Write Right!
How to write your way and have readers clamoring for more:
#2: Killing the Suspense
All stories are powered by conflict and surprise. Killing the suspense with early reveals or immediate resolution can lead to disappointment and exasperation.
Hello, Word Lovers!
Welcome to Write Right!, a gathering place for writers, editors, literary agents, readers and everyone else who loves words. We’ll explore themes inspired by my own observations and experiences as an author and by what you’d like to explore.
I’ve named this series of blogs That’s Annoying! How to Avoid Irritants that Make Readers Want to Scream. As I wrote my suspense thriller, Thunderhead Rising, I wanted to avoid writing practices that irritate me as a reader. I added feedback from my beta readers and writing forums, as well as irritants literary agents don’t want to see in submissions.
Killing the Suspense
Have you ever been involved in a conversation when someone brings up a book, movie or TV show and says, “Oh, and that ending! Bob did it, and…”
“No!” you gasp. “Don’t TELL me. I haven’t finished/seen it yet!”
It’s too late, of course. The ending has now been revealed and the surprise is gone. If the story’s a murder mystery, you’re wishing the victim had been the person who gave away the ending. Ending reveal has a cousin: immediately defusing the suspense, sometimes before the reader has had a chance to feel it. Let’s call these things “killing the suspense.”
Killing the suspense ranks in the top three on our annoyance list. Conflict and surprise power all stories. Removing or defusing them too soon can lead to disappointment and exasperation.
Examples of This Annoying Generosity
To be sure, not only debut authors are guilty. Let’s look at a few real-life examples from best-selling authors, some of them great icons of their genres. The page numbers are from my edition of their novels.
A Death is Coming! Look Here!
In the first paragraph: “When, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 11 September, Venetia Aldridge stood up to cross-examine the prosecution’s chief witness in the case of Regina vs. Ashe, she had four weeks, four hours and fifty minutes left of life.” Venetia Aldridge’s body was found on page 100.
Opening line: “What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?”
On page 4: “She jogged across the south end of New Court, sprinting through the two passageways to Principal Court. No one was about. No lights were on in rooms. It was wonderful, exhilarating. She felt inordinately free. And she had less than fifteen minutes to live.” She then continues jogging and reflecting for several more pages before the blow falls.
And Years Later…
Tom is in danger, and he’s slowly becoming aware of the fact as he begins to feel uncomfortable about his companion’s intentions. As a crisis approaches, the writer says, “Afterwards Tom was to tell himself he had a sick feeling at this point. A sense of impending disaster laid a cold touch on him. But afterwards he was equally sure he could not have felt this, he could not have foreseen. There had been nothing up till then to warn him.” The writer goes on to escalate the tension and drop Tom into a potentially lethal situation.
In a long-running series, Charles, a kind but unfortunately unattractive man, desperately loves a young woman who uses him. From time to time, the author teases readers by having the woman seem to warm to Charles. We begin to hope maybe she’ll see him for the good man he is. But then our author throws us a curveball. She tells us that in the future, Charles has not only given up and married someone else, but he outlived his love interest, who died young. The books continue, including both characters alive in the present and moving forward.
Well, That’s All Right, Then
Someone has stolen money from the landlord and hidden it in the first-person narrator’s underwear drawer. The thief then makes sure the landlord becomes suspicious and searches the narrator’s room, where he finds the money. The landlord confronts the narrator, and the incident is quickly resolved.
What Were They Thinking?
Why do authors do this — not just writers of mysteries and thrillers, but of all genres?
Perhaps they want to soften the blow of a sudden death or disaster, preparing the reader for the worst.
Maybe they fear readers can’t handle heavy emotions if they’re not defused a bit.
Or they believe that the reveal of the incident’s outcome before it happens is suspenseful in its own right.
It could be they’ve learned writers have to “hook” their readers (or agents or editors) in order to get them interested and hold them. So the author puts that juicy tidbit right up front, even though it hasn’t happened yet and won’t for well into the story. Then the writer jumps into the real beginning and the inciting incident.
Give Us Some Credit
It’s hard to argue with these points. There’s some truth to them. But I’ll let you in on a little secret.
Readers deserve some credit. Most of us want to be shocked, surprised, raised to a level of high anxiety for a character in danger, or moved to tears, fury or unabashed joy by the stories we read.
Wouldn’t it be more suspenseful and nail-biting to show a murder victim-to-be or character under threat becoming aware of potential danger slowly or suddenly? Aren’t readers more intimately involved in the story when they’re right there with the characters? When characters decide to trust their fear and act? When they figure out what to do, how to escape or defend themselves? To hold their reader breaths as the characters flee, freeze, or fight? Isn’t not knowing usually scarier and more evocative than knowing ahead of time a character will die or what the outcome of his or her struggle is?
The husband of the young woman who died took us on a journey through the last years of a cancer patient’s life. Emotions run high. Ideally, the reader experiences their suffering, hope and eventual resignation as the story progresses. Had the author not told us in the first sentence that the patient died, we readers could have ridden that roller coaster with her husband. Knowing the outcome diluted our personal involvement in the story. By telling us she didn’t survive in the first sentence, the author shielded us from the blows but also deadened our emotions.
Pssst…He’s Not Really Going to Die
Why on earth would a writer interrupt a suspenseful scene to tell readers what will happen in the distant future? Why take us out of the story and kill the suspense? By telling us Tom debated with himself in the future about whether or not he experienced warnings at the time, we know he survived before the danger point is reached in the story. The emotional effect is like air being let out of a balloon.
The stolen money incident could have meant grave trouble for the narrator. The landlord might have evicted her or worse, charged her with a crime or attacked her. But the writer resolves the tension in less than two pages and doesn’t bring the incident up again. When I read it, I felt a great let-down as the writer missed a wonderful opportunity for escalating conflict and tension.
When Might Killing the Suspense Be Okay?
To be sure, a big reveal of something that hasn’t happened in the story yet can be effective, even necessary. This can work, for example, when the revelation has already happened, and the narrator tells it in retrospect. Perhaps the writer wants to misdirect the reader because the reveal isn’t what it seems. Skilled writers can handle this well and make it interesting, as Kat Rosenfield did in her mystery thriller No One Will Miss Her, which starts with a first-person narrator telling readers she is dead. How did she get that way and live to tell about it?
If an author wants to give away a key suspenseful element that hasn’t happened yet, or to give away the ending early, they can certainly do so when the story and its timeline require it. We the Annoyed simply ask: Please kill the suspense with caution. Write a great beginning for the current story, happening in real-time. Keep us falling off the edges of our seats or rolling in the aisles or going through a box of facial tissues. Don’t underestimate us by believing we can’t handle too much anxiety, stress or emotion, so you have to water it down for us.
We want to feel. That’s why we read. We can handle it.
May the Words Be with You.
