After several thrillers, writer and former Art of Writing guest teacher, Conrad Williams is a master of page-turning stories. In this Blog, Conrad reveals some suspense advice on how to reveal a plot, while avoiding bad twists.
Lisa: What can writers, across all genres, learn from thrillers and thriller writers?
Conrad: Thriller writers have to keep their readers turning the pages. In addition to creating believable characters and realistic locations, they have to maintain control of a knotty plot but also inject exciting scenes throughout the narrative arc. They have to have a good understanding and control of pace, knowing when to change gear and produce hi-octane passages that are counterbalanced by periods of relative calm.
Lisa: Is there a single common skill that all writers in your anthology, Dead Letters, possess in their stories? If not, what are some of the various narrative skills that you admire in the various authors in the anthology?
Conrad: I was knocked out by the wide range of stories I received from the contributors to Dead Letters. There was the danger, I felt (and I’m always wary of ‘themed’ anthologies for this very reason) that I’d receive a lot of stories that had the same feel to them because they were all meant to be about lost, misdirected or returned mail. But the imaginative scope of my writers was broad and weird and brilliant. Should I have been surprised? They are all industry professionals with a strong publishing background. Even the relative newcomers have at least a couple of critically-acclaimed stories under their belts. I think the one unifying theme was unpredictability!
Lisa: What is the one stock thriller gimmick that aspiring writers should best steer away from, and why?
Conrad: Twist endings can be tricky to get right. They need to be original, impactful and you have to make sure you’re not signposting them too much (if at all) in earlier chapters. Too often they can feel like a desperate effort to end a novel with a bang when it might not necessarily need it. The last thing a writer wants, so late in the book, is to have the audience feel as though they are reading a story and, at worst, knowing that they’re being manipulated.
Lisa: Do you have a favourite narrative trick to produce tight, suspenseful, gripping scenes?
Conrad: I will sometimes write a scene I know has to be fast and suspenseful in sentences no longer than six words. Get rid of the extraneous fat: lose the adjectives, lose the adverbs. Write tight. At the editing stage I’ll go back and ‘massage’ the sentences a little so they don’t look too similar, add a little more here and there – soften some corners, smooth some edges – without ruining the punchy, pacy feel that I’ve created.
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