WRITING TIPS

I'm going to talk a little bit about building suspensearound and under your suspense, about building suspense even if you aren't writingsuspense.  I think all storiescontain suspense no matter the genre. The basic formula of romance is suspense, or rather the question orquestions that carry the reader along. With romance, we can boil it down to onebasic thing: Will these two people get together? And how? Even though almostall romances end in happily-ever-after, the question is always there in everyromance, and the reader plays along even though she knows it will most likelyend in a satisfactory way.  WithThe Orchard, one of the big questions: Will this person stay in thisrelationship? A lot of readers hoped she wouldn't, and they wanted to see herbreak free. I say she because I don't think of that person as me. I'm no longerthat person.
The big question is closely tied to conflict, and can often be the conflict. EVERY STORY HAS CONFLICT.  I don't carewhat you're writing.  I don't knowhow many times I've heard this: "I'm not writing suspense so I don't needconflict."
 Conflict doesn't need to be external. Good suspense (thegenre) has both internal and external conflict.
  I'm alwaystalking about unpublished writers not giving the reader enough information.Thinking the reader will magically figure it out. Or worse, the writer thinksshe's creating suspense with this lack of information. So it's a delicatebalance. It's knowing what to use and what to keep in your pocket for later.


 Inmy book Play Dead, I hinted at something that had happened to one of the homicide detectives.  We knew he was on medication, knew he had a drinking problem,  and we knew he'd been sent to Savannah to start fresh.  But I didn't reveal exactly what had happened to him until maybe the halfway mark.


  But you can wait too long. If you waittoo long, the reader becomes impatient and annoyed. You keep dropping thesetantalizing hints, but the payoff comes too late. The reader is alreadyannoyed.  So annoyed that she mightnot even care anymore. Someone who often waits too long for the payoff is JossWhedon. IMO. Love him, but the payoff comes after the annoyance hits.  You're engaging us, and we're followingyou, but you can't keep slamming the door.  And once our annoyance is engaged, the payoff andsatisfaction isn't as strong. And sometime we actually forget what the questionwas in the first place. Oh, yeah.I remember being really curious about that in episode one. And episode two. Andepisode three. But episode eight? Not so much. Which reminds, me, you mightneed to remind the reader at well-placed intervals (part of pacing). But anyway, rambling here. Again.Every story should have questions that keep the reader turning the page.
Note-to-self: Plant some questions for the reader. Itdoesn't have to be anything big. It can be the history of the character. It canbe something that happened recently.  It can be something that the character has been unable toface, maybe something she will have to deal with in order to grow.
Note-to-self: Don't forget that readers are reading becauseof the characters. Even in suspense, readers are reading because of thecharacters. Yes, they want a good mystery, but they really want to live withthese people.
The reason I'm saying note-to-self is because I tend to getcaught up in the storytelling and I sometimes forget to employ these importantstory-telling devices. They tend to hide under the surface of the story, anddon't seem that important, when in reality they could be what keeps the reader(or agent or editor) turning the pages. THE DEVICES DON'T CHANGE THE STORY, but they change how the reader engages with the story.


What is this about?
story structure
pacing
conflict
characterization
building suspense
creating tension