How to Create Tension – Am I Keeping You in Suspense?

Suspense is the tension that is created when you are waiting for something to happen. You might be waiting for news of a loved one; you might be waiting to see if the creak on the stair which sounded suspiciously like a footfall sounds again; you might be waiting, lottery ticket in hand, to see if your numbers have come up. Often, it's a period of magnified inactivity which anticipates a moment of action.

What interests me about suspense, which is often so gripping for your reader, is that it usually occurs when nothing is actually happening.

If this is a contradiction that you'd like to explore further in your work, why not write a scene in which nothing at all takes place, but the tension is excruciating?

Franz Kafka: a Dead Man Writing

I'm sitting in my shed at the bottom of our garden with the doors and windows open, revelling in what passes for peace and quiet in an inner-city. Next door's runner beans are dying, but the ash trees which thresh and rustle overhead have survived the dieback blight so far. Apart from the odd insect zithering amongst the flowers, and the gulls which trace the vapour trails high above, I'm completely on my own, certainly beyond the reach of the front door bell.

That's how I write – in isolation. I can't bear any distraction: the view from my window is hard enough to resist. How JK Rowling managed to write the first volume of the Harry Potter series in a cafe beats me. As Franz Kafka once said, "I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”

So here I am, sitting at my laptop like a dead man, but feeling very much alive...

What's the perfect environment in which you would like to write?

White Rabbits, Wonderland and Writer's Block

Recognise this little fellow?

Said to be carved in approximately 1330 and wearing the distinctive satchel of the pilgrim, he graces the archway of St Mary's Church in Beverley, Yorkshire, a town where Lewis Carroll stayed while he was preparing to write Alice in Wonderland. Even the most fleeting glance suggests an impression of the White Rabbit, running behind schedule, whom Alice follows into the rabbit hole, thus beginning her fantastical adventures.

It was a treat to see him, so distinctive and characterful, partly because it made me smile to think of the stonemason with a sense of humour all those years ago, but also because it's a reminder that inspiration comes in unexpected places. If you are tussling with your Work in Progress, or suffering from writer's block, go out for a walk or a wander – it's amazing what you might stumble upon and following a fresh idea may lead you to unexpected places, just as Alice discovered when she set off in pursuit of an irresistible little rabbit...

Twenty Questions about Characterisation

Do you remember playing that car game, brilliant for long journeys, where one of you assumes a character and the others have to guess who it is by asking twenty questions? When we were little we whiled away hours playing it on the autobahns and autoroutes of Europe, but it has other applications too and can be particularly useful for a fiction writer in search of a protagonist.

When you are in the process of fleshing out your hero or heroine, you might consider submitting them to the same sort of interrogation (and it's also the kind of thing you can do on long car journeys!)

1. When were you born?
2. Where were you born?
3. Do you have brothers and sisters?
4. What is your happiest memory?
5. What makes you saddest?
6. Where do you live?
7. What do you do for a living?
8. Have you had other relationships?
9. Do you consider yourself an extrovert?
10. Do you have secrets?
11. How good is your self-esteem?
12. What is your attitude to your appearance?
13. What is your proudest possession?
14. What are you most ashamed of?
15. What are your politics?
16. What makes you angry?
17. What is your best quality?
18. What do you value most in other people?
19. What do you yearn for?
20. What keeps you awake at night?

There are dozens of other interesting questions you could pose and while some are more simplistic than others, all of them will get you thinking about your character and may even send you off in an unanticipated direction which, in my experience, is where the interesting stuff is to be found...

Monet, Monet, Monet...

Because it's high summer (!) I thought I'd share with you this picture of Monet's garden at Giverney just north of Paris.

He is reputed to have regarded it as his greatest work of art and if you gaze at it through half-closed eyes you can almost see his impressionist brushstrokes at play. There's light and shade and texture and tone and colour all in this little thumbnail image. There's a sense of composition too, with the two paths running in parallel and the tulips bursting forth in between. The effect is deceptively simple, but if you look at the way the blue contrasts with the pink and the prickly rose bushes oppose the softness of the tulips, you begin to get a sense of how complex the design really is – and that's before you take account of the olfactory delights the garden – the symphony of different scents.

I'm not sure that there is a creative writing lesson here, except that Giverney is extraordinarily beautiful in a number of different ways and that it is an expression of one man's vision - much like a good book. It's a source of inspiration, and there is a kind of education to be had as well, if you start to look at the structure of different areas and how they interact as a whole. Perhaps today's little homily is about being receptive to what you see, about being attuned, about seeing the creative potential in your surroundings, no matter what they are...

An Exercise in Sensory Deprivation

The sun is shining, I can hear birds singing outside my window and it's the longest day, so the last thing you probably want is a writing exercise for the weekend, but if you think that the longest day will, by definition, give you more time to write, and allow your senses to be stimulated by the effects of the lovely weather, perhaps you might be persuaded....

Early memories, because they are vivid and elemental and form part of your make up, can be a fertile source of ideas. Try and recall an event from your infancy or early childhood and jot down as many details as you can remember so that you have plenty of information  at your fingertips. Then, just to make it a little more challenging, write a few paragraphs based on this memory, but without using any visual description at all.

This will force you to think about other ways of recalling and describing things – sounds, smells and tastes can be intensely evocative, and conjuring up a memory purely through the medium of touch might be a revelation. This is an opportunity to flex different writing muscles; going beyond the visual might take you deeper into the experience itself, thus bringing rewards to both you and your reader.

And anyway, the forecast for tomorrow is for gales and rain. Have a great weekend....

Why I Hate Fantasy Fiction

I've never been a great fan of fantasy fiction. I don't like its expedience or its lack of boundaries – the way that rules can be endlessly changed to suit the author's creative intent. It's too geeky for me, too concerned with form rather than content, too preoccupied with creating a world and establishing the conventions that go with it to get to the heart of the characters - I think it's often difficult even to find their pulse. For me, the magic is too overt – I prefer something a little more nuanced.

I think I might be with Oscar Wilde on this one. He once said, "The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible," and I think he's right, it's the ordinary everyday mysteries of human behaviour that lend themselves so well to fiction and make the vital process of identification between the reader and the protagonist much easier to achieve. I know that all fiction is fantasy in one way or another, but some of it is too fantastical and anything overly esoteric just doesn't cut the mustard with me.

Which genres do you particularly hate - or admire?