Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

Writing Suspense

As most of you know, I was offered a job in a very low income, tiny area with a lot of issues and I accepted. So I'm not ignoring you guys whatsoever. I'm literally just very concerned about my students. I have five preps and it's insane. Juniors, seniors, two APs, and speech. It's been a very, very busy few months, but I thought I'd stop in for a few moments while I'm not lesson planning or grading or whatever else it is I do all day.

And since it's October (and I've gotten a few requests for this in the last few weeks (sorry I'm just now responding!)), let's talk about something fun: Suspense

A lot of people ask me how to build suspense (and this isn't a writing "how-to" because there are no rights and wrongs when it comes to writing and I find "how-to's" stupid, because that just insinuates that writing is formulaic) so I can't tell you how, but I can give some suggestions. So let's do it!

1. Word choice is important

This one is often overlooked for the soul purpose that suspense, horror, and thrillers seem to have a set vocabulary that people rely a little too much on in my opinion. People use words like "eerie", "creepy", "terrifying", "nervous", "scary", and the like to instill a feeling of fear and suspense, and while they are successful to an extent, they're also overused and losing their magic.

Instead, I want you guys to really think about diction. I love teaching about diction and giving word choice assignments, because I love words. Seriously. I love words.

So here's the deal. When we're writing something suspenseful, we have to think about the words we're using. It's not enough to just use words predominately associated with horror (like ghostly). We have to think about all aspects of the word. What are the connotations surrounding these words. (Connotations are the emotional and societal feelings and definitions we attach to words). Try to pick words that have dark undertones. While scary and daunting have the same meaning denotatively, scary is more juvenile while daunting is often applied to an overarching idea or task. Does that make sense? No. Is Addy going on another one of her crazy language trips she sometimes takes? Yes. Let's move on.

We also have to think of how a word sounds. That sounds weird, right? But hear me out (I'm so funny making puns). We want to think about cacophony and euphony. (What the hell are you talking about Addy? (This is the kind of thing I give extra credit for, if someone can explain these things)). I'll try to make this short and sweet.

Let's think about this in terms of music: cacophony are the dark, unpleasing sounds. It's the clash of notes. It's when you play and E and an F together and it makes your skin crawl. So some letters we typically associate with cacophony are in the word itself, "c". When you say the "c" (or even "k" in words like "creepy", "kill", "scary", it feels like you're spitting on people. Your lips curl up in a snarl. Try it!

Another is "s", like "spooky", "shocking", "distress", etc. These letters slip off the tongue and make you shiver, because they're so sinister (someone stop me). It's like a snake. They hiss at you and make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

You can also look at "d" and "p" as a booming or popping sound and "t" as a sharp, snapping sound. "Disgust", "dreadful", "repulsive", "terror", "panic", "apprehension". Someone name more. I'm using cliché horror words!

Euphony is the pleasing sounds. The harmony. Soft sounds are associated with this, usually with "e", "m", and "n". Does anyone understand? Does anyone want to try to explain this better? Any questions? Leave them in the comments. This is a hard lesson to teach over simple text...but we'll try to get it down! But for now, let's move on.