Plot, Tension and Mapping

So I'm working on my tension in my book. It starts out high, drops down (slows down) and then builds back up at the end. But I want a more sustained and building tension in my novel. A critiquer gave me a few tips, and I thought about reordering some of my plot. Well I decided that I needed to see each scene and the purpose of the scene. I can do this on Scrivener, which is completely awesome by the way. But I wanted it to be bigger. I wanted to physically be able to move things around and decide if that change would work or not.

So I got out my trusty post it notes and turned my wall into a big board. It has helped. A lot. My darling husband glanced at the notes and said, "Gee it looks like your action drops off in the middle" Well yes, yes it does, hence the post it notes. Seriously this I will be doing again for my other novels. Yup. I like it.

My darling son loves to pose for photos and stuck his head in the picture. He's trained. The camera comes out, he freezes for a minute, smiling and then waits until someone says we're done. Trust me that's not my fault. I can't take a picture period. I posted stuff on Craigslist today and the pictures were blurry. Yikes.

So I'm going to be shifting a few things here and there and changing the way they learn the information in different places. Hopefully my tension will build earlier on and keep going up the to end.