 For Authors: September 09, 2020 Issue [#10353] |
This week: The Suspense Is Killing Me Edited by: Vivian  
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First - Happy 20th Year, W.Com. May you have another 20.
Certain components build, add, and/or continue the suspense needed to keep the reader’s attention. What good is writing anything if the reader is lost?
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Suspense Keeps the Reader Reading
All stories need the spice of suspense. Romance keeps building with suspense. Mystery becomes nothing without suspense. Action/adventure lacks substance without suspense. So, how does an author build suspense in writiing?
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 William G. Tapply, The Writer, August 2005, the essential elements for suspense are as follows:
1. State story’s plot as a question (not in the story itself), one that can be answered yes or no. 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 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.”
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. 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. I hope I add suspense in all my writing; all recipes need a little of spice. Maybe my story will show suspense: "The Midnight Hours"
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Words from Our Readers
Due to a big move after living in the same house for over 28 years, I didn't have a newsletter four weeks ago. However, I'm back even though surrounded by piles of boxes. My last newsletter concerned writing about emotion (grief), showing emotion with our words.
brom21 
One emotional reaction I use in a story is bitterness. I am writing a story where the side character dies and the protagonist is angry and resentful. I am at a point where the character finally accepts and goes through a revelation where reaches a spiritual truth. The revelation is short lived and he retains a fleeting glimpse of his experience. This was informative and easy to understand! Thank you!
Bikerider 
Your newsletter of July 15th was interesting. Writing about grief isn't easy, even if you've experienced grief. I recently finished a novel where a man loses his wife unexpectedly. It is his anger over the way she died, (an abortion gone wrong. His anger stemmed from the fact that he is sterile). But it was that anger that brought about character change that is so important to a story.
There is another part of grief that I've experienced. Guilt. As my grief lessened after the loss of a loved one, I felt guilty that I might have started to forget her. Of course I never would, but as my grief lessened I felt guilty that maybe I was recovering too soon. Does that make sense?
Grief affects different people in different ways. Recovery is the same.
wdwilcox
Hey there Birthday Girl!
I was thinking of you and thought I'd respond to your newsletter. I like to show grief in a character by his body characteristics: slumping shoulders, a slow gait while looking down at the ground, covering your face with your hands to stifle tears, all of this helps show tremendous grief and loss.
-Bill
Thanks, Bill.
hbk16
To express feelings should be in a natural way so that the reader can perceive these feelings.
Using the figurative might be interesting indeed. Like using metaphors and similes. There are many writing techniques to express feelings indeed.
It is a featured issue indeed.
Thank you, everyone, for your comments.
Thank you for joining me this issue of For Authors.
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