How do you keep dread alive when nothing scary is happening yet?

[PudgeThePug]

Hey all, I'm working on a dark fantasy horror novel, and I've hit a structural problem I'm curious how others handle.

My opening chapters are deliberately quiet. My main character is tracking someone through a rainy river town: talking to a crooked toll clerk, reading ledgers, buying drinks for a carter who knows more than he's saying. The real horror doesn't show up for a while, and I don't want to rush it. But I also don't want readers getting comfortable.

So far my approach has been small wrong details. The weird cargo in a ledger entry that doesn't add up. A carter telling a story about his dog that sat down in the road and wouldn't go any further. Nothing supernatural on the page yet, just little cracks in the normal world.

I'm curious how the rest of you approach it:

1) What do you use to build tension in slower chapters?

2) Is there a point where hints start to feel like teasing instead of tension?

3) Any books that do this really well? I'd love some reading recommendations.

Looking forward to hearing how other people tackle this.

 

[Penpilot]

Remember the story is filtered through the lens of the main character(s). What they notice and what they feel will influence how the reader will feel. So if the main character notices incongruities in the world/setting, how they feel and react will be passed along to the reader. Now this doesn't mean the reader will 100% ape how the main character feels. The main character can notice something, dismiss it as nothing, but the reader may feel uneasy about it because the reader knows this is a horror story and will read more into it.

For me, tension is about unanswered questions. As the story progresses, you build up a collection of these questions, big and small. BUT it starts to feel like a tease when you don't pay any of them off. Pay off some of the questions and have them lead into new bigger questions, so the reader feels like they're making progress, and you should be good.

Maybe look into Stephen King. He has stories set in small towns with a growing mystery. I haven't read the book, but I've seen the movies and TV shows base on IT, and to me it sounds like that might be what you're looking for.

 

[ThinkerX]

I had to deal with this situation in 'Empire: Country,' the first book of my 'Empire' series.

I took two approaches:

First, I started the story with the massacre of a handful of peasants, which was attributed to one of the dangerous beasts known to wander into the area. The solution for the characters was a hunting expedition, but things didn't quite add up.

Second, I added backbiting and intrigue among the local aristocrats: an agreement that nobody was happy with, an arrogant noble with questionable dealings, and so on.

All this built up tension without revealing what was really going on.

 

[skip.knox]

1) What do you use to build tension in slower chapters?
2) Is there a point where hints start to feel like teasing instead of tension?
3) Any books that do this really well? I'd love some reading recommendations.

These are good questions. The first one is actually fairly easy to state, but can be devilishly difficult to execute. You find other sources of tension. You raise questions, as others here have said. These things don't need to be connected at all to the main plot or the main theme, though they can be. Most times, it will simply be some short-term objective--I gotta get to the store before it closes. Something trivial (again, doesn't *have* to be trivial). The main thing here is to get inside your characters' heads, see the situation as it currently stands--they don't know what's down the road--and then let them overcome the obstacle or fail to overcome the obstacle.

The second one is more difficult, because now you're talking about reader reaction, and that's unpredictable. My rule is, it has to work for me first. Because I'm the author, this means I'm going to be reading that section multiple times in the coming weeks and months, and it's gotta work *every time*. Beyond that, you'll be looking at raising the stakes as you go. You're moving from getting to the store before it closes toward getting out of town before the zombies arrive. As you work, you'll start to identify steps, increments.

As for books that do this really well, here again let yourself be First Judge. I'd venture to say every great writer does this really well; what matters is what works for you. Consult your own library. Look outside the fantasy genre, too. Thrillers, adventure stories, detective books, even romance (one supposes <g>). Pretty much any and every good book builds tension across the span of the story. The trick is to train your eyes and ears to catch it.

 

[RoccO]

A good way to increase tension is to foreshadow the main villain. It happens a lot in aeroplane fiction, stuff that you just throw away because it is generic. It is done in Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden and Dan Brown’s books. It brings up a pervading sense of evil and strips the meat from the bones of a story which starts unremarkable and gentle.

Another way, would be to have something mysterious happen to a love interest at the beginning of the theme. This happens more often than the first example, I can think of a dozen examples, and I would count them as a block buster approach. This environment weighed against the foreshadowing is a multiple facetted approach which is almost like cheating but might be considered useful.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

The classic way for the stuff I've seen:
1: Don't let them see the thing until the end, but have the thing present and be a threat.
2 (works better for video games but I imagine it works for writing too): Use atmosphere, like no shot some of the best jumpscares aren't from the big boogly guy popping out randomly.
3: Make the threat personal.
This one is tricky, but think of it like how (some) thrillers work. Some have the threat be the haunting memory of an 'ex' boyfriend/girlfriend.
Some of them have it be the stepfather who was NOT the best parent.
Stuff like that.

 

[Mad Swede]

Hey all, I'm working on a dark fantasy horror novel, and I've hit a structural problem I'm curious how others handle.

My opening chapters are deliberately quiet. My main character is tracking someone through a rainy river town: talking to a crooked toll clerk, reading ledgers, buying drinks for a carter who knows more than he's saying. The real horror doesn't show up for a while, and I don't want to rush it. But I also don't want readers getting comfortable.

