How do you create suspense?

How to create suspense.

Its an important technical issue & not just for so called suspense novels. Every story needs a reason for people to keep reading to the end, whatever the style, genre or approach.

'How do you create suspense?' has the same interrogatory shape as 'How do you bake a cake?' We all know how to bake a cake. We need ingredients & we infer that the better the quality those ingredients are, the better the quality the cake will be.

We know that we have to mix & properly stir those ingredients, & we are led to believe that the more thoroughly we combine them, the better the cake will taste. We know we have to cook the cake in an oven, & we figure out that the more exact the temperature & timing, the better the cake will look.

So writers are taught to focus on ingredients, their combination & treatment. They are told that they should create attractive sympathetic characters, so that the readers will care about them deeply. They are to plunge those characters into situations of ongoing peril, the descent into which is the mixing & stirring, & the duration & horrors of which are the temperature & timing.

But its really simpler than that. ' How do you bake a cake?' Has the wrong structure. Its too indirect. The right question & structure is : 'How do you make your family hungry?' And the answer is : You make them wait for hours for the meal. In other words, you should ask or imply a question at the beginning of the story & that you should not answer it. (Which is what I did with this piece, & you're still reading, right?)

Readers are human, & humans seem to be hard wired to wait for answers to questions they witness being asked.

I learnt that - & pretty much everything you've read so far - from the writer Lee Child who worked in TV production from 1977 to 1995. According to him, business changed radically during the 80s because of one particular invention. It was something no one had in 1980 & that almost everyone had in 1990, & it changed the production game forever. They had to cope with it. They had to come up with a solution to the serous problem it posed.

(If you've noticed I have not told what the invention was yet. I implied a question & did not answer it. You are waiting. You're definitely wondering what it is. You are probably gonna read the next paragraph aren't you? This the principle works in a small sense, just as well as in a big one. Page to page, paragraph to paragraph, line to line - even in single sentences - imply a question 1st & then you answer it later. The reader learns to chase & the momentum becomes unstoppable.)

What no one had in 1980 & almost everyone had in 1990 was a remote control. Previously at the end of the shows or programs, the TV production guys could be fairly sure that the viewer wouldn't change the channel immediately, because changing it required the viewer to get off the sofa & across the room. But there afterwards, changing the channel was easy which was dangerous for an audience - hungry station. So how did they respond? (Notice the structure here? Wait for it.) They started asking questions & answering them later.

They knew that most viewers would be intruiged. But (& this was the lesson) the success of their tactic didn't depend on intrigued. Even viewers with no interest at all stuck around to find out. Humans are hard wired. They need to know. Even the viewers who knew the answer for sure stuck around, in order to be gratified. The gap was bridged & the danger averted.

We need to be putting the same principle in our compositions. Something weird is happening. What? You'll find out at the end of the story. Someone did something. What? You'll find out at the end of the story. Something needs to be stopped. What? You'll find out at the end of the story. In other words, the big answer is best parcelled out slowly.

Trusting this simple system feels cheap & dumb while you are doing it. But the system works. Its all you need. Of course the attractive & sympathetic characters are nice to have, & elaborate & sinister entanglements are satisfying, & impossible - to - escape pits of despair are great. But they're all luxuries. The basic fuel is always the slow unveiling of the final answer.

So don't bake cakes. Make your family hungry instead.

A/N: Ayyyy what up readers!! That's it just about it. I hope you liked it. Feel free to comment about what you think.

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