What is suspense? Suspense is akin to holding one’s breath, tensing the body, and gritting the teeth. It involves heightened emotions that induce a state of breathless stress.
Thirteen techniques for incorporating suspense into your narrative are as follows:
· Employ short sentences to create taut action and heighten tension.
· Introduce unanswered questions.
· Withhold information to maintain reader curiosity. Avoid revealing everything immediately.
· Raise the stakes by making the consequences of characters’ actions significant.
· Utilize cliffhangers to conclude chapters, compelling readers to seek what occurs next.
· Treat the setting as an additional character.
· Attribute personality, backstory, and purpose to the setting. Provide vivid descriptions encompassing visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile elements. Delve into the history and culture of the setting, including landmarks, climate, and season.
· Examine if there is a backstory. Assess whether the location evolves throughout the narrative. Consider how characters interact with the setting and whether they undergo changes because of it. Evaluate if the setting suggests themes.
· Examples where the location serves as a character include:
· The swamp in “Where the Crawdads Sing”
· The war-torn South in “Gone with the Wind”
· The town in “To Kill a Mockingbird”
· Canton, Mississippi, in “A Time to Kill”.
· Foreshadow upcoming events.
· Create dramatic irony to evoke a sense of impending doom.
· Write detailed descriptions using sensory details to elicit emotional responses.
· Pose intriguing questions that prompt reader engagement.
· Vary the pace to build tension, starting slow and accelerating towards the conclusion of the narrative.
· Incorporate internal conflict within the main character along with external challenges.
· Develop complex characters with secrets, maintaining reader anticipation.
Suspense makes a story entertaining and hard to put down. The more suspense you can create, the better the story.