What Suspense Requires

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If you have a protagonist who has nothing personal at stake, they have little reason to take action, especially when things are getting more and more dangerous, right? And a protagonist who doesn't take action never gets in the way of the antagonist enough to make them push back. And without that pushback, the danger isn't going to properly escalate. At least not in a way that's interesting and compelling for readers. Welcome

Welcome And What We’ll Fix

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to the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. In today's episode, I'm going to share five of the most common mistakes I've seen in thriller manuscripts over the last 10 years of working with writers. And this episode will be beneficial to you whether you are editing your novel because you might have made some of these mistakes on accident, or whether you're still working on your first draft, because then you'll know what to look out for as you finish your draft. So we're going to talk about the five most common mistakes that drain the suspense right out of a thriller. I'm going to tell you what to look out for and how to fix each one of these mistakes as well. Now, real quick, if you are revising a novel right now or if you're about to, then I'd like to invite you to check out my revision accelerator course. This course walks you through evaluating your finished first draft so you can see what's working, what's not working, and why, as well as how to build a clear prioritized plan for your revision. You can learn more about the revision accelerator and get instant access via the link in the show notes. Alright,

What Thriller Readers Expect

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now let's go back to talking about thrillers because before we get into the mistakes, I want to make sure we're on the same page about what readers are signing up for when they pick up a thriller. Because it's actually pretty straightforward when you think about it. Thriller readers want suspense, which basically boils down to worrying about a character they care about who is facing some kind of escalating danger and the reader doesn't know what's going to happen next or how it's going to turn out. So that is what you're aiming for if you are writing a thriller. You want to evoke the appropriate amount of suspense in readers. Now, the five mistakes we're going to talk through today get in the way of that experience that your readers want. So they essentially drain the suspense out of your story or prevent that suspense from happening, which in turn means the reader isn't going to get the experience they want and they're going to put down your book if they even pick it up in the first place. All right,

Mistake 1 Weak Antagonist Threat

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so let's go ahead and dive right into it, starting with mistake number one, which is having an underdeveloped or weak antagonist who doesn't pose a believable threat to the protagonist. And when you're looking at your own draft, this is often one of the least obvious mistakes, but it's one of the most damaging in terms of creating suspense. And honestly, in terms of creating a story that works. So let's talk about what this looks like. Because maybe you have plenty of action, maybe you have a lot of dangerous situations in your story, but your antagonist is mostly off-screen or off the page and only shows up for the final confrontation in the climax of your story. Or maybe your antagonist shows up here and there, but only when you need them to create another problem for your protagonist. So you know you need conflict, you're kind of not really sure what to do about it. So let's bring in the antagonist and have them create some problems. That could easily happen too. Or maybe your antagonist just doesn't really seem like that big of a threat to your protagonist in general, and you know that. I see that happen all the time. It's like you go through the first draft, the antagonist doesn't quite show up as the threat or maybe in the way that you wanted them to, and they're just kind of coming off as a little bit blah. Now, whichever one of those issues or common manifestations of this mistake that we're talking about, either way, it's a problem because readers need to believe that your protagonist, especially in a thriller, they need to believe that your protagonist could actually lose or fail in terms of their story goal. And when your antagonist doesn't feel like a credible threat, then even the most exciting action scenes can only sustain the reader's interest for so long. And that's also why this mistake is so easy to miss in your own draft. Because all that action can make a draft seem like it should be full of tension and suspense, even when the real threat behind the central conflict in your story is actually pretty thin or non-existent. All right, so let me break this down with an example, and we're just gonna use one example that I've made up. We're gonna use it throughout the episode. So let's say that you've written a story about a character named Kate, and she is a reporter who's digging into a string of disappearances in her hometown. And whoever is behind those disappearances stays completely off the page until the final confrontation or until the few scenes leading up to the confrontation. And maybe Kate has to deal with random obstacles that get in her way throughout the plot. We'll come back to that more in a second. But for now, she's dealing with random obstacles that just get in her way as the plot continues. And so for a little bit, that might be interesting, right? But there's nothing of significance that's really there to push back on Kate or cause meaningful conflict as she investigates. And when that happens, readers don't really have a reason to worry about a character like Kate until the very end of the story when the antagonist truly shows up. And once you get to that point, it's hard for readers to suddenly be worried about this or to fear somebody that they've never really seen or felt the presence of up until this moment. All right, now this doesn't mean that your antagonist needs to be on screen or on the page, you know what I mean? Doesn't mean they need to be on screen all the time. Their identity or their motivation for something can stay secret until the very end, if that's what makes sense for your story. But the pressure that they put on your protagonist and the problems they create by pursuing their own goals and things like that, those need to show up on the page from the beginning because that is what's going to help you create the kind of tension and suspense that readers come to thrillers for. So if you feel like this mistake might be happening in your draft, or maybe you've made this mistake, that's okay. I want you to ask yourself this question. Before the climax of your story, or even the few scenes right before that, what problems does your antagonist create for your protagonist? And if the answer is none or not really enough, then you need to pause and develop your antagonist a little bit more and or maybe just show the impact of their actions on the page a little bit more. All right, so that is mistake number one, having a weak or underdeveloped antagonist who doesn't pose a believable threat to the protagonist.

