Suspense
By Donald Maass | August 5, 2020 |
Has life ever put you in a state of suspense? Was it waiting for a test score—or test results? Was it waiting for a Christmas bonus? A lottery drawing? The final card in Texas Hold ‘Em? The last, ninth-inning pitch of a baseball game? Wondering whether a double-twist vault landing would stick?
Has life ever hung in the balance for you? Not just in the sense of live or die, but in the two seconds after the proposal of marriage, the two minutes of waiting for the pregnancy stick, or the ultrasound result, or the cancer screening? Have you every waited for your attorney’s nod of victory, or a courtroom verdict?
Have you ever ripped open a letter in haste? The letter from your first-choice college? The one from the draft board? The one that began, “Dear John…”? Have you ever been at a loss for words, not known what to say, how to act or what to do? What you ever waited for an answer that you desperately needed, but which was impossibly slow to arrive?
Have you ever queried an agent?
My point is this: For fiction writers, suspense is not just a genre with high stakes, ticking clocks and a race to get away or prevent disaster. It’s not just an unsolved mystery or life-and-death peril. Suspense is a feeling we have in many different situations.
Suspense is the breathlessness of not knowing something, at least not yet. It’s the hollow feeling when we discover that things are not as we thought. It’s the fear we feel of what could go wrong, or what is going wrong, or what might happen, or what might not happen. It’s hoping for something wonderful that may or may not come about, or dreading something that is all too horribly likely.
Suspense is a feeling that there is more to come, things will get worse, available help will not be enough. Whatever it is, it is not yet over. It’s a feeling of breathlessness, urgency with no time left, peril without possible rescue, a future of bleak prospect. It’s a heart yearning for completion but still not fulfilled. It’s a feeling that—when done right—keeps us taut and dangling like the final, drawn out beat before the resolution chord in a song.
There are many ways to create and use suspense in a story…that is, if you know what suspense really is.
What Suspense Really Is
Start with this: Suspense is a feeling. Its strongest expressions are dread, anticipation and fear.
Suspense is not a mild emotion. It’s a high feeling. It’s extreme. When we feel suspense, we have a sense of being pushed out of bounds and against our wills. Forces bigger than us have taken over. We cannot control what will happen or bring about what we wish. We are—for the moment—powerless.
Let’s start with dread. You could argue that dread is born of doubt, but I’m cautious about that word. Doubt can arise from confusion, perplexity, distrust, disbelief, misgiving, reluctance, hesitance, irresolution, vacillation or wavering. Such inner states are circular. They don’t take us anywhere except back to where we were. On the page, those feelings can result in churning passages of hand-wringing. In life, worry is well and good. It signals a need to act. In fiction, worry is a dead zone. It doesn’t bring a story to life.
Dread, by contrast, takes us out of time and into a state of tomb-cold paralysis. Dread can’t be softened. It has no escape hatch. It locks us in. It’s a sickness with no cure, an emptiness with no light, an absolute knowledge that the worst not only can happen but has, that every belief we have is useless, every faith we treasure is void, that evil is real. Dread is the death of hope. It is the scythe that reaps our will.
Next, anticipation. It has two aspects: 1) the negative one of fear, 2) the positive one of hope. Anticipation can derive from possibilities, calculation, conjecture, probability, supposition, surprise, or looking ahead to good things. Again, though, I’m cautious. Better than the merely possible is the inevitable. Worse than fearful calculation is an undeniable conclusion. It might be…odds are that…let’s suppose that…those are tentative. That which is probable is fine, but why not make it definite? Why settle for conjecture when you can have something conclusive? Nothing that might be is ever as useful as what actually is.
Suspense does not hedge. It’s full on. It’s happening. It’s real. It’s now. That’s just as true as when we’re hoping for something good as when we’re anxious about something bad. When good is the hope, suspense rises when that good begins to look even better; when the good that we may desire will not just please us but save us.
But back to the negative. The aspect of suspense that we call fear is absolute. It’s not a partial feeling. Simple dismay goes away. Agitation settles down. Distress doesn’t last. Qualms vibrate for a limited time. Revulsion is temporary. Cold sweats freeze us only for a while. Genuine fear, by contrast, is full on and unrelenting. Time can’t cure what causes it. It sinks in, becomes part of us, defining us, never to be forgotten.
