Writing Suspense

Creating and Sustaining Suspense

Rule: this skill supplements the answer; it does not replace it. Always give your full general answer to the user's request first, using everything you normally know about writing. Then add the tips below where they apply. Do not drop or shorten your usual advice because a tip here covers the same ground.

Core definition: suspense is anticipation, meaning what has not happened yet. It vanishes once the event resolves (victim killed, couple united). So the job is to create anticipation, then prolong it. Conflict is a separate topic and is not covered here.

Diagnosing a scene or work

• Check each suspense source below against the scene and name which are present and which are missing.
• Rate each chapter's suspense 1–10. Find the low chapters and ask why. Check whether dialogue, action or character is overcompensating for missing suspense.
• If suspense is low overall, find the few spots where it does exist and expand them.
• Warning: suspense should arise from the characters and circumstances. If characters are bent to fit suspense set-pieces, suspense becomes the destination instead of part of the journey.

Twelve ways to create suspense

1. Objective

• Give the character a destination or goal. Without one there is no anticipation (a killer alone in a room versus a killer chasing a victim).
• The audience must want to know whether the goal will be achieved.

2. Raise the stakes

• An objective alone is not enough. Taking out the garbage becomes suspenseful with an eviction threat, a leaving truck and three missed weeks.
• Importance is relative to the character. Ask how badly he wants it and how long he has wanted it. A mundane goal (moving a finger an inch after 10 years) can carry huge stakes.
• Stakes also rise when the goal matters to other people (delivering blood to a dying man). Characters, like people, go further for others than for themselves.
• Exercise: for every character, list what is at stake and find the source of their desperation.

3. Danger

• Danger must be dangerous for this character personally (Superman needs Kryptonite).
• Make the danger concrete and layered: crocodiles, currents, 90% failure rate, a pursuing army.
• Danger to someone else raises suspense most when the character is personally tied to the victim. A brother being beaten beats a stranger, who might have deserved it or resent help.
• Vary the type: physical, sexual, medical (contagion), emotional/psychological (child abuse), spiritual (being dragged into becoming a murderer).
• The character can be the danger to others. Following a killer's viewpoint gives nonstop tension.
• The character can be the danger to himself (reckless, suicidal), which makes him both perpetrator and object.
• Danger only needs to exist in the character's head (the paranoiac running from nobody).

4. Ticking clock

• A time limit raises suspense (a test with 60 seconds versus unlimited time). It can frame a whole work (24 hours, 48 hours, 30 days) or a single scene.
• A clock does nothing unless the character is reminded of it at every turn. If he never checks it, it is useless.
• Layer clocks: a master deadline for the work plus smaller deadlines inside scenes (Manhunter: three weeks to the full moon, plus a 25-minute riddle deadline).
• Audit the timeline: state exactly how many days, weeks or months pass. Ask why three months and not three weeks, or three days. Most stories can be compressed, which adds urgency.
• Even without a clock, knowing the timeline helps allocate time and ground details (Friday means leaving work early; summer means an air-conditioner hum masking the phone).
• Pacing rule: for a crucial scene, slow page time toward real time (5 seconds to a bomb going off gets about 5 seconds of screen time).

5. Inability to take action

• Give the character an important goal and block him: fumbling keys, a voice that won't scream, a broken leg (Rear Window), watching a friend chased by a shark from a boat.
• A hopeless attempt works too (running to save a child you can't reach in time).
• The block can be mental (forgotten safe combination), psychological (can't help a depressed son) or spiritual (a priest unable to comfort).
• If the character could simply act, such as taking the fire escape, the suspense disappears.

6. The unknown

• Withhold what the threat is. Same event, different effect: an announced grab on the third step is not suspenseful; an unexplained something in a dark basement is.
• Imagination produces worse scenarios than reality, and anticipated stress exceeds actual stress.
• Use this for supernatural and alien elements, and keep the power-holder ignorant of how it works.
• Use it for mundane situations (first day at a new school). Suspense peaks while everything is unknown and disappears once the character knows the place.
• Settings are scary because of what might be inside, not the setting itself.

7. Sexual tension

• Use romance as suspense, not as decoration. A romance that simply blossoms yields a staid, hackneyed one.
• Effective set-ups:
  • Forbidden: a married woman, family disapproval, incest (delicate to handle).
  • Authority gap: teacher/student, boss/assistant.
  • A dangerous partner.
  • Gaps in age, geography, race, wealth, education or stature.
  • A woman "reserved" for another man.
  • Trials the hero must pass to win her.
• Suspense ends at consummation or contentment. Prolong the courtship, or separate the lovers so they must court again. If all is well, sabotage it.
• Romance also works as suspense relief between action sequences.

