Guest Post: April Henry on Just Add Tension: How to Make Any Book - But Especially Mysteries and Thrillers - Better

By April Henry
for Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations

When Cynthia invited me to write a guest post for her blog about some aspect of writing mysteries, I knew immediately what I wanted to write about. Tension.

The trick to writing a good mystery or thriller is to have plenty of tension. Heck, that’s the trick to writing any good book, period.

But how do you get that tension? Here are some things that work for me:

Grab them by the throat

You start right out of the gate, like these first sentences:

•...