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Creating suspence
Hi I'm new to this first time on here and just wondered how all of you deal with creating a mood in your writing that develops suspense so that the reader is drawn in and then gets hit with a scare. Its pretty easy in films and in my head I see it the way it should be but i'm struggling when it comes to describing it in words.
Thanks
Guffy
Thanks
Guffy
Comments
As for creating mood (don't know if this is right, it's just how I do it), depending on which point of view (POV) I'm using, I set the scene (but please never start with 'It was a dark and stormy night'. It's a cliche and cliches are no-nos), I interweave action and reaction, scene setting and other information if needed to clarify things. I use symbols, metaphors, echoes and repetition. You can also set mood through dialogue and gestures.
Okay, that's the theory and it is, of course, easier said than done.
There are loads of 'how to' books out there and loads of online resources, especially blogs, in which writers and tutors write about how to do it. Good luck. And of course you can always ask specific questions on here.
Both hope and despair need to be looming on the horizon and you need to create an ambiguity to which one the character will attain. By dangling both possibilities in front of the reader you increase expectancy and anticipation, both of which will draw the reader into the story.
Suspense will precede an event, which may include danger or loss, so the reader needs to be aware of this event, or at least of the stakes the MC is playing for.
I'm 22,000 words into my first novel and on the whole it is looking good but I just feel in someplaces the pace is too fast so suspense is over too quick. No horror involved just a man alone in his house having a bath unaware that a stranger is walking around his house, he finds out when the man his sat on the toilet staring at him.
Thanks again
I like the idea of your character being blissfully unaware of the stranger in the house. How are you doing this? Two viewpoints or third person omniscient?
Not if its done right, Carol. Gerald's Game by Stephen King is much, much longer and the MC is handcuffed to the bed the entire book!
How long could you not notice someone walking round your house?
My multitasking brain is obviously in need of a MOT. Sorry, Liz!
Not very long in my house, it's not that big and it's very creaky. Plus dog would be on a visitor like a shot! :p
Surely that depends on how well they hide themselves? If you're not expecting to see a stranger in your house you won't be looking for one.
No intruder would want to enter my bathroom if one of my boys had just used the toilet.
You can get your character to think how well everything is going, how safe he is etc - the reader is likely to expect that to all change pretty quickly.
It's taken me a few years to be happy with "showing" rather than telling and I certainly don't think I could explain it better.
Not much help - but hello anyways :)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conflict-Suspense-Elements-Fiction-Writing/dp/0898799074
I have a copy, and I've found it very useful. It explains several elements of suspence, such as mood, atmosphere, viewpoints, foreshadowing, setting and narrative. If you can, then I'd get a copy - especially if you'll be writing more stories full of action and suspense!
First, just write the first draft. Enjoy it and don't even think about publication. Now, when you start a second draft you'll probably have to remove the first 20,000 words.
I really like the idea of finding this man sitting on the toilet. Now, how do you create suspense? Well it's a blend of plot and character. You need to ask yourself:
- Who is this man? Does your hero know him? If so, how?
- How has this man got into his house without his knowledge? How does this make the hero feel?
- Why is he there? To kill the hero or looking for help?
- Why did he decide to wait for the hero in the toilet?
Things like that, build a sense on anxiety up in the hero's and readers mind. Sounds like a fab set up for a thriller. :D
The comments on here have been really helpful
But The Road by Cormac McCarthy is much closer to what I need for my own writing: a continual agony of worry as if wringing your sweaty hands together in your lap in front of a gruesomely menacing horror movie.
So as not to spoil the read for those of you who havent had the pleasure of reading this nicely done horrible book, Ill keep what Ive noticed to note form:
- The road itself, initially going through a forest which affords visual cover, is portrayed as dangerous because it represents the likelihood of meeting people.
- People are seen as the real danger, for reasons which become clear as the journey progresses
- The ideal vehicle for conveying this fear is two protagonists, a man and a boy, and their dependence on each other.
- Their feelings/worries are never told. Instead everything about them is revealed in a clipped dialogue technique.
