Episode 043 - Twelve Sure-fire Ways to Kill the Suspense of Your Novel with Steven James
September 8, 2020
Bestselling novelist Steven James discusses the difference between action and tension, how twists do (and don't) work, the reader's desire to be both surprised and satisfied, and the importance of being alert to the messages your story is trying to send you.
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Steven James is a national bestselling novelist whose award-winning thrillers continue to gain wide critical acclaim and a growing fan base. His latest novel is SYNAPSE, a near-future thriller. Suspense Magazine named his book EVERY WICKED MAN one of their “Best Books of 2018.”
Publishers Weekly calls him a “master storyteller at the peak of his game” and, in fact, Steven has a Master’s Degree in Storytelling. He has taught writing and storytelling on four continents over the past two decades, and spoken more than two thousand times at events spanning the globe. Steven’s groundbreaking books on the art of fiction writing, STORY TRUMPS STRUCTURE and TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR NOVEL, have both won Storytelling World Awards. In his podcast “The Story Blender,” he interviews leading storytellers in film, print, and web. When Steven isn’t writing or speaking, you’ll find him trail running, rock climbing, or drinking dark roast coffee near his home in East Tennessee. |
"A lot of people have been taught that a story needs rising action. And they'll point to Freytag's Pyramid that we've all seen, the mountain and landscape of story with rising action and denouement. But rising action is not necessarily what we need, because action can actually become distraction. What we need is tightening tension." -Steven James
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Steven James. Hey Steven, how are you doing?
[00:00:07] Steven: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:09] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you ...
Steven James is a national bestselling novelist whose award-winning thrillers continue to gain wide critical acclaim and a growing fan base. His latest novel is SYNAPSE, a near-future thriller. Suspense Magazine named his book EVERY WICKED MAN one of their “Best Books of 2018.”
Publishers Weekly calls him a “master storyteller at the peak of his game” and, in fact, Steven has a Master’s Degree in Storytelling. He has taught writing and storytelling on four continents over the past two decades and spoken more than two thousand times at events spanning the globe.
Steven’s groundbreaking books on the art of fiction writing, STORY TRUMPS STRUCTURE and TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR NOVEL, have both won Storytelling World Awards. In his podcast “The Story Blender,” he interviews leading storytellers in film, print, and web.
When Steven isn’t writing or speaking, you’ll find him trail running, rock climbing, or drinking dark roast coffee near his home in East Tennessee.
[00:01:09] I invited Steven on the podcast because I'd heard a talk he had given and one of the components of that was a list that was 12 Surefire Ways to Kill Suspense in Your Novel. And so I specifically asked Steven to come and talk about that, but before we dive into the details of that, Stephen, I'm very curious about the master's degree in storytelling. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:01:31] Steven: I know, isn't that interesting? So back in the late nineties, I was interested in telling stories and leaving my job and writing and telling the stories full time. So there was one college in the world that offered a master's degree in storytelling, here in Eastern Tennessee, East Tennessee State University. So I ended up moving down from the Midwest and plugging into the program and finished that in 1997. So it seems like an entire life ago. Now it is, but it was really fascinating. It focused more on oral storytelling than so much on written storytelling, but in my coursework, I was able to study both and it ended up being beneficial. And it's always fun to be able to tell people you have a degree in storytelling as well.
[00:02:18] Matty: Absolutely. And very useful, I'm sure.
[00:02:21] Steven: Yeah. Back in the seventies, there was sort of a Renaissance of spoken storytelling and it all happened right in this area of Tennessee. And so every year still, there's the National Storytelling Festival here, just down the road. So there's quite a bit of interest in story and storytelling in the area. So it's a great place for a storyteller and a novelist to live.
[00:02:45] Matty: I also think that there's a growing recognition, even among the corporate world, for example, until last year I was in the corporate world, and I think storytelling is important even in that environment where you need to engage people and stories or the best way to do it, even there.
[00:03:00] Steven: Yeah, actually, you mentioned my podcast, The Story Blender. One of my recent guests, Paul Smith, is one of the leading organizational storytelling experts in the world. It was a very fascinating conversation that I had with Paul, just about this idea of using stories to lead, to manage, to market. And as you mentioned, it has become a kind of a place where corporate world is leaning toward.
[00:03:22] Matty: I will include a link to the podcast so if people are intrigued by that, they can check it out.
[00:03:31] Steven: Super. Thank you.
[00:03:32] Matty: So what we're going to do as we talk about the 12 surefire ways to kill suspense in your novel is I'm going to feed Steven a line from his list, and then just ask him to elaborate on what that means.
[00:03:44] And so the first one, the first tip is just as things are getting really thrilling, cut to a different point of view or jump to the next scene
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[00:03:52] Steven: A lot of people will use multiple point of views to ratchet up suspense, which I think is totally legitimate. But what bothers me is someone will get to a cliff hanger moment or they'll have something super exciting happen and then slip to another point of view where there isn't anything exciting happening, or nothing suspenseful, and hope that then they'll be able to keep readers engaged. My view is if you flip to another point of view, it should be in a way that continues to build up the suspense instead of dropping and deescalating it as you do.
[00:04:27] The other aspect with this is a lot of times people will build up to a certain moment of suspense and actually flip to another perspective, but when they come back to the first storyline, it's like there's been a time warp because they forgot that when time passes for one character in your story, it passes at the same rate for all the other characters.
[00:04:53] So in other words, if you're telling the story and these two guys are in a fight and so suddenly one guy reaches back and he's going to punch the other guy in the face, he reaches back and then you end the scene and you flip to another scene and there's a lady walking through the forests with butterflies lilting about and landing on her arm and then she's dreaming of whenever she was five, back in the day, and then finally at the end of her chapter, you flip back and the guy punches him in the face. That just doesn't make any sense because you just had like five minutes of time pass. And so there's just like they were caught in some sort of a time warp.
[00:05:27] So don't do that because a lot of people will try that, thinking that it'll keep people in suspense. But it actually just insults readers instead.
[00:05:35] Matty: So we're going to move on to tip two to kill suspense, which is make sure your characters do inexplicable things.
[00:05:42] Steven: One of the most important aspects of writing and fiction is believability. So if a character does something that is inexplicable or it's out of character for him or her to do in that moment, readers will be jarred out of the moment. They'll be thinking, Why did they do that? Or why did they say that? It doesn't even make any sense. I don't get it. And as soon as readers have any of those reactions, they're no longer in the story, they've distanced themselves from the story. And so I feel like it's super important at every moment of your story to really ask, is this character acting in congruence with who he is? Is it believable for this character to say or do or think this thing in this moment?
[00:06:27] And we want to do as very little as possible to distance readers, but instead, always keep them drawn in. And so sometimes we can keep readers enthralled by keeping everything believable. It's fascinating, too-- it doesn't really matter if something is impossible in fiction, it just needs to be believable. It doesn't matter how impossible it is. But in nonfiction, it doesn't matter how believable it is. It just has to be possible. So fiction and nonfiction kind of differ in that way.
[00:07:01] So like in a nonfiction story, you could tell the story about this lady from New Zealand who jumped out of an airplane and her parachute never opened. She fell like 13,000 feet onto a blackberry bush, broke her ankle and bruised her ribs, and that was it. Now you could never do that in the novel because people, it would be like, Oh yeah, right. I don't believe it. But it actually happened. It's a true event. So it's unbelievable, but it was possible. And the novel, you have to do the opposite. It's got to be believable, even if it is impossible.
[00:07:34] Matty: What if you have a scenario where someone that the reader has thought was a bad guy, shows up, the good guy is in some kind of peril, and you think, Oh no, it's gotten even worse now because the bad guy has shown up, and then the bad guy rescues him, let's say, and that's the twist that the author wants to convey. Are there rules surrounding how you can have a character behave in a surprising way but that makes it legitimate as a way of not killing suspense.
[00:08:02] Steven: Yeah. I would want to just make sure that I'm not saying things that sound like they have to be done in a certain way, like rules. I'm a big proponent of breaking the rules in order to tell better stories. But one of the principles there at work is that for twists to work, they actually need four aspects. They need to be unexpected, in the case of what you brought up, that would be one aspect of a twist. Inevitable. In other words, that everything in the story leads up to that moment. Third is escalatory in the sense that it actually develops more tension and finally revelatory in the sense that it reveals more about what happened earlier.
[00:08:42] And so in that case, if the bad guy shows up and suddenly helps the good guy, readers might be like, Well, that's convenient. Or they might be thinking, Oh, that was surprising. But there's no more tension. So if you developed a story in that way, so that readers are like, Okay, it looks like he's helping, but really there's more going on here, then it could draw them deeper into the story.
[00:09:04] But very often "twists" don't work because they actually introduce de-escalation instead of escalation. This is one reason why most dream sequences don't work as twists because there's a super exciting scene, and then all of a sudden one character is about to save everyone from the airplane terrorist who's onboard and he's got a bomb and everything. And then suddenly just at the exciting places, the bomb is about to go off -- gasp! -- he woke up.
[00:09:32] And no reader is sitting there like, Oh man, it was a dream! That was amazing! I can't believe it! I've never seen that before! Wow! Every reader is like, Oh, okay. He was asleep. Because it might be unexpected might be inevitable, but it's not escalatory, it doesn't escalate the tension. And so in that sense, it doesn't work.