Mistake 2 Stakes Aren’t Personal

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Now, another common mistake I see all the time, or mistake number two, is when thriller writers will establish objectively high stakes, but those objectively high stakes don't actually mean anything or personally affect the protagonist. So essentially the stakes are not personal enough. And what I mean by this is that let's say people could die, a criminal mastermind could escape and cause future problems or commit future crimes, right? But the protagonist doesn't stand to lose anything that is personal to them or that matters to them if they don't succeed in stopping that threat or that bad thing from happening. And this is a problem because if your protagonist isn't personally invested with some kind of personal stakes in the outcome, then readers aren't going to be either. They might follow along with what's happening in the plot for a while and be interested for a while, but they're not really going to worry too much and be really invested in how it turns out. Because what reason is there for them to care, right? And obviously that is a big suspense killer because when you don't care, you're probably putting down the book. So let's go back to my example about Kate. And imagine that in this story we have our character Kate, and she is covering the disappearances in her town only because her editor assigned her the story. And let's say that all the missing women are all just strangers to her. So they're just people in town or people visiting that just all happen to go missing. So the situation in this case is objectively serious. There are objectively high stakes, but Kate's connection to it is mostly just professional. She's only doing it because her boss told her to. And if she fails, the worst that's going to happen is that her story doesn't get written. So readers don't really have a reason to care about what happens or worry about her. They're kind of just like, so what, right? So what if she doesn't get her story written? And maybe even so what if she gets fired? Is there any reason to care or worry about Kate getting fired? That's how you would make it personal, right? So if you feel like maybe this is the mistake that is plaguing your thriller, I want you to ask yourself this question. Does the central conflict in my story threaten something that really matters to my protagonist, like a loved one, their freedom, their career, and their ability to survive off their career, or something else that is just personally meaningful to them? And if not, then you need to develop the stakes a little bit more and or maybe just be more deliberate about showing them on the page if you have already developed those personal stakes. All right, so that is mistake number two that drains the tension out of a thriller. And that is that the stakes aren't personal enough to the protagonist.