- This dialogue circles more and more around topics of anticipated nastiness, as in: Dont do it, Papa; But we have to get food. No, can we move on? In other words, the characters tell each other that there is something to be scared about.
- The ground is regularly laid to establish the unpleasant quality of the dangers that are hanging over the protagonists. For example they come across some form of the danger in a relatively reduced or controlled version first, but the potential for horror is there.
- This potential is only partly perceived by the boy, but this partial observation serves to enlighten the man (and the reader) of what might happen soon.
- The worrying aspect of other people changes as circumstances become more and more desperate during their progress along the road. The author cranks up both the unwelcomeness of what might happen and the imminence of risk. The reader learns to recognise the signs.
- This technique of intensifying the fear-factor is helped paradoxically by another device: the occasional false alarm and the flood of relief that it triggers. The reader is left wondering whether to brace themselves or not.
- The nature of the dangers that face the pair means that they have so much to lose. It is what is at stake in the face of these dangers which makes the fear factor effective.
- The added angst of realising, step by step, that there is only one way for the protagonists to go and that is down. Somehow they are clinging to hopes, unexplained hopes, but everything around them points to hope being baseless and a mere dream. They begin to have dreams, which are based on the way things were, the outcome for the reader being to face themselves with the inevitable: in the new order, those things cannot be. Their outlook, at least as perceived by the reader, is unremittingly bleak.
I'm not the first to say this and I really by a long shot won't be that last. But suspense in fiction is like sex. It the build up, the taking back, the delay the rebuilt and the surprise. It's the new move, the unexpected, the point of no return only to be taken elsewhere. It's the tease of orgasm without giving it but always giving small ones before you do. Then releasing when you both reach the pinnacle of excitement, or at least when one does and that Checov Gun is in danger of going off on its own! But by god like sex it had better be good after all that because if it isn't your readers won't call back or text you ever again.
Great.
Good luck with your book.
But I once watched an american movie in which a Truck followed a car. That was the whole plot. And you kept wondering whether it would smash into it. I actually watched the whole film.
It's actually a perfect illustration of what's being said here: what makes Duel so suspenseful is what's withheld - you never know who's driving the truck, or why he or she goes on such a mission.
Yes I agree, although we did see the 'newly born' alien as it burst into life from John Hurt's stomach, if you remember, covered in blood. Its appearance, with those teeth, and the speed with which it escaped created plenty of scope for viewer imagination to create their own scares.
In Duel, it was the driver who wasn't seen. Almost as if it was the faceless truck itself which was hunting down Dennis Weaver. No driver. This is another element of suspense which can be used to effect: the evil genius is somehow unaccountable to the normal rules and therefore unpredictable. What is he/she/it or what are they going to do next?
Another feature that Spielberg used was to make his protagonist helpless in some way - always a good one for added horror and suspense. So poor Dennis Weaver's car was not a souped up Porsche which might have shown the truck a clean pair of wheels. Do you remember the sequence where he was out ahead of the truck but came to an uphill incline and his blessed car developed go-slow engine trouble. I can't remember exactly, but I think he saw the blessed truck, against all normal uphill odds, gaining on him in his mirror as he begged his car to gather that elusive speed that it was incapable of. What a relief it was for him to crest the blessed hill with bare yards to spare and pull away into the clear blue yonder. Relief. Salvation... until - and there's another suspense trick: the shock of the surprise when least expected. Just as he's thanking his lucky stars at the railroad crossing and his defences, if you like, were down with alertness at its lowest, the damned truck had crept up silently to push him under the train. That trick made that moment one of the scariest in the movie.
Yes Dwight, the glimpse of the Alien in his first gestative state did give the audience something to build on. Almost a tease to lead the audience to the climax.
One of the most effective uses of suspense can be found in the original 1963 The Haunting. The audience never gets to see the 'ghost' but it sure as hell frightens the daylights out of its audience by constantly building on our primal fears.
There is also an argument that there actually isn't a ghost at all, but the 'haunting' is actually Eleanor's psychological breakdown.