Tricks! We’ve been talking in the past two weeks about incorporating a few tricks to writing a powerful suspense. Last week we talked about the Hook, and leaving the reader hanging.
Today…we’re going to talk about what NOT to do.
The hallmark of suspense is the unexpected twist and turns, the increasing tension and dangers. Readers read suspense for the adrenaline ride and the breathless moments – and you as the author want to give this to them.
Some of the breathless moments I’ve included in my suspense have been:
Trapping my hero and heroine in a burning house.
Pushing my hero and heroine off of a cliff into a raging river.
Making my heroine jump out of a moving plane.
Having my hero chase a suspect through Epcot center.
Pushing my heroine off the roof of the Plaza hotel while the hero races through the streets of NYC.
Nearly drowning my heroine in her wedding dress.
Sneaking my hero into a terrorist camp in Africa to rescue a child soldier.
These are all high-action events. However, each of them had the potential of being unbelievable if I didn’t build in plausibility. The key to keeping your reader from closing the book and shaking their head is…
O – (Don’t go) Over the Top –
Over the top is Bruce Willis is running barefoot down a tarmac in the middle of winter trying to get aboard a plane that has already taken off. Or Bruce Willis driving a car into a helicopter. Or Bruce Willis taking out a F-15 with a semi.
Or any Die Hard movie, for that matter. We stay with it because, well, it’s Bruce Willis and we are lead to believe that he can save the world. But for the rest of us, we need to keep our events in the realm of reality or we’ll lose readers.
Ask: Could this really happen? How? If you can support your actions and make it plausible, then by all means – use it! However, there are two questions to ask to keep your plotting from going Over the Top.
1. Before each action, you need to support it the question…WHY should they do it? If it’s just for effect, then you’ll lose readers. Make your event a necessary evil, something they must do to save the day.
2. The key to keeping it from being over the top is adding in the HOW. How will they accomplish this feat? How do they know this information? In your story you want to trickle the clues out so that it makes sense to the reader and to the characters each step of the journey.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about the final trick, the element that makes your book keep them even after they put it down.
Susie May
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