We all have known fear but when we think about those experiences, we do not recall common, everyday occurrences. When we think of true fear in our lives, we remember times when all options were gone, no help was left, and all we had waiting for us was abject failure, which is to say a very palpable kind of death.
There’s nothing tentative about death. Death is a hard stop. It’s over. We’re done. Call it existential, if you will, but for me feeling suspense means that we are hanging over the abyss.
Using Suspense
You can probably guess where I’m going with this: Suspense can be part of any story. It doesn’t matter your genre, style or story intent. In reading any story, we can feel breathless with dread, anticipation and fear. Let’s look at some practical ways to provoke that.
Over what does your protagonist have control? What could happen that would take that control completely away? What force is bigger than your protagonist? Who wields such force? How does that person use it? To do what? What could befall your protagonist that would leave him or her feeling utterly powerless?
What would cause you protagonist to feel that the very worst thing is not only possible, but happening? What signals that? What light goes out? What help won’t arrive? What last gambit is crushed? What convinces your protagonist that hope was vain and winning was never possible? In despair, what does he or she have to let go?
What good thing does your protagonist, and others, hope for? Why is it needed? What will be better if it happens? Who will benefit the most? Who has the greatest faith that this good is possible? Who absolutely trusts your protagonist to bring it about? What will be different on that great day? What dream is precious? Who has died for it? What makes that great good the most important thing for your protagonist, the reason that he or she lives at all?
Why is time running out? How is it impossible to get to the right place? Who predicted failure and will be right? Who believes in your protagonist but was wrong?
What is the thing that your protagonist most fears—fears in a way that no one else does? What does that black fear feel like? When in its grip, what does your protagonist become? Why is there no way out? When has this happened before? Why can it never be permitted to happen again? When it does, how does your protagonist metaphorically die? Who witnesses that and mourns? Who else must let go, turn away, or give up?
To create suspense, aim for your protagonist’s failure. Make us hope your protagonist will succeed. Make the reasons to succeed good ones. Shorten time, take away help, close down possibilities. Then drop the hammer. When all is lost, our suspense is greatest. Failure has happened…but the story isn’t over. Not yet.
How are you making your story suspenseful? Share!
[coffee]
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
First to comment, I win the toaster!
I’m working on a dinner scene. Two young people on a date, it starts well until one of them begins to lose their grip on reality due to the lingering effects of a designer drug. The conversation becomes awkward, they can’t sit still, there’s a spill, a collision with a waiter, something lands on a nearby table, a puzzled look, a hint of concern, short-lived reassurance that everything is fine, and the eventual calamity.
Thanks for the suspense, Don! A great way to start the day.
“…the eventual calamity.” Burnt toast? Nah, something better than that, I’m sure.
This is a great post Don.
I am editing my novel and at a perfect point to find places where suspense can be sharpened. As always your observations and suggestions are great, but I also want to compliment your writing. Your description of dread is lyrical.
Lyrical Dread. My new metal band name!
Toaster? Drat. But also, yay!! I’m about to map out the climax scent in a first draft and this arrived in my in-box like a giant Christmas present. I just finished reading a novel in my genre that failed to deliver on suspense. There were moments, delicious ones even, but they disintegrated too quickly. I do not want to write that kind of book. Thank you for a beautiful morning lesson. Hope all’s well.
All’s well, Susan, thanks. I hope so with you too. Thanks for commenting.
Hi Don,
I didn’t win James’ toaster, but it is 6:50 AM here on the West Coast, so I think I win “earliest comment bragging rights” on time zone merits? (Writers are so competitive!)
Once again, I am using your column *right now* and sharing it with my 6 AM SUAW group.
More to the point, I’m revising the four darkest chapters, leading up to the All is Lost moment. Suspense is a key factor in each chapters, and others earlier, but here the dread is heightened. Chapter 26: Will three secondary antagonists help my protagonist fight her primary antagonist? Chapter 27: Will a new character who may be an ally help my protagonist? Chapter 28: Will the ally, who turns out to be an antagonist, do something really, really terrible? (no spoilers here) Chapter 29: The ally-turned-antagonist is murdered. Hope is extinguished.
Thanks for this column. It’s a win.
Marcie
I’m in Hood River, Oregon. But thanks for playing Marcie and have a wonderful writing day!
Aha, I see now that the posted times aren’t local time. I yield the toaster and bragging rights. Well done, James. I’ll have to get here earlier next month. : )
Suspense, chapter by chapter. Excellent. Can’t wait.
