Writing Slow-Burn Suspense in a Fast-Content World: How Writers Can Build Momentum Without Relying on Shock

Here’s me in my fast-content world: Click on Instagram; one second on the first feed; not interested; swipe up; swipe up again; still nothing to make me pause for more than a second; click on TikTok; oh, a cat video, but I much prefer dog videos; ah, here is one; gee, I wonder what’s on Facebook; click on Facebook (yes I am of that generation); dang, only same old political stuff based on my previous clicks; but, hmm, I am feeling a bit of euphoria; click, swipe, click, swipe. And so, it goes.

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Here’s me in my slow-burn suspense world: I am sitting in my recliner with my feet up; the first chapter of the book makes me wonder why someone has stopped showing up at his top-secret government job and nobody can find him; maybe he is dead; maybe someone tried to kill or kidnap him because of what he knows; in the next chapter I learn he is hiding because he thinks someone at his office might be trying to kill him; I keep reading, because I want to find out why and where and what. With patience, I will.  

I lose myself in whatever of those two worlds I am in, and fast-content is not without its benefits of providing information and worthwhile opinions in certain posts. But there is something irrefutably good about slow-burn suspense that invites the reader to think, that engages the reader as a participant in wondering what comes next.

Suspense doesn’t require a body on the first page; it requires a question the reader can’t stop asking. The best suspense builds gradually. It could build up to a shock, such as an assassination, or the shock could happen early and the suspense has to do with how the shock came to be. In either case, the key to keeping the reader involved is to build the suspense.

Fortunately, writers have a well-stocked toolbox for constructing the momentum of suspense—the momentum that results in pages being turned. The tools work in films as well as in books. I just watched the Academy Award Nominated Brazilian film “The Secret Agent.” In the first scene, the main character stops for gas at a remote gas station. Two policemen search his car. They find nothing wrong, but the main character is still worried, and we as viewers are puzzled. We are drawn into the story by a writer’s tool. That’s ambiguity at work. No explosion, just a question mark. The same principle works in a book: Drop your reader into a scene where something feels slightly off, give them no explanation and they will keep reading to find out why.

Another tool—a very common one—for creating momentum without relying on shock is the ticking clock. Something bad is going to happen and there is a limited amount of time to prevent it. The tension builds as the deadline approaches. Think Whalefall, by Daniel Kraus, where a diver is swallowed by a whale and must find a way to escape with only an hour of oxygen left in his tank.

Then there is the writer’s tool of a character with a false sense of security. The character or characters wander into a situation they think is safe, but of course they aren’t. Think Little Red Riding Hood and other classics. Or, for more current examples, there are countless novels about people in secluded getaways thinking they are safe only to discover they are in danger from a killer. In a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware, is a good example, where the protagonist attends a bachelorette party at a country house with no cell phone service, and the guests are trapped with a killer.

Our real lives are mostly slow-burn, and we can identify with it, easily placing ourselves in the positions of the characters. For that reason alone, there will always be a big market for slow-burn suspense, and we can be assured that writers will keep on using their many tools for grabbing their readers and building momentum for the big shocks or reveals. And when they do, I’ll be in my recliner, feet up, happily turning pages.

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