How To: Build Suspense

I’ll just answer the first half of this ask for today, and I’ll probably come back to the second half of your question later. :)

Building suspense is a key component to any work of fiction, without suspense the antagonist would appear to be useless to the reader as there is no sense of immediate threat. Be open to the idea of the fate of your protagonist (and possibly your antagonist) hanging in the balance, only for one-minute detail which had been forgotten about at a much earlier stage in the novel to suddenly tip the scales and cause all chaos to break loose. 

Here are some elements that you can use in your writing 

1. Cross the Line
2. Be Open to Multiple Endings
3. Hiding Information and Mastering the Betrayal
4. Raising the Stakes

1. Cross the Line

By this point, you must be pretty sure about who your villain is and how your villain behaves around your protagonist. As the writer, you must know every convoluted detail and reasoning behind your antagonist’s actions (I am exaggerating - you basically just need to know how your antagonist works as a human being). If you want to learn more about how to develop your antagonist, click here. 

Crossing the line basically means when your villain pushes its moral alignment to the limit, where they get so desperate and frustrated with the protagonist that they force themselves to do the morally unthinkable. Something so bad that it deeply resonates with your reader, the protagonist, and if you are writing a redemption arc for your villain, themselves. 

There are multiple ways that your antagonist could ‘cross the line’. I know I keep using that phrase but I think that’s the best way to describe this moment in gradually increasing suspense. For example, it really depends on what your villain’s personal beliefs are. This could be anything ranging from the fact that your villain is against intentionally killing civilians/bystanders (although this doesn’t have to link back to their personal beliefs instead they could have a fear of blood, that way it makes your villain’s limits looks more egotistical and less sympathetic to your reader). Additionally, your villain could refuse using certain weaponry.

So, by ‘crossing the line’ this would include betraying deep personal beliefs  - something that before this seemed impossible to the reader. This is why it’s fundamentally important that you use this situation towards the end of your novel, perhaps in the lead-up to the climax. This tells your reader that your antagonist isn’t afraid of crossing their boundaries, and makes the reader worry for their characters as they know that the characters’ are at the antagonist’s mercy. Thus, adding to the gradually increasing suspense that would result in your novel-ending showdown at the end of the novel. 

However, be sure to only break your antagonist’s limits a maximum of two and, if you’re really stretching, three times. Because, at the end of the day, whilst it may be important to challenge your characters’ beliefs - don’t go too far so as to make your readers feel as though your characters are unrealistic and truly untruthful to their nature. Make sure your readers believe that this really is the only option for your characters, whether that be the antagonist or the protagonist betraying their fundamental moral judgement. In summary: keep it balanced.

2. Be Open to Multiple Endings

As a writer, you don’t always need to tell your reader everything. At least, not obviously. The key to increasing suspense is from allowing your readers to not know how this story could end. The best way to do this is to think of possible alternatives to your antagonist’s plan/your protagonist’s solution and foreshadow that any one of these situations could occur. 

For example, if your protagonist were to be in search of a special ancient tool that would result in the ultimate saving of their planet. However, there could also be the potential that this tool could result in its destruction and actually make matters worse. Or, this could be the revelation that one of the protagonist’s most trusted friends turns out to have some connection to the antagonist which would inevitably lead to either the antagonist or protagonist downfall. How you do that is completely up to you - but the point is, always allow there to be more than one outcome to a storyline. 

The best way to do this is to make up a list of all the possible outcomes of a major event in the storyline that splinters off into subplots or something that defines the end of the story. Briefly outline what you would put in each scenario and then go over what the advantages and disadvantage would be of this scenario. If you don’t what to weigh up the pros and cons, you could read it aloud to yourself in its entirety and see what sits better with you. Personally, I have a gut instinct about this kind of thing when I’m considering endings or major events - but, if you don’t trust your instinct, go for the classic pros and cons list. 

Just remember - when in doubt, try killing someone off. That may sound like the most horrible thing in the world but trust me, try and write a course of events that would result in the death of a key character. Just make sure to build up to it first so your readers don’t want to grab you by the throat because of an unjustified death. This swiftly moves on to my next point. 

3. Hiding Information and Mastering the Betrayal

Additionally, to completely satisfy your reader with this surprise when you unveil these details, you would need to subtly add in hints throughout the novel. If you’re unsure how to do this, there’s no need to overthink it. The only rule is don’t make it too obvious, that would just spoil the ending for the reader too soon. 

Let’s go through some examples. To simply summarise this sort of situation, Character A overhears Character B speaking on the phone in a serious tone. Character A casually asks what’s going on and Character B, unbeknownst to the reader, lies to Character A.

Example #1:

“Who you talking to?” Character A’s voice suddenly appeared over Character B’s shoulder, Character B suddenly turned around and hurriedly spat a goodbye to the person on the other end of the phone. 

“Uh…” Character B hesitated, “Just-just no-one. Nothing interesting, nothing you’d be interested in anyway.” 

