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mary rosenblum
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Hello all!
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mary rosenblum
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Welcome to our Tuesday
Lunchbox Forum.
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mary rosenblum
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Happy Halloween. I hope you're
enjoying a lovely fall day.
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mary rosenblum
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This is the Tuesday Forum with
me Mary Rosenblum LR Web Editor, fiction and nonfiction writer. We're
talking about creating suspense…what else on Halloween? If you're new here,
remember that you need to click on the Ask a Question button or the word
bubble next to the red question mark at the top of the screen, or use the
ask a question icon in order to ask a question. Your regular send bar won't
reach me! You can also type /ask in front of your question in your regular
send bar to reach me.
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mary rosenblum
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Suspense is, of course, a
major part of fiction writing...and personal narrative nonfiction.
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mary rosenblum
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It is one of the reasons
readers keep reading.
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mary rosenblum
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It can be a more low-key type
of suspense, where readers hold their breaths hoping the romantic couple
don't allow themselves to be torn apart by misunderstandings.
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mary rosenblum
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Will the romance survive?
Fail?
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mary rosenblum
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In mystery, it's the 'will the
villain be revealed'?
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mary rosenblum
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And of course, it becomes more
intense in more dramatic fiction where the POV may well end up dead as
he/she manuvers through the maze of plot.
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mary rosenblum
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The challenge to the author is
how to create that suspense on the page.
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mary rosenblum
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Suspense is composed of two
major components: lack of information and risk.
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mary rosenblum
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What could happen?
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mary rosenblum
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That is the risk.
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mary rosenblum
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In the romance, it could be
that the lovers part and never get together.
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mary rosenblum
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In the horror story, it could
be that the POV will get torn apart by monters.
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mary rosenblum
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In the mystery, it could be
that the murder will go free.
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mary rosenblum
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The lack of information can be
on the part of either the readers or the characters or both.
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mary rosenblum
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In the romance, readers may
know the real story, but the lovers have received misinformation that
drives them apart.
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mary rosenblum
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In the mystery, of course, you
want your readers in the dark until the revelation.
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mary rosenblum
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In the horror story, you want
the readers ready to leap out of their seats, peeping nervously around
every corner.
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mary rosenblum
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This is the Tuesday Forum with
me Mary Rosenblum LR Web Editor, fiction and nonfiction writer. We're
talking about creating suspense…what else on Halloween? If you're new here,
remember that you need to click on the Ask a Question button or the word
bubble next to the red question mark at the top of the screen, or use the
ask a question icon in order to ask a question. Your regular send bar won't
reach me! You can also type /ask in front of your question in your regular
send bar to reach me.
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mary rosenblum
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So as writer, you need to
mislead the reader, withhold critical information, but at the same time,
provide enough that the readers know what MIGHT loom ahead.
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mary rosenblum
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Just as movies use background
music and camera angles to enhance the suspensful moments
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mary rosenblum
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you do the same things with
words.
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illegible
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screenwriters use foreshadowing.
Is that the same thing?
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mary rosenblum
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That's one technique,
illegible.
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mary rosenblum
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Foreshadowing is the technique
of planting clues that either point the readers' attention in the right
direction...
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mary rosenblum
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(we notice a strange blue
light flickering in the upper window of the abandoned mansion)
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mary rosenblum
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or provide a 'reason' for
revelations later in the story (mystery clues which explain the denoument
but are carefully hidden from the reader)
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mary rosenblum
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Let's look at the tools for
creating suspense from a simple action scene.
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mary rosenblum
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Carolyn marches up the walk to
the old, abandoned mansion she has been commissioned to sell for the dead
woman's estate.
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mary rosenblum
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She opens the door and steps
inside. Cobwebs festoon the corners and breakfast dishes are still on the
dining room table.
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mary rosenblum
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She wrinkles her nose. What a
mess. She's going to have to hire a cleaning crew.
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mary rosenblum
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She hears a noise upstairs and
cautiously climbs to the second floor. She's scared of racoons, hopes that
some animal isn't living up here.
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mary rosenblum
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This is not particularly
suspensful.
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mary rosenblum
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But we can sure turn it into a
nice Halloween adventure. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Three tools will work well
here. One is description.
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mary rosenblum
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Another is foreshadowing.
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mary rosenblum
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A third is what I call
'spotlighting'. That is our equivalent of spooky music and camera angle.
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mary rosenblum
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Let's start with
foreshadowing.
