Parts of suspense: How thriller and thriller writers seize readers
Do you remember how you felt when you read The Da Vince Code or Gone Girl? The sweaty palms, the pleasant shiver, the jaw-grinding tension? Do you remember how those well-drawn elements of tension kept you breathless, ran down your skin and gave you goose bumps?
Remember the delicious, slow-burning tension of Du Maurier's Rebecca or the heart-pounding thrill of a Jack Reacher novel?
Or maybe the memory of the bookworm that burns the brightest for you has been lit up from the shady, secret areas of In a Dark, Dark Wood or Before I Go To Sleep.
Suspense fiction comes in a variety of flavors, all of which are delicious. If you have a yen to use to build tension in your writing and learn how to create the same type of reading experience for your own audience, this is the place for you.
For a specific series of articles, I'll be your guide as we delve deeply into the elements of tension that grasp readers and won't let them go. These elements apply regardless of the publishing route you choose to get your stories across to your engaging readers.
Here's how to create excitement in your own books. So read on – and stay tuned!
Anticipation … it was worth the wait
Anticipation is a critical part of the tension and I suffered / enjoyed anticipation for a long time before starting my writing career. I knew from the time I opened my first Nancy Drew book that I would "grow up" to write secrets. But as I matured, I also realized that those writing days would have to wait for me.
With small children at home and a husband often out and about serving on US Navy submarines, I dared not sit down to write. For me, storytelling is an all-encompassing thing. I go to another world and everything around me disappears, forgotten. Neglected. So I decided to wait until my baby finished high school and was blown out of the nest.
But my writing dream was not idle during these years.
I read almost every book on the craft of writing that I could find, focused on suspense fiction, and learned all I could. I tossed stories in the back of my mind and let them grow there, nurtured by new ideas and influences.
Most of all, I read and read and read for sheer pleasure as I anticipated the season of my life when I would start writing my own detective novels, thrillers, and compelling stories.
At that point, I didn't realize how important this would be to my success. It is important to understand what attracts readers to mystery and thriller stories. And knowing how to enjoy a book for pleasure – to be a reader – is essential to being a good storyteller.
All of this has helped make the wait for my writer's journey worth it.
Learn from Story Masters
While working for our local library system, I attended an all staff training day that changed my life.
Orson Scott Card was the keynote speaker and since I was part of the entertainment for the event, I shared the stage with him. I had visions of the two of us that were building a great relationship, and he took me under his wing as I prepared to step into the world of the writer.
None of that happened.
Mr. Card gave an excellent presentation on the power of words, but we never said anything beyond hello.
In a breakout session after the main event, however, I was very fortunate to meet the renowned writer and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She and her husband, prolific writer Dean Wesley Smith, have been my valued mentors for about a decade.
Much of what flows into my own work today came from the vast store of writing wisdom they passed on to me, and it has boosted my writing light years and helped offset my late start.
I am happy to share with you what I have learned from my years of preparation and experience!
Examining the Elements of Stress (and Why It Matters)
What is tension? What is its function and why is it so attractive to readers?
More importantly, how can you create it in your own work?
I have studied this topic extensively over the years. I have studied, analyzed, practiced, and written using what I have learned over 16 published mysteries and thrillers.
In this series of articles that focuses on the key elements of tension. This is the first post in this series. I will share insights and techniques to help you create your own stories with satisfying thrill and excitement.
Here are some of the topics we'll cover:
Tension – what is it about?
We're going to try to define tension and look at some key differences between tension as a necessary ingredient in any story and tension as a popular genre category. With a little help from the recognized master Alfred Hitchcock, we'll see how tension differs from surprise, and how both work in a story.
We'll examine why readers find the suspense genres so appealing, and find out why such stories have become so popular, and show any signs that they continue to attract large audiences.
We'll also talk about the foundation you need to build to effectively use the elements of tension in your own stories. In order for readers to experience excitement in your stories, for example, they must be carefully present and sensibly invested.
