In an essay for CrimeReads, Sara Gran offers six tips for creating gripping suspense. “If you learn how to build a page-turning quality into your work, you have more choices—more tools to use,” Grans says. “Possession of a well-stocked toolbox will serve you well if you want to write a mystery, nonfiction, or an experimental literary novel.”
- Create a character your readers will care about. “If the reader is identified with the character, the smallest gestures will feel important and suspense will naturally be the result, because your reader will care about them very much,” Gran explains.
- Write short chapters. “Short, focused chapters mete out information in digestible doses to build suspense and interest without generating confusion or leading your reader astray,” Gran writes.
- End every chapter with an answer and a question, in that order. “For every question you answer, raise another, hopefully more interesting or vital-to-the-plot question,” Gran says. “So, at the end of a chapter, you find out that Johnny killed Jane, but you raise a new question—why was Jenny there?” This activates your readers curiosity.
- Stay focused. “The more streamlined your story, the more your reader will be invested in that story, and the more that reader will be dying to know what happens next,” Gran writes. “One main character, one storyline, one mystery to solve—this is the clearest path to suspense.”
- Stop time. Enhance suspense by slowing down time in your scene. You can slow down time by adding highly specific details. “So, it isn’t Jane opened the door,” Gran writes. “It’s Jane reached for the door. She hesitated, then put her hand on the doorknob. The metal was cold in her hand. She turned it to the left…You see the difference, right?” Alfred Hitchcock was a master of this device.
- Surprise your reader, but play fair. “Suspense comes from a plot twist that shocks and raises questions (ideally at the end of a short chapter, as per above), but also brings a feeling of Oh, of course,” Gran explains. “If you love your reader (and you should!) twists should have an emotionally resonance within the framework of the world you’ve created.”
