The secret of creating conflict in scenes you write is to give your characters different scripts.

Diction refers to the writer’s precise choice of words for their effect.

Would the conflict you have described result in a verbal or physical struggle? Would that struggle call for strong scenes in which your characters clash in an exciting way?

The most important moment of tension in a novel is its first use, which should be as close to the beginning of the book as possible. It puts the writer in charge of the reader’s emotions.

Furthermore, many writers see a severe limitation in that the first-person POV can convey to the reader only what that character sees, hears, smells, touches, tastes, and thinks. You can’t have scenes your first-person character isn’t a witness to.

two rules for testing adverbs to see if they are worth keeping: • Keep an adverb that supplies necessary information.

Change in a relationship invites the reader’s tense interest in the outcome.

Suspense builds when the reader wants something to happen and it isn’t happening yet.

If not all adverbs should be cut, what is the purpose of this exercise? It’s to get you to pay close attention to whether each word is helping or hurting your intention. Most of the time two adverbs slow down the pace and weaken the sentence they’re in. But