Suspense in your Story

Using and Building Suspense in your Story

The art of suspense means giving the reader something to worry about. Suspense in Latin means ‘to hang’. Suspense avoids boredom and absorbs the readers in you tale. Heightening suspense as the story progresses compels the reader to turn pages and find out what happens next. Wether you write crime, mysteries, action/adventure, (in any genre) detective or romance stories, this element is a require components to build, add, and – or continue the suspense needed to keep the reader's riveted to your story. 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.

The first place to build suspense needed in any writing is the first few sentences. Bill Reynolds, The Writer, August 2005, page 7, "A proper opening picks the reader up by his collar and throws him into the story." According to The Writer, text books on composition, and my own notes from many a classes and conference, I have assembled seven essential elements. I believe are needed for suspense:

1. While creating your outline, state the story's plot as a question or questions. Ones that can be answered yes or no. List of all your possible reasons why the answer could be "no." Your "no" answers become the focus of problems and obstacles - the suspense in your story.

Protagonist is your hero. Your good guy or girl.

2. In order to sell a story, creating a likable and competent - but flawed - protagonist is essential. If the reader doesn't for some reason to care about your protagonist, then all the suspense is you build meaningless. The flaw or flaws will help create needed suspense because the outcome of the struggle or conflict will always be in doubt.

3. Your protagonist’s motivation must his or her’s driving force. Male or female, your protagonist must have strong wants, needs, and desires. The basic and powerful human needs and drives are essential: Love, ambition, greed, survival, revenge, are among the many. Readers must believe the protagonist would never abandon the quest, so something vitally important must be at stake, life of a loved one, fate of the world, etc.

Aantagonist, your hero's opponent, competitor, rival.
4. Give your protagonist highly motivated antagonists. In fiction, villains commonly function in the dual role of adversary and foil to the story's heroes. As an adversary, the villain serves as an obstacle your hero must struggle to overcome. As a foil, your villain should possess characteristics diametrically opposed to those of the hero, creating a contrast distinguishing heroic traits from villainous ones. Others point out that many acts of villains have a hint of wish-fulfillment, which makes some people identify with them as characters more strongly than with the heroes. Because of this, a convincing villain must be given a characterization that makes his or her or its motive for doing wrong convincing, (The HAL 9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey) as well as being a worthy adversary to the hero.

 Film critic Roger Ebert states it this way: "Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph.

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. You should never make things easy for your protagonist to succeed.

6. Choose your story's point of view to maximize suspense. The objective POV allows your audience’s attention to shift from character to character. This allows them to interpret and imagine, to wonder and worry from inside two or more characters thoughts. 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. Suspense depends on urgency. Wind up the ticking clock, build in a zero hour into your story. Antagonists come in all shapes and sizes human or mother nature. Assassins, terrorists and kidnappers of course create time pressure your hero or heroin must work against. Teachers, parents and editors, employers also, not to mention tides and storms and seasons - create another kind time pressure and constraint. Your story's momentum might build gradually at first, but soon it becomes a race against the clock, 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.