[00:09:53] Matty: There's a note about the tip about making sure your characters do inexplicably things that suggests another area where people can go astray, which is, Why don't they just leave the house instead of going into the dark basement where they've heard noise?
[00:10:07] Steven: Oh yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So that's another total aspect of this too, is, let's say you're watching a scary movie or a horror movie or whatever. And so suddenly a character could call for help? Why doesn't he call for help on his fully charged cell phone? Why doesn't he get in the car and just drive away?
[00:10:26] So in that sense, yes. But people, especially in that genre, tend to do things that don't really make a whole lot of sense and aren't very believable, and so if that happens, typically readers or viewers, if you were watching a screenplay or something, would be like, Come on, that's just dumb. And again, it's just the same thing. It distances them from the story. We really want readers to be like, I have no idea what he's going to do. And then when he takes action, That seems believable. That seems like the best possible course of action for him to take. And, so keeping it, believable and keeping people centered and locked in to the story.
[00:11:07] Matty: The third tip you have for killing suspense is related to the twist. And I'm just going to read through this so people can hear the background of this. Start your story with a great hook, like having a woman jogging along a beach by herself while there's a killer on the loose. Be sure to give the readers lots of meaningless backstory on her life. So guess what? Huh? Huh? You're going to love this. She gets murdered!
[00:11:28] So if somebody is picturing in their mind this great scene where the woman's running along the beach and she gets murdered, how can they rethink that so that they're not falling into this trap of killing suspense.
[00:11:42] Steven: You know, the same idea a little bit as earlier, we want our stories to be unexpected and inevitable. Let's just take those two aspects of twists. We've all seen a thousand stories that start with a point of view character getting killed off. It's a monster story and she's there on the beach or wherever it is, and so suddenly something happens and we're like, Oh, then the next thing is she's killed off. Since it's predictable, don't use it. It's inevitable, but it isn't unexpected. so what could you do instead?
[00:12:13] Let's say that you're writing your vampire story and it's called I Suck Blood. And so on the back cover, it says, "most terrifying vampire story of the year," and on the front, there's a picture of someone with fangs and the blood's dripping down and so on.
[00:12:29] So you open the book and the first scene, here's this person walking along the trail in the forest and suddenly something is watching them from a branch, leaps down and starts to come closer. But as she turns around to look, of course, this creature jumps to the side and eventually comes up closer behind her and bites her. And she dies. He's a vampire.
[00:12:49] No. You can't do that because it's obviously predictable. So what would you do instead? Like what you said? Well, what about this lady? Well, you have to find a way to recast it so that it is, in a way, a twist. So because we take into consideration the genre conventions, and also the expectations of readers. So in this case, maybe, he comes up behind her and suddenly she whips around and drives a stake through his heart. And you're like, Oh, she's a vampire hunter and she was luring him out here into the forest. Or maybe as he gets up close, he pulls out the stake and she tries to bite him and he vampire stakes her and you're like, Oh, she was actually the vampire. Or maybe he bites her and then she stumbles backward holding her neck. He says, It's you? And he drops dead. And you're like, Wow, her blood's fatal to vampires -- never knew that was coming! Wonder what's going to happen next.
[00:13:40] So in all of those ways you have actually respected the genre that you're writing in, but you haven't played, into the predictable tropes that are common in that genre. So yeah, I'm a big fan of trying to tell fresh and original stories instead of just cookie cutter ones that have been around, before.
[00:14:01] Matty: It seems as if the tips you had there, you could encapsulate by saying, if you have one of the scenes that once you've written it, you recognize is not workable in that way to run through all the what ifs. What if the vampire is a different character? What if the vampire does a different thing? What if he's not a vampire at all?
[00:14:20] Steven: Sure, that's a good way to get to the story, of what you would want to write. I was teaching a class up in New York City and this guy had an opening scene where there was the serial killer had snuck into this lady's car. And then she was in the restaurant. And of course he was telling us her backstory or life story or whatever. And then it would flip point of views to the killer in the car, and he was plotting her demise. And finally, she comes out and she goes to the car and gets killed. And I said to this guy, I was like, You probably don't want to start your book with a cliche. And he goes, But everybody does it.
[00:14:54] And that's what makes it a cliche.
[00:14:57] So we don't want to write openings and stories that everybody does. So we want to write new and original groundbreaking ideas and stories instead of just plopping in what's been done before.
[00:15:09] Matty: So I'm going to move along to tip number four for killing suspense. Make sure that the bad guy is either so obvious throughout the story that even a casual observer could guess his identity or so obscure that no one will ever believe it even after you reveal him.
[00:15:25] Steven: This actually ties into what we were talking about a minute ago. People want to be surprised, and so it's kind of an interesting paradox of reading. Readers want to predict where a story will go, but they want to be wrong. And so it's like we're reading our book. And 200 pages in we're like, I think I know who the bad guy is. I think I know what the twist is going to be, whatever.
[00:15:50] So we want to anticipate and make those predictions and so on. If the story goes in the direction that we expected, then we'll be upset. What? That's exactly what I thought was going to happen. And so it's a game that we play with readers, and it's a game that they want to be able to make up predictions and expectations in a certain way. But if they're correct, they're let down. So they want to be satisfied and also surprised. So this has to do with definitely some of these aspects of twist writing that we mentioned earlier is continually surprise readers in a way that satisfies them as they dive deeper and deeper into the story.
[00:16:37] Matty: One of the things that I've asked my beta readers is at different points in the book to tell me who they think is the person who is going to be revealed at the end. Mine isn't really murder whodunit, but it's interesting to see, Oh, now I think it's Fred. Oh, now I think it's Jane. Of course at some point, they're going to guess that it's the actual bad guy, but then sometimes they veer off and they think, Okay, now I don't think it's that person anymore. I think it's the other person. And if you have a couple of people who on page 15 are saying, Oh, I think it's the actual bad guy, then you know that you have some more work to do.
[00:17:10] Steven: You might have some work yet to do. That's helpful thing. I've done similar with some of my books. And of course I write organically. So when I don't outline or plot anything out with my novels. And so in some cases I've gotten to being almost done, 95% done, and not knowing how the book will end or who knows bad guy actually is. And so that's always interesting and surprising.
[00:17:36] A lot of times I might set up three or four different people to be the potential villain, main villain, mastermind behind everything, and I don't always know who it is until I get to the very end of the book. So that's fun. And it's harder for readers to predict if even I don't know who it's going to be.
[00:17:53] Matty: So we're recording this on August 17, 2020, and the episode that goes out tomorrow, so it will be before this one is published, with Hank Philippi Ryan, and she's exactly the same way. She starts writing and doesn't know until she gets to the end whodunit. I was like, oh, that's so crazy to think of that. I'm so much a plotter.
[00:18:13] Steven: I'm pretty ineffective with trying to outline a story I always think how can I possibly outline something that doesn't exist yet?
[00:18:22] Matty: I have had the experience of writing a very detailed, like 10,000-word, outline and giving it to my editor and having him say, Okay, you have to make the bad guy seem worse. I was like, I don't think the bad guy is worse. I think I have to go and redo it because, the story was crying for a different person to have been the bad guy. But I still have to have that in my mind. I think the trick is just not that pantsing or plotting is good or bad. It's just that if one is working for you, don't try to switch to the other one because you'll be doomed.
[00:18:51] Steven: I think personally, one of the most important aspects is being responsive to the story. Like some people tend to want to write an outline or to plot out the story, and then as they write, they have this niggling inside of them. Wait a minute. Things should probably go in a little different direction.
[00:19:10] And I think that we need to trust that. That's part of our writing is risk and all storytelling is risk. And so I think we need to, maybe say, Okay, maybe I was wrong six months ago when I outlined or plotted this out. And this is really the direction I should be taking things. So to be responsive as the story unfolds instead of defaulting back to the preconceptions that we had earlier and handcuffing ourselves to those. I think being free as the story moves forward to take it new directions, I think that's really important, whatever your initial approach ends up being.
[00:19:44] Matty: Yeah. If you have to work too hard to make the person that you thought was the bad guy, the bad guy, then it's probably somebody different.
[00:19:52] Steven: Many years ago I wrote a book called The Knight, like a chess piece. And so I knew when I wrote it, who the killer is going to be, like for a year, I worked on the book and I knew who the killer was going to be. And then three days before it was supposed to be due, I was like, Man, I can't figure out the climax of this book.
[00:20:11] And so I was flying out to go speak at a conference somewhere. And I was like, I think I need to change who the killer is. And so I was like, No, it's too much work. Like it's a 500-page book and I can't change who the killer is. And so finally I got to the Cincinnati airport, called my editor on the phone and I said, Guess what? this book's going to be even better than we thought! She goes, Okay, I'm glad to hear that. That's good. I said, I'm going to change who the killer is. And there's this long pause on the other end of the line. And finally she said, I trust you. As long as it'll be a better book, go ahead. It took me about two more months, cause I had to rewrite the book,
[00:20:46] But it ends up that it was a better book because so far, no one has guessed, or told me -- maybe some people have, but no one has written to me guessing who the main bad guy of The Knight was. And so had I stuck with the original plan, though, it would not have been as strong of a story. People would have been able to predict it.
[00:21:05] And so that was hard, but that's one of the things I always think back to. You've got to be able to adapt and move forward if you find there's a weakness in your story, even if you have to maybe not exactly meet your deadline. But I won't officially say that, but I will say that the book ended up better because I was able to make those necessary changes.
