Guest Post by Amia Jones

Suspense: The secret to engaging your reader

 

We all love reading has us completely hooked; causing goose bumps, nail biting anxiety and sleepless nights. Suspense can enrich the reader’s experience of all genres. But how do we use add suspense into our story?

 

First of all, there are two types of suspense ‘resolved’ and ‘unresolved’. With resolved suspense, the reader knows that something will happen but they don’t know when. So in a horror film like Scream, we know people will die – but we don’t know when. So the reader is kept in suspense, engaged until what they expected would happen, happens. Unresolved suspense is when a story is left open – the reader may suspect what happened, but not know for sure. Readers tend to want suspense, but also want to resolve it.

 

So here’s three quick ways of adding suspense into your story!

 

1. Red Herrings.

Suspense builds when the reader wants something to happen and it isn’t happening yet. Or something is happening and the reader wants it to stop, now. And it doesn’t.

- Sol Stein

This can be referred to as false clues. Let’s say for a romance novel, this is when you can make Mr. Right a baddie and add another guy into the mix to cause suspense in the reader – will the heroine choose the correct guy? It also adds drama, excitement, and conflict into the story. If you are writing a mystery, send the detective off on a four-hour drive, or to a creepy area of town at midnight. These ‘wrong-turns’ can tell the reader a lot about a character, and add more movement and interest in your story.

 

2. Mysteries about the character

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

— Nancy Kress

Complicated characters are the ones we love to read about. What is the backstory to your protagonist? What are his/her secrets – invent some. Everyone has them. Then hint at them. Maybe they flinch when they see fire, and we learn later that they accidently burnt their house down when they were five. Or they don’t want to fall in love, because they’ve already been married and divorced at 22. Don’t tell the reader everything at once. Think of it as layers, you unveil a character slowly. Also what are they afraid of? This can be a powerful driving motivation for a character.

 

3. Real Danger

If there is one single principle that is central to making any story more powerful, it is simply this: Raise the stakes.

— Donald Maass

If the protagonist isn’t scared, the reader won’t be. If theprotagonist is super confident and sure he/she will figure everything out and save the day, the reader will be bored. It’s in their failure, their fear that we relate to the character and we believe in them. Do a George R. R. Martine and kill off someone unexpectedly. Make it someone not only the character loves, but the reader has met and grown to love. Let us feel the pain, the determination, the remorse.

 

One last note on writing suspense:

“Foreboding” and “ominous” is what you're striving to achieve—not mention.

—

Joseph Novakovich

 

Good luck on adding suspense to your writing!

(Check out Amia's blog http://enteringthedirtythirties.wordpress.com now!)