stick out to your reader for months, years, a lifetime to come.