Category: Writing Tips

What a character knows can define what kind of story you are telling.

If you want to write suspense, the reader knows what the character doesn’t. You know that old line from Hitchcock where you show the audience the bomb under the table that the characters are unaware of. Or Michael Myers standing beside the hedge–watching, waiting. That’s all creating suspense–anticipation.

In mysteries, you will have characters know something that the reader and other characters don’t. The reveal generally solves the mystery.

In a lot of fantasy stories, you’ll have one character that knows practically nothing (Luke Skywalker) meet a character that knows everything (Obi-Wan Kenobi). The reader learns while the character learns. Characters like Luke Skywalker or Neo (THE MATRIX) all exist to allow exposition to be shared. Like that new guy on the job that HR takes around and introduces to everyone as they explain when and where they can take their breaks and how to use a time clock.

These are characters at the mercy of the knowledge of those around them. Morpheus could be lying. Obi-Wan could have had ulterior motives. Whenever you present whatever knowledge that your character has been holding back can either create suspense for the reader or become a shocking twist.

Imagine if Luke knew Darth Vader was his father the whole time, and was simply playing dumb to deliver his nemesis Old Ben to earn his father’s favor? When you reveal this makes a difference between whether or not you’ve created a twist or suspense.

The twist could be delivered when Obi-Wan yells at Luke to go–and Luke just stands on the landing platform, arms crossed and smirking as Vader informs Obi-Wan that his son has already joined the dark side. Shocking! This blond-hair, blue-eyed dweeb from Tatooine is evil!

Twists generally come at the end of an act. But it doesn’t have to be the last act.

There are some great horror movies whose twists are revealed pretty early on that change the reader’s anticipation. The recent BARBARIAN (2022 directed by Zach Cregger) is a great example, and an even better one at showing how once the twist is revealed, suspense can be sustained as another character enters the fray with the audience knowing what he doesn’t.

If you don’t like twists, but still wanted to create suspense, you could tell your readers when Obi-Wan says Vader killed Luke’s father, that Luke knew the story much differently. It was Obi-Wan who cut off his father’s limbs and left him for dead. Then the story would have the same impending ticking clock of a bomb beneath a desk as Luke manipulates the poor old Jedi into a fight he cannot win.

Try to be mindful of when a reader learns the information that you know as the author. In order to pull off the twist appropriately with Luke Skywalker, one would’ve had to seed that moment. Perhaps he ‘accidentally’ uses the dark side, and Obi-Wan scolds him while Luke plays like he didn’t know. Perhaps he lets something slip to another character that he would only know about the Death Star if he had already been on it.

Whether you want to create suspense or a shocking twist, be mindful that when you tell your characters or show your readers what’s in store for them makes all the difference.

Somedays are golden and others are days we can’t write. One of the best way to overcome the walls of a writer’s block is to create your own walls.

Placing limits on what the story can or cannot contain will allow you to focus on what needs to be written vs all the possibilities of what could be.

I find I struggle most when the ideas are plentiful but don’t gel. A story about a boy with a toy car can go anywhere. But if we take that line and say the boy is a son of a mobster, but the story cannot have any guns or murder, we’ve narrowed our approach to the story, eliminating several possibilities.

Creating walls is narrowing your focus, and once you have precision focus the writing tends to flow quicker because you’re not addressing every possible problem, you’re just addressing one.

You can use genre to help narrow a story as well as time and place. A horror story with no cellphones makes life easier, right?

But if that cellphone works, then you have to focus on how you can still create fear when a call for help is just a quick selection of a contact’s info.

Avoiding tropes and cliches is something most writers try to do every single time they sit down–that’s creating a wall. I want to write a scary story, but I don’t want them to realize they suddenly have no cellphone connection.

Creating walls is narrowing your focus, and once you have precision focus the writing tends to flow quicker because you’re not addressing every possible problem, you’re just addressing one.

Did you know my short story MAD DOG DONALDSON has been published in 3rd Person POV before?

Here’s the original in first person (one of many free to read short stories here on my site): MAD DOG DONALDSON

I got some kind of critique/complaint on first person point of view and took it to heart enough to revise this short western story into 3rd person. While I reverted to the first person POV, I kept some of the lines that I’d added because they helped clarify the story.

I’ve had other stories that started out in one point of view before I changed them in a future draft.

It can change a story, it can make one that didn’t work, work. I find it is easier to convert a First Person POV to 3rd person, just because you’re eliminating all the I, Me, My, Mine, etc. And if it’s limited 3rd person you can keep many of the thoughts and feelings of that particular character.

But switching from 3rd to 1st, can be a lot more fun. When you make that switch you get to throw the character’s personality into every action of your story. Their commentary can be used to switch the tone of the story or amplify the mood.

Just like the title says . . . One of the best ways to learn is to see other people’s mistakes–and successes.

Although, most of the time, most of us are going to be mostly critical of our own work, but sometimes, more often than not–we actually have BLINDERS on and so, we don’t notice what’s wrong with what we wrote because we clearly wrote it specifically like that for a very important reason and our choice in punctuation or lack thereof can be defended . . . until we see it elsewhere.

I often realize my own bad habits when reading another friend’s story.

There is a difference to being the author reading your own story vs. being the reader expected to be critical of another’s work. By keeping a metaphorical mirror nearby, you can see where your friend’s mistakes are yours as well.

Here’s a tip for when you just can’t get your head in the game. You’ve tried all the tricks that worked for you in the past and you’re just not where you want to be in order to write.

Revisit the rules, tips, tricks that inspired you in the first place. Go back and remember what you might’ve forgotten.

Here’s a link to all the past WRITING TIPS.