IIt's All About Action

Like the bluebonnets that dot the Texas hillsides, the books written by Lisa Wingate decorate the bookstores and bookshelves in Texas homes. She gave out a list of writing techniques you want to hear about:
Make every scene in your story a living experience.  Show Don't Tell is sometimes approached as a complicated concept, but really it is very simple.  Readers want to experience the scene personally. In any great scene your reader should be feeling and experiencing the same stress, fear, emotion, and excitement your character is feeling.
--Make a notebook of good examples to get you into the flow of writing a good scene. Divide it into sections according to the type of scene---action, romance, flashback, etc. Use this to get into the flow when you're about to write or when you're stuck.
  --Let the audience live it. A scene should be a living experience. Consider the most recent brain research on fiction. When we read good material, our brains light up just as if we were going throught he actual experience.
--No over-sharing, please! Trust the readers bring in their owon personal experiences.  Good writing is like a symphony. Your words are the melody but in each reader's brain, there is a little conductor ready to pull the reader's personal experiences and combine them with the story. Why is a scene about rejection in junior high school powerful? Because we all know how it feels. The story begins with the writer and lives with the reader. Trust the conductor in the reader's brain to add new instruments to the scene. Don't over-explain. Readers are smart.
--Create tension and conflict. How do you create tension/conflict on the page?
    1.Thoughts, felings , and gut reactions.  Get into the head of your point of view character and ask yourself what is he or she is seeing, feeling, smelling? What is he or she thinking?What are his or her prejudices or fears? How will he or she react to the situation?
  2. Use the 5 senses. Try to incorporate all of your character's senses.
  3.Live it, don't describe it. Show the audienve how it feels rather than telling how it feels.
  4. Include a setting that fits the mood. Use the setting to enhance the stress, provide contemplation, or emotion.  Storms=crisis etc.
  5. Show thoughts and feelings as a reaction to ongoing action in the story.
  6.  Body languate, body language, body language.
  7.  Show how this scene could be life or death in some way.
  8. Sentence structure--the rhythm of sentences affects mood and speed of reading.  These things give          the pros the appropriate feel for the scene.