Anna asked David Wong:

Hi David! While I was discussing JDATE and TBIFOS with a friend (we're both writers so we were analyzing the books in that mindset) and he said "I dream that one day I will be able to control the delicate yo yo of audience tension as effectively as david wong." So I would like to ask: how DO you build tension and suspense so well? And do you have any advice on that for aspiring writers?

David Wong If you took a class on this I suspect it would be full of stuff about establishing threats early and letting danger linger a certain amount of time and raising stakes and remembering to remind the reader of the threat every x number of pages, etc. But that's focused entirely on the wrong thing.

95% of this is making the reader like and care about the characters. If you do a good enough job of that, you can build unbearable tension over whether or not a lonely grandmother's son remembers her birthday. You don't need monsters and doomsday scenarios. If you read my last one (Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits) look at how hard I work in the first few pages to make you sympathize with the woman who's being pursued by the bad guy.

But really, being able to make that human connection with people, to bring out what's lovable about a character and relay it to the reader, that's 95% of writing in general. All of the other stuff I think you kind of figure out along the way, and that's a common note from my editors (things like, I think you should stretch out this part to increase the tension, or the reader needs a break here before the next thing happens, should add some levity).

flag