Monday 23 May 2016

BLOG TOUR: The Girl Who Lied - Sue Fortin


I'm really excited to be taking part in my first HarperImpulse blog tour and you can read my review of The Girl Who Lied here.  For the blog tour I have a special blog post from Sue Fortin with a clever writing tip that she used when writing The Girl Who Lied.


Blog Post – Upping The Stakes

I’ve been on some fabulous courses over the years, run by some very inspiring writers, such as, Sarah Duncan, Sue Moorcroft and Julie Cohen. I’ve come away with great advice from each of them.

One particular exercise at Sarah Duncan’s course always comes to mind when I’m plotting and, indeed, throughout the whole process of writing a novel and that is to ‘up the stakes.’

The exercise we went through was to first think of an incident that was illegal or dangerous. 

We said shoplifting.

We were then asked to up the stakes. Our response was a friend was shoplifting.

We then had to again up the stakes

The friend was caught by the security guard.

Up the stakes…

The security guard knew the woman.

Up the stakes…

The security guard was the woman’s husband.

So now, the stakes are so much higher, there’s much more conflict and tension to be had in the storyline.

As I say, I find this such a useful piece of advice and when I wrote The Girl Who Lied, I used this throughout. Without giving away the plot, I had to push my characters to their limits which I did by upping the stakes the whole time. It was great fun to see just how far they would go and to see the story develop into something with so much more exciting than the initial idea.



About Sue Fortin:


Published by Harper Collins' imprint Harper Impulse, Sue Fortin writes romance, mystery and suspense. 

Her originally self-published debut novel was awarded the INDIE Brag Medallion and later when published by HarperImpulse was short-listed for the Joan Hessayon Award (2014). Sue was also short-listed for the Festival of Romance, New Talent Award (2013). Her second novel, Closing In, reached number one in the Romantic Suspense Kobo chart at the end of 2014. Sue blogs regularly with the on-line writing group The Romaniacs (www.theromaniacs.co.uk).

Lover of cake, Dragonflies and France. Hater of calories, maths and snakes. Sue was born in Hertfordshire but had a nomadic childhood, moving often with her family, before eventually settling in West Sussex.

Sue is married with four children, all of whom patiently give her time to write but, when not behind the keyboard, she likes to spend her time with them, enjoying both the coast and the South Downs, between which they are nestled.


Sue is represented by Kate Nash Literary Agency.

You can catch up with Sue at
Twitter @suefortin1
Website & Blog www.suefortin.com

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