Foundations of Suspense

We’ve been talking about creating suspense in your writing the last few weeks. Narrative suspense is built out of four parts: reader empathy, impending danger, escalating tension and reader concern – or as I call it: worry.

We create reader empathy by giving your protagonist a goal or objective or an inner struggle that readers can identify with. The more they empathize the better. Once they care about and identify with a character, readers will be personally invested when they see that character struggling to get what he wants.

We want readers to worry about whether or not the character will succeed.  Readers have to know what the character wants so they know what’s at stake, and they have to know what’s at stake to get engaged in the story. To get readers invested in your story, make it clear what your character desires, what is keeping him from getting it; and what huge, horrible consequences he’ll face if he doesn’t get it.

Suspense builds as danger approaches. Readers experience that worry when a character they care about is in peril. This doesn’t have to be a life-and-death situation. Depending on your genre, the threat may involve the character’s physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual or relational well-being. Whatever your genre, show that something terrible is about to happen—then postpone the resolution. That’s how you sustain suspense.

To get a truly satisfying climax, you need to escalate the tension. Raise the stakes by making the danger more imminent, or more intimate, or more personal or more devastating. So, if the shire is at risk in in the first film the world better be in danger at the end of the trilogy.  If the tension doesn’t escalate, your suspense will fade.

Next – give us more promises and less action. Suspense happens in the stillness of your story, in the gaps between the action sequences, in the moments between the promise of something dreadful and its arrival.

If readers complain that “nothing is happening” in a story, they don’t usually mean no action is happening.  It usually means no promises are being made. Contrary to what you may have heard, reader boredom isn’t solved by adding action – the solution is to add apprehension. Suspense is anticipation; action is the payoff. You don’t increase suspense by adding events, but rather by promising that something will happen. So, don’t ask yourself “what needs to happen?” Ask, “What can I promise will go wrong?”

Next week I’ll give you some concrete examples of how to build suspense.

What Kind of Suspense…?

Last time I told you that suspense is created by posing a question the reader wants answered. Variety is good, so in my own work I use three different kinds of suspense. 

There is “what’s going on here?” suspense. If you watched the tv show Lost, or more recently Colony, you know what that is. You came back every week trying to figure out what the heck was going on. 

There is also “why is this happening?” suspense.  This is what writers mean when they tell you to start the story in the middle. Perhaps your story opens with someone holding a gun in your hero’s face, saying “This is what happens to people who go poking their noses into my business.” Then you have to answer the obvious questions during the action. 

Btw, in my humble opinion, Stephen King is the best novelist alive and, also in my opinion, King writes suspense, not horror. Every Stephen King novel is a master class on how to write the “why is this happening?” style of suspense. If you don’t have time to read one of his giant books, rent the first season of his TV show Under The Dome. You’ll get the idea.

The most common kind of suspense is probably “will the hero accomplish his major goal?” That can take different forms based on the genre you write. In a mystery, where the violence usually takes place before the protagonist is involved, the question may be “who done it?” You maintain suspense there by keeping your villain one step ahead of your detective, and your reader. In a thriller the reader may be anticipating the antagonist accomplishing his goal, so the question is “how can this impending crisis or crime be averted.” The reader might know about dangers the protagonist doesn’t know about. That creates suspense. In a horror story the question may be “will the protagonist survive?” 

So as we write, how do we ratchet up the suspense to keep readers on the edge of their seats? To an extent this depends on characterization and conflict. The first key to creating suspense is to create characters that readers care about, and then put those characters in jeopardy.

Next week we’ll discuss the foundations of narrative suspense, so don’t worry (that’s for the reader to do!)

Keep Them in Suspense

Last week we discussed the importance of a scene list. While you are making that list you have to remember to set things up to create suspense. All readers love drama, as long as it’s not in their own lives. The key to suspense in a short story is to set up a dramatic question.

In a horror story it could be as simple as “will he survive the zombie apocalypse?” In a romance it could be “will she get the man of her dreams?” The point is to make clear that the protagonist’s fate is in doubt. That’s what makes the reader want to know what will happen next. To do this successfully you need to say less not more. Carefully restrict how much information you give the reader. Nothing destroys drama like telling too much too soon.

 Suspense is what keeps people turning the pages, no matter what genre of story it is.  In some genres suspense may be thought of as frustration.  The reader wants to know something, and the writer keep saying, “I’ll tell you in a minute.” By the time that minute is over the story is done.  If you write thrillers or that subgenre we call suspense, the word worry might work better.

 I first learned about suspense when I read the Tarzan novels.  Edgar Rice Burroughs had an interesting technique for holding his readers’ attention.  After the first book every story featured both Tarzan and Jane.  They always took off on some adventure, and they always got separated. So, you might see Tarzan running thru the jungle – he comes face to face with a lion – the lion roars – he pulls his knife.  The lion jumps at him and…

The chapter ends and we’re following Jane.  She’s lost so she climbs a tree.  She finds herself on the limb with a huge snake.  It gets closer.  She’s about to fall out of the tree.  The snake rises, about to strike and…

The chapter ends. We see Tarzan grapple with the lion, but the whole time we’re watching Tarzan, I’m worrying about Jane. At the time I found this kind of thing very frustrating – but fun.  I learned that people like to be frustrated this way.

So, suspense is created by posing a question the reader wants answered. For variety, there are different kinds of suspense. I’ll spell a few of them out next week.

Making the Scene

The last few weeks we’ve been preparing to write a short story. We’ve found the actual story, chosen a protagonist and focused on the importance of that first sentence. The next step is to break your story down into scenes. 

Every good piece of fiction, regardless of length, is composed of a set of scenes. Each one takes place in a specific time and place. You’ll want to make a list. The scene list helps you organize your story. Not only does this approach lend some structure to your story, but it makes it easy to see which part needs more details or more work. And just like a novel outline there’s no law that you have to follow that list exactly. But if you’re like me and write the story in more than one sitting it will help you work thru the story.

I don’t imagine your short story will have too many scenes, but every one will be important to your story. I know you’ve heard the saying “show don’t tell” a thousand times. Keep it in mind as you make your scene list. When anything happens in your story that is interesting, or that changes the fate of your protagonist, don’t tell us about it. Show it in a scene. Your readers deserve to see the best parts of the story play out in front of them.

I’d suggest your scene list have four columns:

Point of View (POV)  Summary:

One sentence about the scene:

Planned word count:

Actual word count:

The great unintended consequence of this plan is that you can’t do it until you have your major plot points pinned down. This list kind of forces you to flesh them out.

If you’re working on a novel I would consider doing this too – only in an excel spreadsheet or something. But for the short story it puts everything in front of you, all nice and organized. You can see where there’s a scene missing (Hmmm… How did I get from here to there?) and it’s easy to see where a new scene belongs.

While you are making your list of scenes don’t forget to set things up to create suspense. All readers love drama, as long as it’s not in their own lives. The key to suspense is to set up a dramatic question. I’ll details how to go about that next week.