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Writing and Speaking > Writing > Suspense in Writing
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Vivian Gilbert Zabel
Mystery, action/adventure, crime, and detective stories require components which build, add, and/or continue the suspense needed to keep the reader's attention.
The first place to build suspense needed in any writing is the first few sentences. According to Bill Reynolds, The Writer, August 2005, page 7, "A proper opening picks the reader up by his collar and throws him into the story."
The art of suspense means giving the reader something to worry about. In Latin suspendere means to hang, thus suspense, which avoids boredom and losing readers. The reader is compelled to turn pages, the cure for boredom.
Suspense (uncertainly, doubt, anxiety) is a must for all fiction. It should start from the very beginning of a story or novel, should be built into the premise and structure of any fiction writings.
According to The Writer, composition text books, and my own notes and lesson plans, the essential elements for suspense are as follows:
1. State the story's plot as a question (not in the story itself), one that can be answered yes or no in the pre-writing stage. Make a list of all the possible reasons why the answer could be "no." Those "no" answers become the focus of problems and obstacles - suspense.
2. Create a likable and competent - but flawed - protagonist. (Protagonist = hero, good guy/gal)
If the reader doesn't care about the protagonist, then suspense is meaningless. The flaw or flaws will help create needed suspense because the outcome of the struggle/conflict will be in doubt.
3. Give the protagonist a powerful motivation. He/she must have strong desires, needs, wants. The basic and powerful human needs and drives are essential: Love, ambition, greed, survival are examples. Something vitally important must be at stake, or readers can't believe the protagonist would never abandon the quest.
4. Give your protagonist
highly motivated antagonists (opponents, villains). "All stories need strong villains. Suspense rests on the possibility - even the likelihood - that the villain will defeat the hero," William G. Tapply writes in The Writer, August 2005.
5. Keep raising the stakes and creating disasters. The formula for building suspense is a bad start that gets worse. Suspense is about problems and obstacles, disasters and failures, small triumphs and big reversals. As Tapply says, "Never make things easy for your protagonist."
6. Choose your story's point of view to maximize suspense. The objective POV allows the attention of the reader to shift from character to character. We, as readers, are allowed to interpret and imagine, to wonder and worry. We are drawn into the story by the changing of point of views from one character to another. The single POV limits only to one character's experiences and thoughts. Anything else is speculation, imagination, and worry.
7. Finally, wind up the ticking clock. Tapply's words express this point best. Suspense depends on urgency. Build a zero hour into your story's arc: Antagonists of all kinds - kidnappers, terrorists and assassins, of course but also teachers and parents and editors, not to mention tides and storms and seasons - create time pressures and constraints. Your story's momentum might build gradually at first, but soon it becomes a race against the clock, and it accelerates as it rushes towards its fateful climax.
The result of the use of suspense in any story becomes a riveting story that the reader cannot put down until finished.
Vivian Gilbert Zabel taught English, composition, and creative writing for twenty-five years, honing her skills as she studied and taught. She is a author on Writers (http://www.Writing.Com/), and her portfolio is
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