Yesterday we established that conflict is the source of suspense and tension, and what gives meaning to surprise. Combined with structure, we can create a plot with enough suspense and tension to keep our readers engaged.

In Raymond Obstfeld’s Fiction First Aid, he looks at the intersection of conflict, suspense and plot, taking it act by act in the three-act structure. This week, we’ll take a look at his structure for creating suspense.

Obstfeld defines suspense creation as “a series of . . . promise-payoff scenes.” In act I, the setup, we establish the conflicts and the stakes to create suspense. Says Obstfeld:

• Plot conflict. This focuses on what the characters are pursuing. It could be a romantic relationship, money, a new job, an education—anything they think will make them happier.
• Character conflict. This focuses on the internal/emotional problems that get in the way of the characters achieving what they think will make them happier. In fact, this conflict may involve the characters pursuing the wrong goal, one that the reader realizes won’t make them happier.
• Stakes. This focuses on the intensity with which the plot conflict affects the characters.

Now I’ll turn it over to you. How do these elements work to create suspense in the first quarter of a book?

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Yesterday, Deb Salisbury left a comment that’s worth discussing (or “foreblogging,” as I’ve heard it):

Sigh. I foreshadow until I’m afraid of telegraphing, but my crit partners complain about not seeing the surprise coming. I’m doing something wrong. ={

Perhaps, perhaps not, Deb. I’ve been there, too. (If one critique partner pegs the killer by page 30 and another says that the surprise reveal was unfulfilling because it wasn’t foreshadowed, which one is right?) Naturally, there are detriments to foreshadowing too heavily:

(You only have to watch 15 seconds to get the message; you don’t have to actually learn the bball technique.)

I watched a movie recently where every time a “little fact” was mentioned, I could see the plot twist they thought they were “foreshadowing.” (“I don’t swim,” says one character. I called it—she was going to fall out of the boat and the lead would have to save her. Took about 30 minutes to get there.) Maybe I’ve just seen too many movies and thought about these things too much, but total predictability is definitely not our goal as writers.

Or, to go back to our basketball analogy:

So, what’s the writing equivalent of a no-look pass? I don’t think a reader has to see a surprise coming. But I think that once the surprise is sprung, readers should be able to remember (ideally) or go back and find the clues you’ve been planted along the way.

In The Plot Thickens, Noah Lukeman gives one example of setting up a surprise—specifically, a secret:

For the secret to be used for suspenseful effect, we have to know there is a secret; Norman Bates’s mother is alluded to in shadowy fragments; in Casablanca Ilsa flat out reveals there is something she cannot tell Rick; in the whodunits, we know from the long looks the staff exchange with each other that someone is not saying something. (137)

Conversely, some surprises don’t actually have to be heavily foreshadowed: if you really can’t foreshadow because none of the POV characters have enough information or interactions to come across foreshadowing, or if the surprise is a complicating incident of a level of conflict.

Again, predictability is not a virtue in most storytelling. It’s not a bad thing to surprise your readers. But it is a delicate balance with foreshadowing and betrayal. Make sure your readers have all the pieces your characters do—but beating your readers over the head with the coming surprise is a good way to ruin it.

What do you think? What’s good foreshadowing for a surprise?

Oh, the sagging middle. The bane of most Americans’ existence. And also tough for writers .

The sagging middle is where we can start to feel a little lost. Even if we’ve done a good job establishing conflicts and the stakes in the first part of the story, sometimes the middle has us feeling like we’re running in circles or spinning our wheels. Are our characters making progress, or are all these obstacles we put in their way (because you are putting obstacles in their way, right?) starting to make them wander aimlessly?

In Fiction First Aid, Raymond Obstfeld acknowledges that this part of the book is a challenge—as we try to make the story more difficult for the characters, it’s often more difficult for us.

But he also offers a structural solution. He explains that Act II is The Complication where we “increase [the] suspense by complicating [the] plot through increasing stakes and/or decreasing [the] ability of [the] character to achieve [his/her] goal.”