Mistake 3 Passive Protagonist

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Now, speaking of your protagonist, another easy-to-make mistake is having an overly passive protagonist. This is mistake number three. And an overly passive protagonist is someone who spends most of the story reacting to the threats and the obstacles that get thrown in their way instead of actively trying to stop bad things from happening. Now, don't get me wrong about this. It is normal for a character to start the story reacting to the central conflict because that is the nature of an event like the inciting incident, right? Your character is literally being pulled into the central conflict against their will. But in a lot of thriller drafts I've seen over the last decade, the protagonists will just end up reactive for way too long. So bad things will happen and they'll just kind of wait for someone to tell them what to do, or they'll follow clues that other characters have uncovered for them, or they'll just kind of get pulled from one dangerous situation to the next over and over and over again. And this is a problem, especially in terms of maintaining suspense for two main reasons. So, first, it's just not very fun to watch a character flop around the plot like a wet noodle, right? Readers, we know they're coming to thrillers because they want to see someone fight back against the bad guys. They want to see someone standing up and, you know, taking action. And doing all of that means that the character needs to be proactive at some point. That's the first reason. Second reason is that if your protagonist never, you know, makes plans of their own or takes any kind of risk or tries to outthink or outmaneuver or outact the person who's causing the conflict or the person who's after them, then readers have no one to root for, and there goes that suspense that you're trying to evoke. All right, so let's go back to our made-up example with Kate. Imagine that Kate in this scenario spends most of the story waiting for the main detective at the police station or the FBI, whatever, to call her with updates. So she's investigating the murder of these missing women, and she's just kind of hanging out, gardening, going about her day, waiting for this detective to call her with an update or with a task that she can put on her to-do list. That's not very fun, right? Even if those calls bring Kate new clues, someone else is driving the investigation and driving the story forward. So readers end up waiting right alongside Kate instead of watching her do something and feeling like an active participant in the story. And again, if readers are just kind of waiting for something to happen, that's really boring. Okay. So if you feel like you've made this mistake in your draft, or if there are sections of your story where your protagonist is maybe a little bit too reactive and not proactive enough about stopping the threat, I want you to ask yourself this question. What does my protagonist do to stop the threat? Or what could they do to stop the threat rather than just reacting to it? And if the answer is not much, then you need to develop your protagonist's goal and their motivation a little more because if you develop their goal and motivation, that is almost guaranteed to give them the agency they're going to need to become proactive. And or you might just need to make sure that they have enough agency on the page. So if you know their goal and they have a strong motivation, maybe it's just not translating into agency on the page just yet. All right, so that is mistake number three, an overly passive protagonist.

