What Kind of Suspense…?

Last time I told you that suspense is created by posing a question the reader wants answered. Variety is good, so in my own work I use three different kinds of suspense. 
There is “what’s going on here?” suspense. If you watched the tv show Lost, or more recently Colony, you know what that is. You came back every week trying to figure out what the heck was going on. 
There is also “why is this happening?” suspense.  This is what writers mean when they tell you to start the story in the middle. Perhaps your story opens with someone holding a gun in your hero’s face, saying “This is what happens to people who go poking their noses into my business.” Then you have to answer the obvious questions during the action. 
Btw, in my humble opinion, Stephen King is the best novelist alive and, also in my opinion, King writes suspense, not horror. Every Stephen King novel is a master class on how to write the “why is this happening?” style of suspense. If you don’t have time to read one of his giant books, rent the first season of his TV show Under The Dome. You’ll get the idea.
The most common kind of suspense is probably “will the hero accomplish his major goal?” That can take different forms based on the genre you write. In a mystery, where the violence usually takes place before the protagonist is involved, the question may be “who done it?” You maintain suspense there by keeping your villain one step ahead of your detective, and your reader. In a thriller the reader may be anticipating the antagonist accomplishing his goal, so the question is “how can this impending crisis or crime be averted.” The reader might know about dangers the protagonist doesn’t know about. That creates suspense. In a horror story the question may be “will the protagonist survive?” 
So as we write, how do we ratchet up the suspense to keep readers on the edge of their seats? To an extent this depends on characterization and conflict. The first key to creating suspense is to create characters that readers care about, and then put those characters in jeopardy.
Next week we’ll discuss the foundations of narrative suspense, so don’t worry (that’s for the reader to do!)