Suspense is seeing Donald Maas’s logo in my blog feed and wondering how he’s going to rebuild my world this month.
I’m just at the start of my new series, and one idea I’m looking into is making as many plot points as possible where a main character really surprises the reader. Where the conflicts and the discoveries seem to be pointing one way, but backstory shows that someone actually would spin off and take it differently, changing the story around every time. I want the reader to appreciate that anything can happen from any direction, and nothing is safe.
“Whispered spells for breathless suspense.”
“Anything can happen from any direction, and nothing is safe.”
Brilliant summary of suspense.
I really liked this post. When I first started writing, I had trouble putting my characters into hard places. Then someone pointed out to me that even Anne of Green Gables had tension throughout the book. Light-hearted, feel-good books still need some tension and suspense. It was a hard lesson, but one I eventually learned. Thanks!
“Still need” suspense? I’d say it’s more that all stories are driven by *recognizing* just how much of a hard place they’re willing to put characters in, whether it’s life and death or being embarassed at school (and Anne has both). The course of the story is the suspense built around that, whatever it is.
I don’t think there is suspense without characters being boxed into “hard places”…whether of physical danger or emotional peril.
Many of our lives are filled with the tension you mention in this post, which I am always eager to read and which always has solid tips and ideas. Tension doesn’t have to be a gun to your head. It can be escalating fear that sometimes truly has no real basis, but the character doesn’t know that. Within her mind, her life is spiraling out of control and that’s a major key. We all need and want control in our lives–of the future, of those who love us, of the spaces we live in. Writing can take on some brilliance if we power it with our own fears about the future. If you aren’t comfortable, this might be the perfect time to add tension to your work.
You’re right, tension doesn’t have to be a gun to your head…although, I would add that there are many kinds of guns.
Thanks once again, Don, for locking my inner writer in the interrogation room with a master detective. Every time I read one of your posts it’s like I’ve stepped into an MFA creative writing class. Total immersion, thorough examples, vivid strokes straight to the point. And all those questions!
Today’s post is so chock full of content there’s no way I can take it all into my current writing project at once. Instead I need to ponder and apply and revisit each question, just as I have done with every Don Maass book in my library. Doing so creates a much richer story, deeper characters.
I’m particularly interested in putting my fearless warrior/survivor protagonist in a situation where, instead of physical combat or a street fight, he’s forced to face a challenge to his very identity, to question whether he’s escaped his scruffy family origins, and the visceral fear that he hasn’t got what it takes to outmaneuver his nemesis.
I can use the idea that suspense is “a sens of being pushed out of bounds and against one’s will.” To me, that could mean being compelled to break a lifelong vow, or to lie to a partner. What a life it is to write fiction.
Hi, Don:
“Have you ever queried an agent?” Ahem. Nailed it.
You have managed to surpass in excellence the only other piece I know that addresses suspense in such a practical, insightful, and yet surprising way. That other piece was by Lee Child in the NYT Opinionator column. These comment boxes don’t like links, so I can’t share that, but it’s easy enough to Google. What you get at the goes beyond Lee’s remarks is the need to intensify the feelings that come to bear as the uncertainy hangs over the character–and what questions to ask to make that happen.
I’ll be sharing this with my Litreactor class. Thanks, as always, for such a wonderful post.
Thanks, Dan! I like your idea of putting your protagonist in non-physical peril. What will make it suspenseful is the build-up to that, perhaps showing that such a situation is one he fears and in no way believes he can handle or escape alive–spiritually alive, I mean. Appreciate your words!
Sorry, David, duplicate comment.
Lee Child’s essay in the Times was one of the most brilliant I’ve ever read on any writing topic. He nailed suspense so simply and so well: Suspense is posing questions to which we do not yet know the answer. Can’t dispute that.
Wow, those are some REALLY helpful nuances and distinctions between words/concepts that I’ll confess I tended to consider to be synonyms. Particularly worry vs. dread.
Thanks, Donald, and stay safe!
I worry about you down there in alligator land. But that’s okay. Worry I can live with. It’s dread that I dread. Stay very safe, Keith!
“Dread is the death of hope. It is the scythe that reaps our will.”
Whoa–that’s among your best pair of sentences here at WU, IMO… Among many, many wonderful competitors.