Mistake 4 Danger Doesn’t Escalate

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Now, mistake number four is danger that never really escalates. And you can usually spot this one pretty easily in your own draft. So what does this look like? Well, let's say your protagonist gets past one obstacle and then they run into another one just like it, and maybe even a less dangerous one after that. So there might be plenty of interesting, maybe objectively exciting stuff happening, but the overall situation with the central conflict doesn't really change. So your character still has the same options, maybe the same allies, and maybe even they seem to have all the time in the world to figure things out because the danger and the stakes aren't really escalating the way they need to. And when that happens, that is a surefire way to drain the tension and suspense out of a story. Why? Because readers get used to danger when it's all the same flavor or intensity. And what I mean by that is think about the first time that a character narrowly escapes the bad guy's henchman. It's exciting, right? It's the first time you're seeing this. But by the fourth or fifth time that they are narrowly escaping the bad guy's henchman, readers are already going to guess how it's going to end up and they're going to be less interested in moving forward with the story because the rest of the book probably unfolds in the same exact way. All right, now to go a little bit deeper and more specific with this, let's go back to our story about Kate. So imagine that Kate is investigating the disappearance of these women, and maybe one day she gets an anonymous message telling her to stop looking into it. Then a few chapters later, a car follows her home. A few chapters after that, someone leaves her another warning on her windshield, right? I see stuff like this all the time in thriller drafts. And what I want you to notice is that each moment can genuinely be scary on its own. So of course, someone leaving you an anonymous note to stop digging isn't ideal, right? And of course, a car following you home is scary and dangerous. And of course, someone leaving you another warning on your windshield is not what you want to wake up to, right? So each moment is scary on its own, but they're all really the same kind of threat at the same level of intensity, and none of them actually change anything in the bigger picture. Because after each one, Kate is definitely a little bit shaken, right? But then she just goes right back to investigating the same way she was before because why wouldn't she, right? The danger hasn't escalated. So at this point, she's thinking, at worse, I'll just get like another note on my car tomorrow, right? Or maybe in my inbox. I don't know. So in this scenario, readers are learning that essentially every threat is going to blow over. And by the third, fourth, fifth time it's happened, it's really easy for them to stop caring and stop worrying. All right, now just to be super clear, when I say danger that escalates, this doesn't mean that you have to have bigger explosions or longer car chases or more of violence than you already have. I want you to think a little bit outside the box on this because some of the most effective ways to escalate danger and raise the stakes are things like maybe your character has an ally who turns out to be working for the other side. And so now your protagonist has lost someone that they were relying on. And the antagonist probably knows a lot more than your protagonist thought they did, right? And overall, they just kind of don't really know who else they can trust or not trust. You could even do something like maybe your protagonist had a plan to do something or they were counting on some kind of plan to work out, but then it falls through. So now they have fewer ways to stop the threat and they have to take bigger risks, which means putting themselves in more danger. Or maybe even there is some kind of deadline in your story and the actual deadline moves up. So now your character has less time to figure out, you know, who's behind the bad thing and stop the bad thing, and they have to maybe act before they're fully ready, right? So in each case or in each one of these examples, the threat isn't necessarily objectively bigger. So it's not like 10 car explosions compared to five, right? But the protagonist's position is getting weaker over time. And that's what makes the danger and the stakes escalate, and that's what makes your reader worry more. So essentially what I'm saying is mix it up and make sure that your danger escalates. And if you think that this might be what's going on in your draft or why it feels less suspenseful than you want it to, I want you to ask yourself this question. In any given scene in your draft, how is your protagonist's situation harder or more dangerous than it was five scenes earlier? And if you can't say, or if you're like, it's really not, then you need to dig into your central conflict a bit more. So the main source of danger in your story. And or if you have already done this work, maybe you just need to show more clearly how that threat escalates or how the danger escalates on the page. All right, so that is mistake number four, having danger that doesn't escalate.

