The last two weeks we talked about the key to creating a suspense is  the big EVENT that awaits the characters – either a positive or negative event that looms at the end of the story, one they either know about or don’t, but that has the effect of raising the tension as they draw closer (or are kept from it). 

Think about it – if we didn’t believe there would truly be an invasion of aliens, then we would have laughed our way through Independence Day.  If we didn’t believe the Russians and the Americans could wage World War 3, then we would have never had  the cold war (and the Hunt For Red October). If we didn’t believe that Buttercup might not marry Wesley, that Prince Humperdinck  would indeed kill him or even marry her before Wesley could rescue her, then we would have stopped watching/reading when she and Wesley were reunited. 

There needs to be something looming at the end of the story, a Big Event that they want to avoid or achieve.   We need to believe that the threat is real, that the bad guy WILL pull the trigger, or detonate the bomb, or that the volcano will erupt.   

The first element in creating this event is making it Believable.

The Big Event also needs to be Compelling.  See, if it doesn’t affect the life of a character (that we love), then we won’t really care.  Or, if it doesn’t affect them in a way that matters to us, we also don’t care.

So what Buttercup doesn’t win the man of her dreams?   What if she is marrying Prince Humperdinck…who really loves her?  What if she loves him?  But no, Humperdinck is trying to kill her.  Big difference. 

Even, Compelling.  For the Big Event to matter, it needs to get personal.

I spent the past week in Iowa.  Nice place. Warm.  Big fields.  But I was supposed to leave on Sunday morning.  I ended up spending two days waiting for a flight out of Moline, IA after the tornados shut down a runway (or something like that…I’m still not sure).  I often watch the news about people being stranded in airports….and while I care, I didn’t quite care like I did when it became personal.  When it happened to me.  Or, someone I loved. 

Making the Big Event Compelling is about making it personal.  Let the hero or heroine walk in on the situation/crime, or make them targets.  Maybe they are caught up in it – like Dante’s Peak (the eruption of a volcano), or a floor.  This compelling aspect can be personal, or it can be peripheral – meaning it can affect loved ones.

Just a note here:  If you are making the event peripheral, make the compelling element reasonable/realistic.  You’re not going to be afraid of a volcano erupting on your mother if she lives in North Dakota.  If she lives in Hawaii, however, that’s a different story.  In my romantic suspense, Expect the Sunrise, I made the Big Event compelling by taking my heroine’s father hostage.  She doesn’t know this, but the reader does, and it adds to the compelling aspect of the story.

How is your Big Event Compelling? Have you made it personal? Peripheral?  Is it reasonable? 

Tomorrow we’ll be talking about yet another element that will help you build your Big Event…

Susie May