What Is Suspense?

If you talk to any ten editors and ask each one about the "key elements" they are looking for in a manuscript, you're likely to get ten different answers. 

At the end of the day - when that all-important decision to take on a book is made - it's really a matter of many elements working together, so it's probably impossible to say that any one element of genre fiction is more important than the others. BUT...in terms of making that first cut, one of the main criteria I use is SUSPENSE.

The question, of course, is "What is suspense?"  It's one of those terms that's bandied around a lot. Mysteries that aren't quite "mysteries" in the traditional sense are often labeled "novels of suspense." But can I define it in a helpful way?  Hmmm, let's give it a try.

In its most basic sense, suspense is that quality of a book that makes you want to keep reading. The suspense is usually tied in to unanswered questions of some sort: What is this character behaving this way?  What exactly did that event mean?  Where did those missing jewels go?  This is why it is essential that manuscripts raise more questions than they answer, particularly in the first half. This is also the reason that backstory in the first couple of chapters kills so many manuscripts - if there's mystery about the protagonist, where s/he's come from and why, there's little reason to read on. (Sort of like dating, I think - the fun is figuring out the mysteries of your date.  Anyone who's an open book on a first date doesn't leave us much to think about.)

For me, suspense also connotes the unexpected.  I mean, this is why fiction is fiction - right?  Things have to happen that are beyond our everyday boring lives - the trick is to make events and people different enough to be compelling and interesting, but not SO different that disbelief kicks into gear and derails the reading experience.  I think this is why so many of our sleuths are (former) newspaper reports, or cops, or people in forensics - They see all kinds of crazy things that we in our comfortable worlds do not see or even imagine. The hobby-based mysteries get at this angle, too - We learn about a microcosm to which we've never paid much attention, and find it hard to believe that there are people for whom it is the macrocosm.

Finally, suspense is tied inextricably to pacing.  For me, a plot that starts slowly and progresses too leisurely is the worst sin that a manuscript can commit. Because this means to me the writer doesn't understand how to tell a story and is unable to experience his/her manuscript from the reader's point of view. Now, I will admit that in the later books of a series, plot and suspense often play second fiddle to a reunion of the reader's favorite characters - but I also think that it's precisely this perception that leads to so much fan disappointment and so many 1- and 2-star reviews on Amazon. Ultimately, even if readers love particular characters, they need a story to back them up.  The lives of the characters aren't really enough, unless your Alexander McCall Smith (and he's the exception rather than the rule). 

Ultimately, I think suspense means getting on with it.  Keeping the story moving.  Making the reader say "Just one more chapter before bed" - again and again. That sense of feeling incomplete and unresolved until you get the answers you need - the closure. I've read plenty of manuscripts by people who can build character, and plenty who can plot out a good story.  That quality of suspense, though - that feeling that I must keep reading this manuscript, even though I have a million things to do and I really don't have the time to keep reading - is much harder to find.  

 

 

Comments

[Jersey Jack]

In her book, How to Write Killer Fiction. Carolyn Wheat details the difference between mystery and suspense. In her view, a true suspense novel must have more than one POV -- so that the reader can know things other characters don't. Thus, you get Carolyn's ultimate description of suspense -- the reader saying to herself, No, no, no, don't go in that house -- don't open that door, don't make that call.

[Pepper Smith]

Interesting, but I'm not sure I agree with her description of a true suspense novel. It's possible to built quite intense suspense without having more than a first-person narrative.

[Jersey Jack]

I'm misquoting her about "true suspense", I'm sure. I've read great suspense in the first person, too, Pepper. But I think you can see her point: If you have the reader identifying with the character who's walking up those stairs, but also knowing that the killer is waiting for her up there -- that's a very special kind of suspense.

[Pepper Smith]

I suppose so. I just prefer not to know what's coming, just that something is coming. Knowing what's coming just feels too manipulative to me. JMHO.