I attended Scene Therapy by Susan May Warren and Rachel Hauck for my continuing education class at the 2010 ACFW conference. Tension is what drives a novel. And they showed the participants how to create tension in each and every scene.
I’m not going through every thing that was taught in the class, but I will say that one thing Suz had us do was take a portion of one of our scenes and remove everything but the dialogue. Then go in and make sure the dialogue itself had conflict–if not, add it in (either with insults or by letting a secret out). Then layer back in the meaningful action. Suz says to tell the story between the quotes.
Here are the notes from the class. Here is a scene that she wrote and then layered as an explanation during the class.
Susan May Warren has two practical craft books that I highly recommend. You can purchase them here.
This CE class was chock full of great info! Order the 2010 conference tapes as soon as they become available 🙂