My wife and I recently took our kids on a long car ride.
And like any parent knows on a long trip, the kiss of death when traveling with young kids is talking too much once they’ve fallen asleep.
So we queued up a podcast, and as soon as we heard snoring from the backseat, we started listening to Up and Vanished. It’s a true crime podcast about a 10 year old cold case of a missing woman.
While I listened it made me think a lot about how we write fiction and specifically suspense, thriller, mystery, horror, and crime fiction. And I took away three things to remember when we’re writing stories.
Even though this podcast was a true story, I learned a lot about how to hook readers or in this case listeners, so that they’ll stay invested and continue wanting more.
3 Lessons Learned
🚰 Strategic Backstory
Drip in your backstory throughout your story. But also, be extremely selective about which details from your character’s life should be revealed and when.
This has come up over and over on the 5-Minute Writer Series. It’s also something I asked author Rob Hart about. Rob is a fantastic writer and he shared how he opened his novels by asking a simple question, then building from there.
“As you’re writing, you should be asking questions of your reader, not answering them right away. It’s like a way to kind of like build momentum and suspense. And even when you answer those questions, to have those…bring about more questions…every answer should it should itself also provide a bit of a question.” –Rob Hart
In this particular true crime case on this podcast, it was important that the victim wasn’t fully explained in the opening.
Sure, we find out about the simple aspects of her life.
Things like:
- What she did for a living
- What she liked to do outside of work
- Her age
Aside from that, we don’t learn too much about her full background until time goes on. And the details we learn about her later add to the mystery of the overall story.
This made the case interesting because we start to learn about her social life, which may have played a role in her untimely death (or not).
This is why people tend to gravitate toward true crime podcasts or mystery and thriller stories more generally. They want to solve a crime.
This strategy made the story more engaging. And, in the case of our fiction, won’t bore a reader by listing out things about a character.
Early on, show us your character through their professional career, their personal life and their goal aspirations. Then, let us see them navigate their world. And strategically drop in backstory when it suits the narrative.
🔍 Whodunnit
Obviously this depends on the type of story you’re telling, but consider having more than one whodunnit option.
Creating tension and suspense over who did it can keep readers guessing, and in a lot of ways, they’ll spend time coming up with their own theories. That’s a good thing!
It’s the development and modification of theories which keeps readers reading.
In the case of this podcast, my wife and I were whispering our own theories back and forth across the car. Things like “oh, he definitely did it.” and “No, now I’m starting to think it’s him.”
By showing readers the possibilities and opening up the door to new ones, what you’re doing is allowing readers to try to put together the clues and solve the mystery alongside your protagonist.
In many cases, this can be a propulsive way to pull readers through your story.
🤨 Reasonable Doubt
Creating reasonable doubt on all sides can work really well alongside the advice from number 2.
Consider providing reasonable doubt for every suspect in your story.
It’s a tricky thing to do and isn’t always possible. But think about ways you can make everyone seem simultaneously guilty but also, unable to have committed the crime.
It might be fun to play with motivations here.
A character highly motivated to have done the terrible deed, has a rock-solid alibi (or so we thought). A character with opportunity has no motive (or so we thought). See where I’m going with this?
Everyone in your story should have a reason they probably didn’t do it as well as reasons they probably did. By creating that complexity within your narrative, you’ll keep your readers guessing the whole way through.
“That inner world that’s already there inside you, especially if you as a kid, you were told stories, you were a reader, that inner world’s inside you. And at some point you just trust this is going somewhere.” -Katherine Ramsland
1 Final Thought
When you’re writing, do you think about the reader’s experience? What are some ways you can make the reader experience just a bit more thrilling? Do you need to withhold more information? Create more reasonable doubt?
Let me know! Tweet me!Tell me what you learned from listening. It will make my day!
P.S. If you want to have readers ready to gobble up your stories, you’ll love this interview with Bryan Young. He shares how he built an audience based on his interests so that he had an audience ready to grab everything he published. If you want readers ready for your work BEFORE you even publish, don’t miss this one!