Mistake 5 Withholding Key Information

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Now, mistake number five is a very, very common one, and this is withholding too much information from readers. And I saved this one for last because this one usually comes from a place of good intentions or from the right instinct, but it's the wrong execution. So, what I mean by this is you know that thrillers need tension and suspense, right? So you hold things back, hoping that's what's going to create the tension and suspense. For example, maybe your protagonist discovers something important, but you don't show what that discovery is through your protagonist's interiority. Or maybe you save a really key piece of information that the reader really should have because we're in your character's point of view. So maybe you save it for a big reveal later on and you're kind of just counting on the absence of that information to create suspense. Again, if you're like, yep, I did this, I just want you to know it's super common. And again, I think it comes from a place of good instincts, and we just need to fix the execution. Because in reality, suspense doesn't work this way, right? And when you withhold too much information from your readers, then what usually happens is it just leaves them feeling confused or like they're locked out of your story. And if readers don't have enough information or context to understand what's happening in any given moment or why they should care about what's happening, then they're either going to be completely lost, disengaged, or bored, or maybe even all three of those at once, right? So let's look at our example with Kate. And imagine that Kate finds an anonymous letter in her mailbox. So on the page, readers see that Kate gets that letter out of her mailbox, she reads it, she goes pale and immediately runs inside and locks all the doors. So readers see her react to this letter, but you don't show them what's inside the letter. So they don't know what the letter says. Now, for a second, they might wonder, okay, I wonder what was inside that made Kate react that way, but without knowing what exactly the letter said or what she's now afraid of or what's now at stake, then it's really hard to kind of continue on feeling that suspense that you might have felt before the letter showed up. And also it's not really playing fair with the reader either, because if you've been in this character's head up until that moment, and then all of a sudden you decide I'm just not going to show you what's in the letter, that's a little bit unfair to your readers, right? It just doesn't quite make sense. And this is how authors can inadvertently shut readers out or lock them out of the story when they're actually trying to do the opposite and pull them in. All right. Now, just to be clear, this doesn't mean that you have to give everything away because in thrillers, a lot of the times authors will want to hold back some things like the identity of the person behind the threat and or the motivation behind their actions or things like that. And that's fine to an extent, but readers do need to know enough of what's going on and what your character is experiencing to understand the shape of the threat and how it's affecting your character. All right, now one more thing I want to say here is that if you are writing a story with an unreliable narrator, then that is a whole different scenario. And when you have an unreliable narrator, part of the design of a story with an unreliable narrator is that readers aren't. Getting the complete or the true story, right? So if you're writing an unreliable narrator, you do have a little bit of wiggle room here. And I think at some point I'll do an episode on writing an unreliable narrator, but that is not what we're talking about here today. All right, so just wanted to throw that out there. And if this mistake resonates, or if you think that this one might be what's going on in your draft, then I want you to ask yourself this question. In the scenes where my point of view character learns or sees or realizes something important, do readers learn or see or realize it as well? And if not, then you probably need to work on getting more interiority on the page. So what your character is thinking, noticing, realizing how they're putting things together, you know, stuff like that. So you might need to get more of that on the page and or you might just need to trust your story a little bit more. So you might need to just trust that your story will keep readers engaged without purposefully withholding information that they need to know to understand the story. Now, if you want to go deeper onto this mistake in particular, I have an episode that I will link to in the show notes for you. It's episode number 197, and it's called How to Write a Novel That Hooks Readers Through Curiosity, Not Confusion. So, in this scenario we just talked about, withholding information creates confusion for the reader, right? What we want to do instead is hook them and keep them engaged through curiosity. And that episode will talk more about that. So that is in the show notes for you if you want to go deeper. And that is mistake number five, withholding too much information from your readers. Now, very

How The Mistakes Connect

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quickly, let me go through these mistakes. So mistake number one was having a weak or underdeveloped antagonist that is not a believable threat to your protagonist. Mistake number two is that the stakes just aren't personal enough to your protagonist. Mistake number three is that you have an overly passive protagonist. So someone who is just very reactive and never takes a proactive stance in dealing with the threat. Mistake number four is that the danger in your plot doesn't escalate. And mistake number five is withholding too much information from readers, thinking that this is what's going to help you create tension and suspense. Now, if you recognized one or more of these mistakes in your draft, I don't want you to worry this happens. That's why I did this episode, because like I said, these are common mistakes that I see in thriller drafts. And what I kind of want you to notice, if you haven't already, is that these mistakes are often connected. So, for example, if you have a protagonist who has nothing personal at stake, they have little reason to take action, especially when things are getting more and more dangerous, right? And a protagonist who doesn't take action never gets in the way of the antagonist enough to make them push back. And without that pushback, the danger isn't going to properly escalate, at least not in a way that's interesting and compelling for readers. And that's why it helps to figure out what's really causing the problems in your draft before you start revising. Because otherwise, it's really easy to spend weeks fixing symptoms of the underlying problem while that bigger issue or that issue that's connected to a few other bigger issues just kind of stays put, right? And survives draft after draft. So when I gave you questions to ask yourself in today's episode, those are good places to start. And if any of those questions were hard to answer, then that's usually a sign that there's something bigger or deeper to dig into.

Revision Help And Closing

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All right, now if you would like my help tackling your revisions, I want you to go check out my revision accelerator course, which walks you through evaluating your finished draft so you can see what's working, what isn't working, and why, and then building a clear and prioritized plan for your revisions. I'll put the link to the revision accelerator in the show notes for you if you want to learn more or sign up for instant access. All right, so that link will be in the show notes, and that is all I have for you in this episode. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope your writing is going well, and I will talk to you next week.