Keep Me in Suspense, Please!

Some years ago I was working as a marketing communications manager for a small IT company when the handwriting was on the wall for a merger and layoffs. This happened around the time I wanted to switch gears and go into writing. (I had no idea then that the next step along my career path would be to work for Scholastic during their Harry Potter heyday.)

While crafting an exit strategy and career transition, I read writing magazines cover to cover and decided I should attend a writing conference. I chose Wesleyan Writers Conference because it was nearby and because of their stellar offerings. When I was accepted, conference manager Anne Greene wrote on the acceptance letter, “I hope you can attend.” Never underestimate what a kind word can do for a struggling writer. I took encouragement and set off.

That year one of Wesleyan’s workshop leaders was acclaimed novelist Madison Smart Bell, now an agent with Ayesha Pande and the author of Narrative Design, a delightfully complex book on story structure. One of Bell’s first questions was, “Do you think suspense is necessary in storytelling?” Bell posited the question to a group of people interested in the craft and art of literary fiction, so his question initially met with silence. But the unspoken answer was that suspense was more of a ploy writers used to buoy a story that didn’t have much else going for it. Over the ensuing days, Bell proved that suspense is essential in all good writing.

However much we want to avoid being on tenterhooks in real life, we like it in stories. It’s safer there. But suspense is important for another reason, one that relates to how we define the word. The dictionary definition is “a feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen”. For storytelling, we could also say that suspense is the intentional withholding and revealing of key elements—information, an event, a change in a character—to create a richer, more gratifying story that is elevated by the very technique we might otherwise relegate to lesser works.

Although we might agree that suspense is necessary to story, we don’t always know how to achieve suspense that works effectively. To use this craft element well, we can ask these questions: 

• Who in our story will do the work of revealing and withholding?
• What form will the reveal and concealment take?
• Where in the story should we hold back, and where should we reveal?
• When in a scene do we withhold and reveal?
• Why is the revelation being withheld or shown?
• How much do we reveal and withhold?

While suspense doesn’t equal surprise, one outcome of effective suspense is surprise. A great example appears in Career of Evil, an upmarket crime fiction novel by J. K. Rowling, writing under the pen name Robert Galbraith. We might figure out who done it or even why before the story ends, but there’s still a surprise at the close. Here’s how the writer used suspense in this instance:

• Who: The main character and perpetrator share the reveal, which further solidifies the main character’s reputation as a private investigator.
• What: The perpetrator appears as a reliable character who is anything but.
• Where: The writer showed the perpetrator early on but in disguise.
• When: The ultimate reveal is at the very end of the novel.
• Why the revelation is withheld or shown: In this case, the writer both showed the person and kept them hidden. Not even the person closest to the perpetrator had any idea who the individual really was.
• How much information is given: Just enough information is provided for the reveal to make sense and not make the reader feel cheated, as when a character comes out of nowhere to claim responsibility. 

Leave it to a writer of such consummate skill as Rowling to provide a contemporary example of suspense. And did you notice that I hinted early on at the person I would use as the example without saying so? It’s always good to practice what one posits.

Tip: Effective suspense takes practice. Create a short scene between two people, one with a secret, one who suspects there’s a secret but isn’t sure what it is or who knows it. Use the above questions to render the scene more than one way before deciding how to present it.

Happy writing!

Adele Annesi’s SPD bestselling novel is What She Takes Away (Bordighera Press, 2023). She also coauthored Now What? The Creative Writer's Guide to Success After the MFA and was managing editor of Southern Literary Review. Adele received her MFA in creative writing from Fairfield University. Her long-running blog for writers is Word for Words. Her podcast is Adele Annesi on Writing.