by Jeffe Kennedy
Have you ever kept reading a book for no other reason than because you simply had to know the answer to some burning question? Hopefully, if you’re enjoying the book, there are other reasons to finish, but every once in a while there’s that book that we read to the end – or maybe skip to the end! – because it created a mystery or puzzle we can’t go on without solving.
That’s the author doing a great job with using secrets and suspense to keep us turning those pages.
While we, as writers, hope that readers will devour our books for many reasons – because they love the world, the magic system, the galactic political sweep, the characters, the swooning romance – there are basic craft tools we can employ to keep that plot tension high and the pace racing along.
Two of those are secrets and suspense, which are intertwined, the one feeding into the other.
There are all kinds of secrets – from minor to major – from why a character has a certain scar to who might have committed a murder. Those secrets can and should involve the conflicts in the story, both internal and external, and revealing them can be used as climaxes and/or to further escalate tension. The keeping of secrets creates suspense – characters are worried about keeping those secrets, or having them revealed, and the reader is also on tenterhooks, fretting for the characters or dying of curiosity.
Secrets can also be nested or chained. Uncovering one secret often leads to another. Or, the efforts characters go to in order to preserve the secret – from lying to committing murder – can create even more secrets. The suspense of if, how, and when those secrets will come to light will often drive the story to the very end. This tool also allows the resolution of the HEA to remain in suspense, out of fear that the ultimate revelation of the secrets will doom the love affair.
In the end, there’s no limit to how an author can use secrets and suspense to create and heighten tension and conflict in a story – and to keep those readers hooked and holding their breath in anticipation to the very last page.
About Jeffe Kennedy
Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include novels, non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction. She has won the prestigious RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America (RWA), has been a finalist twice, been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. She is the current President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
Her award-winning fantasy romance trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms hit the shelves starting in May 2014. The novella, The Dragons of Summer, first appearing in the Seasons of Sorcery anthology, finaled for the 2019 RITA Award. Most recently, Kennedy has released two new series. The epic fantasy romances in the Heirs of Magic series include The Long Night of the Crystalline Moon, The Golden Gryphon and the Bear Prince, The Sorceress Queen and the Pirate Rogue, and the upcoming The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage (September 2021), and The Storm Princess and the Raven King (February 2022). She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.
Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency.
Don’t miss Jeffe Kennedy’s
On-line Workshop
KEEPING SECRETS &
CREATING SUSPENSE
This 4 Week Course Starts August 8, 2022
Sponsored by FF&P
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