Keeping the Pages Turning in Romantic Suspense (Lessons I’ve Learned the Hard Way)

Revisions on my current manuscript have been torturous. Murky, slow and agonizing. Why? I blissfully (stupidly) ignored the tenets of what makes a romantic suspense a real page-turner. To the point where my agent, after having read the first 55K words, essentially said, “Well it all hangs together, but it reads like a contemporary romance.” Ouch. That’s not to say that contemporary romances are dull—in fact, they are some of my favorites to read. However, if you grab a romantic suspense, you expect to be biting your nails. Or, according to Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia’s definition: Suspense is a feeling of pleasurable fascination and excitement mixed with apprehension, tension, and anxiety developed from an unpredictable, mysterious, and rousing source of entertainment. There’s more, but you get the idea.

Below, I’ve shared the 11 best methods I’ve found to enhance suspense. No need to use all of them at once, nor are they listed in order of importance. Simply pick a few, make them integral to your story, and viola, readers will burn dinner because they snuck a few pages while standing over the range. The extra bonus? The same elements, ahem, make the story far easier to write.

1. A Solid Conflict. Opposing forces. Absolute must do’s. No other options. Any story in any genre will fall flat without well-constructed conflict. The simplest formula I’ve seen is Madeline Hunter’s: She MUST DO SOMETHING, and He MUST STOP HER from doing it.

2. Ticking Clock & Short Time Frame. The character(s) MUST do something before a certain event or within an allotted time, or tragedy will strike. Keeping the time frame short ramps ups the tension. How stressed and off balance is your heroine going to be if she has two months to dawdle over a problem—as opposed to just two weeks to act? Two days? Force them to make quick decisions and to go to extremes.

3. The Chase. When the heroine is being chased, is on the run, and is constantly in danger? Slam dunk—for the same reasons that the Ticking Clock and Short Time Frame work.

4. High Stakes. Stakes vary by genre and by book. Wiping out a city or the world? Certain death for the protagonist? Abduction of a loved one? Loss of freedom? As long the stakes are potentially devastating to your character and they’d do ANYTHING to stop the worst from happening, you’re golden.

5. Enlighten your Protagonist. Make sure the characters actually KNOW they are in danger, or at least suspect it. A clueless protagonist, la-tee-da-ing around the story, doesn’t excite anyone.

6. Seriously Wicked Opponent. Make the villain more determined, more motivated, and better equipped, than the protagonists. By the end, your characters will rise to the challenge and defeat the baddie. In the beginning, however, the reader should really be worried because the odds seem insurmountable.

7. Tight Writing & Fast Pacing. Keep the backstory feed short and impactful. Hack any unnecessary scenes, characters, tangents (yours and the characters), lines, and words.  Keep things happening to the characters. Yes, readers may need a minute to catch their breath, but then, boom—something more needs to happen to march the characters toward the inevitable showdown.

8. Include the Villain’s POD. The bad guy’s point of view is a bonus. The reader is given the gift of knowing what’s coming and can therefore dread every delicious second, even if the protagonist is a step behind. Like in the movies, when you clutch your seat and want to scream: Don’t open that door! Don’t go into the basement!

9. Turn Worlds Upside Down. Wrench the rug out from under your characters’ feet, ASAP, so that they are reacting from a place of stress and uncertainty from the get go.

10. Take Away the Easy Out. His Glock was tossed over a cliff, her mega funds have been stolen, the K-9 dog was poisoned, or she can’t use Judo because she’s tied up…Whatever the character normally relies on to get them out of a tight spot—eliminate. Problems become more challenging and the characters must use their noggins and guts in new ways.

11. Withhold Answers. If someone dies or something terrible occurs, at the start, your reader will need to find out who, why, how… If you hold back the big reveal until the end, they will trail along picking up the puzzle pieces until the last blank spot is filled. It’s the intrinsic need-to-know factor at work.

Please share your own experiences in using these devices in your stories. What did I miss? Which elements make you as a reader plop a book into your buyer’s basket? Thanks for reading!

Jenna

Posted by JB Schroeder on June 10, 2013

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