Fiction

How do I build tension and suspense in my writing, especially when I’m writing short stories.

This might be too cliche, but a good way to add suspense is to give the characters a time limit, say one hour to save somebody, get a million, get a vaccine ect… whilst doing this make it difficult for the characters to achieve this, give the characters a challenge, make the reader think the characters isn’t going to make it.

Keep the pace fairly quick, followed by slower ones. If you add an action scene followed by a slow scene, the action scenes will be more suspenseful, than if you just add action after action.

Don’t give the reader all of the action at once, keep it flowing with the story, make unsuspected turns, make the reader think something is going to happen, only to find it was a false lead. (Like in a horror film, when you think something is going to happen, but something else happens)

The aim of suspense is to get the reader wanting to know more; what’s going to happen, or who done it? If it’s a who done it story, don’t reveal until the end and try getting the reader to believe somebody else did it. Do this by misleading, characters lying ect…

Another good way is adding small cliffhangers after each chapter, mostly done in novels to add the suspense feel, but still a good way.

And probably the most important is show, don’t tell. Doing this will add more depth, if we can see what’s happening to the character, then that’ll create a picture and create suspense on its own. For example don’t just say he was scared, show us how he was scared, shivering with wide eyes, heart beating faster with sweats, eyes fixed on the spot, he froze.

There are numerous hyper-emotional romance books and films out there. They all follow the same basic plot line. Boy meets girl. There is some social or economic difference between boy and girl. At first, this makes things exciting. Then, intervening friends or family members of one side or both cause the relationship to sour. At this point, a number of things can happen, but often, one of them dies or is permanently separated from the love of their life.

The end.

Well, some of those books are literally porn. They have explicit sex scenes that are meant to be masturbation aids.

If the book doesn’t literally contain porn, I’d say it’s more analogous to stupid action movies than to porn. It’s simple wish-fulfillment that appeals to that little spot inside you that’s secretly not modern or feminist at all and wants to play out a raging gender cliche.

like why doesn’t it break? since Nikki and slash probably did alot of Dyeing, Teasing, used heat tools for hair and alot of hairspray in the 80’s and they still have fine looking hair.

umm , I don’t know . I’m guessing
since they don’t dye or tease
now a days , their hair became
healthy again .

I’ve noticed at my local bookstores, Chapters, Indigo and Coles here in Canada, that there are some romance books in the fiction section. For example, Nicholas Sparks books are all in the fiction section as well as Jane Austen and others that are clearly romances. It’s not that they’re the cheesey romances you would find in the supermarket, but they’re still romances, why aren’t they in the romance section? What makes these in the fiction and the other romances in romance? Where do you draw the line?
Thank you.

There are two very distinct types of romance novels: classic romance and modern romance. Modern romance was born in the early 1970’s. It’s somewhat trashy and explicit. The romance section is populated by modern romance novels. Pick up a romance from the romance section and read it. Read a few of them. Compare what you’ve read to Jane Austen. The differences in the two types should be crystal clear.

Other novels may contain some romance without having romance and sex being the driving force behind the story. I call these classic romance, and they areshelved within the general fiction section. This is done to provide a clear separation from the modern romance novel. Examples of classic romance include Atonement, Birdsong, Pride and Prejudice, and Corelli’s Mandolin. Sure there is romance in the novels, possibly even some sex. However, the main story is not simply how two people hooked up.

It’s winter break of my junior year and I love reading books about love and romance but I’m sick of reading books by authors like Sarah Dessen, mainly because all the characters are in high school. I’m not too interested in adult novels either. Does anyone have suggestions for romance books that take place in a college setting?

Thanks in advance.

Melinda Metz – Roswell High
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Game Of Thrones

I have Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus-Top Electric Guitar and wanted to know how to get slash effects from guns n roses songs? and try and make it the simplest and cheapest way… thanks you

I put the bass and mid around a 3-5, and the treble around a 6-8. I put my drive (or gain) all the way to a 10, as far as it goes. I use a Boss Distortion pedal to crank solos, and a Crybaby Classic Wah pedal to get sounds he uses like the solo in Civil War. We’ll never get the perfect tone though without the Marshall Slash Amp. But personally, I don’t want to spend $1000 to sound exactly like Slash

So I am somewhat writing a book and I have been starting to get a little curious as to how fantasy books have changed or stayed the same over the years. I have looked at a lot of websites but they haven’t really answered my question and I would really like someones input on this.
Thank you so much to anyone who answers! =)

Fantasy books in the past tended to take place in an idealized medieval land (castles, fair maidens, dragons, knights in shining armor, etc.), Greco-Roman mythology settings, or "barbarian" heroes saving damsels from either classic mythological or wholly author-invented creatures. Though you still see a lot of this, today’s fantasy is just as likely to take place in modern urban settings (that’s actually a major sub-genre), involve novel interpretations of classically "understood" creatures, or even futuristic (or not-so-futuristic, like, say, a steampunk King Arthur) fusions of science and sorcery.

When I was 13 (so….1992), I read a book about a virus/bacteria strain that could essentially regenerate things that had once been alive (animals/people). I wanna say that it killed you and THEN brought you back, but not certain. It was kept in some lab underground and somehow it gets airborne and spreads. At the end of the book, it talks about how everything is immortal now and no one needs to eat food anymore, etc.

I don’t remember much more about the storyline, nor the title, not the author. I always thought it was called Lake of Fire or something, but I can’t find anything along those lines. I remember it being in the 400-500 pages range. And it was paperback when I read it, but I think it was a pretty recent release at the time.

Does this ring a bell to anyone? I really want to reread this book now that i’m older.

Andromeda Strain-By Michael Crichton
The Fire you remember is the name of the organisation Wildfire it is used to control Astrobiological threats…

* The Time Machine (2002)-colonization of the moon destroys it and earth
* Wall-E-earth gets covered in garbage
* I Am Legend-cure for cancer causes plague that decimates mankind
* Avatar-earth’s natural resources have been severely depleted

I love sci fi, but why is this a common theme in it? Does it reflect modern issues?

Are there any other movies with this theme? I’d love to know.

well there set in the future and there are allot of reports about how there won’t be enough resources for people in the future so I thing it’s being based of that but it’s the same when you (going video games here) look at the game Halo it starts out with each country going into a technological fight and start wars with each other and almost destroy each other or when they fight the aliens they encounter the human race could be destroyed but eventually gain a treaty but if you look at some reports that ore going on now I think the Sci-Fi stuff is being based of of all the stuff going on now and what allot of people think may happen.

I know James Cameron has done it in a lot of his work and it is the main theme of the movie "Insidious" but what other directors use child endangerment as a way to advance their theme and create suspense?

Steven Spielberg used it in a lot of movies.