“This suspense is killing me—I hope it will last”

Tension, uncertainty, doubt, doubtfulness, anticipation, expectation, expectancy, excitement, anxiety, nervousness, apprehension, apprehensiveness, strain — what do these words have in common?  They are all synonyms of the word SUSPENSE.

When we think of suspense in novels we immediately think of Thrillers, and Gothic stories, such as Henry Jame’s The Turn of The Screw or Stephen King’s The Shinning. I can literally taste the suspense in a novel such as Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. It is a page turner, a heart stopping romp of a read. But I have learnt over the years that good writing always contains suspense. Suspense in dialogue, suspense in what is omitted, suspense in relationships, in the weight of the words, the conflict between players….in fact a good novel is so full of suspense you can find it on every page, but it is often carefully disguised as one of the other synonyms above. The suspense can be so subtle; you don’t even realise you are being lured into the reader’s world. That is the anticipation of what’s going to happen next!

And it matters not which genre we find ourselves emersed within. When we examine the use of suspense in all fiction genres we find (ignoring the obvious thriller/horror/gothic) tension between lovers in ‘Romance’, or ‘Love’ the uncertainty before, and during momentous events in ‘Historical,’  excitement and expectancy in Comedy,  fear and anticipation in ‘Crime,’ uncertainty and foreboding in ‘Sci-Fi’ or ‘Fantasy’.

Take the gentlest of stories, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The suspense is killing me as I read the gentle banter between Lizzie and Darcy. Why can’t they just be straight with one another? Why is there all this misunderstanding, this pride, this prejudice?  Ah, it’s to keep the reader in suspense, to keep me turning the page. Will the infuriating Mr Darcy ever declare his love?  Can Lizzie actually look past her prejudices and see Darcy as he really is?  Jane Austen is the queen of irony and secrets, and she keeps the reader guessing until the final reveal, which is not quite The Block, but a wonderful reveal  that has you breathing out a sigh of relief that all’s well that ends well!

If you’d like to learn more about adding suspense into your writing, contact us about the next Mockingbird Writer’s Mastering Suspense Workshop which we hope to run twice a year. 

Lisa Cortez 2021