Your memoir’s suspense: Make it reader-friendly

 

We’ve been studying the importance of suspense, tension, and conflict in your memoir. They are must-haves: They draw readers into your story, make them care about you, and keep them reading. (Click on Make ‘em wait and Suspense—yes, but melodrama—no.)

 

While it’s important to include suspense in your memoir, make those passages reader-friendly. Readers don’t want to waste time with long, drawn-out moaning and groaning.

 

“Readers don’t buy books that ponder problems,” writes Chip MacGregor. “They buy books that offer great solutions to their problems. So offer solutions.” (Chip MacGregor, Memorable Words)

 

MacGregor says we should go ahead and “set the stage by revealing what the conflict or problem is” in a condensed way, and then we should get on with it.

 

But wait! We don’t want to downplay our suspense too much, according to K. S. Davis.

 

She teaches her students (both fiction and memoir writers) to beware of a “failure to sustain key moments.” Key moments: moments of tension and suspense and emotion.

 

In some of her students’ rough drafts, Davis discovered key moments “were just going by too quickly.” To remedy that, she advises, “. . . Writers, don’t be afraid to slow down and ‘linger.’

 

“Make sure you are devoting sufficient space to the ‘key moments’ in your manuscript so that they register with your readers. Your writing will resonate much more clearly and vividly if you do.”

 

Davis says we can achieve that by using dialogue, summarizing unspoken thoughts, and using nuance. (from K.S. Davis’s post, Lessons in Lingering.)

 

So, the combined message

from Chip MacGregor and K.S. Davis is this:

Find a healthy balance in writing passages

of suspense and drama and emotion.

 

You might be muttering, “Easier said than done.” I agree. Here’s what I’ve found helpful:

 

I draft a couple of versions of a vignette or chapter and play around with the suspense. I condense. Reorganize. (I’m so glad we live in the days of computers instead of typewriters! Back in the olden days, if we wanted to change just one word—or even one comma—we’d have to retype the entire page!)

 

After tweaking, I set aside the manuscript for a week or so. Later I’ll take a fresh look at it and by then I will have a better perspective on what works and what doesn’t.

 

Also, if you’re not part of a writers’ critique group, I highly recommend you join one—just be sure it’s a quality critique group. Not all of them are helpful, professional, and supportive.

 

Suspense—yes, but melodrama—no

 

Life includes suspense. Good stories, then, include suspense.

 

Your memoir needs suspense. Hook your reader and make her eager to know the outcome—but make her wait for it.

 

Suspense implies an uncomfortable waiting mixed with impatience for a good resolution. It arouses curiosity. It keeps her reading.

 

And so . . . today we continue with these all-important ingredients for your memoir: Suspense. Tension. Conflict. (Click on “Make ‘em wait” if you missed last week’s post)

 

Becca Puglisi at Writers Helping Writers explains how she discovered the difference between conflict and tension.

 

A critiquer had returned one of Becca’s manuscripts and had noted, several times, the need for tension. “Where’s the tension?” and “Add more tension.” (Becca’s manuscript was fiction but remember: Many fiction techniques are important nonfiction techniques, too.)

 

Becca said, “No tension? What’s she talking about? The main character was just abandoned by her father. Her best friend was attacked by racist pigs. The family farm is about to go under. . . . There is conflict ALL OVER the place, so how can she say there’s no tension??”

 

Becca was puzzled but eventually recognized that conflict and tension are not necessarily the same thing. She adds, “Although the terms are often used interchangeably (and they CAN be synonymous), they aren’t necessarily the same.”

 

Conflict is when a character has a goal but an obstacle prevents him from reaching it.

 

Tension, on the other hand, stirs up the reader’s emotion, grabs hold of him, and makes him care about how the story will end—and it keeps him reading. Tension, Becca says, is “that tight, stretched feeling in your belly that makes you all jittery. That’s what you want your reader to feel. . . .”

 

Click on this link to read more of Becca’s Conflictvs. Tension.

 

So how do you stir up your reader’s emotion?

 

Your own emotion—excitement, fear, joy, doubt, wonderment, or awe—will impact your readers’ emotions.

 

“Emotion is an involuntary action:

The best stories in the world

always have an emotional appeal.

They inspire the audience to act, to think,

to laugh, to cry or to get angry. . . .

If an audience is moved to feel something,

they become more emotionally invested in a story

based on that connection.”

Slash Coleman

 

How much tension should a writer include?

 

Every scene should have tension, FaithWriter’s Lillian Duncan says, sometimes big, sometimes little. “It may be internal or external. It may be real or imagined, but there should be a sense of unpredictability in every scene. . . .”

 

Lillian offers this word of caution: Melodrama is not a mark of good writing. Avoid overwriting. “Keep your ‘flowery’ writing to a minimum.”

 

Click here to see Lillian’s checklist on how to avoid overwriting. It includes:

• Word choices
• Exclamation points 
• Too many adverbs and adjectives
• Emotional reaction equal to the event
• Cut every unnecessary word

 

(Keep this in mind: Many if not all of her fiction techniques also apply to nonfiction.)