So in Act I, we established the stakes—whether the character will lose his job or let a killer go free if the hero fails. In Act II, we increase the negative consequences of failure—the character will go to jail or the killer will go on a rampage if the hero fails.

Also, we can “inhibit [the characters'] ability to get what they want.” The guy clinging to his job tries to do something to impress his boss, but it backfires and ruins a major project. The hero after a killer gets suspended from the force/agency/whatever after his drive takes him just a little too far.

Interestingly, many plotting methods and structures have specific events designed to accomplish these things. In Larry Brooks’s Story Structure, for example, Act II contains two “pinch points” that are designed to raise the stakes by showing us just how bad the villain is. Even the Mid-Point is designed to help with this, showing the hero more to the story, changing the way he views the world.

Simply establishing suspense in Act I isn’t enough. We have to build on it in Act II to keep our readers reading—and hooked.

What do you think? What other ways can we increase the suspense and keep the tension high in Act II?

Photo credit: Todd Stadler

Why are suspense, tension and surprise all so important? We’ve established that suspense and tension draw the readers along through your story, and compel them to keep reading. But it’s more than just making readers read, and rewarding them (with surprise sometimes)—it’s making them want to read your book (and your next one).

James Scott Bell highlights one reason why these elements are so important: “Modulating tension is one of the keys to writing fiction” (Revision And Self-Editing, 82). We started off our series with a quote from agent Noah Lukeman: “Suspense, more than any other element, affects the immediate, short term experience of the work” (The Plot Thickens, 119).

But Lukeman further explains why being conscious of tension and suspense are so important:

The presence of suspense is . . . a feat and shows promise, since it indicates that the writer is writing more for the reader than for himself. (120)

I think it’s easy—and for many of us, important—to draft for ourselves. I’m told Stephen King says you should write the first draft “with the door closed”—with little to no input or interference from others, so that you can get out the story you’re trying to tell. Remember the delight, the way you relish the scenes that you’ve been waiting for your whole book long?

But when we’re ready to open that door, to share your writing with an eye to improving it, it’s not about what you loved writing and what you still love reading anymore. It’s about what someone else—an agent, an editor, a customer in a bookstore—will love reading, what will suck them in and drag them on a relentless, compelling journey with your characters. Focusing on the experience of your readers shows that you’re not just in it to entertain yourself and a few friends—you’re here to tell a story, to get people reading—to entertain.

What do you think? Why are suspense, tension and surprise so important?

Photo credit: Aart von Bezooyen

Eventually, all suspense and tension must be released—since anticipation is the source of suspense and tension, it’s probably not fair to readers not to eventually satisfy that anticipation. Naturally, this will happen to some extent throughout the story as we build up anticipation for events along the way. But the overarching suspense of the story reaches its ultimate payoff in the last part of the story, in the final act.

In fact, Raymond Obstfeld refers to Act III as The Payoff in Fiction First Aid. Here, we have to satisfy all that suspense we’ve worked so hard to build—and that payoff had better be commensurate with the anticipation, or our readers will feel cheated.

Obstfeld says, “The key to a good payoff is not to give the reader what you think they want” (55). That’s not to say that the hero and heroine shouldn’t get together in a romance (they should), or that the hero can’t catch the villain in a thriller (he should). It does mean that giving the reader exactly what you promised all along and only that is not enough to reward the suspense you’ve created for that goal.

This is a common reason why we don’t like the way a book ends. I read a book last year where the entire book was about the heroine learning about others and herself—but at the end, she went back and did the same thing she’d been planning to all along (and it was rushed). All along, I was promised some revelatory, life-changing experience, but in the end, the character didn’t change.

After spending hundreds of pages with these characters being thwarted in their quests, yes, they have to see some measure of success in the end (unless this is a tragedy, I guess). But that hard-won success probably shouldn’t just be the exact thing they’ve looked for all along. Take Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indy is reluctantly dragged into looking for the Holy Grail, which he doesn’t really believe exists. What does he find in the end? (Yeah, he finds the grail—but is that all?)

A good payoff is both unexpected in some way and commensurate with the suspense the author has created.

What do you think? How else do we see suspense in Act III?

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