Character B laughed awkwardly and loudly in an attempt to fill the dead air between them, Character A stopped stirring their tea for a moment before kissing their teeth; a clear indication that they didn’t believe a word that just came out of Character B’s mouth. Character A nodded slowly and turned to leave, Character B watched and as if on instinct Character B began speaking again, determined to leave this situation without looking guilty. 

“It was just a short chat anyway - nothing important. You know, nothing important compared to what we’re doing,” They laughed again, Character A’s facial expression remained stoic. “You know, saving the world and all that.”

“Okay,” Character A finally said, “Just letting you know that there’s a meeting in the conference room in 10. That was all I wanted to ask.”

Now, as always, my examples are exaggerated. But I hope it’s obvious in this example that I was trying to show that this sort of “subtle” hinting is not effective if you wished to do a shocking reveal. This example tells a lot to the reader simply through body language and Character B’s internal monologue that they are clearly guilty and arousing immediate suspicion from Character A -despite the fact that Character B had not necessarily been confronted by Character A, however, Character B continued to declare their innocence even though it wasn’t prompted. Additionally, I’ve made it evident that by Character B stressing how not important the situation is, it’s clearly contrasted by the number of times they’ve repeated it and stressed it indicating to the reader that it actually may be important. Notice the contrast between this example and the following example.

Example #2:

“Who you talking to?” Character A’s voice suddenly appeared over Character B’s shoulder, Character B turned their head slightly and caught Character A’s eye. Character B smiled and then issued an apology to the person on their phone, saying that they’ll talk to them later.

“Take care, alright, bye.” Character B said, turning towards Character A. 

Character A raised their eyebrows, clearly indicating the good-natured curiosity and intrigue that was rooted inside their personality. 

“So?” Character A asked, trailing off deliberately for Character B to finish the sentence.

“Oh, it’s just the usual family business. Sandra…” They paused for a split second too long, “Well, you know what she’s like. Always worrying over one thing or the other. They send their love, by the way.”

“Aw, that’s nice.” Character A, reflected as they continued to stir their tea as they leaned against the kitchen counter. The sound of the spoon clinking against the sides of the mugs was the only thing that filled the room before Character A spoke again.

“Anyway. Conference room. Meeting in 10,” They said casually, “Going over the gameplan once more before tomorrow.

I hope in this example that it’s more obvious as to how to mask lies in your writing. Whilst this still isn’t extravagantly obvious, or too ridiculously secretive, it allows your readers to insinuate from this situation potential clues so as to hint at Character B’s betrayal. It establishes a sense of comradery between Character A and Character B. Along with the fact that it contrasts the prior example where Character B was giving unprompted information and in this example where Character B is simply giving information when asked for it - the pause between describing the nature of the phone call could indicate a possible lie within Character B. However, it is disguised cleverly - you do need to remember that if your character has been recruited as a double-agent or a traitor by the antagonist, they would probably need to be pretty good at lying or they wouldn’t have been approached by the antagonist. 

Again, keep a close eye when describing body language that could give it away to your readers and spoil the ending. 

4. Raising the Stakes

Don’t be afraid to throw some dilemmas into your critical climax in your novel. This doesn’t have to be anything too extravagant, it could just be the case of breaking their moral philosophy ethics or by introducing the aspects of a time constraint. 

For example, your antagonist could force your protagonist to save three people on the edge of the cliff who are all tied to a burning piece of rope to the cliff edge (morbid, I know, but just go with it for now). Of course, the protagonist only has time to save a maximum of two people, thus introducing a personal conundrum that could have devastating effects on your protagonist’s personalities/traits/mental health etc. in the future. This allows includes the effects on their relationships with the three characters, how would you feel if you had been chosen to be saved at the expense of someone else’s life? Make it even more complicated, the protagonist has to save one person from a couple. Whoever the protagonist chooses will be forced to live with the fact that they were chosen to live over their significant other - but why? Why does it have to be them? They would have to deal with the grief and the turmoil for the rest of their lives, maybe they would think that they didn’t deserve to live and that their significant other should be alive instead. Maybe one half of the couple insistently told them to save the other, whilst the other half did the exact opposite - it would cause the protagonist to be unable to make the right decision.

Additionally, continuing on from that horribly exaggerated scenario, it can result in a lose-lose situation. The hero could end up saving neither of them. Remember, the hero doesn’t always have to win in the end. 

Multi-tasking is also vital. The more high-priority things that the protagonist has to do, the more stretched out they will be. So, be prepared for your villain to have a few tricks up their sleeve. The stressed hero will have to come to the decision they can’t be in the same place at once, and that you could explore the fact that if they did attempt to do everything, it would just result in more disastrous results than if they hadn’t done anything. 

I hope this helps, Anon! I had a lot of fun writing this post. I do apologise if some of this is incoherent, it’s nearly 12AM while I’m writing this very sentence!

Happy Writing!