Ideas on how to create a little Suspense?

[bunnie]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to create a little suspense?

[Sarpedon]

I'll tell you tomorrow.

Just kidding!

make the readers know something is going to happen, but leave the characters ignorant. Its even better if the readers doesn't know what is going to happen, but are sure that SOMETHING is going to happen

[Bufty]

Give a midget a sledgehammer, then get another little guy to kick him in the shins and tell him he's a sh#thead. :flag:

Does anyone have any ideas on how to create a little suspense?

[Siddow]

Don't take the reader where they want to go.

[CasualObserver]

What they said. :lol:

Insert a problem (a difficulty, puzzle or danger). The period between problem insertion and problem resolution is suspense; the auditory version of this is the first two notes of the Jaws theme, played sloooowly. Works best if you snowball it by introducing more problems for every one you solve. Don't forget to tie everything off, and don't forget that too much suspense will annoy the crap out of your readers; the auditory version of listening to the Jaws theme for an hour and finally screeching, "Oh, SHUT UP already!"

[dpaterso]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to create a little suspense?
A bowling ball, perched on a shelf above someone who's bent forward into a closet, angrily rummaging around for something they can't find.

A pigeon perched on a branch above a spotless black limousine.

A ticking bomb hidden under a café table, set to go off at noon, the clock on the café wall showing 3 minutes to 12, and the two diners, unaware, arguing politics. (That's a riff off Hitchcock.)

-Derek

[TheIT]

Keep 'em guessing.

An analogy: You, the author, are playing a game of cards with the reader. In a real game, you'd never show your whole hand at once to your opponent. Each card which gets displayed or cast away is a clue to the puzzle of what you find important. A careful reader can use those clues to piece together what might be in your hand. Only at the end of the game do you reveal the truth.

Card = scene/plot point/event/etc.

[aonarach]

put a likable character in uncomfortable/dangerous situations that don't have obvious solutions.

[Stew21]

Don't just give them one obstacle to overcome. Everytime your character gets close, you need to move the goal posts.

[bunnie]

cheers guys, I'll take all advice into consideration. It'll be a challenge experimenting - but that's all part of the fun in writing.

[bunnie]

I'll tell you tomorrow.

Just kidding!

make the readers know something is going to happen, but leave the characters ignorant. Its even better if the readers doesn't know what is going to happen, but are sure that SOMETHING is going to happen

LOL Thanks :snoopy:

[Expanding Ink]

Also, make sure that the challenges faced by the MC are . . . well, challenging. Sometimes I find that my stories fall flat until I up the stakes a little bit. For example, there isn't just a knife in the hand of some stranger, there's a bloody machete in the hand of a raving lunatic.

Another way to handle this, of course, is to rip through the character's safety nets. Can you imagine what Jaws would've been like had the shark not been able to destroy the boat? Boring.

So, in summary, madmen with machetes and man-eating sharks. Surefire ways to build suspense. :)

[Exir]

What is suspense? Suspense is simply the holding back of information. That is, when a reader does not receive the information they want, they feel suspense.

Hope that helps.

[Exir]

However, the suspense will only be meaningful to the reader, if the information that is held back is meaningful, and does not make the read uncomfortable or awkward.

I have seen novels where the character's names are kept unknown for 20 pages, then the author suddenly reveals that it is "Annie". The author used a lot of phrases like "that woman", or "the woman we were talking about", or "she", until suddenly she suddenly uses "Annie says" and reveals her name. This suspense is lame, because 1) the information that is held back is unimportant and 2) people are not accustomed to referring to a person as "that woman", making the read awkward. The only exception I can think of is if a kind Jewish man rescues a drowning boy who turns out to be called Adolf Hitler. And even that is somewhat lame, IMO.

[bunnie]

cheers guys - your advice is helping alot :)

[dpaterso]

I've seen that "unnamed character" item listed in The Standard Deviations of Writing (http://www.sfwa.org/writing/mistakes_allen.htm) by Roger MacBride Allen on the SFWA (http://www.sfwa.org/) website (Resources > Craft of Writing). Although they're aimed primarily at Sci-Fi/Fantasy writers, the Standard Deviations article and the Turkey City Lexicon (http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html) article (not to mention numerous others) may be illuminating to all aspiring writers.

Um... the above may find its way into a sticky thread someday. Carry on.

-Derek

[williemeikle]

Also make sure you end scenes and/or chapters with small cliffhangers... even if it's just leaving your protagonist with a decision to make.

Make the reader turn the pages :)

Willie

[williemeikle]

You could do a lot worse than reading Ira Levin's "A Kiss Before Dying" ... it's got just about the best "reveal" ever put on paper....

Willie

[writin52]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to create a little suspense?

I like to insert little teasers that make the reader think he knows exactly what will happen, then hit 'em with a plot twist that shows them they're wrong, or are they?

[underthecity]

Technique-wise, regarding a cliffhanger, one way to show suspense is to end a chapter or scene with that cliffhanger, then switch to another scene involving other characters and/or a parallel situation. So when the reader reaches that cliffhanger, he turns the page to find himself now having to wait for that resolution while he reads about something else going on.

I suppose that technique can backfire, though. Sometimes when I'm readin a novel that does that, I "cheat" by skipping ahead to read the resolution to that cliffhanger. THEN, I'll go back and read the section I skipped.

It's still a good way to keep the reader wanting to turn pages.

allen

[bunnie]

Technique-wise, regarding a cliffhanger, one way to show suspense is to end a chapter or scene with that cliffhanger, then switch to another scene involving other characters and/or a parallel situation. So when the reader reaches that cliffhanger, he turns the page to find himself now having to wait for that resolution while he reads about something else going on.

