Guest post written by author Laura Griffin
Laura Griffin is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty books and novellas. Her newest romantic thriller, Last Seen Alone, is out September 28th 2021.
Good secrets make good stories.
And that’s especially true when it comes to suspense fiction. Good secrets are what make a thriller thrilling and a mystery mysterious. Suspense authors love withholding information from readers to ratchet up the tension.
I’ve been a fan of suspenseful stories since I picked up my first Stephen King novel as a teenager. After years of reading all type of suspense fiction, from paranormal thrillers to cozy mysteries, I began to realize that the best stories had one thing in common: the authors knew how to keep their readers in the dark.
So, how do the best authors use secrets to ramp up the suspense? One way is through pacing. The author kicks off the story with a question, maybe even a minor one. Next time you pick up a suspense novel, see if you can spot it on the first page. It can be a question about something small, such as “Why is this character ticked off right now?” to something big, such as “How did this body get here?” Most authors will dangle a question right away to make the reader keep going until the next sentence, the next page, the next chapter, in an effort to discover the answer to that question (the secret) that the author has withheld.
By the time a small story question gets answered, a bigger question has come along to take its place, and—voila!—the reader is hooked. That is the power of secrets big and small.
For secrets to be useful in fiction, they have to be revealed. The key question is when. Experienced suspense authors dole out information and story revelations little by little to keep the story moving briskly. But there may be one or two key surprises (or secrets) that the author saves for a pivotal moment to maximize the effect. Often these explosive secrets (“The real bad guy is still out there!” or “The ally we thought was dead is actually alive!”) end up being a plot twist, which is the best kind of story secret of all.
Some authors keep story secrets by cleverly shifting point of view. This technique shows up frequently in psychological thrillers. Oftentimes, the story unfolds from multiple points of view with a character’s name at the top of each chapter to help readers keep track of all the head hopping. As the reader jumps from one viewpoint to another, they try to figure out who might be the villain only to discover that it was someone whose head they were in all along. One hint: if you can figure out whose point of view is being hidden during critical scenes, such as when someone gets murdered off, you may have an early shot at figuring out whodunit.
Another technique is to come right out and show a murder or a crime from the villain’s point of view, but that character’s identity is carefully concealed, leaving the reader guessing. This technique is most interesting when the author plants subtle clues for the reader, so that when the secret is revealed, the reader can look back and realize they had at least a chance of cracking the case.
Using an unreliable narrator is an increasingly popular—if controversial—way for an author to keep secrets. Think Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn or The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Warning to aspiring authors: readers either love this or they hate it! Some people feel cheated at the end of the story, but this technique makes for a twisty tale.
Good secrets are key to good suspense fiction. Authors use a variety of techniques to keep secrets from the reader and then carefully time each story revelation for maximum effect. Next time you pick up a suspense novel, pay attention to the different ways the author is keeping you in the dark. If you can pinpoint the author’s technique, you’ll have a better chance of figuring out the key secret that unlocks the story.
