Let’s say water starts dripping out of the light fixture right above your kitchen table. Maybe the wiring in the light starts to spark. What do you do?
The moment you solve all the problems in the story, the story is over because the readers have nothing more to worry about. Troubles allow the story to progress and grow.
Remember, the better the opposition, the more tension the reader will feel because a formidable opponent increases the chances in the reader’s mind that the hero will fail.
Display your command of language. It’s worthwhile for a writer to think about poetry, and all its devices like assonance and alliteration, metaphor and allusion, internal rhythm, even meter.
Readers want to hope and fear for a character. To feel this, they must not know what WILL happen, but do need to suspect or know what MIGHT happen and feel tension about the possibilities.
Character and problem by themselves don’t go anywhere. You still have to build reader tension to a sharp point. So how do you do that?
In my last two posts, I identified a number of things that make people and, therefore, characters interesting to us. In this post, I’ll present the last two draws and introduce the next condition for reader suspense.
I would like to share ten resources, more or less, that I think are really terrific when it comes to getting the science right. These will be biased toward my areas of expertise, and will span books, websites, and software. Old-fashioned books first.
Writing is a rewarding and fun gig, but finding the time to write can be a challenge. The only commodity an author has are her words, and the only way to produce that commodity is to get some quality butt-in-chair action. Contrary to urban legend, stories don’t write themselves or grow on Novel Trees. So how do you find the time to make the magic happen?
Surprise is one of the vital elements in story making precisely because it makes things unpredictable. It makes hope, fear, worry, and curiosity possible.
Twelve princesses disappear nightly. Can this former soldier ease the king and queen’s heartache and earn himself a home? If you like upstanding heroes, picturesque romance, and delightful surprises, then you’ll adore this heartwarming story.
Andrew Gillsmith is a science fiction writer living in St. Louis, Missouri.
Gillsmith grew up in the Golden Age of Cyberpunk. Fittingly, his first job out of school was delivering mail for Jeff Bezos when he was still selling books via Listserv.
