Suspense writing is an amorphous and multifaceted concept, but Kate Riordan wants to make it straightforward.
Having written five novels – including the Richard and Judy book club pick The Heatwave – Kate is a master of mystery and suspense writing, and she’s sharing her wisdom with us.
Here are Kate’s 5 suspense writing tips to create suspenseful fiction.
What is suspense writing?
While ‘suspense’ as a genre might mean slightly different things to publishers and readers, for writers hoping to position themselves in this part of the market, it’s worth going back to basics.
Suspense is a state of excitement or anxiety about something that is going to happen very soon, for example about some news that you are waiting to hear.
— Collins Dictionary
The dictionary definition of the word itself is the key to why readers love suspense writing. It’s the uncertainty. God knows why we like it, but we do, at least within the confines of a book – when it’s a safe thrill we can literally hold at arm’s length. But that’s if you’re reading it. What if you’re writing suspense?
5 tips for suspense writing
Here are five top tips that have helped me when writing suspense:
- Don’t build suspense in a rush
- Tell secrets and lies
- Suspense writing hinges on setting
- Use dramatic irony
- End chapters powerfully for maximum suspense
1. Don’t build suspense in a rush
This might sound counterintuitive for really impactful suspense writing.
But think of a rollercoaster ride: the scariest part is that moment at the top, before they let the brakes off. If you hurtle past this to get to the action, you risk squandering the best bit – the bit when you’ve got them, heart in mouth and full of dread.
As a reader, I love the jangling unease of these moments. You know something bad is coming, but you’re not sure exactly when, or what it will look like – and therein lies the peculiar and tenacious appeal of a suspense story.
Scene after scene of high-octane action is exhausting and ultimately numbing for a reader. But suspense, with its agonisingly drawn-out tension – the literary equivalent of creeping through a pitch-dark house at night, nerves flaring and skin prickling – will always keep ’em coming back for more.
In craft terms, to create suspense you can layer up at chapter level, whole-book level and even in a single image. Rosamund Lupton demonstrates the latter beautifully in her opening to the genuinely un-putdownable Three Hours, about a school siege:
A moment of stillness; as if time itself is waiting, can no longer be measured. Then the subtle press of a fingertip, whorled skin against cool metal, starts it beating again and the bullet moves faster than sound.
—Rosamund Lupton, Three Hours
2. Tell secrets and lies
Suspense fiction is the natural home of unreliable narrators and mic-drop reveals. As Louise Dean points out in The Novelry’s fantastic new Advanced Class, the golden rule of creating suspense is that no one and nothing is quite as it seems. This adds another layer of discomfiture for the reader (it really is a deliciously sadistic business, writing this stuff).
Gone Girl does this with aplomb when (spoiler alert!) Gillian Flynn allows the reader and everyone else in her cast to believe that protagonist Amy Dunne is dead until – ta-da! – we realise Amy has faked it. In one fell sweep, Flynn upturns reader expectations.
Not only is this a great way to write suspense, but it’s a masterclass in intricate character development. It’s no surprise this has become such an icon amongst thriller novels.
My own narrator in The Heatwave, Sylvie, lies by omission to both the reader and her own daughter, with the truth only coming out at the midpoint. Until then, the seasoned reader of suspense writing will know that a secret or three will be lurking, which keeps the reader guessing. But to discover the truth, they’re compelled to read on as the story progresses.
Avoid being too secretive or misleading
A word of warning. If your big reveal or solution to a complex plot comes out of nowhere and is too convenient, it will fall flat on its face.
This is the Deus ex machina problem and sometimes happens when an author has written themselves into a corner. ‘And it was all a terrible dream!’ really won’t wash. Nor will throwing in a random character the reader has no investment in, just to tie up loose ends.
A really satisfying reveal will simultaneously surprise and make sense to the reader because the writer has seeded its possibility from the start. Future events were foreshadowed right from the beginning, and the writer used clues (and maybe even red herrings) to build tension.
Withholding information is vital, but so is setting up a satisfactory ending for your plot. It has to make sense.
3. Suspense writing hinges on setting
A well-drawn setting can underpin the tense atmosphere a suspense writer is trying to create. I’m always saying in my coaching sessions that setting can do a lot of heavy lifting: why not make the most of it?
Authors of gothic fiction know this only too well, and have been employing a sympathetic backdrop or pathetic fallacy for centuries.
Of course you need to be a little bit wary of tropes here, but an isolated place, extremes of temperature and weather in general, plus plenty of darkness and shadows, all have the power to unnerve readers and create an atmosphere of mystery.
An example of successful suspense writing
It’s high time I mentioned Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier’s suspense classic and a masterwork of atmospheric setting.
It opens with our main character – the second Mrs de Winter – dreaming of Manderley, establishing immediately how integral setting will be to the entire book, and how like a strange and discordant dream the setting actually is.
With the book’s explicit echoes of Jane Eyre, the fire that consumes Manderley by the end feels almost inevitable, the reader carrying the potent dread of it all the way through thanks to Du Maurier’s masterly suspense writing. It’s like a ticking clock; readers know the breaking point is coming, and we relish the key questions and suspenseful elements that carry the plot to its logical conclusion.
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn.
— Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
4. Use dramatic irony
Dramatic irony is a great tool for suspense writing; the literary equivalent of a pantomime audience shouting ‘he’s behind you!’ to no avail. It’s one of my favourite ways to create suspense.
It has been used to great effect in tragedy forever – think of Othello, when the audience is party to Iago’s Machiavellian asides while Othello himself continues to blindly trust.
If you’re writing in third person, this is a really handy device to use when your main character is in danger.
Alternatively, a first-person narrator who is themselves a danger (like Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s series) can tease and titillate. The reader constantly wonders what the main character might do next.
He remembered that right after that, he had stolen a loaf of bread from a delicatessen counter and had taken it home and devoured it, feeling that the world owed a loaf of bread to him, and more.
— Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley
5. End chapters powerfully for maximum suspense
A writer can keep the suspense simmering away and create anticipation by manipulating their chapter endings.
A proper cliffhanger is great, of course, ending as it does in the middle of something dramatic, practically forcing the reader to read on. But it doesn’t have to be as explicit as someone’s fingers being peeled off a cliff-edge, one by one.
In psychological suspense writing, it can be something much more subtle and insidious. A small but crucial detail revealing a new facet to a character the reader thought they knew, for example. Suddenly, the reader wonders who they’ve really been following all this time. Has the hero been the bad guy all along? Have they duped the reader as well as the other characters?
Quiet twists like these can also lead to heightened emotions and have your reader thinking, ‘just one more chapter…’
And while we’re on chapters, the way they’re structured and labelled can also create more suspense for the reader.
In my latest book, Summer Fever, I begin my story at the end, in the aftermath of an earthquake which has killed one of the principal characters (of course I don’t reveal who). I titled this prologue ‘Day 14’, and then flashback to ‘Day 1’.
This way, the reader is set up to ask the question ‘what the hell happened here?’ from the outset. The idea is that they’ll then tear through the rest of the suspense novel to find out…
Be sure to look over our other articles more tips on writing a murder mystery, writing thrillers, getting story ideas for thrillers, or the closed circle mystery.
Kate Riordan’s novel Summer Fever was described by bestselling author Harriet Tyce as ‘a sultry, sexy, immersive read’, and the perfect book to read on holiday.