[00:21:32] Matty: Well, I was very relieved that I came to my realization after having written a 10,000-word treatment, not the 85,000 word book. That made it a little less painful to say, You know what? I have to rethink this. So I'm going to get The Knight and then after I read it, I'm going to get in touch with you and find out who the original bad guy was.
[00:21:50] Steven: That'd be fun. Let's do it. Yeah. Sounds good.
[00:21:53] Matty: So the next tip is, whatever you do, avoid countdowns and deadlines.
[00:21:59] Steven: Obviously these are all written, in a backwards sort of way, countdowns and deadlines can be really effective cause you don't want to overuse them. Sometimes I'll tell people, there's a difference between a metronome and an oven timer. So a metronome just continues to kind of record the time. But an oven timer is counting down to something very specific. Your pizza is going to be done. There's payoff in the end.
[00:22:23] And so, if you were to say, Okay, every chapter, I think I'm going to have one more hour pass by, or something. Eventually since it doesn't escalate, it might become kind of boring for readers if it's just one hour for every chapter, something like that.
[00:22:39] So instead we use countdowns and deadlines. Once in a while throughout the story, maybe at the climax, or maybe building up to a second act or third act, mid book climax or whatever it is with the story. So use them judiciously just don't overuse them and make sure that they escalate in the story instead of just drone on like a metronome would.
[00:23:03] Matty: There's a particular issue I have with certain kinds of countdowns. And I can imagine all sorts of examples of this in movies. I'm not sure I can imagine them so much in books, but one of these ones where the bomb is ticking down and it's at 10 seconds and then it's nine seconds, and then something else happens and a minute and a half goes by and you go back. And now it's at eight seconds where it gets unrealistic, the closer it comes to the zero for a minute, it becomes increased unrealistic. Is there a written fiction version of that that people should beware of?
[00:23:40] Steven: The big thing again is don't have your characters go through time warps, like we mentioned earlier. It happens so often when people flip from one point of view to another. And so you might be doing the countdown and you might say, Oh, hey, I'm going to flip to the girl who's disarming the bomb and then I'm going to flip to the guy who's in a fist fight with someone up in the upper part of the skyscraper, or whatever.
[00:24:04] But, yeah, whenever I use, deadlines or countdowns like this, I always make sure that they're pretty accurate. In other words, when you read through it, it's in real time. So whatever happens between each second would only take a second to happen, instead of playing with time like that. I think because it's unbelievable, again. That comes back to this whole idea that stories need that believability factor. And as soon as that's lost, it ends up distancing readers.
[00:24:36] Matty: I like that. I've never heard that caution about making sure that the time is consistent across scenes. I've certainly heard it within a scene, but that's a great tip to keep in mind what is going on with the other characters as well.
[00:24:49] Steven: I actually I've read a lot of work of aspiring authors. And very often they do like to use point of view flips because there's some advantage to be able to do that. But this is one of the most common weaknesses that I see in their work is this idea of, We'll have one point of view. Something will happen that's dramatic and it will stop. Flip to another one. And it's almost like that time doesn't really pass in this timeline. Yeah, the easiest way that I know to explain it is just say time passes for every character exactly the same within your book. And if you play that out, usually it'll help solve that problem.
[00:25:32] Matty: Yup. So I'm going to move on to our next tip about how to kill suspense, which is never tell readers anything about what's going to happen. Keep all plans a secret.
[00:25:43] Steven: Yeah, I know this is like counter intuitive for some people they might say, Why would you tell what's going to happen later? Don't you want to have twists? And I totally understand that. And yes, you do still want twists, but a rudimentary way of actually creating suspense is simply to have characters tell readers their plans. So for instance, a character might say, I'll see you tomorrow at four o'clock at the baseball game.
[00:26:07] Okay. Now, readers to know that there will be a scene at the four o'clock baseball game or something dramatic might occur to postpone it or cancel it or. But now readers are looking forward to that and they can be in suspense and really what is suspense? Suspense is really apprehension born of concern. So when we're concerned for the character, we get apprehensive. Something's going to go wrong. I know it. They're never going to make it to the baseball game. Or His son's looking for him at the baseball and he's not going to be there, and his son's feelings are going to be hurt.
[00:26:41] So one of the simplest things we can do as far as storytellers is to allow readers to tell each other their plans and that will help root our readers in the story and also create that apprehension born of concern for the characters that we're reading about.
[00:27:02] Matty: Is there any tip about how subtle or obvious the character's plan needs to be in order to retain the suspense?
[00:27:10] Steven:
[00:27:11] I would say that usually the more specific you can be in revealing what is to come, the more you can lead readers to worry about what would happen if it doesn't. So we want high stakes typically with building suspense. So stakes are basically the negative consequences that would happen if the character does not reach his goal or whatever it is she's trying to attain or overcome. And so, yeah, I think the more specific you can be, instead of, I'll see you tomorrow, that one way of making a plan or promise is to say, I will see you tomorrow for coffee at breakfast at eight, or whatever. That specificity actually helps to create suspense.
[00:27:57] So my view is really that suspense is really built up through a series of promises and payoff. So it isn't just about making scary things happen or having danger around the bend. But it's also about making promises of peril and then paying off with dramatic escapes or things like that.
[00:28:20] Matty: So moving on to the next tip for how to kill suspense, keep repeating the same stuff over and over. Chase scenes, prayers, kissing, scenes, murders, and so on. If it's exciting, once, it will be again and again.
[00:28:32] Steven: Yes, repetition is the enemy of escalation. And so if you want to bore readers, give them relentless action. A lot of people have been taught. you need to make stuff happen with your story. You need to make it exciting and so you need to make more things happen. Usually you don't. You need to promise that more things will go wrong. In other words, let's say that you have a chase scene, then there's another chase scene and they chase each other. Then they get on motorcycles and they chase each other again or whatever. There's nothing more boring than relentless action. It needs to escalate. And the more that it just recycles itself over, the duller and more boring it'll be.
[00:29:16] I was talking with my friend, Rob Dugoni, who teaches this writing intensive with me. And so he said he had taken his daughter to see one of the movies with Superman. Superman was battling a bad guy. They were both indestructible and they were flying through buildings and smashing each other through buildings back and forth, and it went on for like 10 minutes, And finally in the movie theater, his daughter -- she's maybe 10 or 12 at the time -- she goes, Okay, I get it. They fly through buildings.
[00:29:44] Matty: That's an editor in the making.
[00:29:47] Steven: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, Just get on with it! So it's boring, even though there's plenty happening. There's lots of action and activity. But it's not escalating, there's no stakes. They're not going to die. So they can fly through buildings. So what? So that's one of the really big secrets of creating and sustaining reader interest is building up, not through repetition, but through escalation, more and more interest in the story.
[00:30:15] Matty: One of the examples of repetition that isn't exactly creating suspense, but it's more meeting reader expectations is -- I'll disguise the names to protect the innocent -- but there's a series where in every book, the hero crashes his car, something terrible happens to his car, and so I think that readers have come to expect the car crash or the car destruction. And will probably be disappointed if at some point the car doesn't get damaged in some way. So obviously that's not creating suspense across the whole series, but it's almost like a trope that that particular author's readers are looking for. Do you have any tips about when that's an okay thing to do and when it's not?
[00:31:06] Steven: I think that something like that can be fun and interesting. It's almost like a character's special skills or abilities or his emblem or something. They look forward to that. In the series I wrote, the Patrick Bowers novels, in at least eight or nine out of the 11 books, maybe all 11, he uses his flashlight in a creative way at the climax to get out of trouble. So readers are thinking, How is he going to use his flashlight now? His hands were cuffed behind his back or whatever.
[00:31:37] And then he would always say, Everything matters. In every book they would say, What does that matter? and he would say, Everything matters. so these two things just sort of became, if I didn't include one in a book, readers would be like, Why didn't you? Yeah, I thought he was going to say ... So I had to come up with creative ways of using them each time in the book and it got harder and harder. At first, the flashlight thing wasn't that big of a deal. He could use it in a creative way. But finally, after like 10 books, I'm like, how else can you use a Maglite flashlight?
[00:32:06] Matty: Yeah. You've created quite a challenge for yourself.
[00:32:09] Steven: I know. So anyway, so that was fun, but that stuff can be really fun for readers, I think. And again, it's a bit of a promise. You've created this scene and we look forward to the moment where Schwarzenegger will say, I'll be back, or this car crash would occur and so on.
[00:32:24] Matty: Moving on to tip number eight for killing suspense. Only let readers see the danger that the story's characters see. It's too confusing to let readers in on information that the characters don't have.
[00:32:37] Steven: Yeah, the thing is, there's a way to create dramatic irony when you allow readers to be aware of the peril that the characters in the story are not aware of yet.
[00:32:48] So let's say that you're writing your story and you have a character who's the bad guy. And he sneaks into the victim's house. So there he is in the house and he's rooting through the guy's drawers or something. All of a sudden, the guy starts pulling up in the driveway. It's a long driveway and you can see the lights coming up and we flip to his point of view and he's glancing his cell phone, he's got some calls to make, or he's on the Bluetooth or something like that. And he pulls up to the driveway and gets out of the car. Then you flip back point of view to the killer, the bad guy, and so he's got a knife and he hides behind the door.
