Creating Suspense in Fiction

Sheriff, John Paxton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0709064284 ISBN 13: 9780709064282

Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd, 1999

Do you want to write a novel which will keep the reader in a constant state of suspense? John Paxton Sheriff shows you how to develop this essential skill which is used by all successful writers of fiction. With over thirty-five years writing experience and several novels behind him, John Paxton Sheriff is able to present the art of creating suspense in easily understood, practical terms. Beginning with the suspense created by placing memorable characters in an evocative setting, the author progresses to the devising of tight plots which can be improved by linked sub-plots, tells how characters' traits and their predictable and unpredictable reactions are indispensable to the building of suspense, and offers help with the all-important first chapter. Less familiar literary devices such as foreshadowing and overlapping chapters are dealt with alongside the time-honoured techniques of hooks, cliff-hangers and time-limits, and throughout the book the author uses outstanding examples taken from the work of bestselling authors. In Creating Suspense in Fiction John Paxton Sheriff has passed on the knowledge that comes from many years of successful writing, in a book filled with invaluable advice that is difficult to find elsewhere. It will be an indispensable aid both for the beginner and for the more experienced writer alike.

About the Author:

John Paxton Sheriff has been writing successfully since the 1960s and became a full-time freelance writer in the late 1980s. He has had fifteen novels published and has written short crime fiction for publishers in the UK, Australia and the USA. John Paxton Sheriff is the author of Practical Short Story Writing and Writing Crime Novels (also published by Hale).