The Suspense Is Killing Me!

Five simple tips on how you can ramp-up the tension in your writing.

Here's a simple equation for keen writers of horrors and thrillers:

Tension + more tension = Suspense

In other words, the more tension you incorporate into your narrative – into your prose – then the more the reader will be biting their fingernails to find out what happens next.

So how is it done? Well, funnily enough this little illusion of suspense is easier to achieve that what we may realise. In writing, we may not have a chilling soundtrack and haunted actors to send a shiver down our spines – but we do have words, and punctuation. And that is all you need. Allow me to explain.

1) Controlling Pace

Good pacing – how fast or slow something is happening – is essential in any piece of writing, be it fiction or non-fiction. When we are trying to build tension however, moments leading up to moments of reveal should put the reader at the edge of their seat, without feeling dragged-out and prolonged. To achieve this, use a variety of short and long sentences in your writing. Short sentences are fantastic for building tension – they are quick blasts of information, choppy like ragged breathing; whereas longer sentences can relieve this tension, and, at times, show disorganisation and – from the character's viewpoint – feeling overwhelmed.

To summarise:

– Short sentences speed things up during intense moments

– Long sentences slow things down to make the reader hold their breath, wondering what's next

2) Utilise Punctuation

Sounds simple, doesn't it? But maybe what you writing is missing is a strong and consistent use of the correct punctuation. Ellipses, for example, is great (when not overused) for building anticipation and leaving the reader hanging before a reveal. (Just don't do this at the end of a chapter – because that's really annoying. At the end of an entire novel is a nightmare). Dashes are a great way to show sudden interruptions in dialogue, description, action and thought, and exclamation marks (again, don't overuse them!) are perfect for when emotions are sky-high.

3) Limit the Point of View

Sometimes it's best not to give away all the information. By limiting what readers know, they'll feel more suspense as they wait to learn what happens next. To achieve this, use the first person perspective, and – to spice things up a little – make the narrator even a little unreliable.

4) Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony is a simple yet 100% effective tool for building suspense – purely because it gives us, as readers, an insight into something the characters don't know, and will leave us reading-on to find out if the truth will become universal in the fictional realm of the story. This one will certainly leave readers shouting at the pages, or even the screen – BBC One's The Traitors is a sublime examples of how dramatic irony can be utilised to its full suspense-dripping potential. As viewers, we know who the traitors are, and we'll keep watching – not to unravel a mystery, but to root for characters (or, in this case, real people) and await their reactions when they learn the truth.

5) Cliffhangers

Entirely different from coat-hangers –  which is a matter or retail, not writing – the cliffhanger is possibly one of the most overused techniques to build suspense. This is when a chapter, episode, series or film (etc, etc) ends with a major question, or just before the killer is revealed, or just as our favourite character is about to fall off the edge of the cliff... You get the idea. This said, it can be used effectively when cheesiness is avoided and the implementation isn't jarring or just plain annoying. Because nobody wants to left feeling confused and annoyed, and then realise this entire thing makes no sense and is only prolonged for the producers' already deep pockets... (Reference Lost...).

Did you find these tips helpful? Do you have any rules of incorporating more tension into your writing? Feel free to comment below!

Thanks for reading!