[00:33:26] Now as your hero walks up to the front of the house, he pulls out his house key and he slips it into the lock. Readers are thinking, Don't go in the, guy's waiting for you. He's right behind the door. Don't open the door. Don't open the door. Of course the hero has no idea that there's danger waiting on the other side of the door, but we've created quite a bit of tension and suspense by allowing readers to be aware of the peril that the character is not.
[00:33:52] This is one of the reasons why point of view flips are so common in thrillers, is because you can use one person or character's point of view to show readers peril that another is not aware of.
[00:34:06] Matty: Remind me of what the definition is. I think that mystery is when the reader and the protagonist have the same amount of information and then suspense as you're describing is where the reader has more information than the protagonist. Did I get that right?
[00:34:19] Steven: There's different people who have stated things in different ways, but the idea is that in a mystery, typically the character is one step ahead of the readers. In a suspense, typically the readers are one step ahead of the character. So basically what that means is like in a detective story, the mystery story, the detective will take action. Maybe he'll pick up the cell phone, he'll look at it and he'll swirl the wine around in his glass and they'll look out the window at the light against the leaves, and he'll say I've solved the case. Meanwhile, readers are like, What? I have no idea. How did that solve anything? And what did that mean? So he is one step ahead of the readers. Like he has figured something out that we're not aware of yet. And then maybe later he'll explain it.
[00:35:02] But in suspense very often, it's the readers who are in on the information that the character's not. Yeah, so you're right. That's one of the ways to identify some of these different genres is where the orientation is between the reader and the main characters.
[00:35:22] Matty: Yeah. So we're going to go on to tip nine for killing suspense. Readers don't want the promise that something terrible is going to happen in the future. They just want to have exciting things happen right now. Add action.
[00:35:36] Steven: Now we touched on this a second ago, but the idea is that stories, a lot of story is about apprehension. It's about what's to come. It isn't just about what's unfolding moment by moment. And so very often when people are told you need to make more stuff happen, or you need more action, very often that's not necessarily the case. And so I would always advise you to look at the context and see what the reader is actually thinking about, worrying about, wondering about, expecting, or hoping for in this moment, in this scene. And you may realize readers don't need something exciting or whatever in this moment, what they need is stillness. The stillness that precedes the action. That action very often can be payoff for promises that were made earlier.
A lot of people have been taught that a story needs rising action. And they'll point to Freytag's Pyramid that we've all seen, the mountain and landscape of story with rising action and denouement. But rising action is not necessarily what we need, because action can actually become distraction. What we need is tightening tension.
[00:36:50] So tension develops more of our apprehension, like we mentioned earlier. So it's like in The Silence of the Lambs, at the climax, when Clarice Starling is after Buffalo Bill, the bad guy, she's in his lair in the basement. And of course he turns the lights off and so she can't see him. He's right behind her. He has on the night vision goggles. So he's coming closer to her and she's standing there with the gun and she's turning with the gun. He's coming closer to her. She's standing there, slowly he's moving. Now there's no rising action. That's like the least amount of action for the last 20 minutes of the movie. So there's no rising action, but there's lots of tension. There's lots of suspense. And so that's what we want in our stories, is to not necessarily just have a bunch of active things going on, but instead to really tighten the tension of the story.
[00:37:50] Matty: I had an editor who used to rate each of my chapters on action and intensity. And so the action was more physically related. Intensity was more emotionally related. And her theory was that you want a rise and fall, you know, gradually ramping up over the entire story. But. you could intersperse heavily action-oriented scenes with more emotionally intense scenes. And that keeps the reader engaged, but it gives them some variety instead of just having Superman fly through the building one more time.
[00:38:21] Steven: Yeah. That's interesting.
[00:38:23] Matty: So I'm moving on to tip number 10 for killing suspense. Portray or villain as the hand ringing self-congratulatory, chortling, look what an evil mastermind I am type of character.
[00:38:36] Steven: Yeah, we want to avoid the mwahaha bad guy, they're silly, they're not scary. And so a lot of people want to make their bad guy self-congratulatory in the sense of look how clever I am. Look how I'm making these people suffer. they're actually missing on something very important called status. Status has to do with the character's prominence or submission within a scene. And you can undermine status by showing a sense of neediness. So if your character, the bad guy, is needy in the sense that he needs to see people suffer or he needs to have attention, or he needs to prove himself to anyone else, it actually lowers his status.
[00:39:21] The most frightening bad guys are ones who have high status, who aren't doing it so that they can see someone suffer. They're doing it simply because they're completely cold hearted or callous. They don't care if someone suffers or doesn't suffer, they could just as easily walk up to you and shove you in the shoulder and say, Hey, how are you doing? as they could stab you in the stomach and watch you bleed to death. These are the terrifying villains, not the ones who were like, I'm going to make him suffer. So it just depends what type of story you're telling. But if you really want to make someone scary, make him cold hearted instead of needy and sadistic, and then you'll elevate his status and he'll be memorable.
[00:40:07] Matty: Another link I'm going to put in the show notes--again, an episode that will have aired by the time this episode comes out--was with Jenna Moreci and it was all about writing realistic and compelling villains. So it will be fun for people to be able to reference back and forth between that tip that you gave and some of the tips that Jenna gave.
[00:40:25] Steven: Excellent. Yeah. Sounds good.
[00:40:27] Matty: Tip number 11 for killing suspense is keep the mystery alive. Don't let readers know what your character really wants in a scene.
[00:40:37] Steven: Now, see, this is interesting. It brings up one of the differences between mystery and suspense. And some people will say, I don't want to give too much away because I want to keep people in suspense. Now there's actually a backward way of thinking within that statement. And that is the only way for someone to be in suspense is to give them information. So by keeping information away from readers, we actually keep them from suspense instead of in suspense. So it's super important in your scenes to create moments where it's clear to readers what does the character want within this scene?
[00:41:17] Because if we're just sitting there, I really don't get what's going on. I don't understand this character. Sure. He walks in the house, but what is he there for? what's he searching for? I don't get it. So the longer we're in that space as readers, it's not that we are creating more and more suspense. We're just creating more and more what? Confusion. And so it's really important to orient readers said, this is what the character is in the scene for.
[00:41:41] You don't have to specifically state in those terms, but you might have a character say to another character, What are you even doing here? Well, I've come here for the $500 you owe me and I want it before I'm going to leave. Now we know, now we can worry about whether or not he's going to get the money or the other guy's going to attack him or whatever might happen. So allowing your characters to have specifically stated goals within scenes is really important to create that tension and worry apprehension for readers.
[00:42:12] Matty: Can you reveal what a character wants at a superficial level? I'm not sure superficial is the word I want, but the guy shows up and says, I'm here to pick up the briefcase. And so it's clear that he wants the briefcase, but you're holding back what's in the briefcase or why he needs the briefcase, or is that cheating?
[00:42:32] Steven: Oh, no. After a while it would be cheating in the sense that would be like teasing readers if we play with it too long, you'll just be like, Come on, just tell me what's in the briefcase so I can worry about ... and stuff like that. But no, there's nothing wrong with that. That's a good way of doing it and creating some curiosity.
[00:42:48] Basically different things drive us to flip pages. There are really four. Actually there's five, but we want to avoid the fifth one at all costs, but I'll just flip through them really quickly. But one is curiosity. And so in that case of what you just mentioned, it's curiosity, that's leading readers to wonder What's in this briefcase? Then there's concern, and this test to do with apprehension. So concern is different from curiosity. Curiosity is where we want to know answers. Concern is when we want safety. We're worried about the character and apprehensive and so on. So there's curiosity, concern. And then there's anticipation where we look forward to something happening. We're not scared it's going to happen, but we're actually looking forward to it. And then there's just really the entertainment value of reading something that's so good. We're not really worried about anything. We're not really looking forward to. We're just immersed in the amazing writing as we read it.
[00:43:44] So you can appeal to any one of these four when you write, you might have a certain scene, like you just mentioned where you're going to lean more toward curiosity, one more toward concern or maybe anticipation, or maybe you're just like, I'm just going to write the super powerful moment in my book that people are going to want to read.
[00:44:03] So of course the last thing that keeps readers reading is obligation, which we want to avoid. This is where someone will say, well, I started the book, so I'm going to finish it. And so sometimes in my writing seminars, I will have people raise their hand and say, okay, repeat after me. And I'll say from now on, I will never finish reading a book that was written worse that I could write it. If you're reading a book and you actually realize that this is a waste of your time, then there's so many amazing books out there to be read. I would say don't waste your time on it. I finish maybe two out of every six to eight novels I start reading. There's just so many. There's just so many amazing stories that if the author is just not really engaging me that strongly, I'm like, I going to start another book, man. I'm not just going to waste another six hours with this guy when he clearly doesn't even know how to tell a great story.
[00:45:03] Matty: So how long do you give it before you give up on it?
[00:45:07] Steven: Usually you can tell within the first 10 pages.
[00:45:10] Matty: Yeah.
[00:45:11] Steven: Some people will say, I'll give it a hundred pages. That's a lot of investment in a book, but usually you can tell pretty early if the writer knows what they're doing. sometimes I'll get halfway through a book and I'll be like, man, it's not developing. It's not going anywhere. I have bookshelves full of books that I want to read, and so I'm just like itching to get to some of these amazing stories that I want to read. So, yeah, we want to avoid the reading it just because you have to.
