Book Review: Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction
When I write, plotting is more a series of premises and consequences. I write a scene then consider what might unexpectedly occur as a result of it. In the first draft, there is a fair amount of exploration involved. The downside is that it’s rarely a linear process, and I spend an excessive amount of time working things out. It’s not a terribly efficient way to tackle a first draft.
To help improve on this, I’ve been reading books on writing to see what techniques I can use to make this an easier process.
How do you write a suspense novel?
I'll just keep you in suspence
about that.Patricia Highsmith is well-known for her suspense novels. She is great at setting up unusual circumstances then exploring the psychological and social repercussions. In Strangers on a Train, two men meet. One proposes they trade murders – each will kill the other’s wife. The second man thinks it’s all a joke, until the first one actually does it. What a creepily thrilling storyline!
So, who better to read on how to formulate a good plot? Her nonfiction book, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, analyzes elements of fiction – everything from the germ of an idea to development, plotting, snags, and revisions.
Unfortunately, I came away from her book pretty disappointed. There wasn’t much concrete in her examples, and her recommendations often had an offhand quality: “Oh, by the way, you might want to try this. But don’t do that.” The writing had a kind of stream-of-consciousness quality to it, as though Highsmith had jotted down notes for the book and occasionally referred to them:
“I can give no advice, or do not presume to give any, on the question of concentrating on character or plot in the course of developing a story idea. I have concentrated on either or both. Most often for me comes a short bit of action, with no characters attached, which will be the hub or the climax, occasionally the start, of my story.”
In other words, she’s tried a lot of different strategies, and they work or they don’t work, so you’re on your own. Her language is like tomato soup that has been diluted with too many cans of water. I can’t get a grasp of anything specific. Admittedly, she states that this is not a how-to book. Still, I expected a bit more to work with.
The chapter titles – “The Suspense Short Story”; “Development”; “First Draft” – suggest a very specific focus, but no subject is developed very far. In the chapter “The Second Draft,” she writes, “I used to make a complete second draft, and then a third … Lately, I am a little more efficient and do not have to retype every page of my first draft to form a second draft …”
I’m glad she has that kind of efficiency, but again it gives me nothing to work with. While Highsmith is upfront that she is describing her techniques and not other writers’, she remains frustratingly vague. Probably the best section of the book is her analysis of her novel The Glass Cell. Only there does she go into detail about how she constructed the plot and how she revised it when the book was initially rejected.
Highsmith seems to have a workman-like approach to writing. When writing a 200-page novel, certain key elements need to occur within the prescribed allotment of text. Okay, that makes sense. But when she analyzes the opening lines of various novels, she talks more about the number of lines involved rather than what those lines contain. For example, when she examines Graham Greene’s “The Basement Room,” she provides the first sentence of the story then she goes on to write, “And so on for four lines, then a paragraph of five lines, then eight, then six.” I’m not sure what this is supposed to teach me about writing, other than that paragraphs have varying lengths.
The biggest problem with Plotting is the sagging, lackluster tone. For such an accomplished writer to sound so bored about writing is a puzzle to me. Where is the love for the craft? Where is the curiosity about the unexpected discovery? It seems awfully ironic that someone who can construct exciting suspense fiction cannot use language with any sense of urgency.
To help improve on this, I’ve been reading books on writing to see what techniques I can use to make this an easier process.
How do you write a suspense novel?I'll just keep you in suspence
about that.Patricia Highsmith is well-known for her suspense novels. She is great at setting up unusual circumstances then exploring the psychological and social repercussions. In Strangers on a Train, two men meet. One proposes they trade murders – each will kill the other’s wife. The second man thinks it’s all a joke, until the first one actually does it. What a creepily thrilling storyline!
So, who better to read on how to formulate a good plot? Her nonfiction book, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, analyzes elements of fiction – everything from the germ of an idea to development, plotting, snags, and revisions.
Unfortunately, I came away from her book pretty disappointed. There wasn’t much concrete in her examples, and her recommendations often had an offhand quality: “Oh, by the way, you might want to try this. But don’t do that.” The writing had a kind of stream-of-consciousness quality to it, as though Highsmith had jotted down notes for the book and occasionally referred to them:
“I can give no advice, or do not presume to give any, on the question of concentrating on character or plot in the course of developing a story idea. I have concentrated on either or both. Most often for me comes a short bit of action, with no characters attached, which will be the hub or the climax, occasionally the start, of my story.”
In other words, she’s tried a lot of different strategies, and they work or they don’t work, so you’re on your own. Her language is like tomato soup that has been diluted with too many cans of water. I can’t get a grasp of anything specific. Admittedly, she states that this is not a how-to book. Still, I expected a bit more to work with.
The chapter titles – “The Suspense Short Story”; “Development”; “First Draft” – suggest a very specific focus, but no subject is developed very far. In the chapter “The Second Draft,” she writes, “I used to make a complete second draft, and then a third … Lately, I am a little more efficient and do not have to retype every page of my first draft to form a second draft …”I’m glad she has that kind of efficiency, but again it gives me nothing to work with. While Highsmith is upfront that she is describing her techniques and not other writers’, she remains frustratingly vague. Probably the best section of the book is her analysis of her novel The Glass Cell. Only there does she go into detail about how she constructed the plot and how she revised it when the book was initially rejected.
Highsmith seems to have a workman-like approach to writing. When writing a 200-page novel, certain key elements need to occur within the prescribed allotment of text. Okay, that makes sense. But when she analyzes the opening lines of various novels, she talks more about the number of lines involved rather than what those lines contain. For example, when she examines Graham Greene’s “The Basement Room,” she provides the first sentence of the story then she goes on to write, “And so on for four lines, then a paragraph of five lines, then eight, then six.” I’m not sure what this is supposed to teach me about writing, other than that paragraphs have varying lengths.
The biggest problem with Plotting is the sagging, lackluster tone. For such an accomplished writer to sound so bored about writing is a puzzle to me. Where is the love for the craft? Where is the curiosity about the unexpected discovery? It seems awfully ironic that someone who can construct exciting suspense fiction cannot use language with any sense of urgency.
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