Tension is the most important part of your crime novel. Without tension, our crime novel is boring and goes nowhere.

When we are writing our second act, we need to increase the tension as we approach the final cliffhanger before the finak unveiling of the plot. One technique is that of grading.

When we grade a scenem we assign events a score between 1 and 10. That way, we can see at a glance how the pace of our novel. Here;s how it works.

A score of 1 means that nothing dangerous is affecting our protagonist in this particular scene. It may be a scene where the protagonist is in refkective mood. It may be some information that we need to impart to the reader and so we use a lot of internal dialogue.

At the other end of the spectrum is the score of 10. Our hero is in danger of death any second. Our villain has a gun held against our hero’s ear and is going to pull the trigger.

Most scenes you write will rate a score of between 3 and 8.

Re-examine the scene’s you’ve written and see if you can ramp the 3’s up to 5’s. your crime novel will be the better for it.

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