Increasing your plot's intensity

When my back hurts from cleaning my house, I often read one of my Writer's Digest Books. The one I'm currently reading is Creating Plot by J. Madison Davis. Click here for the link.

To increase the plot's intensity, the scenes move to more important and dangerous level as the story moves forward, while the protagonist is caught in tighter situation with the possibilities for action decreasing with each scene.

As I've plotted my time travel novel, this sentence hit me like a brick (but without the migraine :). My antagonist, Sam, wants to make a name for himself and please his father. As he plots the best course of action, he receives disturbing news and makes poor choices that lead to his becoming evil.

Once my character profiles were developed, the event that led to Sam's dark path flashed in my mind. It takes a good bit of time for me to improve my writing skills, so these great aha moments helps me write better fiction.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any great tips for increasing your novel's intensity that you care to share?

My plot thickens....

After a long break, I've returned to my young adult novel, Time Control: Deception. After much thinking and talking to my husband/co-author Jim, my antagonist, Sam, has solid, believable reasons to form his dark plans.

It's fun to write about characters who travel down a dark path when greed and lust for power takes control over them. I have always been interested in 'why' people behave the way that they do, so giving Sam a complicated past helped me understand what motivates his choices.

Do you enjoy getting to know your antagonist and understanding what makes them behave the way he/she does?