Year 11 English Week 4

Year 11 English
Week 4
Name _____________________________________________

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Year 11 English Week 4

Creative Writing: Mystery and Suspense

This week we will focus on creating mystery and suspense in your narrative writing.
We’ll analyse an example of this before you attempt to incorporate it into your own
work.

Techniques and Conventions

There are a number of techniques you can use to add mystery, suspense and
tension to your narrative writing in order to engage your readers. Creative story
writing needs to be compelling to read and, to achieve this, it needs to be given an
effective structure. Like all texts, stories also have their own basic recipe called
'genre conventions'. Even everyday incidents can make very effective stories if you
elaborate and dramatise, add detail and explanation, always keeping a sense of
tension till the end. Your audience will enjoy wondering where it all is leading and
what will happen next.

There are a number of techniques and genre conventions you can adopt and use to
add tension and suspense to your writing and thus engage your readers:

1. Setting.

Think of an appropriate location that is suitably mysterious and unnerving. An empty

Pathetic fallacies can also help in creating suspense and tension. Use objects to
signify different emotions, in particular mystery and fear. This includes, but is not
limited to, weather and settings; think of thick fog, dense forests and impenetrable
darkness.

2. An atmosphere of mystery and suspense.

Your story should contain a threatening atmosphere - a feeling enhanced by the fear
of the unknown. This is often developed when characters see only a glimpse of
something. Was that a person rushing out the window or only the wind blowing a
curtain? Is that creaking sound coming from someone's step on the squeaky floor or
only the normal sounds of the night?

Play with this doubt in your narrative. Don’t be afraid to ask rhetorical questions, and
try to portray the suspicion in your characters’ minds. Avoid concrete description
initially in the story. Use vague language that only hints at something more sinister.

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3. Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events.

Of course, not every spooky tale has to deal with the fantastical. Some of the most
chilling stories are based on true events (H. H. Holmes included). However,
intimations to ghosts, ghouls, and spirits can ratchet up the tension.

Like in Sherlock Holmes, or even Scooby Doo, perhaps these monsters are hinted at
before a scientific explanation can be found.

Nevertheless, the unlikely and unexplained are perfect ingredients for creating
mystery.

4. Emotion.

Describing your characters’ feelings is a necessary component of any piece of

But, remember, show don’t tell. Facial expressions, bodily functions (such as
twitching or sweating), stuttered speech or silence can be helpful tools to indicate
emotion without outright telling the reader exactly how everyone is feeling.

5. Senses.

You should be intimately familiar with the senses, but don’t worry if not. The best way
to engage your reader is to bring the danger to them. Make sure they can imagine
themselves in your scenario by describing in detail everything your character can
sense.

Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste conclude the five senses, but what about the
feeling of someone watching you or an inexplicable intuition that danger lurks round
the next corner?

These primitive instincts can resonate with the reader and ensure their hairs stand on
end.

6. Ellipses and Dashes.

Punctuating your writing is key to communicating the tone of the text. Using ellipses
is a great way to keep the reader on the edge of their seat; they will mentally form an
idea of what will happen next without it being revealed.

For example: 'As he slowly popped his head around the door…’

Here the ellipsis leaves the reader wondering what may be behind the door and gives
the author the chance to fulfil or subvert that expectation.

Dashes can be equally effective in creating dramatic pauses in the text.

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Both can be used in speech to show when a character is nervous or has been
interrupted by something terrifying.

7. Simple and Fragmented Sentences.

Sometimes writers don't use full sentences. Fragmented sentences can often help to
emphasise a point, create drama or show surprise, but they are not complete
sentences.

For example: ‘It’s dark outside. Dark and cold.’

Simple sentences are a great way of creating suspense or unease. A simple

For example: ‘We stood in awe at the sight of what was before us.'

As with the other techniques we noted earlier, these can leave the reader wanting.
Remember, sometimes less is more!

Extract

The following extract is from The Haunting of Hill House - a story of paranormal
events in a secluded mansion.

"Theodora," she said, and closed her eyes and tightened her teeth together and
wrapped her arms around herself, "it's getting closer."
"Just a noise," Theodora said, and moved next to Eleanor and sat tight
against her. "It has an echo."
It sounded, Eleanor thought, like a hollow noise, a hollow bang, as though
something were hitting the doors with an iron kettle, or an iron bar, or an iron glove. It
pounded regularly for a minute, and then suddenly more softly, and then again in a
quick flurry, seeming to be going methodically from door to door at the end of the hall.
Distantly she thought she could hear the voices of Luke and the doctor, calling from
somewhere below, and she thought,Then they are not up here with us at all , and
heard the iron crashing against what must have been a door very close.
"Maybe it will go on down the other side of the hall," Theodora whispered, and
Eleanor thought that the oddest part of this indescribable experience was that
Theodora should be having it too.
"No," Theodora said, and they heard the crash against the door across the
hall. It was louder, it was deafening, it struck against the door next to them (did it
move back and forth across the hall? Did it go on feet along the carpet? Did it lift a
hand to the door?), and Eleanor threw herself away from the bed and ran to hold her
hands against the door.
"Go away," she shouted wildly. "Go away, go away!"
It started again, as though it had been listening, waiting to hear their voices
and what they said, to identify them, to know how well prepared they were against it,

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waiting to hear if they were afraid. So suddenly that Eleanor leaped back against the
bed and Theodora gasped and cried out, the iron crash came against their door, and
both of them lifted their eyes in horror, because the hammering was against the
upper edge of the door, higher than either of them could reach, higher than Luke or
the doctor could reach, and the sickening, degrading cold came in waves from
whatever was outside the door.

● What makes this extract suspenseful and tense?

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Exercise

● Write a scene of someone exploring an abandoned prison at night.

Use all of the techniques above to create a palpable atmosphere of unease and
discomfort.

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Year 11 English Week 4

● Write a suspenseful and tense scene where someone is hiding.

Try to use as much emotion as possible - but, remember, show don’t tell!

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HOMEWORK NAME:

● Now write a short account of a time when you did something that frightened
you.

This could be something you did for the first time or something that someone dared
you to do. Of course this can be fictional, but try to make it believable. It will seem
more terrifying.

Use all of the techniques we noted earlier.

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Year 11 English Week 4

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Year 11 English Week 4

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