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mary rosenblum
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We'll back up a bit. Carolyn
has just been contacted by the estate of Lady Burroughs, and gets to sell
the mansion. This could be a GREAT start for her new real estate business.
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mary rosenblum
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She's excited. She drives by
the house to check it out. It's discouraging.
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mary rosenblum
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Overgrown yard, it needs
painting, the old girl was a recluse and this is a mess.
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mary rosenblum
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As she starts to get back into
her car, she thinks she sees a flickering blue glow in the upstairs window,
like a TV perhaps.
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mary rosenblum
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But when she looks again, the
window is dark. A car drives down the street and she decides that it was
the reflection of the headlights on the glass.
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mary rosenblum
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Ha. We readers know better.
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mary rosenblum
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We could add more foreshadowing
if she mentions to the checker at the supermarket next day that she will
sell the mansion
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mary rosenblum
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and the checker tells how her
grandmother knew Lady Burroughs and said she sold her soul to the
devil...would never let her trick or treat there
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mary rosenblum
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or even eat the grapes that
grew on the archway over the front walk.
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mary rosenblum
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And our POV, Carolyn is not a
Stupid Character so she does NOT go visit the house at midnight, folks. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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She goes in the middle of the
afternoon, because the place creeps her out, too.
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mary rosenblum
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And here you use your
description tool...the place has all the attributes of the haunted
house...cobwebs, dishes left as if a meal had been abandoned hastily...
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mary rosenblum
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whatever other weird and kind
of scary details you want to use, but we're not near the climax yet, so you
don't want to make things TOO obvious
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mary rosenblum
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here, just increase the uneasy
sense of 'not right'.
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mary rosenblum
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She hears that noise. It's
daytime. She's a grown up. She tells herself she has to go check the
upstairs, see if she needs to call an exterminator.
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mary rosenblum
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And here you can use that
'highlighting'.
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mary rosenblum
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She starts up the stairs, they
creak. She realizes that some creaks are BEHIND her, as if someone is
following her.
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mary rosenblum
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So she turns to look.
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mary rosenblum
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Let's cue the spooky music
now. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Carolyn clutched the rail,
turning slowly, as if the joints in her neck had all rusted. Bannister.
Cobwebs. Dusty magenta carpet. Sunlight from the broken window
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mary rosenblum
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glittered golden on dustmotes.
Silly. Her shoulders sagged and she laughed.
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mary rosenblum
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The sound shattered the thick
silence and she bit her lip.
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mary rosenblum
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So we have the slow turn.
--something is there--- But it's not. And she laughs in relief.
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mary rosenblum
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You have that sense of slow
motion, time slows down, there is something back there.
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mary rosenblum
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But there isn't. Sudden
release.
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mary rosenblum
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And then, right away, that
laugh 'shatters' the silence. And we're reminded that this is still a
spooky house.
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mary rosenblum
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This is the Tuesday Forum with
me Mary Rosenblum LR Web Editor, fiction and nonfiction writer. We're
talking about creating suspense…what else on Halloween? If you're new here,
remember that you need to click on the Ask a Question button or the word
bubble next to the red question mark at the top of the screen, or use the
ask a question icon in order to ask a question. Your regular send bar won't
reach me! You can also type /ask in front of your question in your regular
send bar to reach me.
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mary rosenblum
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Suspense tends to really grip
the readers when you add a point of tension (the creaking on the stairs
behind her), then release it, add a new one, release it, building to the
climax.
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mary rosenblum
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(It wasn't a racoon
upstairs...we all know that by the time she discovers what it was, and
we're holding our breaths waiting to see just how awful it is!)
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mary rosenblum
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So you essentially use
everyday actions...examing an abandoned house with an eye to selling it...
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mary rosenblum
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then use foreshadowing,
description, and 'highlighting' to create an atmosphere of looming threat.
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mary rosenblum
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The biggest problem novice
fiction writers tend to have with suspense is that they reveal too much too
soon.
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mary rosenblum
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If we foreshadow too much
here, so that by the time she enters the gate, we KNOW that the old gal was
really a vampire, say, then we think our Carolyn is a stupid character who
deserves to get eaten.
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mary rosenblum
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Get this one out of the gene
pool, thank you.
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mary rosenblum
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Here we have no
suspense...readers are just twiddling their thumbs waiting to see how long
it will take this fool to figure out what's going on here.
