I don't always recommend these guys because sometimes they have tips I don't think are great, but Writer's Digest has a pretty good article on this.

The main thing I think you need to do is connect us more to the main character (basically the first point in the Writer's Digest article). The main character seems really rushed. I tried to remember the main character's name without looking... and I don't think I ever learned it. Well, going back I noted that he crawls towards a door that "obviously has his name on it" but we were never told what his name was. Leo was the door. Is the character's name Lionel? Leon? Is he just named Leo? Who is he? Why do I care about him?

The main character says and does a lot of things that I don't particularly understand, but it isn't done in a suspenseful way, per se. Rather, it seems more haphazard than suspenseful. There's a lot of jumping and "mysterious" things happening with no actual substance. For example, something like this...

Stars… I look at them, dream of them… They are so close, and yet, so far… They sparkle like tiny fireflies on the dark canvas of the bluish sky. The horns of the half-moon have newly vanished out of sight from the horizon, leaving behind them tenebrous ash. It seems the moon is looking at me with its silver-shining beam.

...sounds romantic and intriguing. Following this with these lines...

I suddenly remember my great-grandfather’s old telescope of which my mother told me about an epoch ago (I might be exaggerating). His death was very enigmatic. Nobody knew how he disappeared. Nobody saw his cadaver.

...ruins that mood. It's so quick and sudden, it's just jarring. I'm not sure if the main character is a dreamer or just someone who likes stars and the sudden "my great-grandfather owned a telescope and died mysteriously" change of pace doesn't draw me in.

In exchange, keeping the romantic mood but still being able to talk about the great-grandfather and the mystery surrounding him would be easier to digest.

Further, in some places you seem to be rushing to create mysteries without giving us purpose to care, then quickly drop the topic and move to something else. Here is an example:

I don’t think she doesn’t know. I am going to find that telescope.

I am very bored. And I don’t have one of those fancy PlayStation thingies to entertain me with. So I decide to write.

In one sentence, we're talking about a telescope, which was the focus (mostly) of everything that came before it. And then in the next sentence, all of a sudden, for no reason, the character is bored and wants to start writing. Just as quickly, you wheel around to another thing the character is doing.

I throw the pen aside. I look at the blank paper in front of me. I can’t write. Not now. I stare at the starry sky through the window. The moon is beaming down at me, gleaming beautifully among the stars. I let my mind drift away. When will this end?

I open the door. I hear hurried steps coming toward me. It’s Mum.

I do have questions, lots of them, but I'm not in suspense. There's no actual tension in any of the scenes here at all. My questions are like "When will what end? Nothing seems to be happening. Is the character tired of monotony? It seems like he is pretty monotonous himself, so why does it matter to him? Is the monotony strange for his world?" The second point in the Writer's Digest article is helpful here-- When a reader says nothing is happening* it doesn't mean there is no action but rather that no promises are being made.

Right now I am writing something with a lot of horror and gore aspects to it so I kind of get the idea of trying to write suspense with a lot of action in it, but the slow, empty periods where it seems nothing is happening is where suspense is built. If you carefully lay the foundation for the action ahead, you build tension and tension is the essence of suspense. The best way to do that is to make "promises", which more or less is you telling the reader, "Something terrible here/because of this will happen for sure if you read on". For example, the character goes to a school basement. He calls it "mysterious" but to the reader, there is nothing mysterious about it. We don't know anything about the school basement at all, so it's hard for us to think "Oh, this is a place where something might happen". But if you build it up to be mysterious or strange and then the character is dragged into the basement, you pretty much have made it clear that something will happen down there. You've made the readers begin to worry about the main character. Instead of constantly throwing the characters into scenes where they are in immediate danger, let the readers acclimate, even if the process is agonizingly slow, to the atmosphere of your character's world.

The last pointer I would give you is that you need to make sure that you're using all the time you can. What I mean is, there are times when you actually do need to speed up your story, but sometimes it isn't necessary. This...

Today’s a good day because Mum and Dad are invited to the neighbour’s wedding ceremony. I nagged to stay home. This was the perfect chance to find the telescope. But Jared and Arthur call me and tell me that they’d be glad to accompany me to the school’s mysterious basement, where I was yesterday.

...was unnecessary. Firstly, it would have been helpful to know why finding the telescope was at all important. But for whatever reason, the main character is also interested in the school basement-- why? There's no reason for him to be interested in it, but he is. What's the purpose? What got him interested in it? Why do I care about the basement? Secondly, a full day passed and I know nothing about it. The neighbor's wedding came flying out of nowhere-- you'd think the character or their parents might've brought it up earlier. Who are Jared and Arthur-- why do we care about them? There was a whole day to give these loose ends some meaning, but instead of using that time, you jumped forward to the action. These people and these events and all of the things you're talking about are necessary things for a reader to know. To jump from "I went into the school basement and it was weird" to "A day passed and I went into the school basement and it was weird" diffuses tension so it's not suspenseful.

Use your time wisely. Spend the time you have laying the foundation to create truly suspenseful moments. Action alone is not suspenseful. A tense moment between characters or an overwhelmingly heavy atmosphere will make your story more suspenseful.

---

(0)

Login to post a comment!