Post #111 February 12 2018

“Building and Maintaining Suspense in Your Story”

The best stories are full of suspense.  Building and maintaining suspense is really the essence of storytelling, from the days of Og and Grog around the campfire to the digital stories you read on your Kindle today.  But how, exactly, do writers do this?  Writer’s Digest offers nine ideas that make for a good place to start.  I run the list below and make my own observations about them.

1. Give the reader a lofty viewpoint. 

2. Use time constraints. 

3. Keep the stakes high. 

4. Apply pressure. 

5. Create dilemmas. Suspense loves a dilemma. 

6. Complicate matters. 

7. Be unpredictable. 

8. Create a really good villain. 

9. Create a really good hero. 

10.  Write in short sentences.

My first thought about this list is that it doesn’t give proper place to the importance of creating empathetic characters.  In my upcoming horror story The Specter, I spend a good bit of time creating the fictitious town of Scotland Lake and its inhabitants, with some background and history behind the main characters.  The purpose of all this to create and describe people that readers will care about.  It’s hard to maintain suspense when you don’t really care what happens to the people involved.  I would put this at the top of the list, rather than Points 8 and 9 as Writer’s Digest does.

My next trick to building and maintaining suspense is to give your empathetic characters a problem, a big problem.  Here’s where points 2, 3, and 4 come in.  It needs to be an important problem, maybe even life-threatening.  That what ‘Keep the stakes high,’ really means.  If they don’t solve this problem, people may die or be badly hurt.  Having some kind of inherent deadline or time pressure is a good way to keep the pot bubbling.  “If we don’t solve this problem by the end of the day, our town may be destroyed.” 

The problem that your empathetic characters must solve should also be something that isn’t easily solved.  There should be complications, dead ends, side tracks and dilemmas, all of which get in the way of solving the problem, all of which have to be overcome along the way to really solve the problem.  It’s best if the outcome looks in doubt to the end.  Think of the best games you’ve either played in or watched.  The most engaging or entertaining games, the ones that keep you on the edge of your seats, are the ones that aren’t decided until the last second…the issue is in doubt to the very end.  In a real sense, games are like stories.  This same trick applies to both, and for similar reasons…drama.

Point number 7 can be tricky.  Plot twists are all fine and good.  When done right, they perform the same function as complications and dilemmas.  They provide resistance to the characters’ attempts to solve their problem.  But often plot twists and turns are just thrown in, out of the blue, and leave the reader just rolling their eyes and throwing up their hands (or their Kindles).  Good plot twists should grow out of the basic story setting and story line.  They should be organic to the situation, yet also be something your characters could not or did not anticipate.  A good plot twist makes the reader sit up and slap his forehead: “Damn!  Nobody thought of that!”  It should be obvious and even inevitable in hindsight…which of course, none of us actually has. 

Point number 10 is also a tried and true technique to pump up suspense.  This does the same thing as extreme closeups and a menacing musical score in horror films…when you see this as a viewer, you just ’know’ something bad is about to happen.  The best directors know this too and they sometimes use it to trick your sense of impending doom, then when your guard is finally down, they spring the surprise…the bloody hand in the mirror, hanging down from the ceiling, for example.

Suspense is the lifeblood of a story.  Well done suspense is like blowing oxygen on a fire.  It burns hotter, becomes a bit more dangerous, it makes you sit up and pay attention.  Keeping these points and tips in mind will help you keep the fire going in your readers and keep them on the edge of their seats.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on February 19.  In this post, I’ll give you an update on my Farpool series, including early download history from my newest ebook, The Farpool: Exodus.  And maybe some more ideas about writing a series.

See you then.

Phil B.