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mary rosenblum
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So you need to foreshadow
deftly. Not with a sledgehammer, thank you. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Same thing with the romance or
the mystery. If you plant too many clues, it's just a matter of 'how long
will it take this stupid sleuth to figure it out'.
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mary rosenblum
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If you plant too many clues
about the misunderstood lover's past, the heroine seems incredibly dense
not to realize that he's being framed by the evil twin brother.
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mary rosenblum
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That is the most common
weakness I see.
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mary rosenblum
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Part of that is simply getting
a feel for how little you can plant in order to make the reader 'get it' at
the proper moment.
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mary rosenblum
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It's generally way less than
you thought. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Although I do see the story
where you don't have a clue what is coming before the monster pops out of
the closet.
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mary rosenblum
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There, you simply elicit a
puzzled 'huh'? from the reader rather than a leap of fear.
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mary rosenblum
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You haven't primed that reader
to be scared yet.
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mary rosenblum
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Remember this if you are
writing something dark...the readers will supply a MUCH scarier monster
than you can.
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mary rosenblum
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We all have our own boogeyman
under the bed and we know what that thing looks like.
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mary rosenblum
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YOUR boogeyman may make me
roll my eyes. ooooh...that headless slime thing is soooo yesterday.
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mary rosenblum
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My boogeyman may make you roll
your eyes. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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HP Lovecraft wrote some of the
scariest stories out there, way back in the thirties.
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mary rosenblum
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(I still don't like to read
him if I'm in, say, an empty building on a dark day)
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mary rosenblum
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But you never SEE the monster.
You get hints.
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mary rosenblum
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Characters babble incoherently
about what they saw as they die.
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mary rosenblum
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But he lets us fill in the
blanks with that moster under our beds and it is highly effective.
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mary rosenblum
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Flooding the scene with buckets
of gore desensitizes the reader quickly. What? Another severed head?
Doesn't this thing every try something new?
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mary rosenblum
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That is not suspense.
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mary rosenblum
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That's shock impact and we get
numb very quickly. (Or revolted and quit reading)
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mary rosenblum
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Suspense is the ANTICIPATION
of a shock.
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mary rosenblum
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Think of it like this. If you
have to stick yourself with a pin, you anticipate the pain and it hurts a
lot.
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mary rosenblum
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If you prick yourself on a pin
left in that new hem while you're getting dressed, you say out, but hardly
notice the sting.
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mary rosenblum
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It's the anticipation that
makes the pain seem worse. Think about going to the doctor to get a shot or
to get your tooth filled.
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mary rosenblum
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That's suspense...well, it's
dread because you know what's coming, but if you don't know...it's susense.
:-)
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mary rosenblum
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This is the Tuesday Forum with
me Mary Rosenblum LR Web Editor, fiction and nonfiction writer. We're
talking about creating suspense…what else on Halloween? If you're new here,
remember that you need to click on the Ask a Question button or the word
bubble next to the red question mark at the top of the screen, or use the
ask a question icon in order to ask a question. Your regular send bar won't
reach me! You can also type /ask in front of your question in your regular
send bar to reach me.
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onepozy
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If you don't give enough info,
might you loose the reader, is less always better than more?
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mary rosenblum
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Not really, one. As with most
things in writing, you're reaching for that fine balance point between too
little and too much.
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mary rosenblum
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As a rule, less is better than
more up to a point. While readers are pretty forgiving if they have to
stretch to figure out what is going on
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mary rosenblum
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if they don't have a clue then
your climax is going to get you a 'huh'?
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mary rosenblum
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But too much DOES flatten the
suspense, whether it's a romance or a thriller or a horror novel.
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mary rosenblum
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So I suggest you try for less,
give it to some readers after you have a solid draft, and ask questions
after to make sure they got it.
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mary rosenblum
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Reader feedback is really your
only way to know if you are doing 'too much' or 'too little'.
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dim writer
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Do you have to keep repeating
the clues?
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mary rosenblum
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Definitely not, dim. We ALL
tend to do that when we start out. Maybe they didn't get it...let me remind
them...
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mary rosenblum
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You don't want to do 'lowest
common denominator' foreshadowing here where you plant enough clues
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mary rosenblum
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that your dimmest, sloppiest,
most careless reader gets it.
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mary rosenblum
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If you do that, your regular
readers figured it out in chapter two. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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You will lose some casual,
careless, or sloppy readers. Oh well.
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illegible
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Say more about points of
tension? telling or showing?
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mary rosenblum
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Depends on what you're
writing, illegible.