[00:45:38] You know, my daughter. when she was in high school, was systematically taught to hate reading by being assigned to read the "classics." And so she would read all these books that really, and let's just be frank, a lot of them are not that good. They're not that well written. So she would read it and be like, Dad, this book isn't very good, because ... Then she would use discernment and tell me the reasons why it wasn't good. And I'm like, you're absolutely right. And so she had to read these books that she just didn't identify with. And so she just fell out of love of reading when she was in high school, because she was having to read these books under the threat of getting a bad grade if she didn't read it.
[00:46:17] So anyway, I'm a big advocate of writing books that are worth reading and also, not forcing someone to chew on something that just doesn't taste good.
[00:46:27] Matty: That's a good tip for all our readers up there. And the last tip for killing suspense is promise that something terrible will happen and then don't let it happen. It'll make for a great twist.
[00:46:40] Steven: Yeah. Twists have to be payoff. And so when we make a promise, we need to keep it. I always like telling people, make big promises in your books. Now that doesn't mean that you need to have the most action packed, maybe your book isn't an action thriller, but you still are going to make big promises. And then always keep those promises. So for instance, the dad might say to his son, I will be at your game on Friday. I promise. Nothing is gonna stop me. That's a big promise for a dad to make this kid. Now every reader's like, Oh no, you're not going to make it, something's going to happen, I don't know what it is.
[00:47:18] Or maybe you are writing a thriller and in one of my books, The Pawn, my first, Patrick Bowers novel, there's a character says to another, he says, Your death will be remembered for decades. That's a huge promise. Like she can't just die some normal death, it's gotta be something really horrifying, and that's a huge promise to make to readers. So readers reading, and they're like, Oh man, I don't know what's going to happen, but it's going to be pretty terrifying. Because that's a thriller and I want to scare you in that book.
[00:47:49] But it doesn't always need to be physical danger. It could be peril. Emotional peril and psychological, relational. It could be spiritual. Maybe there's a demon after them. But always, always, always keep the big promises that you've made to your readers.
[00:48:07] Matty: Well, that was our 12 fabulous tips for killing suspense. And, Steven, I appreciate so much you joining to talk about that with our listeners. Please let them know where they can find out more about you and your fiction and your nonfiction work online.
[00:48:22] Steven: Well thanks so much. Yes, this is great to be here. So Stevenjames.net, is where you can go for all things Steven James -- my novel and some of my books on the craft of writing. And you can follow me on Twitter at ReadStevenJames, and I love to hear from people, so I appreciate the chance to be on the show today. Thank you.
[00:04:27] The other aspect with this is a lot of times people will build up to a certain moment of suspense and actually flip to another perspective, but when they come back to the first storyline, it's like there's been a time warp because they forgot that when time passes for one character in your story, it passes at the same rate for all the other characters.
[00:04:53] So in other words, if you're telling the story and these two guys are in a fight and so suddenly one guy reaches back and he's going to punch the other guy in the face, he reaches back and then you end the scene and you flip to another scene and there's a lady walking through the forests with butterflies lilting about and landing on her arm and then she's dreaming of whenever she was five, back in the day, and then finally at the end of her chapter, you flip back and the guy punches him in the face. That just doesn't make any sense because you just had like five minutes of time pass. And so there's just like they were caught in some sort of a time warp.
[00:05:27] So don't do that because a lot of people will try that, thinking that it'll keep people in suspense. But it actually just insults readers instead.
[00:05:35] Matty: So we're going to move on to tip two to kill suspense, which is make sure your characters do inexplicable things.
[00:05:42] Steven: One of the most important aspects of writing and fiction is believability. So if a character does something that is inexplicable or it's out of character for him or her to do in that moment, readers will be jarred out of the moment. They'll be thinking, Why did they do that? Or why did they say that? It doesn't even make any sense. I don't get it. And as soon as readers have any of those reactions, they're no longer in the story, they've distanced themselves from the story. And so I feel like it's super important at every moment of your story to really ask, is this character acting in congruence with who he is? Is it believable for this character to say or do or think this thing in this moment?
[00:06:27] And we want to do as very little as possible to distance readers, but instead, always keep them drawn in. And so sometimes we can keep readers enthralled by keeping everything believable. It's fascinating, too-- it doesn't really matter if something is impossible in fiction, it just needs to be believable. It doesn't matter how impossible it is. But in nonfiction, it doesn't matter how believable it is. It just has to be possible. So fiction and nonfiction kind of differ in that way.
[00:07:01] So like in a nonfiction story, you could tell the story about this lady from New Zealand who jumped out of an airplane and her parachute never opened. She fell like 13,000 feet onto a blackberry bush, broke her ankle and bruised her ribs, and that was it. Now you could never do that in the novel because people, it would be like, Oh yeah, right. I don't believe it. But it actually happened. It's a true event. So it's unbelievable, but it was possible. And the novel, you have to do the opposite. It's got to be believable, even if it is impossible.
[00:07:34] Matty: What if you have a scenario where someone that the reader has thought was a bad guy, shows up, the good guy is in some kind of peril, and you think, Oh no, it's gotten even worse now because the bad guy has shown up, and then the bad guy rescues him, let's say, and that's the twist that the author wants to convey. Are there rules surrounding how you can have a character behave in a surprising way but that makes it legitimate as a way of not killing suspense.
[00:08:02] Steven: Yeah. I would want to just make sure that I'm not saying things that sound like they have to be done in a certain way, like rules. I'm a big proponent of breaking the rules in order to tell better stories. But one of the principles there at work is that for twists to work, they actually need four aspects. They need to be unexpected, in the case of what you brought up, that would be one aspect of a twist. Inevitable. In other words, that everything in the story leads up to that moment. Third is escalatory in the sense that it actually develops more tension and finally revelatory in the sense that it reveals more about what happened earlier.
[00:08:42] And so in that case, if the bad guy shows up and suddenly helps the good guy, readers might be like, Well, that's convenient. Or they might be thinking, Oh, that was surprising. But there's no more tension. So if you developed a story in that way, so that readers are like, Okay, it looks like he's helping, but really there's more going on here, then it could draw them deeper into the story.
[00:09:04] But very often "twists" don't work because they actually introduce de-escalation instead of escalation. This is one reason why most dream sequences don't work as twists because there's a super exciting scene, and then all of a sudden one character is about to save everyone from the airplane terrorist who's onboard and he's got a bomb and everything. And then suddenly just at the exciting places, the bomb is about to go off -- gasp! -- he woke up.
[00:09:32] And no reader is sitting there like, Oh man, it was a dream! That was amazing! I can't believe it! I've never seen that before! Wow! Every reader is like, Oh, okay. He was asleep. Because it might be unexpected might be inevitable, but it's not escalatory, it doesn't escalate the tension. And so in that sense, it doesn't work.
[00:09:53] Matty: There's a note about the tip about making sure your characters do inexplicably things that suggests another area where people can go astray, which is, Why don't they just leave the house instead of going into the dark basement where they've heard noise?
[00:10:07] Steven: Oh yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So that's another total aspect of this too, is, let's say you're watching a scary movie or a horror movie or whatever. And so suddenly a character could call for help? Why doesn't he call for help on his fully charged cell phone? Why doesn't he get in the car and just drive away?
[00:10:26] So in that sense, yes. But people, especially in that genre, tend to do things that don't really make a whole lot of sense and aren't very believable, and so if that happens, typically readers or viewers, if you were watching a screenplay or something, would be like, Come on, that's just dumb. And again, it's just the same thing. It distances them from the story. We really want readers to be like, I have no idea what he's going to do. And then when he takes action, That seems believable. That seems like the best possible course of action for him to take. And, so keeping it, believable and keeping people centered and locked in to the story.
[00:11:07] Matty: The third tip you have for killing suspense is related to the twist. And I'm just going to read through this so people can hear the background of this. Start your story with a great hook, like having a woman jogging along a beach by herself while there's a killer on the loose. Be sure to give the readers lots of meaningless backstory on her life. So guess what? Huh? Huh? You're going to love this. She gets murdered!
[00:11:28] So if somebody is picturing in their mind this great scene where the woman's running along the beach and she gets murdered, how can they rethink that so that they're not falling into this trap of killing suspense.
[00:11:42] Steven: You know, the same idea a little bit as earlier, we want our stories to be unexpected and inevitable. Let's just take those two aspects of twists. We've all seen a thousand stories that start with a point of view character getting killed off. It's a monster story and she's there on the beach or wherever it is, and so suddenly something happens and we're like, Oh, then the next thing is she's killed off. Since it's predictable, don't use it. It's inevitable, but it isn't unexpected. so what could you do instead?
[00:12:13] Let's say that you're writing your vampire story and it's called I Suck Blood. And so on the back cover, it says, "most terrifying vampire story of the year," and on the front, there's a picture of someone with fangs and the blood's dripping down and so on.
[00:12:29] So you open the book and the first scene, here's this person walking along the trail in the forest and suddenly something is watching them from a branch, leaps down and starts to come closer. But as she turns around to look, of course, this creature jumps to the side and eventually comes up closer behind her and bites her. And she dies. He's a vampire.
