The dark art of creating suspense

More than any trick or technique, what makes suspense so enthralling is empathy – crafting characters your readers can truly connect with, says Mark Billingham

I am often asked at events and creative writing workshops how you go about creating suspense. There was a period when, in answer to this question, I would talk about the tricks of the trade: the cliffhanger, the twist and the “reveal”. Such things are still important, of course, but I have come to realise that the answer actually lies in something far more basic, something that should be central to the writing of any piece of fiction: the creation of character.

The techniques mentioned above are, of course, all vital pieces of the mystery writer’s armoury and, as such, are components of the genre that readers of crime novels have come to expect. They are part of the package; the buttons that a writer has to push every so often. When a crime writer thinks up a delicious twist, it is a great moment. Time to relax and take the rest of the day off. I do think that it can be overdone, however. There are a number of writers who believe it is their duty to throw as many curve balls at the reader as possible. To twist and twist again. These are the Chubby Checkers of crime fiction and, while I admire the craft, I think that it can actually work against genuine suspense. Put simply, I find it hard to engage with any book that is no more than a demonstration of technique.

That said, the “reveal” remains a very effective technique, and one with which I am very familiar from my time as a standup comedian. It may sound surprising, but a joke and a crime novel work in very much the same way. The comedian/writer leads their audience along the garden path. The audience know what’s coming, or at least they think they do until they get hit from a direction they were not expecting.

The best example I can think of from the world of crime fiction is in Thomas Harris’s novel, The Silence of the Lambs. The Swat team have the killer cornered and are approaching his house. At the same time, Clarice Starling has been dispatched to a small town many miles away to tie up a few loose ends. A member of the Swat teams ring the killer’s doorbell. We “cut” to the killer’s ghastly cellar where he hears the doorbell ring. This is the moment when the dummy is sold and the reader buys it completely. The reader stays with the killer as he slowly climbs the stairs. We know he has a gun. We know what he is capable of. He opens the door, and … it’s Clarice Starling! The Swat team are at the wrong house, she is at the right house and she doesn’t know it. It’s the perfect reveal and it happens at the precise moment that the reader turns the page. The best crime fiction is full of heart-stopping moments such as this.

The reason that Harris’s reveal works so wonderfully, however, is not just because of the sublime timing. It works because of the character of Clarice Starling; a young woman the reader has come to know well and to empathise with. Ultimately, this is where I believe that the key to genuine suspense is to be found.

This revelation happened several years ago when I was reading a novel called The Turnaround by American writer George Pelecanos. Pelecanos is happy enough to call himself a crimewriter, but he is not one overly concerned with the sort of tricks already described. There is usually shocking violence, often with an element of investigation in its aftermath, but his books are not traditional mysteries by any means. What he does do is create characters that live and breathe on the page. As I read, I realised I had come to know some of these people so well that the idea that something bad was going to happen to them had become almost unbearable. I was turning each page with a sense of dread and it dawned on me that here was the most satisfying way to create suspense.

These are crime novels, after all. The reader has seen the jacket, read the blurb and knows very well what they are in for. Yes, there may be redemption and resolution of a sort, but there will also be suffering and pain, grief and dreadful loss. You know it’s coming, but not when or to whom. The tension is real and terrible, because you care.

So, by all means throw in a thrilling twist every now and again, but not so often that they lose their power to shock. Time those “reveals” to perfection so as to give your reader a punch line they will remember for a long time. But above all, give your readers characters they genuinely care about, that have the power to move them, and you will have suspense from page one.

Mark Billingham is the author of 11 crime novels. Winner of the Theakston’s Old Peculier crime novel of the year award, he has tutored creative writing courses for both Faber and Arvon. His latest novel, Good As Dead, is published by Sphere