Purple Prose:
suspense

As a huge fan of Angela Ackerman, The bookshelf Muse, and The Emotion Thesaurus, I’m thrilled to have her on my blog today to talk about creating characters you want your readers to trust, even when they shouldn’t. The result is the page-turning story readers crave.

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I don’t know about you, but I love reading books where the author encourages me to draw conclusions that are wrong. Case in point--untrustworthy characters who I trust anyway. Like all writers, I am ultra aware of character cues and actions as I read, so when I’m led astray and find out someone I believed to be good really isn’t, I want to cheer and tell the author, “Well done!”

Tricking readers in this manner is difficult. In real life, all of us are body language experts. At least 93% of communication is nonverbal, meaning we are very adept at ‘reading’ other people by their mannerisms, gestures, habits and voice changes. In books, this skill allows us to pick up on nonverbal description that communicates a character’s emotions. Plus, if we are in the dishonest character’s POV, we also have access to their thoughts and internal visceral sensations (heartbeat changes, adrenaline shifts and other uncontrollable fight-or-flight responses). All this means that tricking the reader can be very tough.

There are several ways to make the reader believe one thing while another thing is true. One technique is the red herring. This is where a writer nudges a reader in one direction hard enough that their brain picks up on ‘planted’ clues meant to mislead them. So for example, let’s say I had a character who was a pastor and youth councillor for his church and he spent his weekends working with homeless teens, trying to get them back into group homes. The reader will begin to get a certain image in their mind. If I then further describe him as slightly bald with a bad taste in fashion (imagine the kind of guy that wears those awful patterned sweater vests) but who has a ready smile for everyone he meets, it’s a good bet that I’ve disarmed the reader. They’ve written this character off as a good, honest guy. Even though his life is all about the church, no way could he be the one stealing cash from the collection box, or the man having affairs with depressed women parishioners, or playing Dr. Death by administering heroin to street teens, right?

Another technique is pairing. Similar to a red herring, pairing is when we do two things at once to mask important clues. If as an author I show my friendly pastor leaving an alleyway at night and then have a car crash happen right in front of him, which event will the reader focus on? And if later, the police find another overdosed teen nearby as they interview the pastor about the accident, commending him from pulling a woman from the wreckage before the car could explode...would the reader put two and two together? If I did my job right as an author, then no.

A third technique is to disguiseuntrustworthiness as a Character Flaw. After all, no one is perfect. Readers expect characters to have flaws to make them realistic. If our nice pastor (am I going to go to Hell for making my serial killer a pastor?) is characterized as absent-minded with a habit of forgetting names, misplacing his keys, or starting service late and flustered because of a mishap, later when the police ask him when he last saw dead teen X and he can’t quite remember, readers aren’t alarmed. After all, that’s just part of who the character is, right?

When your goal is to trick your readers, SET UP is vital--if the clues are not there all along, people will feel ripped off. Make sure to provide enough details that they are satisfied you pulled one over them fair and square!

What techniques do you use to show a character is untrustworthy? Any tips on balancing your clue-sprinkling so that the reader doesn’t pick up on your deceit before you’re ready for them to? Let me know in the comments!

Angela Ackerman is one half of The Bookshelf Muse blogging duo, and co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression. Listing the body language, visceral reactions and thoughts associated with seventy-fivedifferent emotions, this brainstorming guide is a valuable tool for showing, not telling, emotion.

As you might have figured out by now, I’m a writing-craft-book junkie. So it should come as no surprise when I picked up Elements of Fiction Writing: Conflict & Suspense by James Scott Bell. I wasn’t planning to. But then author Jody Hedlund gushed about it on her blog. And she was right. The book seriously rocks (Okay, those weren’t her exact words).

It’s divided into two sections: Conflict and Suspense. These are further subdivided into twenty-two informative chapters (you can check out the table of content here). The explanations in each chapter are brilliant, and examples from various novels are used to demonstrate the key points. For those of you who enjoy exercises that transfer to your writing (me me me!), the book is rich in that area. For example (chapter 12—Styling for Conflict):

• Identify a highly charged moment in your book.