[00:12:49] No. You can't do that because it's obviously predictable. So what would you do instead? Like what you said? Well, what about this lady? Well, you have to find a way to recast it so that it is, in a way, a twist. So because we take into consideration the genre conventions, and also the expectations of readers. So in this case, maybe, he comes up behind her and suddenly she whips around and drives a stake through his heart. And you're like, Oh, she's a vampire hunter and she was luring him out here into the forest. Or maybe as he gets up close, he pulls out the stake and she tries to bite him and he vampire stakes her and you're like, Oh, she was actually the vampire. Or maybe he bites her and then she stumbles backward holding her neck. He says, It's you? And he drops dead. And you're like, Wow, her blood's fatal to vampires -- never knew that was coming! Wonder what's going to happen next.
[00:13:40] So in all of those ways you have actually respected the genre that you're writing in, but you haven't played, into the predictable tropes that are common in that genre. So yeah, I'm a big fan of trying to tell fresh and original stories instead of just cookie cutter ones that have been around, before.
[00:14:01] Matty: It seems as if the tips you had there, you could encapsulate by saying, if you have one of the scenes that once you've written it, you recognize is not workable in that way to run through all the what ifs. What if the vampire is a different character? What if the vampire does a different thing? What if he's not a vampire at all?
[00:14:20] Steven: Sure, that's a good way to get to the story, of what you would want to write. I was teaching a class up in New York City and this guy had an opening scene where there was the serial killer had snuck into this lady's car. And then she was in the restaurant. And of course he was telling us her backstory or life story or whatever. And then it would flip point of views to the killer in the car, and he was plotting her demise. And finally, she comes out and she goes to the car and gets killed. And I said to this guy, I was like, You probably don't want to start your book with a cliche. And he goes, But everybody does it.
[00:14:54] And that's what makes it a cliche.
[00:14:57] So we don't want to write openings and stories that everybody does. So we want to write new and original groundbreaking ideas and stories instead of just plopping in what's been done before.
[00:15:09] Matty: So I'm going to move along to tip number four for killing suspense. Make sure that the bad guy is either so obvious throughout the story that even a casual observer could guess his identity or so obscure that no one will ever believe it even after you reveal him.
[00:15:25] Steven: This actually ties into what we were talking about a minute ago. People want to be surprised, and so it's kind of an interesting paradox of reading. Readers want to predict where a story will go, but they want to be wrong. And so it's like we're reading our book. And 200 pages in we're like, I think I know who the bad guy is. I think I know what the twist is going to be, whatever.
[00:15:50] So we want to anticipate and make those predictions and so on. If the story goes in the direction that we expected, then we'll be upset. What? That's exactly what I thought was going to happen. And so it's a game that we play with readers, and it's a game that they want to be able to make up predictions and expectations in a certain way. But if they're correct, they're let down. So they want to be satisfied and also surprised. So this has to do with definitely some of these aspects of twist writing that we mentioned earlier is continually surprise readers in a way that satisfies them as they dive deeper and deeper into the story.
[00:16:37] Matty: One of the things that I've asked my beta readers is at different points in the book to tell me who they think is the person who is going to be revealed at the end. Mine isn't really murder whodunit, but it's interesting to see, Oh, now I think it's Fred. Oh, now I think it's Jane. Of course at some point, they're going to guess that it's the actual bad guy, but then sometimes they veer off and they think, Okay, now I don't think it's that person anymore. I think it's the other person. And if you have a couple of people who on page 15 are saying, Oh, I think it's the actual bad guy, then you know that you have some more work to do.
[00:17:10] Steven: You might have some work yet to do. That's helpful thing. I've done similar with some of my books. And of course I write organically. So when I don't outline or plot anything out with my novels. And so in some cases I've gotten to being almost done, 95% done, and not knowing how the book will end or who knows bad guy actually is. And so that's always interesting and surprising.
[00:17:36] A lot of times I might set up three or four different people to be the potential villain, main villain, mastermind behind everything, and I don't always know who it is until I get to the very end of the book. So that's fun. And it's harder for readers to predict if even I don't know who it's going to be.
[00:17:53] Matty: So we're recording this on August 17, 2020, and the episode that goes out tomorrow, so it will be before this one is published, with Hank Philippi Ryan, and she's exactly the same way. She starts writing and doesn't know until she gets to the end whodunit. I was like, oh, that's so crazy to think of that. I'm so much a plotter.
[00:18:13] Steven: I'm pretty ineffective with trying to outline a story I always think how can I possibly outline something that doesn't exist yet?
[00:18:22] Matty: I have had the experience of writing a very detailed, like 10,000-word, outline and giving it to my editor and having him say, Okay, you have to make the bad guy seem worse. I was like, I don't think the bad guy is worse. I think I have to go and redo it because, the story was crying for a different person to have been the bad guy. But I still have to have that in my mind. I think the trick is just not that pantsing or plotting is good or bad. It's just that if one is working for you, don't try to switch to the other one because you'll be doomed.
[00:18:51] Steven: I think personally, one of the most important aspects is being responsive to the story. Like some people tend to want to write an outline or to plot out the story, and then as they write, they have this niggling inside of them. Wait a minute. Things should probably go in a little different direction.
[00:19:10] And I think that we need to trust that. That's part of our writing is risk and all storytelling is risk. And so I think we need to, maybe say, Okay, maybe I was wrong six months ago when I outlined or plotted this out. And this is really the direction I should be taking things. So to be responsive as the story unfolds instead of defaulting back to the preconceptions that we had earlier and handcuffing ourselves to those. I think being free as the story moves forward to take it new directions, I think that's really important, whatever your initial approach ends up being.
[00:19:44] Matty: Yeah. If you have to work too hard to make the person that you thought was the bad guy, the bad guy, then it's probably somebody different.
[00:19:52] Steven: Many years ago I wrote a book called The Knight, like a chess piece. And so I knew when I wrote it, who the killer is going to be, like for a year, I worked on the book and I knew who the killer was going to be. And then three days before it was supposed to be due, I was like, Man, I can't figure out the climax of this book.
[00:20:11] And so I was flying out to go speak at a conference somewhere. And I was like, I think I need to change who the killer is. And so I was like, No, it's too much work. Like it's a 500-page book and I can't change who the killer is. And so finally I got to the Cincinnati airport, called my editor on the phone and I said, Guess what? this book's going to be even better than we thought! She goes, Okay, I'm glad to hear that. That's good. I said, I'm going to change who the killer is. And there's this long pause on the other end of the line. And finally she said, I trust you. As long as it'll be a better book, go ahead. It took me about two more months, cause I had to rewrite the book,
[00:20:46] But it ends up that it was a better book because so far, no one has guessed, or told me -- maybe some people have, but no one has written to me guessing who the main bad guy of The Knight was. And so had I stuck with the original plan, though, it would not have been as strong of a story. People would have been able to predict it.
[00:21:05] And so that was hard, but that's one of the things I always think back to. You've got to be able to adapt and move forward if you find there's a weakness in your story, even if you have to maybe not exactly meet your deadline. But I won't officially say that, but I will say that the book ended up better because I was able to make those necessary changes.
[00:21:32] Matty: Well, I was very relieved that I came to my realization after having written a 10,000-word treatment, not the 85,000 word book. That made it a little less painful to say, You know what? I have to rethink this. So I'm going to get The Knight and then after I read it, I'm going to get in touch with you and find out who the original bad guy was.
[00:21:50] Steven: That'd be fun. Let's do it. Yeah. Sounds good.
[00:21:53] Matty: So the next tip is, whatever you do, avoid countdowns and deadlines.
[00:21:59] Steven: Obviously these are all written, in a backwards sort of way, countdowns and deadlines can be really effective cause you don't want to overuse them. Sometimes I'll tell people, there's a difference between a metronome and an oven timer. So a metronome just continues to kind of record the time. But an oven timer is counting down to something very specific. Your pizza is going to be done. There's payoff in the end.
[00:22:23] And so, if you were to say, Okay, every chapter, I think I'm going to have one more hour pass by, or something. Eventually since it doesn't escalate, it might become kind of boring for readers if it's just one hour for every chapter, something like that.
[00:22:39] So instead we use countdowns and deadlines. Once in a while throughout the story, maybe at the climax, or maybe building up to a second act or third act, mid book climax or whatever it is with the story. So use them judiciously just don't overuse them and make sure that they escalate in the story instead of just drone on like a metronome would.
[00:23:03] Matty: There's a particular issue I have with certain kinds of countdowns. And I can imagine all sorts of examples of this in movies. I'm not sure I can imagine them so much in books, but one of these ones where the bomb is ticking down and it's at 10 seconds and then it's nine seconds, and then something else happens and a minute and a half goes by and you go back. And now it's at eight seconds where it gets unrealistic, the closer it comes to the zero for a minute, it becomes increased unrealistic. Is there a written fiction version of that that people should beware of?
[00:23:40] Steven: The big thing again is don't have your characters go through time warps, like we mentioned earlier. It happens so often when people flip from one point of view to another. And so you might be doing the countdown and you might say, Oh, hey, I'm going to flip to the girl who's disarming the bomb and then I'm going to flip to the guy who's in a fist fight with someone up in the upper part of the skyscraper, or whatever.
[00:24:04] But, yeah, whenever I use, deadlines or countdowns like this, I always make sure that they're pretty accurate. In other words, when you read through it, it's in real time. So whatever happens between each second would only take a second to happen, instead of playing with time like that. I think because it's unbelievable, again. That comes back to this whole idea that stories need that believability factor. And as soon as that's lost, it ends up distancing readers.
