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?
Depending on how long you give Flora to wrestle with the car, we either don’t have time to prepare for the shock as Flora sails over the cliff, or we get a little buildup of suspense as we hope she finds a way to save herself. Either way, the story situation resolves when the in...
Though written as a YA novel,The Hunger Gamesby Suzanne Collins was a big hit with readers of all ages. One key to its success was its use of suspense, and we can examine it to learn how to write suspense ourselves. First, create an engaging protagonist. The reader needs to care what...
When it comes to research, there are key strategies to keep in mind to help you make the most of your time and effort. 9 Strategies to Research a Novel Readers who’ve posted reviews for my thriller,Nocturne In Ashes, often comment about how well-researched it is. While that can be a...
Here are 6 ways to create suspense and build mystery: First, what are mystery and suspense? ‘Mystery’ itself has many meanings. As a literary genre, a mystery is ‘A novel, play, or film dealing with a puzzling crime, especially a murder’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Mystery, more ...
9Use poetic devices to enhance your poem's beauty and meaning. The most well known poetic device is rhyme. Rhyme can add suspense to your lines, enhance your meaning, or make the poem more cohesive. It can also make it prettier. Don't overuse rhyme. It's a crime. In fact, you don...
Infuse unique elements to add intrigue/suspense, or just for entertainment! For example, Ten Things I Hate About You is based on Shakespeare’s classic romantic comedy The Taming of the Shrew— but it’s set in modern day with high schoolers, which makes it much more fresh and accessible....
To do this, you need to master several key facets of fiction including: character, plot, setting, dialogue, narrative voice, and genre. We cover them all and much more in this Write Fiction course. You will learn how to write gripping scenes, add suspense to your writing, craft attention...
Again, that’s not entirely accidental, since a novel synopsis for any of those narrative choices would need to be written in the third person, rather than the voice(s) of the book, and eschew English Lit-class discussion of protagonists and antagonists, right? In fact, any 3-, 5-, or...
conventions limit what you can do with your book cover. You can always mix and match colors to effectively convey the overall feel of your story. Look at Emma Donoghue's book, Room. It uses bright colors and a minimalist design, but the book is categorized as suspense and psycholog...