• Make a list of possible actions, gestures, or setting descriptions that might reflect upon the scene.

• List at least twenty to twenty-five possibilities as fast as you can. Remember, the best way to get good ideas is to come up with a lot of ideas and then choose the ones you want to use.

• Write a long paragraph incorporating the detail, then edit the paragraph so it is lean and potent. The telling detail works best when it is subtle and does all the work by itself.

Fiction is like an iceberg. Only twenty-five percent of it is visible (the words on the page). The other seventy-five percent is known as subtext. It’s the part that is tricky to convey, but when you do it right, it makes for a compelling story.

Last week, I told you about the Toyota dude and the issue with my van doors. He didn’t tell me he was nervous when I calmly asked my question, again and again. His body language gave him away. I interpreted, based on what he didn’t say and how he acted, that Toyota had never inspected the doors during the regular maintenance, even though they knew there was a design flaw. But maybe I was wrong*. Maybe he was shifting on his feet and looking at his coworkers, who were busy staring at their computer screens, because his bladder was about to explode due to a super large latte he recently consumed. Maybe he was hoping someone would come to his aid so he could go to the bathroom before he humiliated himself.

Okay, I didn’t believe that either, but it does show you how things might not always be as they seem. That’s the beauty of subtext. It can add an element of suspense. You can have your character screw up by thinking the subtext means something else and misdirect your reader. But make sure it’s believable. If your reader can guess the truth behind the subtext, your misdirection will come off as contrived and your character will sound like an idiot.

It isn’t always necessary to spell out the subtext for your readers. Often it’s more satisfying if you let them figure it out for themselves. That’s the beauty of fiction. It exercises our brains. However, if the subtext is confusing and is going to frustrate the reader, then definitely have a character spell it out.

One thing to avoid is the mistake director Catherine Hardwicke made in Twilight and Red Riding Hood. In Twilight, she wanted to show Edward’s eyes, which changed color depending on when he last ate blood. In Red Riding Hood, she wanted to show that the werewolf had human eyes. Fair enough. But in both movies, the close-up shots of the eyes filled the screen, and the camera stayed zoomed on them for way longer than necessary. In Red Riding Hood, Catherine then focused on everyone’s eyes so we could examine them (not necessary, if you ask me). Except, I doubt Amanda Seyfried (Red Riding Hood) was leaning that close to the individuals, and for that long, to check out their eyes. At one point, my eleven-year-old said in an exasperated tone, “Yeah, yeah, we get it.”

Lesson: don’t underestimate your readers’ intelligence. They won’t appreciate it.

Do you use subtext to misguide your readers?

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I’ll be talking more about subtext next week.

(*I wasn’t wrong. Toyota never inspected the doors until I complained about the noise. And by then it was too late.)

During the holiday season, I realized I have A LOT of books about writing fiction. And of course, I added a few more titles to my shelves last month. So, I’ve decided to start a fairly regular feature where I review non-fiction books on writing that I either own or have borrowed from the library. These posts will occur either on a Monday (in lieu of that week’s photography tips) or on Wednesdays. They won’t, though, be weekly.

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In addition to writing YA, I’m now venturing into the world of romantic suspense. Face it, I’m a sucker for anything filled with romance and danger (which also describes the YA novels I write). This is why I decided to check out Writing the Thriller by T. Macdonald Skillman.

This is an advance writing book. After exploring the different categories of suspense, the requirements for writing them, and reader expectations for each, she focuses on the important elements of fiction and the considerations you need to be aware of when writing the different types of suspense. However, she already expects you to have a good understanding of these elements beforehand, which include:

• Characterization
• Plot
• Setting and atmosphere
• Point of view
• Backstory
• Goals and motivation
• Dialogue
• Pacing
• Theme
• Style

• Action-adventure
• Legal thrillers
• Medical thrillers
• Political thrillers
• Psychological suspense
• Romantic suspense
• Women-in-jeopardy suspense
• Techo-thrillers