[00:24:36] Matty: I like that. I've never heard that caution about making sure that the time is consistent across scenes. I've certainly heard it within a scene, but that's a great tip to keep in mind what is going on with the other characters as well.
[00:24:49] Steven: I actually I've read a lot of work of aspiring authors. And very often they do like to use point of view flips because there's some advantage to be able to do that. But this is one of the most common weaknesses that I see in their work is this idea of, We'll have one point of view. Something will happen that's dramatic and it will stop. Flip to another one. And it's almost like that time doesn't really pass in this timeline. Yeah, the easiest way that I know to explain it is just say time passes for every character exactly the same within your book. And if you play that out, usually it'll help solve that problem.
[00:25:32] Matty: Yup. So I'm going to move on to our next tip about how to kill suspense, which is never tell readers anything about what's going to happen. Keep all plans a secret.
[00:25:43] Steven: Yeah, I know this is like counter intuitive for some people they might say, Why would you tell what's going to happen later? Don't you want to have twists? And I totally understand that. And yes, you do still want twists, but a rudimentary way of actually creating suspense is simply to have characters tell readers their plans. So for instance, a character might say, I'll see you tomorrow at four o'clock at the baseball game.
[00:26:07] Okay. Now, readers to know that there will be a scene at the four o'clock baseball game or something dramatic might occur to postpone it or cancel it or. But now readers are looking forward to that and they can be in suspense and really what is suspense? Suspense is really apprehension born of concern. So when we're concerned for the character, we get apprehensive. Something's going to go wrong. I know it. They're never going to make it to the baseball game. Or His son's looking for him at the baseball and he's not going to be there, and his son's feelings are going to be hurt.
[00:26:41] So one of the simplest things we can do as far as storytellers is to allow readers to tell each other their plans and that will help root our readers in the story and also create that apprehension born of concern for the characters that we're reading about.
[00:27:02] Matty: Is there any tip about how subtle or obvious the character's plan needs to be in order to retain the suspense?
[00:27:10] Steven:
[00:27:11] I would say that usually the more specific you can be in revealing what is to come, the more you can lead readers to worry about what would happen if it doesn't. So we want high stakes typically with building suspense. So stakes are basically the negative consequences that would happen if the character does not reach his goal or whatever it is she's trying to attain or overcome. And so, yeah, I think the more specific you can be, instead of, I'll see you tomorrow, that one way of making a plan or promise is to say, I will see you tomorrow for coffee at breakfast at eight, or whatever. That specificity actually helps to create suspense.
[00:27:57] So my view is really that suspense is really built up through a series of promises and payoff. So it isn't just about making scary things happen or having danger around the bend. But it's also about making promises of peril and then paying off with dramatic escapes or things like that.
[00:28:20] Matty: So moving on to the next tip for how to kill suspense, keep repeating the same stuff over and over. Chase scenes, prayers, kissing, scenes, murders, and so on. If it's exciting, once, it will be again and again.
[00:28:32] Steven: Yes, repetition is the enemy of escalation. And so if you want to bore readers, give them relentless action. A lot of people have been taught. you need to make stuff happen with your story. You need to make it exciting and so you need to make more things happen. Usually you don't. You need to promise that more things will go wrong. In other words, let's say that you have a chase scene, then there's another chase scene and they chase each other. Then they get on motorcycles and they chase each other again or whatever. There's nothing more boring than relentless action. It needs to escalate. And the more that it just recycles itself over, the duller and more boring it'll be.
[00:29:16] I was talking with my friend, Rob Dugoni, who teaches this writing intensive with me. And so he said he had taken his daughter to see one of the movies with Superman. Superman was battling a bad guy. They were both indestructible and they were flying through buildings and smashing each other through buildings back and forth, and it went on for like 10 minutes, And finally in the movie theater, his daughter -- she's maybe 10 or 12 at the time -- she goes, Okay, I get it. They fly through buildings.
[00:29:44] Matty: That's an editor in the making.
[00:29:47] Steven: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, Just get on with it! So it's boring, even though there's plenty happening. There's lots of action and activity. But it's not escalating, there's no stakes. They're not going to die. So they can fly through buildings. So what? So that's one of the really big secrets of creating and sustaining reader interest is building up, not through repetition, but through escalation, more and more interest in the story.
[00:30:15] Matty: One of the examples of repetition that isn't exactly creating suspense, but it's more meeting reader expectations is -- I'll disguise the names to protect the innocent -- but there's a series where in every book, the hero crashes his car, something terrible happens to his car, and so I think that readers have come to expect the car crash or the car destruction. And will probably be disappointed if at some point the car doesn't get damaged in some way. So obviously that's not creating suspense across the whole series, but it's almost like a trope that that particular author's readers are looking for. Do you have any tips about when that's an okay thing to do and when it's not?
[00:31:06] Steven: I think that something like that can be fun and interesting. It's almost like a character's special skills or abilities or his emblem or something. They look forward to that. In the series I wrote, the Patrick Bowers novels, in at least eight or nine out of the 11 books, maybe all 11, he uses his flashlight in a creative way at the climax to get out of trouble. So readers are thinking, How is he going to use his flashlight now? His hands were cuffed behind his back or whatever.
[00:31:37] And then he would always say, Everything matters. In every book they would say, What does that matter? and he would say, Everything matters. so these two things just sort of became, if I didn't include one in a book, readers would be like, Why didn't you? Yeah, I thought he was going to say ... So I had to come up with creative ways of using them each time in the book and it got harder and harder. At first, the flashlight thing wasn't that big of a deal. He could use it in a creative way. But finally, after like 10 books, I'm like, how else can you use a Maglite flashlight?
[00:32:06] Matty: Yeah. You've created quite a challenge for yourself.
[00:32:09] Steven: I know. So anyway, so that was fun, but that stuff can be really fun for readers, I think. And again, it's a bit of a promise. You've created this scene and we look forward to the moment where Schwarzenegger will say, I'll be back, or this car crash would occur and so on.
[00:32:24] Matty: Moving on to tip number eight for killing suspense. Only let readers see the danger that the story's characters see. It's too confusing to let readers in on information that the characters don't have.
[00:32:37] Steven: Yeah, the thing is, there's a way to create dramatic irony when you allow readers to be aware of the peril that the characters in the story are not aware of yet.
[00:32:48] So let's say that you're writing your story and you have a character who's the bad guy. And he sneaks into the victim's house. So there he is in the house and he's rooting through the guy's drawers or something. All of a sudden, the guy starts pulling up in the driveway. It's a long driveway and you can see the lights coming up and we flip to his point of view and he's glancing his cell phone, he's got some calls to make, or he's on the Bluetooth or something like that. And he pulls up to the driveway and gets out of the car. Then you flip back point of view to the killer, the bad guy, and so he's got a knife and he hides behind the door.
[00:33:26] Now as your hero walks up to the front of the house, he pulls out his house key and he slips it into the lock. Readers are thinking, Don't go in the, guy's waiting for you. He's right behind the door. Don't open the door. Don't open the door. Of course the hero has no idea that there's danger waiting on the other side of the door, but we've created quite a bit of tension and suspense by allowing readers to be aware of the peril that the character is not.
[00:33:52] This is one of the reasons why point of view flips are so common in thrillers, is because you can use one person or character's point of view to show readers peril that another is not aware of.
[00:34:06] Matty: Remind me of what the definition is. I think that mystery is when the reader and the protagonist have the same amount of information and then suspense as you're describing is where the reader has more information than the protagonist. Did I get that right?
[00:34:19] Steven: There's different people who have stated things in different ways, but the idea is that in a mystery, typically the character is one step ahead of the readers. In a suspense, typically the readers are one step ahead of the character. So basically what that means is like in a detective story, the mystery story, the detective will take action. Maybe he'll pick up the cell phone, he'll look at it and he'll swirl the wine around in his glass and they'll look out the window at the light against the leaves, and he'll say I've solved the case. Meanwhile, readers are like, What? I have no idea. How did that solve anything? And what did that mean? So he is one step ahead of the readers. Like he has figured something out that we're not aware of yet. And then maybe later he'll explain it.
[00:35:02] But in suspense very often, it's the readers who are in on the information that the character's not. Yeah, so you're right. That's one of the ways to identify some of these different genres is where the orientation is between the reader and the main characters.
[00:35:22] Matty: Yeah. So we're going to go on to tip nine for killing suspense. Readers don't want the promise that something terrible is going to happen in the future. They just want to have exciting things happen right now. Add action.
[00:35:36] Steven: Now we touched on this a second ago, but the idea is that stories, a lot of story is about apprehension. It's about what's to come. It isn't just about what's unfolding moment by moment. And so very often when people are told you need to make more stuff happen, or you need more action, very often that's not necessarily the case. And so I would always advise you to look at the context and see what the reader is actually thinking about, worrying about, wondering about, expecting, or hoping for in this moment, in this scene. And you may realize readers don't need something exciting or whatever in this moment, what they need is stillness. The stillness that precedes the action. That action very often can be payoff for promises that were made earlier.
A lot of people have been taught that a story needs rising action. And they'll point to Freytag's Pyramid that we've all seen, the mountain and landscape of story with rising action and denouement. But rising action is not necessarily what we need, because action can actually become distraction. What we need is tightening tension.
