In a guest post on Writers in the Storm, Janice Hardy offers advice for leveraging your character’s fears to create suspense. “If you’re not using fear, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to engage your readers,” she says. “Fear is one aspect of anticipation, which is at the heart of tension. Readers anticipate what might happen, good or bad, and they keep reading to discover how it all turns out.”
That doesn’t mean you have to write a horror novel or plant jump scares in your hero’s path. There are many types of fears, most of them mundane but important to your characters. Hardy suggests a few:
- The Fear of the Wrong Choice. Your character has a goal, but is it the right one? Are they pursuing it the right way? Readers will assume your character is correct unless you suggest they’re not. “When we layer in a few hints that it’s not the best choice, or give the character reasons to wonder if they’re doing the right thing, we allow uncertainty to creep in,” Hardy says. “Uncertainty leads to worry, which leads to fear, which leads to tension.”
- The Fear of the Reason Why. “There’s also the fear of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, or doing the wrong thing for the right reasons,” Hardy notes. “Not every character acts from the goodness of their heart, so let them worry about why they’re so gung-ho to do whatever needs doing in the scene.”
- The Fear of What’s Out There. Conflict is inevitable, but how bad will it be when it arrives? “This is a major fear every scene should have, even if the characters know what conflict awaits them—they just won’t know how it’ll turn out,” Hardy writes.
- The Fear of it Coming Back to Bite Them. Your characters’ actions have consequences. “Stakes are a great way to add fear, tension, and a dark cloud hanging over the heads of your characters,” Hardy says. “If they screw up, they really should regret it.”
- The Fear of the Ugly Truth. “Let characters worry that deep down, they deserve all the horrible things that have happened to them,” Hardy writes. “They’re not worthy of what they want. They’re just kidding themselves by trying to be a better person. They’re everything that person who wronged them said they were. This is what’s driving them on an emotional level, so don’t skimp out here when developing your fears.”