Tension depends on emotions. Unless the reader is somewhere under the skin of the world of your story and cares about what happens to your protagonist, they may not feel a satisfactory tension.
Give this gift to your reader.
Draw the reader into your story
As part of the foundation, you need to dig into a suspenseful story and engage the reader deeply in your story. Superficial engagement is not enough to arouse the necessary emotions.
With all the competition in the world today – social media, online streaming, video games to name a few – it is more important than ever to establish that all-encompassing depth.
Without it, it's just too easy to lose your reader's attention.
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You may not remember each plot point after reading a story, but you will remember how you felt. This is why it is so important for writers to stimulate a reader's emotional well-being.
There are many writing techniques you can use to accomplish this throughout your story.
For example, if you anchor the reader firmly in the head of the point of view mark and filter every word through that point of view, your readers will forget they are reading.
It does this by using certain types of detail and avoiding things that bring the reader to the surface, such as: B. An abrupt change in perspective or what my mentor describes as the wrong detail.
This will also do a world of good for the ascending action in your story, building stakes and minor conflicts as they develop into an intense, climatic moment. The silence of the lambs is a good example. As Clarice Starling neared the discovery of the whereabouts and identity of Buffalo Bill, Hannibal Lector's masterful escape plan followed a parallel spike.
We're going to explore techniques like these and learn how to effectively capture your reader that they can't put your book down. There's more to come!
Make the reader care about your characters
You could create a scene full of exciting action and surprising revelations, but if you haven't preoccupied your reader with taking care of your main character first, it won't matter much.
Flash and fanfare may hold your audience in the short term, but you need to get your reader to invest emotionally in your hero's fate if you want to keep their attention and create this all-important tension.
Readers like strong characters, but they also appreciate that your hero will have flaws. We're going to explore character development and explore different ways you can get your reader to invest in your protagonist and care about what happens to her.
There are certain techniques, such as making sure your character is good at what they do and showing how they interact with others, that create sympathy and resonate with readers.
Think of characters who stop helping others in trouble, especially children, animals, and the elderly, at the risk of their own well-being. Readers love these selfless acts and rounded characters in exciting moments, like Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive.
We'll cover these most effective and important aspects of character development in a future post.
Write action to create tension
Once you've met the requirement for your reader to care about your character, you can focus on the action and make them count. We're going to explore some of the best techniques for writing effective actions in a scene – the types of actions that drive the story and make your reader turn pages.
Action often carries an impending danger and is one of the most important elements of suspense. However, you will find that you don't have to rely on a quick chase or hand-to-hand combat to create out-of-service tension.
Turning on tension between characters in a scene using the active setting and making sure the tempo matches the content are some of the methods you can use to create actions that create a sense of tension.
Providing information to create tension
How and when you convey information to your reader is a key factor in adding excitement to your stories. It's about giving your reader what they need, when they need it, so that they can keep reading and stay deeply involved and actively participate in the story.
Think about how a good stand-up comic works.
They know how to set it up with the right information and then pay off with a spectacular punch line. For example, a nifty comic will raise the audience's expectations, tread a path, and then turn in an unexpected direction to surprise a laugh from its audience.
Consider this example from the September 2005 issue of Reader & # 39; s Digest:
Joe and Dave are chasing when Dave falls over. Joe desperately dials 911 on his cell phone and says, “My friend just dropped dead! What should I do?"
A soothing voice on the other end says, "Don't worry, I can help. First, let's make sure he's really dead."
After a short pause, the operator hears a shot. Then Joe comes back to the phone.
"Okay," he says nervously to the operator. "What do I do next?"
The correct flow of information depends on the same idea. Make sure you've given your readers all the relevant information so they can predict and anticipate the outcomes. That way, they can feel a sense of accomplishment if they deduce correctly, and a sense of surprised joy if they guess wrong.