[00:36:50] So tension develops more of our apprehension, like we mentioned earlier. So it's like in The Silence of the Lambs, at the climax, when Clarice Starling is after Buffalo Bill, the bad guy, she's in his lair in the basement. And of course he turns the lights off and so she can't see him. He's right behind her. He has on the night vision goggles. So he's coming closer to her and she's standing there with the gun and she's turning with the gun. He's coming closer to her. She's standing there, slowly he's moving. Now there's no rising action. That's like the least amount of action for the last 20 minutes of the movie. So there's no rising action, but there's lots of tension. There's lots of suspense. And so that's what we want in our stories, is to not necessarily just have a bunch of active things going on, but instead to really tighten the tension of the story.
[00:37:50] Matty: I had an editor who used to rate each of my chapters on action and intensity. And so the action was more physically related. Intensity was more emotionally related. And her theory was that you want a rise and fall, you know, gradually ramping up over the entire story. But. you could intersperse heavily action-oriented scenes with more emotionally intense scenes. And that keeps the reader engaged, but it gives them some variety instead of just having Superman fly through the building one more time.
[00:38:21] Steven: Yeah. That's interesting.
[00:38:23] Matty: So I'm moving on to tip number 10 for killing suspense. Portray or villain as the hand ringing self-congratulatory, chortling, look what an evil mastermind I am type of character.
[00:38:36] Steven: Yeah, we want to avoid the mwahaha bad guy, they're silly, they're not scary. And so a lot of people want to make their bad guy self-congratulatory in the sense of look how clever I am. Look how I'm making these people suffer. they're actually missing on something very important called status. Status has to do with the character's prominence or submission within a scene. And you can undermine status by showing a sense of neediness. So if your character, the bad guy, is needy in the sense that he needs to see people suffer or he needs to have attention, or he needs to prove himself to anyone else, it actually lowers his status.
[00:39:21] The most frightening bad guys are ones who have high status, who aren't doing it so that they can see someone suffer. They're doing it simply because they're completely cold hearted or callous. They don't care if someone suffers or doesn't suffer, they could just as easily walk up to you and shove you in the shoulder and say, Hey, how are you doing? as they could stab you in the stomach and watch you bleed to death. These are the terrifying villains, not the ones who were like, I'm going to make him suffer. So it just depends what type of story you're telling. But if you really want to make someone scary, make him cold hearted instead of needy and sadistic, and then you'll elevate his status and he'll be memorable.
[00:40:07] Matty: Another link I'm going to put in the show notes--again, an episode that will have aired by the time this episode comes out--was with Jenna Moreci and it was all about writing realistic and compelling villains. So it will be fun for people to be able to reference back and forth between that tip that you gave and some of the tips that Jenna gave.
[00:40:25] Steven: Excellent. Yeah. Sounds good.
[00:40:27] Matty: Tip number 11 for killing suspense is keep the mystery alive. Don't let readers know what your character really wants in a scene.
[00:40:37] Steven: Now, see, this is interesting. It brings up one of the differences between mystery and suspense. And some people will say, I don't want to give too much away because I want to keep people in suspense. Now there's actually a backward way of thinking within that statement. And that is the only way for someone to be in suspense is to give them information. So by keeping information away from readers, we actually keep them from suspense instead of in suspense. So it's super important in your scenes to create moments where it's clear to readers what does the character want within this scene?
[00:41:17] Because if we're just sitting there, I really don't get what's going on. I don't understand this character. Sure. He walks in the house, but what is he there for? what's he searching for? I don't get it. So the longer we're in that space as readers, it's not that we are creating more and more suspense. We're just creating more and more what? Confusion. And so it's really important to orient readers said, this is what the character is in the scene for.
[00:41:41] You don't have to specifically state in those terms, but you might have a character say to another character, What are you even doing here? Well, I've come here for the $500 you owe me and I want it before I'm going to leave. Now we know, now we can worry about whether or not he's going to get the money or the other guy's going to attack him or whatever might happen. So allowing your characters to have specifically stated goals within scenes is really important to create that tension and worry apprehension for readers.
[00:42:12] Matty: Can you reveal what a character wants at a superficial level? I'm not sure superficial is the word I want, but the guy shows up and says, I'm here to pick up the briefcase. And so it's clear that he wants the briefcase, but you're holding back what's in the briefcase or why he needs the briefcase, or is that cheating?
[00:42:32] Steven: Oh, no. After a while it would be cheating in the sense that would be like teasing readers if we play with it too long, you'll just be like, Come on, just tell me what's in the briefcase so I can worry about ... and stuff like that. But no, there's nothing wrong with that. That's a good way of doing it and creating some curiosity.
[00:42:48] Basically different things drive us to flip pages. There are really four. Actually there's five, but we want to avoid the fifth one at all costs, but I'll just flip through them really quickly. But one is curiosity. And so in that case of what you just mentioned, it's curiosity, that's leading readers to wonder What's in this briefcase? Then there's concern, and this test to do with apprehension. So concern is different from curiosity. Curiosity is where we want to know answers. Concern is when we want safety. We're worried about the character and apprehensive and so on. So there's curiosity, concern. And then there's anticipation where we look forward to something happening. We're not scared it's going to happen, but we're actually looking forward to it. And then there's just really the entertainment value of reading something that's so good. We're not really worried about anything. We're not really looking forward to. We're just immersed in the amazing writing as we read it.
[00:43:44] So you can appeal to any one of these four when you write, you might have a certain scene, like you just mentioned where you're going to lean more toward curiosity, one more toward concern or maybe anticipation, or maybe you're just like, I'm just going to write the super powerful moment in my book that people are going to want to read.
[00:44:03] So of course the last thing that keeps readers reading is obligation, which we want to avoid. This is where someone will say, well, I started the book, so I'm going to finish it. And so sometimes in my writing seminars, I will have people raise their hand and say, okay, repeat after me. And I'll say from now on, I will never finish reading a book that was written worse that I could write it. If you're reading a book and you actually realize that this is a waste of your time, then there's so many amazing books out there to be read. I would say don't waste your time on it. I finish maybe two out of every six to eight novels I start reading. There's just so many. There's just so many amazing stories that if the author is just not really engaging me that strongly, I'm like, I going to start another book, man. I'm not just going to waste another six hours with this guy when he clearly doesn't even know how to tell a great story.
[00:45:03] Matty: So how long do you give it before you give up on it?
[00:45:07] Steven: Usually you can tell within the first 10 pages.
[00:45:10] Matty: Yeah.
[00:45:11] Steven: Some people will say, I'll give it a hundred pages. That's a lot of investment in a book, but usually you can tell pretty early if the writer knows what they're doing. sometimes I'll get halfway through a book and I'll be like, man, it's not developing. It's not going anywhere. I have bookshelves full of books that I want to read, and so I'm just like itching to get to some of these amazing stories that I want to read. So, yeah, we want to avoid the reading it just because you have to.
[00:45:38] You know, my daughter. when she was in high school, was systematically taught to hate reading by being assigned to read the "classics." And so she would read all these books that really, and let's just be frank, a lot of them are not that good. They're not that well written. So she would read it and be like, Dad, this book isn't very good, because ... Then she would use discernment and tell me the reasons why it wasn't good. And I'm like, you're absolutely right. And so she had to read these books that she just didn't identify with. And so she just fell out of love of reading when she was in high school, because she was having to read these books under the threat of getting a bad grade if she didn't read it.
[00:46:17] So anyway, I'm a big advocate of writing books that are worth reading and also, not forcing someone to chew on something that just doesn't taste good.
[00:46:27] Matty: That's a good tip for all our readers up there. And the last tip for killing suspense is promise that something terrible will happen and then don't let it happen. It'll make for a great twist.
[00:46:40] Steven: Yeah. Twists have to be payoff. And so when we make a promise, we need to keep it. I always like telling people, make big promises in your books. Now that doesn't mean that you need to have the most action packed, maybe your book isn't an action thriller, but you still are going to make big promises. And then always keep those promises. So for instance, the dad might say to his son, I will be at your game on Friday. I promise. Nothing is gonna stop me. That's a big promise for a dad to make this kid. Now every reader's like, Oh no, you're not going to make it, something's going to happen, I don't know what it is.
[00:47:18] Or maybe you are writing a thriller and in one of my books, The Pawn, my first, Patrick Bowers novel, there's a character says to another, he says, Your death will be remembered for decades. That's a huge promise. Like she can't just die some normal death, it's gotta be something really horrifying, and that's a huge promise to make to readers. So readers reading, and they're like, Oh man, I don't know what's going to happen, but it's going to be pretty terrifying. Because that's a thriller and I want to scare you in that book.
[00:47:49] But it doesn't always need to be physical danger. It could be peril. Emotional peril and psychological, relational. It could be spiritual. Maybe there's a demon after them. But always, always, always keep the big promises that you've made to your readers.
[00:48:07] Matty: Well, that was our 12 fabulous tips for killing suspense. And, Steven, I appreciate so much you joining to talk about that with our listeners. Please let them know where they can find out more about you and your fiction and your nonfiction work online.
[00:48:22] Steven: Well thanks so much. Yes, this is great to be here. So Stevenjames.net, is where you can go for all things Steven James -- my novel and some of my books on the craft of writing. And you can follow me on Twitter at ReadStevenJames, and I love to hear from people, so I appreciate the chance to be on the show today. Thank you.
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