{"id":82018,"date":"2018-07-31T11:27:28","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T00:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=82018"},"modified":"2018-07-31T11:27:28","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T00:27:28","slug":"ross-watkins-top-10-ways-build-suspense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2018\/07\/31\/ross-watkins-top-10-ways-build-suspense\/","title":{"rendered":"Ross Watkins on The Top 10 Ways to Build Suspense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ross Watkins is the author of The Apology<\/em>, a gripping psychological drama about family, betrayal and the limits of forgiveness.<\/p>\n

As an\u00a0author and illustrator for both children and adult, Ross Watkins’ award winning short fiction and non-fiction have been published in Australia and internationally. He was shortlisted for the 2011 Queensland Premier’s Award for Emerging Authors, and he teaches creative writing on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.<\/p>\n

If you have ever wondered what the secret is to writing a\u00a0thrilling page-turner, don’t miss Ross Watkins’ Top 10 Ways to Build Suspense<\/strong> …<\/p>\n

\n

\"ross<\/a>1.<\/strong> Suspense does not exist without first creating engaging characters. Whether emotionally empathetic or intellectually stimulated, your reader will only feel suspense if they can engage with the characters experiencing the drama.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Feed your reader\u2019s curiosity and their desire to puzzle. Don\u2019t underestimate the intellectual capability of your reader, and never forget that part of the pleasure of reading a good book comes from being rewarded for anticipating correctly, just as much as being thrilled by the unexpected.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Be the magician who relies on sleight-of-hand. Anticipate what your reader is thinking (based on the information you\u2019ve provided), distract them with illusion while you\u2019re staging the effect right under their noses, and then \u2026 reveal.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Avoid nasty surprise tactics that undermine the potential for genuine tension. The poorly executed \u2018plot twist\u2019 is essentially a surprise tactic that serves the writer\u2019s sense of amusement, more than the reader\u2019s intellect.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> Consider creating contradictions between what your characters think, speak and do. A character who thinks one thing but does the opposite not only helps build conflict, but the psychological rendering of that character also becomes more complex and interesting. This also creates dramatic irony, another nifty device for enabling suspense.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> Allow your reader the chance to supply the anxiety implicit in the drama. Rather than imposing anticipation on the scenario by shortcuts such as exclamation marks or overly dramatic characters, let your reader navigate their way through the emotional turmoil that the scene presents. Overstatement! is! prescriptive!\"ross<\/a><\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> Be prudent with phrases that overtly pre-empt action. Phrases like \u2018But then\u2026\u2019 and \u2018Soon that would all change\u2019 might seem like a way to create anticipation, but they soften immediacy and impact.<\/p>\n

8.<\/strong> Avoid stringing the reader along with unnecessary ambiguity. Keeping the circumstances vague does not generate long-lasting suspense. Worthwhile suspense is built on complex characters being involved in a convincing sequence of cause and effect.<\/p>\n

9.<\/strong> If writing cliff-hangers (ending a chapter amid a dramatic moment), use variation. If you end consecutive chapters with cliff-hangers, your reader will suspect that the author is overplaying their hand. The best cliff-hangers shouldn\u2019t read like cliff-hangers at all \u2013 the reader should be compelled to read on due to the momentum of what the action means for the characters.<\/p>\n

10.<\/strong> Re-read a book that provided you with plenty of suspense. Your best teachers are the authors who came before you. Read the books you love and scrutinise the devices those authors used, whether structural or stylistic, to create the effect you desire to craft with your own words. Then, go play.<\/p>\n

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Click here to order your copy of The Apology by Ross Watkins.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ross Watkins is the author of The Apology, a gripping psychological drama about family, betrayal and the limits of forgiveness. As an\u00a0author and illustrator for both children and adult, Ross Watkins’ award winning short fiction and non-fiction have been published in Australia and internationally. He was shortlisted for the 2011 Queensland Premier’s Award for Emerging Authors, and he teaches creative writing on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. If you have ever wondered what the secret is to writing a\u00a0thrilling page-turner, don’t miss Ross Watkins’ Top 10 Ways to Build Suspense … 1. Suspense does not exist without first creating engaging characters. Whether emotionally empathetic or intellectually stimulated, your reader will only feel suspense if they can engage with the characters experiencing the drama. 2. Feed your reader\u2019s curiosity and their desire to puzzle. Don\u2019t underestimate the intellectual capability of your reader, and never forget that part of the pleasure of reading a good book comes from being rewarded for anticipating correctly, just as much as being thrilled by the unexpected. 3. Be the magician who relies on sleight-of-hand. Anticipate what your reader is thinking (based on the information you\u2019ve provided), distract them with illusion while you\u2019re staging the effect right under their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":82027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6677],"tags":[1445,2303,8868,7226,9064,5100,6148,6621],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/apology-social-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82018"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82028,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82018\/revisions\/82028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}