Get Your Alligator On … and Put Your Readers on Edge

Our annual summer bocce league is almost underway. Over two dozen teams, made up of four players each (plus alternates), meet at a local park to play bocce every Wednesday evening.  Over the course of three months we battle it out to see who will be crowned the League champions and get to take home the so-cheesy-they’re-cool gold medals.  It’s tons of fun. This year, with a slightly different group of team members, we decided a new team name was in order.  Normally teams call themselves some funny play on Italian words and the game of bocce itself, like “Kiss My Pallino” or “La Vita Bocce.”  But we decided to go right to the heart of the matter, so we are now “The Alligators.” Alligators have nothing to do with Italy or bocce, but they are dangerous creatures that should be feared.  That’s us.

Or at least that’s what we want our competition to feel when they hear the name of our team.  Apprehension would also be nice, as would anxiety, worry, and even a little angst thrown in for good measure.  Oh, to add to the intimidation we bring to the courts, we’re going to borrow a trick from the University of Florida Gator fans and come up with our own jaw-chomping cheer … and that’s all before the game even starts! It occurred to me that writing a suspenseful scene in fiction requires the same “malice aforethought”—in a strictly literary sense, of course.  That is, the writer must purposefully lay the groundwork in order to build the tension needed in such a scene. Notice I said our goal is to instill fear and trembling in our opponents before the game starts.  That’s because real suspense isn’t getting eaten by an alligator or getting trounced in a game of bocce – it’s the idea that it could happen.  It’s the not knowing that drives you crazy. Creating suspense means creating uncertainty.  The hero walks up the stairs and he knows that behind one of the bedroom doors is a little girl possessed by a demon.

She could do something horrible, to him or to others. But he doesn’t know which door she’s behind.  That’s suspense.  Once the hero opens the right door and the little girl starts flinging verbal and physical excrement at him, the scene turns to action and the question becomes “Who’s going to come out smelling better?” If I asked you to give me some effective words that I could use to create a suspenseful scene, you might come up with “creepy,” “scary,” “frightening,” “dangerous,” etc. And I can guarantee that some of you would say, “dark” and “stormy.” With the exception of the last two, the words I listed may describe what you want your reader to experience, but if you rely too heavily on them, you’re telling your readers what to experience and not letting them experience it on their own. Instead, I try to do three things:

1. Set a scene in which something normal is … not … quite … right.
2. Help the reader identify with the protagonist as much as possible by using the five senses.
3. Use pacing to heighten tension.

Setting the scene.  No need to wait for a “dark and stormy night” —you can create suspense virtually any place at any time. You just have to let the reader know it’s not going to be business as usual. Take clowns, for instance.  They’re supposed to bring joy and laughter, right?  Okay, I take that back: clowns are creepy, no matter what.  Instead, How about delivering the mail to a harmless old man in the middle of the day? Walk in the protagonist’s shoes.  I keep a Post It note on my computer screen that lists “Sight, Sound, Taste, Touch, Smell.”  I try to get as many senses as possible into a scene so the reader will really be there, feeling what the protagonist feels.  So let’s make our hero Andy, the mail carrier, who is going to see the harmless old man in the middle of the day. Pay attention to pacing.   If you want to put your readers on edge, your writing has to reflect that tension.  No long, poetic descriptions or explanations; instead, use minimal set up and/or backstory, just enough to put the reader at the scene, feeling what the hero’s feeling. Here goes:   Damn it’s like a sauna out here.  Andy wiped his face with a bandana and stuck the damp square in his uniform’s back pocket. Let’s get this over with.  Mail and a package in hand, he rang the little cowbell Mr. Vittima had hung by the gate, and waited.

Waited for the deep growl of Diavolo, Mr. Vittima’s prized Italian mastiff, and the dog’s predictable, frenzied dance of terror. Andy’d learned his first day on the route that Diavolo ruled the yard. God knows it was a crappy yard, overgrown with weeds and the leavings of Mr. Vittima’s sad life, but it was Diavolo’s domain just the same. Any minute now, the hundred-pound brute would bound over from somewhere on the side of the house and fling himself against the chain link fence, over and over again, barking as if all he’d ever wanted in life was to tear Andy’s guts out.  Barking as if the world would come to an end if he didn’t. His frantic, wretched snapping, like the jowls of hell, was noisy enough to wake the dead, but barely loud enough to roust Mr. Vittima from his favorite chair in front of the T.V.

Yet if Andy waited long enough, Diavolo’s canine warrior cry would eventually pierce Mr. Vittima’s hearing aids and the old man would check to see who was at the gate.

So Andy waited.

And waited.

And waited.

But there was nothing.  Just an uneasy silence, disturbed only by the occasional buzzing insect.  A fly, maybe.  Or a bee.Andy paused long enough to feel the heat soak up through the concrete and into his body. He wiped his brow again. Feeling light-headed, he was about to turn back to his van when he saw it.

A bone, the length of a femur, lying on the weed-strewn path leading up to the house.

It was different than the usual refuse lying about the place.

It was fresh.

Andy could see a bit of red  smeared on it, and something stringy hanging off the end. But the heat brought something else: a metallic smell.

The smell of blood.

And still there was silence.

Maybe the next part of the scene will have Andy deciding whether or not to enter the yard.  I can’t bear to have him be so stupid, so I’ll stop it there.  You get the picture, though: we’re Andy, confronting a situation that’s not normal, and it dawns on us that something bad might have happened.  Very bad.  But we don’t know for sure, and that’s suspense.

In my soon to be released novel, The Lair, I’ve included many suspenseful scenes (stands to reason, since it’s romantic suspense!).  One of them sets the main character, Dani, on a quest to visit a room in “La Tana,” the mansion she grew up in. She suspects the room, part of her uncle’s suite, might contain something she’s been looking for.  She’d tried checking it earlier, and failed. Now, late at night, she’s back at it:

La Tana was dark and still, but not lifeless. Like its namesake, the panther, it seemed to be waiting—a predator, biding its time before pouncing on unwary victims. Dani tried to ignore the chill slithering into her. Remember, it’s only a house.

She made her way down the hall to Santo’s office. The door was unlocked. She turned the knob and entered the room, gently closing the door behind her in case another night owl should pass by.

The same small table lamp now lent an eerie glow to the room. She could see that her uncle had been working there recently, possibly that very afternoon. A number of files were stacked on top of his desk, and one drawer stood open, as if he had been looking for something in a hurry. She could smell the faint, musty odor of tobacco and she thought of the fat Italian thug with his hand on her breast. She shivered.

The door to Santo’s inner room was closed, but a light shown underneath the door. Dani frowned. Did he leave a nightlight on when he wasn’t home? Why would that be necessary?

Oh my God, maybe he’s already home. A frisson of panic shot through her. She turned to leave and had her hand on the doorknob of the hallway door when she heard a deep voice behind her.

“I knew you’d come back.”

Meanwhile, back on the bocce court, I’m looking forward to getting our “alligator” on.  Will we psych out the opposing team?  Will they quake in their tennies when we step up to play?  Well, that all depends on how we play the actual game.  Same goes with fiction. Creating tension has to have some payoff, otherwise it’s like Lucy forever snatching the football away from poor old Charlie Brown. I’ll let you know how it worked playing bocce; you’ll have to read The Lair to see if I followed through there.

So, do you recall recent tales of suspense that kept you on the edge of your seat?  Why not share them and we can keep learning together how to write them better.