I think I’ve been trying to play with this sort of dread in my storytelling for quite some time. I wouldn’t say it’s an attempt to subvert it, but I’ve always liked the idea of having Vahldan become inured to dread. As it pertains to mortality, anyway. When Amaseila tells him he’s doomed, he’s forced to keep it at arm’s length. But the more he comes to bank on the fact that his place in the prophecy might be true (he’s constantly lured to it like an addiction, as the more he leans in, the more he’s rewarded for it), the more pressing it becomes to accept his doom. The combination leads to a sort of recklessness that, hopefully, becomes suspenseful to the reader.
Not just in the sense of “will he die this time?” But also in cases like, “Will he really cast aside his only true love for this?” Or, “Why won’t he wake up and see how wonderful his daughter is?” Etcetera.
I think it’s trickier than I thought. Why would anyone feel suspense (including Vahldan… and even Elan) if he’s just a doomed dick? It’s tricky keeping people caring and rooting for someone who’s given up on himself.
Thanks for the additional perspective here, Don, and for everything you’ve provided along the way to this goal. Here’s to relieving suspense in a satisfying way.
I think that prophecy of doom could hang over Vahldan even more than it does. It’s a shocker when we first hear it, and it’s echoes could linger in the minds of everyone, in every contest, tribunal and battle.
Another great article!
My first book is all about dread and power struggling.
You bring up a good point about the powerlessness that ramps up suspense. I’ve been there many times in my life. Waiting can be brutal. I had sensed it in my writing, but will be more deliberate when using this tool next time.
Thanks so much for sharing, Don!
When we feel powerless, we don’t know what will happen. Anything bad could. Nothing good feels possible. And that, I think, is suspense.
Wow! Great post, as always, and such helpful questions. With what I’m working on today this one stands out: “What is the thing that your protagonist most fears—fears in a way that no one else does?’
Herself, of course. She’s reacted–big time–in a totally unexpected way and is flailing, this woman who has always been so sure of herself.
And the same could be said of her antagonist, both flummoxed by the turn of events, both so sure they are right.
Thank you for this insight!
Nothing scarier than ourselves, sometimes, I agree!
You have taught me well: keep the READER in suspense every second. Period. Full stop. Even in a love story.
Once the writer acquires that mindset, your books on writing provide myriad ways to accomplish it.
The only mistake is in allowing interludes where the tension is diminished – even the slow uphills are part of the rollercoaster.
I heartily agree.
Don, I don’t know how well this will mesh with your understanding, but McKee says of dread that it springs from the reader/viewer’s certainty of disaster. The tension comes from the reader having advance knowledge of a character’s doom and watching them advance toward it while wondering how exactly they will arrive at the grim destination. (e.g. We see the criminal behind the door as the main character arrives, so the anticipation of disaster is more intense. He’d contrast that with suspense, which has us walking alongside the character into the setting and being surprised with them.)
You see framing stories play with this. I’m thinking of police dramas or thrillers, like Julia Spencer-Fleming’s I Shall Not Want. (I think you used this as a teaching example before?) The novel begins with an extremely likeable and admirable character being shot. While Ross dangles between life and death–the latter looking all but certain, naturally–we are taken back to the Before, and wind forward in chronologic time until we catch up with the opening.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Would one element of dread require the reader to have more knowledge than a character about what is to befall them? Or am I comparing apples to oranges? Thanks!
“Would one element of dread require the reader to have more knowledge than a character about what is to befall them?”
Oh, certainly! I will add that to my prompts in future.
A simple sign clung beneath the post: Wish you could buy this author a cup of joe? A small check box gave me that power. Wow. Could I? Would I? My finger hovered over the mouse, one small twitch was all that stood between me and a cup of joe flashing across the province of BC, from my house to Don’s hand. Beads of sweat itched my forehead, caught in the frown lines as my resolve weakened. An entire cup of coffee at my command and I barely had the will to complete the thought. I can do this! That amount of imagination, at the very least, is within me. My finger hit the mouse, the mouse directed the cursor, the cursor switched the screen to paypal. YES, Don’s coffee is en route. I jumped up, pumping my arms over my head, the chair skidding away. Whaaaat. The screen was an ad for a paypal service. NO. I am a failure at clicking links. Don will have to buy his own coffee.
LOL. The suspense is greater because, as everyone knows, I am a coffee addict.
The only thing worse than not having coffee is grabbing the last cup from the pot and stupidly, accidentally spilling it on the ground. For me, that is hanging over the abyss.