If there is one thing more horrifying than suspense done well, it’s suspense done poorly. We’ve all read that book that promised blood, sweat, and ashes but failed to deliver. The reader wants to be terrified. The reader wants to scream. But the writer doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain. The book fizzles and dies with a sob. What went wrong? And what can we do to make it right?
- Be Good at What You Do
Being good at what you do is all about knowing your craft. There are literary devices we can use to heighten the terror of the moment. Remember, every author has a tool chest, and every tool is specific for a single job. There are tools that are useful for heightening tension. Don’t try to sand a scene smooth when what they really need is a wrench.
As you’ll see, much of the work to be done in suspense involves keeping information from the reader. People fear what they don’t know. If crucial details are kept away from them, they will wonder and they will fill in the blanks themselves, automatically doing so with the worst their imaginations can come up with.
- Imagery
As Navidson takes his first step through that immense arch, he is suddenly a long way away from the warm light of the living room. In fact his creep into that place resembles the eerie faith required for any deep sea exploration, the beam of his flashlight scratching at nothing but the invariant blackness.
Navidson keeps his attention focused on the floor ahead of him, and no doubt because he keeps looking down, the floor begins to assume a new meaning. It can no longer be taken for granted. Perhaps something lies beneath it. Perhaps it will open up into some deep fissure.
Suddenly immutable silence rushes in to replace what had momentarily shattered it.
Navidson freezes, unsure whether or not he really just heard something growl.
–House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
Obviously, your book should be full of stellar imagery. But the imagery that is used when building suspense is very different from that used in simple exposition. The operative word is nyktomorphs. From the Greek meaning night shapes, nyktomorphs are images that bring up more questions than they answer. As in the above example, they play off of darkness and uncertainty, creating a tension in the scene that the reader needs resolved.
Uncertainty is the key to suspense. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is as useful in literature as it is in quantum physics. Heisenberg said that, when examining a particle, you can either know its position or its momentum, but never both. If you know where something is, you don’t know where it’s going. If you know the destination, you don’t know the present location.
This rule is vital for building suspense. If the reader knows that something is coming, but they don’t know what, they will be frightened. If they know what it is that’s coming, but they don’t know when or where, they’ll be on the edge of their seat. If they know both, then they have nothing to fear. Therefore, when building suspense, remove crucial details, instead using images that are evocative and unclear.
- Point of View
The furnace man…returned with a work crew. The men installed a more powerful burner that, once ignited, heated the kiln to three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Holmes seemed pleased.
Only later did the furnace man recognize that the kiln’s peculiar shape and extreme heat made it ideal for another, very different application. “In fact,” he said, “the general plan of the furnace was not unlike that of a crematory for dead bodies, and with the provision already described there would be absolutely no odor from the furnace.”
But again, that was later.
–The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
This is another tool that will help you to limit the information reaching the readers and incite fear in their hearts. It’s not uncommon, especially for amateur authors, to run into “dramatic” scenes that are told from no point of view in particular. The author is herself, telling every detail of the scene as she sees it, almost as if she’s taking notes as she’s witnessing microbes in action in a biology lab.
While in the throes of a suspenseful scene, the author should limit the point of view being used. As we’ll discuss later, the reader will always perceive the world through the eyes of the point-of-view character, especially the protagonist. By limiting the point of view to a particular character, the reader will then be emotionally embedded into a scene, knowing only what comes to the character’s mind. The reader is then sealed off from every other piece of information that remains outside that character’s purview. If the point-of-view character is being hunted, now the reader is being hunted, and with proper imagery their fight-or-flight reflexes will kick in.
- Pacing
She ran across the bridge.
Oh. God, God, please, please let me get up the hill! Now up the path, now between the hills, oh God, it’s dark, and everything so far away. If I screamed now it wouldn’t help; I can’t scream anyway. Here’s the top of the path, here’s the street, oh, God, please let me be safe, if I get home safe I’ll never go out alone; I was a fool, let me admit it, I was a fool, I didn’t know what terror was, but if you let me get home from this I’ll never go without Helen or Francine again! Here’s the street! Across the street!
— Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury
Your should already be working on varying the pace of your story, upping or lowering the tempo as the scene sees fit. This is even more crucial in suspense. Remember, suspenseful writing is all about limiting the reader to the experiences of the moment, not letting them see behind whatever curtains you’ve put into place. Limiting the reader to the point-of-view character’s mind also entails having the reader experience time in the same way the character experiences it.
If the point-of-view character is hiding, for example, time will seem to drag on, and each detail will be its own little crisis. There will be creaks in the floorboards, muffled voices on the other side of the door, footsteps in the darkness. Imagine the ponderous ticking of a grandfather clock – this should be time as the reader experiences it, each terrible moment bringing new fears of discovery and demise.
On the other hand, there will be scenes like the above, where the point-of-view character is fleeing from the killer behind her. She’s running. She’s taking action. The mind in that situation will speed up and process thoughts and sensory input more quickly. Notice the punctuation in the example above. One sentence alone has nine separate clauses, all separated by commas and semicolons. The sentences describe the character’s ascent out of the ravine in her race to get home. In experiencing time accelerated alongside her, the reader will run with her.
The Consortium in Oklahoma City