Creating suspense involves withholding information and asking key questions that arouse readers' curiosity. Character development plays an important role in generating suspense; for example, if a character's wish is not fulfilled at the end of the book, the reader will not feel that the story is complete. The suspense is holding your breath, waiting for the other shoe to fall. Take a second to imagine that moment.
Notice how your body tightens; you may clench your teeth or bend your toes upwards. Take our 1-minute quiz to find out. Do you want to read more Agatha Christie books? We've got you covered. Here are 10 of Christie's greatest mysteries.
Or if horror is your thing, here are the best horror books of all time. However, no matter how you use flashbacks, they have to mean something in the story. You can include a red herring as part of a flashback, but all of this can't just be a distraction or your reader will feel betrayed. That applies to both content and tone.
Flashbacks should be read as vividly and intriguingly as the current narrative, and should not seem like a distraction, but rather an expansion of the plot. Join a community of more than 1 million authors. If need or desire opposes another character or goes against social norms, you can create suspense without much effort. What makes a conflict matter and creates suspense in the reader's mind is that it is intimately linked to the protagonist's deepest desire and, if the outcome is not in her favor, it will prevent her from achieving that desire.
Anyway, a few cleverly placed Chekhov weapons are a very effective way for writers to create suspense when writing. Making life for your protagonist won't create suspense if the reader doesn't care. Keeping lies hidden creates internal tension, which in turn can create external conflicts for no apparent reason. Multiple problems and the constant tension between them offer endless opportunities to create suspense.
With every previous decision I made to hide violence or “allow it”, suspense scenes were created that made readers hold their breath. You can create suspense around anything that arouses readers' curiosity, whether it's a love triangle or a murderer on the loose. It's vital to keep the reader asking questions, not knowing which hand you're holding, to create the suspense that keeps her reading to the end. So let's take a look at the conflict in fiction, because any old difficulty doesn't always work if we want to create a real and scathing suspense.
One of the best applications of short-term suspense is to create ending scenes or episodes that leave the reader desperately in suspense.
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