Creating cliffhangers to create tension
Cliffhangers remember anticipation, like that old ketchup commercial – you know it's coming and you know it will be good, and your hunger and excitement grow as you wait for it to arrive. As with the flow of information, the trick is in timing.
You want to cut the scene in the right place for maximum impact and add excitement without those fries going cold.
There are a number of cliffhanger techniques that deserve consideration, and we're going to take a closer look at a few and learn how to make them. Recognizing that these cliffhangers will lose some of their effectiveness without the basic requirement of the stage, I would like to give a few examples.
Here's a kind of emotional cliffhanger from Dennis Lehane's book Shutter Island. Spoiler alert!
Teddy knew what he was seeing, but he also knew it wasn't possible.
"No? Can't you believe that either?"
"It can not be."
"It is," said Cawley. “The same letters again. Anagrams for one another. You came here for the truth? Here is your truth, Andrew. "
"Teddy," said Teddy.
Cawley stared down at him and his face filled again with lies of empathy.
"Her name is Andrew Laeddis," said Cawley. “The sixty-seventh patient at Ashecliffe Hospital? He is you, Andrew. "
And look at this cliffhanger from Stephen King's book "The Girl Tom Gordon Loved":
More checkerboard bushes, the forest was full of em, yuck-yuck. And they found the beetles again. They reformed their cloud, hundreds of tiny black spots danced around their eyes, only this time the spots were bigger and seemed to break open like the blossoms of black roses. Trisha had just enough time to think, I'm going to pass out, this will faint, and then she fell on her back in the bushes, her eyes rolled to white, the bugs hung in a shimmering cloud over her pale little face. After a moment or two, the first mosquitos formed on her eyelids and began to feed.
This is an example of a power outage, some kind of physical cliffhanger. Incidentally, stimulation principles are also used well, in this form the content follows. But we'll talk about that later.
For now, note that an effective cliffhanger involves a lot more than just leaving your reader hanging.
Identify what it's about to create tension
Knowing what the hero has to lose (or gain) always adds excitement as the reader turns pages to see the outcome. Without this knowledge, the story can hold little tension. However, it doesn't always have to be a high-stakes game to make sure your reader is excited. It depends on the genre and subgenre you are writing.
We're going to examine some of the problem areas that many writers fumble around. For example, the flow of information and identifiable operations go hand in hand. If you're not providing good information to your reader, how will they know what it's about?
I remember reading Lisa Cron's book Wired for Story about an experience she had while editing a story by a beginning writer. She said it was a real problem getting through and when she discussed this with the author he explained how he had withheld the exact information that would have made the story interesting because that was his big reveal for the end of the story.
That does not work. Readers need to be able to see what it is about early on so they can feel the weight and keep the score throughout the book.
In a future article, we'll tell you how to put to the test the stakes your reader can identify and cheer on.
How to speed up the story to create tension
Tempo is perhaps the most advanced element of suspense, but since it can have a massive impact on the tension level of your story, it's well worth the time and effort involved.
Do you remember the example of Stephen King from the cliffhanger section above? One of the guiding principles with Tempo is to make sure your form follows the content and create a compelling congruence that immerses your reader in your story.
What do I mean by content form? Ask yourself What's happening in your story.
Trisha McFarland passes out in The Girl Tom Gordon Loved.
Everything blurs, slows down, darkens. This is not the time to break up the page with short, bold paragraphs surrounded by lots of white space.
King used a block of text and formed a thick, dark passage as Trisha's vision narrowed to a black unconsciousness.
This is just one type of signal that will send the right stimulation to a reader's subconscious and instruct them how fast to move through the story. We will examine more examples from the Masters as we learn about the techniques of effective stimulation.
Stir emotions to create tension
In the years after your reader finished your book, they may not remember every plot point, but they will remember how they felt when they were immersed in your story. There can be no tension without committed emotions.
Why? Because in the end it's all about the emotions. What is your protagonist's goal? Find the treasure and get rich? At what end?
Because she imagines having the treasure, she will feel a certain way – powerful, secure, free. It's not about the gold pieces, but how she thinks she has them will make her feel.
