When writing a novel of fiction, creating suspense and tension for the reader is probably the most important aspect of the story. You want the reader to turn the pages. You want them to finish a chapter and immediately start into the next one. You want them to believe in your characters and empathise with their conflict and you want them to read late into the night and say the words – I couldn’t put it down!
When I start writing a new novel I always look at my characters first. I start thinking about them long before I open a new document and overtime I notice that they are with me as I go about my day. I do take notes as I go, lots of notes! Creating characters for a book is one of the most exciting parts of writing a story for me and a character can come from anywhere. I always think people are the gift that keep on giving. You might overhear a conversation while standing in the queue at the supermarket or sitting in a café or walking down the street. Just ordinary people offer real depth and you can see someone, observe their look, their walk, their gait, dress, style, age and you can create a back story and the character builds from there. When you introduce more characters with opposing goals, tension starts to push its way through.
I then work on raising the stakes by adding an inciting moment. Something needs to happen in order to garner interest. Most people’s lives are relatively ordinary and they move along without too much difficulty. But if you throw an obstacle or conflict towards them, for example bad news or a tragic life-changing accident or betrayal or murder, then a relatively normal life can turn on its head and change forever.
Tension happens when your reader anticipates struggle and conflict. This stops your character from getting what they want. You can create tension in relationships, by introducing the element of surprise and mystery. Faster pacing can heighten tension and if you put a time-line into the story then it becomes a race to the end.
For years I have been writing theatre and film with community groups of all ages and from many different backgrounds in Limerick city. We start with a blank page and through brain storming, we come up with a theme and storyline. We then introduce characters and plots and each week the groups improvise a scene and I then add my own twist. When I bring it back to the group we discuss the script and work on an edit together. It’s an interesting process, because we genuinely don’t know what is going to happen to the character. But what we find is that as we move along creating the script, we get to know these characters, we draw on personal experiences and conversations we have overheard to form the storyline and the different voices in the group add depth and texture.
When I started writing my debut novel The World’s End, I used a similar process. The story follows a group of friends who travel to stay in a luxurious summerhouse for a long weekend. All five have something troubling them in their personal life that they were trying to escape from. I knew something tragic was about to happen while they were away and that one of the five would be responsible. What I didn’t know was who. I changed the perpetrator half way through the book and it felt as if I was investigating the crime as well as the Private Investigator Lana Bowen and I thought the reader might feel the same.
In Never Look Back, I used the same process. The idea came from a dream about a middle-aged woman who discovers she had a new grand-daughter by paying a surprise visit to the flat her daughter was sharing while attending university in Belfast. The woman decides to bring the two home to Limerick but she gets separated from her daughter, Clara at the busy Colbert train station. Clara’s brother then calls up his old college friend Lana Bowen to help him find his sister. What happens next took on its own journey and I used a sub-plot to bring the story together.
(c) Karen Fitzgibbon
About Never Look Back:
Jenny loses her nineteen-year-old daughter Clara at Colbert train station in Limerick. She is holding Clara’s young baby in her arms, a baby she didn’t know existed twenty-four hours earlier. As they move along the platform, Clara simply vanishes.
Clara’s brother Nyah calls up an old college friend, Lana Bowen, who works as a private investigator, to help him find his sister. Together they trace Clara’s movements to London – but they are always one step behind, encountering more and more baffling developments along the way.
Where is Clara, what is she involved in and who is she running from?
As the pressure to find Clara increases and tension builds, Lana and Nyah are desperate, and running out of time. The trail eventually leads them back to Ireland where they uncover a web of deceit and malice. What is the deadly secret that someone wants to keep hidden? Will they find Clara before it’s too late? Will digging up the past destroy her future?
The truth is cloaked in shadows, buried beneath layers of falsehoods and dishonesty.
Order your copy of Never Look Back online here.
And read Karen Fitzgibbon discussing her first thriller, The World’s End, on Writing.ie here.
