5 key tips on how to create mysterious suspense in your novel! Click to tweet! 1. Keep your readers hungry Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series,likens suspense to making a cake: there are a hundred ways to do it, but how do you make sure it’s delicious?
You can build suspense by carefully paying attention not just to what happens but how it’s conveyed and paced. Edgar Allan Poe conveys the mental state of the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” with fragmented sentences that break off...
To create suspense, set up a dramatic question. A dramatic question is something like, “Is he going to make it?” or, “Is she going to get the man of her dreams?” By putting your protagonist’s fate in doubt, you make the reader ask, what happens next? To do this well, you ...
Writers can present events in that order, but it’s often more interesting to mix them up. Choosing to reveal the origin of the motive toward the end of the story will build suspense and keep the reader guessing about the “why” of the crime. It’s intriguing how past events have deva...
In just a few lines, Poe creates an atmosphere ofsuspensefor the reader. It’s late at night, there’s a strange knocking at the door, and it’s reasonable to suspect something mysterious or even dangerous is waiting on the other side. In this example, the atmosphere is created not only...
Writers use foreshadowing to tell readers what to expect. This may come in the form of events or phrases that hint at actions to come later in the plot. Foreshadowing can be obvious or very subtle, creating suspense because the readers aren’t sure what to expect. For instance, a writer ...
An introductory paragraph that has suspense is good. You can create suspense by including questions that the readers can find answers to by reading the rest of your content. Moreover, do not give many details in the introductory paragraph. If the professor already knows the content you intend ...
4. Create suspense through point of view Your reader should feel a kinship with your main character, such that when the stakes are high, they feel their own heart start to beat faster. This can be achieved through either first person or third person limited point of view. (When writing ho...
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For example, sandwiching abrupt short sentences in between very long sentences can help create an air of suspense, tension, or anxiety. Here’s an example from Ray Bradbury’sFahrenheit 451: He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over, and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the ...