And if you've done an effective job of making your character feel something, so too will your reader, although it's not necessarily the same emotion.
The real goal is to stir the waters of your reader's own emotional well so that they can draw on their own experiences, hopes, fears, pains and disappointments.
In that moment, you have connected with your reader and made a real emotional investment in your story. A great way to add tension.
In a future article, we're going to cover a number of effective techniques that you can use to increase the emotion – and the tension – in your stories.
Using reader hooks to create tension
Hooks are tools that you can use to encourage and keep a reader engaged in your story. The job of a hook is to arouse small and increasing curiosity in the reader and to increase the tension.
This is done through the choice of words and placement.
There are a variety of hooks that you should have in your toolbox.
For example, a certain type of hook is used to put questions in the reader's mind and get them to turn pages to find the answers. Here is the opening of Decider by Dick Francis, one of my favorite writers of all time:
Ok, so here I am, Lee Morris, opening doors and windows to the gusts of life and early death.
Some immediate questions that arise: What form will this early death take? What made this moment happen? Why did he open his door or window to admit it?
There are other questions, and the following paragraphs will answer many of them, while others are included to move the reader through the story.
Another type of hook is to toss your reader a curveball in the form of a surprise situation. Here is an example from the opening of my story "The Carson Effect".
Adam Carson awoke from a numb sleep and stared at the long barrel of a gun.
We're going to take a closer look at these and other types of hooks and learn how to make them to catch and hold your reader.
Using subtext, premonition, and situational irony to create tension
Have you ever read Hemingway's story, Hills Like White Elephants? It drips with subtext, masterfully raising questions and building tension.
You can learn that too.
The use of subtext allows you to add nuance to a scene by giving it an underlying meaning implied by the surface action and dialogue. A striking example comes from an early scene in the Billy Wilder film Double Indemnity, which is based on a James M. Cain story. The two main characters speak of cars and speed limits as euphemisms to cover their burgeoning interest in each other.
Premonition is the incorporation of clues into your story so that future events feel natural and inevitable, rather than made up. It also allows the reader to predict and anticipate these events, which increases the tension.
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Readers want a certain type of reading experience, and the ideal thriller and mystery readers will crave a story that is infused with well-written and escalating tension that is predicted early on in the plot.
As an example, I recently re-watched Tom Cruise's second film Mission Impossible, M: I-2. It starts with Cruise climbing high above the canyon floor without a seat belt. This shows his abilities and suggests that this ability will be used later in the film.
Adding situational irony can also add tension to a story. This is when you point the reader out to something that your protagonist doesn't know, thereby making them sweat for the unsuspecting hero.
They see it all the time in horror movies and they shout, “No! Don't open the door to this monster! "or no! Don't get in the car with that serial killer!"
Of course they never listen.
Seasoned writers use these literary tools to weave tension into their stories, and you can learn to use them in your own work.
Use euphonics and atmosphere to create tension
Atmosphere is the texture of the story created through the careful selection of details and provides the sensory palette through which the reader can experience story events.
I took this example from Mary Stewart's book "Nine Coaches Waiting". It evokes an atmosphere of the French Alps for the reader:
It was a warm afternoon and the little town we were driving through was gay in the sun. Pollarded trees lined the streets and connected branches that were already bursting with green buds. Shops had spilled their wares on the sidewalks; Racks of brightly printed clothes swayed in the warm breeze; red and green peppers shone under last season's withered apples …
Euphonics deals with the sounds of the words you use, their rhythm, and their resonance. For example, words that ripple on the letter F are reminiscent of the fleeting and frivolous things that are fluffy, frilly, flirtatious, and so on.
The use of these words gives the writing a certain feel. You can use other phonetic sounds to create a variety of euphonic effects.
There's a reason voltage starts with S.
These techniques are enhancers, like the condiment, that bring out the best flavors in a well-prepared meal. They're judicially sprinkled and can add tension to a well-told story.