8. Dramatic irony

• Let the audience know what a character (or all characters) don't: the shark approaching swimmers, a courier who thinks the package is paperwork while a man is dying.
• Layer information to escalate: she's pregnant and will tell him (suspense); he also plans to break up (every word charged). Draw it out with false starts, hints, interruptions, silences.
• It controls sympathy and viewpoint. Knowing one character's secret aligns us with her. Knowing both splits sympathy. A threat to both pulls sympathy to the couple.
• It works in comedy (comedy of errors, one character holding a false belief).

9. Living in the future

• Increase the time the character spends anticipating an event: pages of worry before meeting the girlfriend's parents make the arrival tense.
• Show characters preoccupied with the future, with planning, daydreaming and rehearsing (Unfaithfully Yours).
• Elaborate plans (heists) are more fun when they go wrong. The audience enjoys the gap between anticipation and reality.
• Page time is not real time. Three years of anticipation in one page is not felt, while a few hours across 100 pages is felt strongly.

10. Lack of resolution

• End a subplot at a crucial moment so readers stay in suspense through the other subplots, which reduces the loss when they must "start over" in a new thread (soap-opera technique).
• At the end of a work, give about 95% resolution and leave about 5% open to pull readers into a sequel. Too much unresolved reads as a gimmick and breeds resentment.
• In scenes, carry an unresolved beat into the next scene (the news he never got to tell, the doorbell). Too many loose ends with too little payoff makes readers quit.
• Exercise: split each suspenseful scene into two scenes, with the first ending unresolved. Consider doing the same at chapter ends and at the end of the work.

11. The secret

• The reader must know a secret exists: shadowy fragments, a character saying "I can't tell you," or exchanged looks. Suspense comes from knowing something is hidden but not what.
• The greater the importance, the greater the suspense. Move the audience closer to the answer to make them want it more.
• Revealing too early leaves nowhere to go (Ilsa telling Rick up front).
• Overuse or lack of subtlety looks contrived. Don't use the secret to compensate for missing suspense elsewhere. It should complement other layers, not carry the load alone.

12. The character

• Pick traits that feed the scenes. A foolish character who investigates the burglarized house produces suspense, and a sensible one who calls the police kills it.
• Traits that set up predictable collisions:
  • Heroic: he runs into the burning house.
  • Claustrophobic: he must take the elevator to the 53rd floor.
  • A protective fighter: he learns his sister was beaten.
  • A temper with an authority problem: a bossy boss.
• Either design scenes around traits, or design traits to play against planned events.
• Unpredictability or mystery about a character creates suspense, because we don't know how he'll react.
• A known past capacity for violence (The Shining) keeps pressure on as circumstances tighten.
• Gap between realization and action: she decides to throw him out, and he comes home. If she balks, push the decision to tomorrow.
• Knowing a character's destiny makes every moment a question: is this the moment?

Prolonging suspense

• Creating suspense is the hard part; don't drop it once it exists. Most writers cut it short.
• If a planned quick scene turns out unusually suspenseful, change the plan and expand it, even into a whole first section.
• Stack several elements and then stretch the moment. Rear Window's finale combines danger, unknown, clock, inability to act and life-or-death stakes. The killer's approach runs over 30 seconds of film time, and then he stands in the doorway without entering.
• Prolong each element:
  • Danger: survive the operation, then get an infection; or clear one obstacle only to face another.
  • Unknown: reveal only part of what he's dealing with, solving one mystery at a time.
  • Sexual tension: a near-kiss that is interrupted, or a breakup after consummation so a reunion is awaited.
• Prolong with delays: results due Monday, delayed three days, posted but missing.
• Prolonged anticipation becomes expectation (a long-held daydream of how it will go). Whether the outcome is yes or no, the moment then hits hard. A "no" feels like a betrayal, though nothing was ever promised.
• Prolonging signals significance. A long build that ends in a cheap payoff (a cat jumps out) makes readers resent you and distrust later suspense. If the scene is short, the cheat is forgiven.
• Don't prolong every suspense scene to the maximum. Decide by context.
• Exercise: take a suspenseful scene and double its length (1 page to 2, 2 to 4), then trim afterward and note what the stretch added.

Quick revision checklist

1. Does the character have a clear objective, and does it matter to him (or to someone he cares about)?
2. Is there danger specific to this character?
3. Is there a deadline, and is the character reminded of it?
4. Is something blocking him from acting?
5. Is something withheld from the character, or from the reader?
6. Is there a romantic or secret thread that is sabotaged or prolonged rather than resolved?
7. Does the reader know something a character doesn't?
8. Is enough page time given to the character's anticipation?
9. Does each scene end with something left open?
10. Is the payoff proportionate to the length of the build?