So far my approach has been small wrong details. The weird cargo in a ledger entry that doesn't add up. A carter telling a story about his dog that sat down in the road and wouldn't go any further. Nothing supernatural on the page yet, just little cracks in the normal world.

I'm curious how the rest of you approach it:

1) What do you use to build tension in slower chapters?

2) Is there a point where hints start to feel like teasing instead of tension?

3) Any books that do this really well? I'd love some reading recommendations.

Looking forward to hearing how other people tackle this.

For me building tension in writing is all about triggering emotions in the reader. By that I mean that I try to put the reader in the situation by building a picture, an image if you like, of the situation. How does it feel, what do the senses pick up? Temperature, smell, light levels and so on. What do the characters (and by extension the readers) feel? Fear? Caution? Do those feelings go against how they normally are? How are others reacting and does that have an impact?

Pace is also important creating tension. That means keeping it simple. No flowery, wordy descriptions. No back story. Short sharp sentences. It's all about selecting the right details so that I keep the pace up. Dialogue helps, in that it can set the pace for the scene as well as adding drama, developing the characters and moving the story forwards.

For me tension builds through the story, so I write in spikes – tension, relax, tension, relax. Incident, quieter passage, incident. Towards the end the quieter passages disappear and the tension rises to a crescendo. All the incidents I use lead, directly or indirectly, to the final incident which rounds the story off. That doesn't mean all the incidents and questions get resolved, but they all lead to the climax of the story.

What I don't do is try to develop tension in the quieter passages. I use the quiet bits to provide a sort of contrast, so that the incidents (which can be small) have more impact and add more tension. And to kick the story off I generallt start in medias res, that is with an incident in the middle of the story. Then I can add the back story gradually in the quieter bits.

 

[pmmg]

Since question is really about a sense of dread, I will pass on the many different kinds of tension. And...since the OP'er has already said the scenes are prior to any actual danger appearing, that would seem a bit tricky to me.

I tend to build this up with a portending or foreboding danger lurking just beyond the scenes. The character is nervous, or unsure, their tools are sharp, but maybe they wonder if they are sufficient, or they can use them well enough. Thoughts of the cost of if he fails, perhaps a trail of past failures that came with consequences. I try to enhance this with word choice and voice.

He rode his horse along the streets becomes, the hooves of his horse clopped on the wet stones of the deserted street, echoing its hollow sound from the shadows of the dark alleys he passed.

I also try to build, suggesting that everything is moving closer to the danger, and ending each scene with something left unknown and unanswered. I find this is even more effective it there are multiple POV's that I can shift to so as to prolong the unanswered portion of it.

She fell to the stones, her sword sliding from her grasp, her motions spent with exhaustion. The orc stood over and raised its axe. For an instant she saw its edge glint against the night sky above, an the lumbering shape of her foe ready to finish his blow. She closed her eyes with dread, waiting for the end. {end scene} <--now we don't know what happened.

These types of broad questions are always subject to a million alterations, and none of them probably match your story. A better way to workshop this is to present a portion of it you are struggling with and maybe we can help directly with the prose.

 

[Prince of Spires]

The question reminds me of the Hitchcock quote on the difference between surprise and suspence:

“There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.”

The reader should know something's off about the situation. They don't necessarily need to know exactly what. They don't need to know it's a bomb to stick with the quote, but if you know something bad is about to happen, then that lovely sunny afternoon in the park suddenly because a tense situation.

There are a lot of ways to achieve this. You could show something terrible happening that everyone ignores. This is often why in horror movies some homeless guy gets eaten in the opening scene. You could have the characters know something's wrong, even if they don't know what. In Stephen King's IT for instance, the protagonists get a phonecall that tells them to come home because it's back. They have no memory of what it is or why they should come back, but they know it's terrible and they don't want to. You could have the character realize it, or you could have the reader realize it without the character knowing.

It depends on how you frame your story and how it develops. If you're deep in someone's head, then you can look at using specific descriptions that don't match what we're seeing. You could have deadly pale sunlight or brakes screeching like fingernails of a skeleton hand dragging across a chalkboard.You could highlight the character's unease or contrast a character's thoughts with what is actually happening on the page. After all, most people would not realize a vampire is a vampire in real life. A reader of a vampire novel on the other knows one is about to show up. So the drained body is a clear sign for a reader while the detective protagonist will blame some kids playing at devil worshipping or drag addicts or whatever.

If you're less deep in a character's head or you have an omniscient POV, you can use more heavy handed foreshadowing. It would be the last bright sunny morning the town would see in a long while or The town held it's breath as the sun sank and darkness encroached or whatever.

Lastly, it's important to realize that in slower chapters the tension can deflate somewhat (though not completely). If you're always at a 10 with the tension, then readers grow numb and you lose all tension. Having a contrast between low and high tension makes the higher tension parts feel more tense. Just realize that the slower chapters still need to be plot or character relevant. If they're just slows because nothing happens, then just cut them out.