4+ Tips for Building Suspense in Mysteries

I once spotted a woman reading a book while walking her dog down the street, her head bowed over a hardcover balanced in one hand and her dog’s leash in the other.

Isn’t that what all writers want? To craft a book that holds our readers so enthralled they can’t bear to put it down either to go to bed or walk the dog?

(Surprise vs. Suspense, and How to Pair Them in Your Writing.)

Of all the elements that make a book riveting, one of the most critical is suspense. Suspense can come from fear that something awful will happen, anxiety that something good won’t happen, or anticipation of when something will happen. Even curiosity can create suspense as the need to know becomes overwhelming.

So how do we craft this magic elixir that holds readers enthralled? Here are four tried-and-true methods.

1. Introduce a threat—or two or three. 

Old-fashioned mysteries tended to be cerebral affairs, with the reader pulled through the story by the desire to understand how someone managed to murder Colonel Mustard in the locked library. But suspense is emotional, and one of the best ways to create it in your book is to include a threat.

Hit the ground running. Start with a murder, and make it so spectacular/weird/horrible/tragic that we need to see this killer taken off the streets.Threaten your hero. Someone is watching him. Following her. Leaving warning notes nailed to her door. Sending henchmen to beat him up. Trying to kill him. And don’t forget psychological or emotional threats: the threat of exposure, or a situation that dredges up something traumatic/secret from the hero’s past.Threaten someone—or something—your hero cares about. A partner, child, sibling, parent, old love, the legacy of someone beloved.Provide external threats. There’s a hurricane coming. Or it’s Berlin 1945 and the Russians are closing in fast. One of the fun things about writing historical mysteries is that you can create a situation where the characters don’t know what’s about to happen but readers do. The murder in my When Blood Lies takes place in Paris in the spring of 1815, when Napoleon escapes from Elba. Everyone expects him to be quickly stopped, except he just keeps getting closer and closer.Kill someone else. This also escalates the threat, which is such a good thing to do, it’s our next point.

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2. Up the stakes. 

Whatever was important before, make it more important, more frightening, or more pressing.

Set a ticking clock. This is used all the time in thrillers, but it works in mysteries, too. An innocent man’s execution is set for 6:00 a.m. Or the killer will strike again tonight. And once that clock is ticking, consider shortening the available time to ratchet up the suspense even more.Make the threat more dangerous. Not only does another body show up, but this murder is more worrisome because of the method/victim/timing/whatever.Complicate your hero’s life. Take away something he relies on. Break his leg. If she’s a cop, take away her badge. In The Archangel Project, my Iraq War vet-hero is running away from bad guys who blow up her car, send her mentor to the hospital, have her bank accounts frozen, and sic the police on her, all against a loudly ticking clock as she tries to figure out what disaster they’re plotting.

3. Make us care. 

Remember that suspense and anxiety are emotions, and we will always worry more about characters we like, empathize with, or feel sorry for.

Make us care about your hero. The alcoholic former cop traumatized by an incident in his past is a cliché for a reason: It’s an easy way to make a hero sympathetic. But whether you give your hero a great sense of humor or show her volunteering at the local animal shelter, make them someone we want to see succeed. If your hero is solving murders because it’s her job or he likes puzzles, then they don’t have anything emotional invested in what they’re doing, and neither do your readers.Consider making your victim sympathetic. It’s been over 20 years since I saw The General’s Daughter, but I still remember it vividly. Why? Because it taught me the value of creating empathy for a murder victim. Of course, nasty victims who gave 20+ people a good reason to kill them can be fun, so in that case give us someone else to care about and worry about. Make your hero’s father/brother/best friend a prime suspect. Or make us like a suspect who looks guilty, so we hope they’re not.

4. Use the tricks of the trade. 

These might seem hackneyed, but they work.

Cliffhangers. End each scene and chapter on a note that doesn’t make it easy to put the book down. Think Dan Brown-style He turned and gasped, or, She opened the door and couldn’t believe what she saw. There are subtle, graceful ways to do it, too. The point is to leave us desperate to know what happens in the next scene.Watch your pacing. An intense, fast pace can heighten the sense of suspense. Shorten sentences; use snappier, active verbs; focus on dialogue and action; trim description and narrative. Don’t kill your suspense with long, unnecessary descriptions or information dumps. If you’re going to describe a character’s dress, for instance, it needs to be for a reason—characterization, sexual tension, etc.—not to show off your research.

Get in the habit of noticing what increases your anxiety when you’re reading, analyze it, and make a note of it so you can add it to your repertoire.

Oh, and remember that book the dog walker couldn’t bear to put down? It was Gone Girl.

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