Use genre expectations to keep your reader happy
Readers are drawn to the exciting genres – mysteries, thrillers, and suspense – because that's the taste they crave. When you sit down to write a book like this, you are making great promises to your reader, and you'd better keep them.
If you're anything like me, when you go to a Baskin Robbins, try a few samples and sometimes decide on a new taste. But in the end, you always come back to your time-tested favorites because you know they will get your wish.
It is the same with books.
Readers want a certain type of reading experience, and my target readers have learned that they can find it on the pages of a well-written mystery, thriller, or engaging novel.
As a writer, it's my job to make sure they get what they came for, and you want to do the same for your readers.
One way to do this is to give them what they expect, but not what they expected. For example, readers of crime novels expect that towards the end of the book there will be a scene in which the detective explains how he came up with the solution.
Whenever you're writing a detective mystery, you have to somehow include that scene. It is essential if you want to please your reader.
Of course, you can choose to redefine the way you deliver this important scene, but it has to be there. Mystery readers will be disappointed with the story if they don't.
Later, in these elements of the Suspense series, we'll look at some of the other expectations the reader has, like the introduction of the crime scene and the final hero and villain confrontation.
Build a team to please your reader
One particularly enjoyable aspect of the most popular stories is the team.
While it isn't usually labeled as a team, most popular protagonists surround themselves with a support structure. The members of this structure fulfill important functions and offer the reader interesting points.
For example, if you're a fan of the NCIS TV show, you know Gibbs' crack team of crime solvers well. James Patterson created a team of colleagues and family members for his character Alex Cross that his readers love.
We'll learn how to build a team to move the story forward, provide relevant information, and fill in the kind of secondary storylines that add dimension and support the main plot.
Strengthening your story idea
Every story has been written before.
Your chances of formulating a completely new story idea are roughly the same as your chances of being hit by a meteor. However, don't let this discourage you. Nobody else can provide your unique voice and perspective.
There may be nothing new under the sun, but you may be able to turn your story idea into something fresh and compelling.
For example, the writers of Shakespeare's Lion King took Hamlet and placed it in the African savannah, changing the environment and turning the human characters into animal counterparts.
Or you could change the genre, like the writers of Throw Mama from The Train did when they vamped the Alfred Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train and turned the classic thriller into a comedy.
We're going to look at different methods you can use to innovate your idea for a mystery or thriller novel or short story.
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Understanding the elements of stress can help you create a stress-optimized diagram.
Plan for excitement
After studying the elements of suspense and learning how to use them in creating a compelling story, let's focus on plotting and creating the underlying structure that supports and shapes the story.
Understanding the elements of stress can help you create a stress-optimized diagram.
Chart diagrams are a great way to examine these elements as you draw and structure. One of my favorites and the one I use in conjunction with Scrivener to write every scene in my novels is Shawn Coyne's name for the five commandments to storytelling.
It contains (1) a stimulating incident, (2) progressive complications, (3) a crisis, (4) a climax, and (5) a solution to create a scene that contains a turning point on the axis of critical scene worth .
This structure ensures that I covered all of the elements necessary for my scene to work, and giving readers what they need to work through the story in a satisfactory manner.
Eine andere ähnliche Struktur sind die sechs Elemente der Handlung, die Joe Bunting in seinem Buch The Write Structure behandelt.
Wir werden uns diese Struktur genauer ansehen und einige der anderen Plotdiagramme untersuchen, die für die Suspense-Genres am besten geeignet sind, wie die Lester Dent Seven-Point-Plotstruktur und das Brooks-Modell.
In dieser Serie erfahren Sie, wie Sie diese Plotstrukturen verwenden.
Hier kommt der Gummi auf die Straße!
Das Ende … was nun?
Irgendwann – nach dem Schreiben, Polieren und Korrekturlesen – wird es Zeit, Ihre Arbeit zu verpacken und in die Welt zu tragen. Aber wohin wirst du es schicken? Was genau hast du überhaupt geschaffen?
