Writing Writing. I have an Idea! More Cancel. Related Content. Suspense vs. Mystery vs. Thriller In a mystery , the plot normally centers on a protagonist trying to get to the bottom of a crime.
Pacing The pace of your novel is another important component to building suspense. Red herrings Red herrings are clues in your story that mislead readers. Atmosphere The mood and tone of your novel are things that will affect how readers feel when they read your book. High stakes Similar to conflict and time, you need your story to have high stakes if you want it to be suspenseful.
Mystery — Thriller — Suspense article fiction. Share this story. For this to happen, the stakes need to be high and the reader needs to be able to clearly identify what the protagonist stands to gain or lose. As conflicts arise—obstacles and complications that keep your character from achieving her goal—the level of suspense increases, keeping the reader glued to the page.
An example of a story with progressive complications that keep ratcheting the suspense to ever-increasing levels is the Mel Gibson movie Ransom.
We all are. Because of this, we can use the pieces laid out by the storyteller to predict and anticipate what could happen in the story. In the movie The Fugitive , the pieces get laid out for us early on.
We have Dr. Richard Kimble, wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for killing his wife. We have the one-armed man who committed the crime.
We have a US Marshall who cares not one whit about the guilt or innocence of his quarry; he is simply obsessed with capturing Kimble. We see the pieces moving and predict that Kimble will find the one-armed man and prove his own innocence. This is the outcome we anticipate and we will watch with rapt attention to see how the pieces interact and if we guessed correctly. We all want to see what happens in the end, and with a well-constructed story, we hang on with both hands until we see it.
I remember, as a child, watching a sketch on Sesame Street. A cartoon girl wants to pop a balloon with a pin. The girl imagines she will end up in big trouble with mom. She anticipates the disaster, and her ability to do this averts it.
Again, she imagines a play-by-play of what could happen, and then thinks better of it. We demand the disaster and we delight in being able to anticipate it. And that suspense is what keeps us invested in a story, reading to find out what happens. As you write your own stories, remember to give your characters—and your reader—something to worry about, something to anticipate. Suspense is what drives the reader forward, devouring sentence and paragraph to reach the resolution.
For example, the Sophocles play Oedipus Rex relies heavily on suspense as readers or viewers press forward to learn how the tragic hero will fulfill the prophecy that predicts he will kill his father and marry his mother. Suspense is what motivates the reader to keep turning pages as they anticipate story events. Every kind of story should have some suspense serving this function, whether slated for a New York editor or simply for your own enjoyment.
In a suspense story, you need to create an atmosphere of underlying peril and let your reader know things are not what they seem, dropping hints along the way so they can anticipate the truth under the surface. The three modalities that entertain a reader and move the story forward are curiosity, surprise, and suspense. While the three are related, they are not synonyms. We make a promise to our readers, right from the first sentences of a story, by way of genre and reader expectations.
What a reader brings to the table is curiosity and a willingness to be satisfied. Providing, of course, that we furnish something to be curious about. Curiosity serves us well in the beginning, and from time to time thereafter. Providing the supporting information, bit by bit, will boost the reader into a state of suspense.
I was in a deep sleep, alone aboard my houseboat, alone in the half acre of bed, alone in a sweaty dream of chase, fear, and monstrous predators.
Why is he alone? Why is he having nightmares? What are the nightmares about? But without more information, we are not in a position to make many predictions beyond that he will soon wake up with his heart racing. This generates curiosity, but little suspense. My decision to become a lawyer was irrevocably sealed when I realized my father hated the legal profession.
Reading this, we might wonder: Who is this lawyer? Why does his father hate the legal profession? Why does he hate his father? I suppose he must have been in his early twenties. It was hard to be sure of his age because there was so little of his face available for study. That kind of intense focus really is a survival mechanism, causing us to snap to attention and assess the situation to decide what course of action is called for. It can be a life saver. In story, surprise might come in the opening sentence of a scene or the last, taking the form of a cliffhanger.
Its impact is immediate, but its influence can quickly dissipate, meaning one of the other modalities—curiosity or suspense—will need to take its place to keep us glued to the story. The body had no head. That single, grisly detail was the most prominent feature of the police photographs that were being passed among the three CID officers gathered at the circular table in the Scotland Yard office.
Setting is where your story resides. Could be a town, city, castle, beach, office, etc. We want to draw our readers in by transporting them to another world.
Suspense can create fear — fear of the unknown — and because there is an unknown element at play, that uncertainty in turn creates intensity. By giving them fears and making them face those fears, you also allow the reader to face those fears. Foreshadowing is a literary device used to give an indication or hint of what is to come later in the story. Foreshadowing is useful for creating suspense, a feeling of unease, a sense of curiosity, or a mark that things may not be as they seem.
Foreshadowing in fiction creates an atmosphere of suspense in a story, so that the readers are interested and want to know more. This literary device is generally used to build anticipation in the minds of readers about what might happen next, thus adding dramatic tension to a story. A writer creates suspense through a controlled release of information to readers that raises key questions and makes readers eager, but terrified, to find out what happens.
Details are often left out, but the suspense is created to keep readers interested. The same work can have multiple themes, and many different works explore the same or similar themes. Themes are sometimes divided into thematic concepts and thematic statements. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.
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