I'm having some real trouble with a certain scene in my story. It's supposed to be somewhat suspenseful, but I feel like it's downright boring. My main character is getting kidnapped by a person whom she later falls in love with, and I'm yawning as I read over it. Should I add more emphasis on the character's thoughts, or more on her actions? Right now it's focused on her actions, but it's still somehow boring as hell.
Thoughts and actions should be the same...trick for action based scenes is to focus on the feelings, observations, and reactions of the main character. Always describe how it affects them from their point of view...never describe as if a birds eye view.
I think pulling the story right in the character always adds the suspense. For instance if she feels she's being followed and she starts getting paranoid and noticing small things and jumping at everything. just try and build it up that way and then have the kidnapping. Don't know if that helps, but without knowing how the story goes it's a bit hard to give direction. Good luck though, sounds interesting.
Feel free to send it my way Tristan often scenes just cannot be written the way we see them and to the writer it is a disappointment.
Alright, I posted it up for review in the novel section. Go easy on me, I'm a bit embarrassed of it! lol
Make the reader be the character and not see the character. If all you do is describe what's taking place in a dry manner that makes us feel like we're watching strangers from 300 feet above them, it'll be boring as hell. Make the readers feel as though it's them being kidnapped.
I find it hard to believe that you would fall in love with a person that kidnapped you. I know they say when someone as been kidnapped and held captive for a number of years a bond can,and for the sake of survival sometimes has to, be formed between the kidnapper and his victim. This may be mistaken for love but, it is more likely dependency, the victim has had to depend on her captor for everything and as possibly become more or less institutionalized by the experience. I don't understand it - I read it somewhere.
agreed - I'm not going to like the character if she's the type to fall in love and be dependent on some guy who kidnapped her. I'm not a fan of passive heroines who let the man in their lives control them.
I don't know about the rest about you, but as long as it was well written, it wouldn't bother me. Plenty of people throughout history have been known to develop "Stockholm Syndrome", this could just be quite a severe case It could possibly work IF it was well written, if not it would probably flop.
It's hard to explain on this, but first of all, she definitely doesn't fall right away, and in the next part she manages to escape for a while. Also, the guy isn't kidnapping her for no reason. He lives in a city that is overrun by criminals and he works with the police unofficially. My main character has been pinned as a criminal elsewhere, and the guy recognizes her and is just doing his job by bringing her to the town where she supposedly committed the crime so that the court system can take care of her there. Later on, he realizes that she's been falsely accused of something, and that the people who accused her were well aware of that. They just want to keep her quiet so she doesn't get in the way of what they're planning to do. So when he realizes that, he decides to turn it around and help her, and once he convinces her that he's not trying to trick her or something, they work together and slowly develop a friendship, then something more. Whew, I think I said it all... lol So yeah, I would hate a character like that, too, but she isn't that type of girl. It makes a LOT more sense when you know the rest of the story, and it doesn't sound as cheesy, either! lol