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mary rosenblum
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In third person, showing is
nearly always stronger than telling especially for those points of tension
like our
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mary rosenblum
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climb up the stairs when the
creaks came from farther down the stairs.
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mary rosenblum
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As she turns slowly, her neck
stiff...we are thinking 'something is back there and she is scared to death
she's going to see a monster.'
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mary rosenblum
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If the author told us this,
the tension would be weaker.
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mary rosenblum
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Carolyn turned around slowly
on the stairs, her neck stiff with dread that she would see a monster there
leering up at her.
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mary rosenblum
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Ho hum.
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mary rosenblum
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Remember...if you put the
reader on the stairs, then that reader is at risk, too. :-)
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mary rosenblum
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Generally, the scarier the
story, the more you want to strive for zero narrative distance and put the
reader right there, just a much at risk as your MC.
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mary rosenblum
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BUT you can do suspense just
fine in first person.
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mary rosenblum
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You aren't going to create the
same kind of tension points.
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mary rosenblum
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Since your POV is telling us
what is happening, you'll have to work a bit harder at foreshadowing.
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mary rosenblum
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I see more 'stupid character
syndrome' in first person suspense than in third.
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mary rosenblum
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"I opened the door and
looked in. All these dark stains spotted the wall around the old table. I
scratched at the rusty brown stains. I wondered what kind of animal had
soiled the wall.
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mary rosenblum
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Duh. Get that one out of the
gene pool, too. Cue the monsters.
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dim writer
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Like running from the monster in
high heels.Lol
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mary rosenblum
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Yeah, dim, or going down in
the subbasement with a candle in a storm to see what's growling.
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mary rosenblum
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Remember, if you are smart
enough to figure out that the stains on the wall might happen to be blood,
so is your character.
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mary rosenblum
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If you want to create
suspense, give your MC GOOD reason to think they are not bloodstains.
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mary rosenblum
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Or to think they have a reason
to be there. The readers will doubt that reason, don't worry.
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mary rosenblum
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Suspense is harder to create
believably in first person because of that stupid character issue.
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mary rosenblum
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If you're not talking life and
death...say romance...then it's very doable.
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mary rosenblum
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If you want a haunted
house-monster in the basement-scary story, I'd think twice about first
person.
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mary rosenblum
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Lovecraft uses it, so read his
stories if you want some good examples of how to create suspense in
narrative form.
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mary rosenblum
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Even his third person stories
are in narrative third -- that was the literary style of the time.
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mary rosenblum
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But even if your suspense is
simply building to the climax of 'will the lovers get together or part
forever' make your first person POV's misunderstandings believable.
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mary rosenblum
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Readers do not love stupid
characters.
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mary rosenblum
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Any last questions before we
end here?
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illegible
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What's narrative third vs.
third?
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mary rosenblum
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I was contrasting narrative
third with limited third, illegible.
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mary rosenblum
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In narrative third, the author
tells the story.
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mary rosenblum
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In limited third, the story is
told through the perceptions of a POV (point of view) character.
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aelle
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So how do you decide which to
use? Foreshadowing, desc or h
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mary rosenblum
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You'd probably use a mix of
all three, aelle, using whichever tool fit the scene at the moment.
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mary rosenblum
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In our real estate agent in a
haunted house example, foreshadowing set us up to expect something, the
description showed us a spooky looking house, and that 'highlighting' put
something on the stairs behind her.
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seigfried007
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Ah, but which is more annoying:
the stupid character that couldn't possibly ditch her heels to run faster
or the character that mysteriously knows everything based on clues never
shared with the reader?
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mary rosenblum
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They're equally annoying,
seig! Feed them both to the monsters and try for someone more realistic!
:-)
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mary rosenblum
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Thanks for coming all!
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mary rosenblum
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Join us tomorrow, same time
and place
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mary rosenblum
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for our casual chat, where we
just get together to talk.
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mary rosenblum
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I'll post the transcripts in
the usual place: Writing Craft: Forum Transcripts.
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dim writer
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Happy Haloween Mary
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mary rosenblum
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And happy Halloween to you
all, too!
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mary rosenblum
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Happy pumpkins.
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seigfried007
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Glad to know I'm not the only
one who thinks the gene pool of characters ought to be thinned once in
awhile >;-D btw, Happy Halloween, Mary
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mary rosenblum
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Oh yeah, got to keep the
monsters fat.
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mary rosenblum
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Have a good week, all!
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