Ihr Buch wird eine bestimmte Gruppe von Lesern ansprechen.
Der Trick besteht darin, sicherzustellen, dass sie es finden können. Wenn Sie es falsch vermarkten und es in das falsche "Regal" stellen, wird es niemand kaufen und diejenigen, die es wahrscheinlich nicht mögen. Sie müssen sicherstellen, dass angezeigt wird, wo die Leser, denen es gefallen wird, Bücher kaufen.
Wir werden eine Reihe von Fragen untersuchen, die Sie auf Ihr Buch anwenden können, um Genre und Subgenre zu bestimmen. Vieles davon hängt davon ab, wie viel Gewicht Sie jedem dieser fünf Story-Elemente gegeben haben: Charakter, Einstellung, Handlung, Stimme und Stil.
Wir werden uns zusätzliche Wege ansehen, auf denen Sie herausfinden können, was Sie geschrieben haben und wie Sie diejenigen erreichen können, die es zu schätzen wissen.
Lassen Sie sich befähigen, indem Sie sachkundig werden, und schreiben Sie dann!
Der Grund, warum ich schreibe, die treibende Kraft hinter meinen fortgesetzten Bemühungen, ist mein Wunsch, für Leser der Spannung das zu schaffen, was andere Autoren für mich getan haben. Ich möchte dieses Geschenk, dieselbe Art von Nervenkitzel und Begeisterung, jemandem irgendwo bringen, der sich mit einem meiner Bücher zusammengerollt hat.
Wenn Sie den gleichen Wunsch haben, bleiben Sie bei mir durch diese Artikelserie. Wir werden uns mit den Elementen der Spannung befassen, sie untersuchen, lernen, wie man sie herstellt, und herausfinden, wie man tiefer geht und mehr lernt.
Setzen Sie ein Lesezeichen für diesen Ort. Achten Sie auf die kommenden Artikel, lesen Sie sie, setzen Sie sie in die Praxis um und stärken Sie sich!
Sie können lernen, wie man ein packendes Mysterium oder einen Thriller schreibt, den die Leser lieben werden.
Bis dahin hoffe ich, dass diese Einführung in die Elemente der Spannung Ihre Räder zum Drehen gebracht hat. Nehmen Sie diese Story-Idee, die in Ihrem Kopf geerntet wurde, und lassen Sie sie los.
Wie ist es mit Ihnen? Sind Sie gespannt, mehr über die Elemente der Spannung zu erfahren? Erzählen Sie uns davon in den Kommentaren.
TRAINIEREN
Es ist wertvoll, mit einigen Zielen an einer Lernsitzung teilzunehmen. Stellen Sie sich für die Zwecke dieser Artikel folgende Fragen:
- Warum schreibe ich? Wen möchte ich mit meinem Schreiben erreichen?
- Welche Art von Leseerfahrung möchte ich für meine Leser schaffen?
- Welche Themen in diesem Artikel interessieren mich am meisten?
- Worauf freue ich mich am meisten?
Beantworten Sie diese Fragen und sprechen Sie alles an, was Sie sich durch das Studium dieser kommenden Artikelserie über die Elemente der Spannung erhoffen. Sie werden mehr aus dieser Erfahrung herausholen, wenn Sie einige Wünsche und Ziele identifizieren.
Aber bevor wir dies tun, möchte ich Sie auch herausfordern, Ihre eigene spannende Mystery- oder Thriller-Geschichte aufzubauen, während Sie lernen.
Schreiben Sie heute für fünfzehn Minuten eine Prämisse für Ihr Mystery- oder Thriller-Buch, die spannende Elemente anwendet. Eine, die Sie im Verlauf dieser Serie weiter erstellen und schreiben können.
Wenn Sie diese Idee teilen möchten, veröffentlichen Sie sie in den Kommentaren. Geben Sie unbedingt Feedback für Ihre Mitschreiber!