I suppose that technique can backfire, though. Sometimes when I'm readin a novel that does that, I "cheat" by skipping ahead to read the resolution to that cliffhanger. THEN, I'll go back and read the section I skipped.

It's still a good way to keep the reader wanting to turn pages.

allen

Funny you say that - I too have skipped ahead when reading :)

[bunnie]

Most of the advice is working for me - thanks again :)

[bunnie]

I've seen that "unnamed character" item listed in The Standard Deviations of Writing (http://www.sfwa.org/writing/mistakes_allen.htm) by Roger MacBride Allen on the SFWA (http://www.sfwa.org/) website (Resources > Craft of Writing). Although they're aimed primarily at Sci-Fi/Fantasy writers, the Standard Deviations article and the Turkey City Lexicon (http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html) article (not to mention numerous others) may be illuminating to all aspiring writers.

Um... the above may find its way into a sticky thread someday. Carry on.

-Derek

This is great, thanks :)

[giusti]

What Derek has referred to in his first reply above, is a famous conversation between Alfred Hitchcock and French director François Truffaut. It began as an interview, and evolved into a discussion of the two genius' opinions on the art of cinematography in general. One of the items that the two disagreed upon was the value of surprise versus suspense. Truffaut believed solely in surprise, and Hitchcock, being the "master of suspense" of course disagreed. So Hitchcock posed a theoretical scene to prove his point.

If two men sit down at a table, and begin to have a conversation, this is a scene. If then, a bomb blows the two of them to pieces, this is a surprise. If, however, before the two sit down, we can see someone planting the bomb, and through the conversation, every word could be their last, this is pure suspense.

And much more exciting to boot. The key to suspense is to not hide information from the audience, but to keep it from the characters. Dramatic irony, if you will. The audience knows that the bomb will go off. They're just waiting for the "boom."

[bunnie]

What Derek has referred to in his first reply above, is a famous conversation between Alfred Hitchcock and French director François Truffaut. It began as an interview, and evolved into a discussion of the two genius' opinions on the art of cinematography in general. One of the items that the two disagreed upon was the value of surprise versus suspense. Truffaut believed solely in surprise, and Hitchcock, being the "master of suspense" of course disagreed. So Hitchcock posed a theoretical scene to prove his point.

If two men sit down at a table, and begin to have a conversation, this is a scene. If then, a bomb blows the two of them to pieces, this is a surprise. If, however, before the two sit down, we can see someone planting the bomb, and through the conversation, every word could be their last, this is pure suspense.


And much more exciting to boot. The key to suspense is to not hide information from the audience, but to keep it from the characters. Dramatic irony, if you will. The audience knows that the bomb will go off. They're just waiting for the "boom."

What you have said makes alot of sense - thanks :)

[jonrhodesuk@hotmail.]

Teasers. Make the audience thinks something is about to happen, then it doesn't. Repeat a few times, before finally making it happen. It can be what is expected, or something else entirely.

[DWSTXS]

I like the unnamed character idea.

In my WIP, I have an unnamed character that commits a rape, and there are several scenes told from that characters POV, yet the other characters never know who it is, and neither does the reader. The characters make guesses, and I'm hoping the reader will too, and towards the end, I let the readers in on who it is, but the characters are forever in the dark.

[bunnie]

Teasers. Make the audience thinks something is about to happen, then it doesn't. Repeat a few times, before finally making it happen. It can be what is expected, or something else entirely.

Something else entirely different sounds good - thanks :)

[bunnie]

I like the unnamed character idea.

In my WIP, I have an unnamed character that commits a rape, and there are several scenes told from that characters POV, yet the other characters never know who it is, and neither does the reader. The characters make guesses, and I'm hoping the reader will too, and towards the end, I let the readers in on who it is, but the characters are forever in the dark.

I haven't any unnamed characters in my story, but is an idea for the next. I like the idea of letting the reader know 'who it is' and keeping the characters guessing - thanks :)

[hammerklavier]

Another compenent of suspense is the savoring of the expected event when it occurs. The bomb blast, although a great example for the building of suspense, isn't the best example for the savoring of the event, because it just blows up and then you're describing what happened while and after it blew up.

But consider a group of people taken hostage by some brutal criminals. The reader knows they are going to kill these hostages, in fact they've already read how they've killed several so far. But the reader also knows that our hero has a small handgun tucked in his belt. The reader also knows that the hero is actually a coward, that's why he carries the gun, he's in constant fear. Now you see the suspense, one by one the hostages will be killed, but will the hero be brave enough to act, even to save his own life, much less the other innocents? When he does act, he's one man against three, can he pull it off?

Now comes the moment we've been waiting for, some commotion has two of the hostage takers distracted. "He jerks the gun from his pants, shoots the first man in the head. He leaps up and quickly kills the other two."

You've just killed the suspense by not savoring the expected action. Now is the time to fully describe the scene. The sweat rolling down our hero's brow and how he's afraid it will give him away. His hand and eyes keep involuntarily moving toward his hidden weapon and he has to force them still. When the moment comes he reaches in and feels the touch of hard metal, warmed by his skin. He eases off the safety, his heart pounding, etc, etc.

[spud]

What I have done with one of the characters in my book, is to give the impression to the reader that they have been killed in battle. I haven’t gone into great description with this. The idea is to leave the reader guessing. Just put a seed into the reader’s head that the character is no more.

Then further, on in another chapter, they discover the characters not dead, but alive and well.

[bunnie]

Cheers guys :)

[JacobWorld]

What I would do is to identify first what people are afraid of -- unknown
Try to bring a new character , maybe add some mystery to his profile .
Connect him to the plot and you have suspense!

[bunnie]

What I would do is to identify first what people are afraid of -- unknown
Try to bring a new character , maybe add some mystery to his profile .
Connect him to the plot and you have suspense!

Thanks JocobWorld :) That's a great idea.