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Key Conditions for Suspense:
Part 9 - character draws 9-10
by John D. Brown
The following is part of a continuing series. If you wish to start at the beginning, head to It’s All About The Reader.
In my last two posts, I identified a number of things that make people and, therefore, characters interesting to us. In this post, I’ll present the last two draws and introduce the next condition for reader suspense.
Surprise
We are intrigued by characters who play against type, even if it’s only a little. So maybe you have a plumber who quotes Shakespeare or William Blake to his customers. Maybe you have a mixed martial arts fighter who is a woman with three kids. Maybe the hero hates dogs. Maybe he’s a bee keeper. Maybe the villain has a fear of spiders or tends lovingly to his daughter. Maybe the cutthroat millionaire businessman secretly goes to poor neighborhoods to find folks to help. Maybe the bearded and tattooed biker carries around a Book of Mormon and reads it during quiet moments. Maybe, like Michael in the series Burn Notice, the super spy loves yogurt. Anything that runs against, or just doesn’t fit, our expectations of the type. This includes motives as well as external character tags.
Cast Variety
Finally, because we almost always deal with a cast of people in our stories, we need to make sure they’re interesting as a group. You will increase reader interest if you give each character some memorable and interesting trait, but you’ll get the most bang for the buck if you make those traits different.
For example, let’s say you have a team of characters who need to go behind enemy lines to find and dismantle a radar station. If every one of those team members is exactly the same-they’re all wise-cracking blond farm boys from Oklahoma-we might find it funny and odd at first, but it will soon lose its appeal as they all say and do the same things.
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