As the month comes to an end, a lot of people are reaching the peak of their anticipation! Whether it be opening presents, visiting family or digging into dinner feasts, ever since it’s gotten colder and winter breaks have started – a suspense has been building… Let’s talk about it, in terms of writing!
Utilising a valuable tool such as suspense in writing keeps readers, well, reading! Suspense includes tactics that make readers ask questions and form anticipation for the ending. Particularly useful in mysteries, thrillers, horrors and actions – suspense tactfully places yet withholds information that allows readers to try and connect the dots till the final page!
Hopefully we built some excitement for you to read our tips because here they are! These are our 3 main pointers for effortlessly building suspense in your stories.
TIP #1: ADD HINTS TO YOUR STORYLINE
We cannot stress the importance of leaving hints around your story! A hint in this case would be an indication of how a future progression would play out in the storyline. These hints could be building anticipation for the next chapter or even the ending.
Hints can vary in how revealing they are! Let’s take indirect foreshadowing, this technique hints at future events without unveiling much information – and smoothly connects the storyline together. You can indirectly foreshadow progressions prior to their happening through: casual hint placement in dialogue/ description, changes in atmosphere (see tip #2!), and abstract cues that tie into symbolism/ superstition. This method piques the interest of readers and maintains it. Not only do readers gain greater enjoyment of your writing after doubling back to see the, in hindsight, obvious hints – continuing to use it in your writing will make the investigative readers attempt to search for the key clues you leave, engaging them further!
Direct foreshadowing hints at future events with more information available – and gives the reader knowledge on what to anticipate, and a clearer guideline for your writing. Foreshadowing directly can be accomplished by using: dialogues, prologues, narrative comments, and prophecies. This method sets an expectation for your readers, which gives you the power to also contort the path towards these expectations and produce a setting where the expected progression seems impossible to link up! Readers may know the final result but will have suspense as they await the progressions and the clues that will accompany it.
Remember not to place too many hints in your story! Suspense needs to leave readers curious, and too many hints will lay the plot flat out for everyone to see before it can really shine. Reading your work with an adjusted perspective of an unknowing reader, or even letting your friends/ family read through it can be helpful to make sure you build enough suspense but not too much! A way to stabilise the number of hints you drop is to keep a strict rule of only adding necessary hints that all make sense in relation to your progression.
TIP #2: create an atmosphere
Suspense is intensified by the atmosphere, which is why creating settings that induce more tension is important. Though you can pick your setting to be a more eerie location such as an old cabin or a dense forest, any setting can be veiled with suspense!
One way to do this is through vivid imagery. Using simple elements such as weather, time, people, colours and more can transform text! ‘At the end of the path there was an eerie old cabin,’ can become, ‘In the midst of the heavy evening rain, an old cabin peered through the mist – void of lights, and of people.’ Another way to accomplish a suspenseful environment is to use abstract imagery. Rather than utilising physical components, emotions play into the pieces of the setting. ‘Behind us, the dense forest stood, almost inviting,’ can become, ‘Hauntingly looming behind us, the dense forest stood – static, yet pulling us closer.’ Besides using imagery, using the other senses are important too! Smells, sounds, and sensations all deepen the text. What the characters have knowledge of and experience (see tip #3!) will allow you to create unpredictability in these descriptions!
These techniques can be used to introduce brand new settings, accompanied by a sense of unfamiliarity – but are also used to re-introduce previously mentioned settings in a new light. Don’t forget that blatancy, when used properly (usually following more abstract visualisations), can create suspense too!
TIP #3: Detail characters/ actions
When it comes to inducing empathy and strong emotions of suspense and excitement, characters serve as the gateway between the story and the reader. Building characters and the reader’s expectations of their characteristic actions set the stage for throwing in obscure behaviours in reaction to physical or emotional occurrences.
Creating a connection between the characters and the reader through characteristic traits and behaviours helps transfer feelings of suspense between fiction and reality easier. Adequate character building makes the reader form care and empathy for the characters, and dwell in the suspense of the storyline. Characters can react to suspense in positive or negative ways, and throwing in obscurities in behaviour can express this. Rather than blatantly state, ‘Character A is nervous and jittery,’ you could write a change in demeanour/ actions, or even an abrupt decision they make, ‘Character A aimlessly paced around the room, pulling at their thumbs.’
When creating your characters, you could take into consideration how each one handles suspense – especially if your story particularly employs it a lot. How they handle it could depend on more basic factors such as age and personality, but it also depends on their experiences, the people around them and how recent events in the storyline have impacted them/ others close to them. Focusing less on reactions based on concrete factors like personality and age leaves space for unpredictability!
SUMMARY
Hints build suspense in writing, with direct/ obvious and indirect/ subtle foreshadowing being two methods to leave clues!
Set suspenseful atmospheres within your settings through vivid/ abstract imagery, engaging all the senses!
Create obscurities in characters/ actions to emphasise the suspense and simultaneously form empathy between the reader and characters!
That’s all the tips we have to offer for how to build suspense (for now…)! We hope you found these useful, let us know what we missed or could add on to! Happy holidays!
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These are original writing tips.
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