As a writer, I have always been the type to overthink my writing, and when it comes to writing suspense I tend to do the same. But here is a secret. If you have any desire or need to create or finish a book and have nothing to lose then there is a good chance you will make it through. I think that is why writers go for suspense novels. They want to feel in control of what happens and to have something to lose.
What has always frustrated me is when writers feel they have nothing to lose and feel the urge to start writing. I have had to stop writing fiction a few times because I felt the urge to write this month’s issue of VanityFair. If you need to lose a lot of money, you are going to have to write suspense.
I think the best way to write suspense is to keep yourself entertained. If you have nothing to lose, then you will have to keep trying to figure out how to get out of a situation that is already over.
That’s the best way I know to write suspense. If you don’t have the opportunity to fail, then keep trying until you do get it right. Or at least until you find a way to fail in such a way that you can never repeat it. Like a game of hide and seek.
With that in mind, I can honestly say that I find writing suspense is easy! I can’t wait for the next time I write a story.
Writing suspense is easy, and that’s all I can say.
What this says to me is that writers can use the same techniques of suspense as screenwriters do to create suspense in their movies, the same techniques as TV writers use to create suspense in their shows. It’s more of a “what can I do…” question that gives the writer more room to work with. If they have a story they want to tell, they can use the same methods, techniques, and tools that screenwriters use to create suspense in their movies.
A lot of writers are looking to their movie scripts as the blueprint for their movies, so they feel they can’t use a tool that is already in use to create suspense in their own movies. The tool I’m talking about is the story, and the story needs to feel true to reality.
This is a great example of how a writer might use a tool that is already in use to create suspense in their own movie. The example is from the movie “A Simple Plan.” Director John Ford was using the story of a young girl who’s father is killed to create suspense and fear. He had two ways of doing that, both involving the tools already in use in the movie. One was a slow fade to black, and the other was a jump scare.
The movie A Simple Plan was used to be a thriller, but after the jump scare, John Ford wanted to try something different. He wrote a script to use as a thriller but only to have it scare the shit out of its audience. One of the ways a thriller works is by using a jump scare because that’s the most effective way for a story to scare the shit out of an audience.
