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Wednesday Photo: Cemetery Statue

September 01, 2010

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Tuesday Guest Post: Rayne Hall

“Keep Out - Danger!” Creating Suspense Suspense is a feeling - the feeling of excitement, of tension, of fear, the feeling of needing to know what happens next. As writers, we aim to create suspense, because our readers love it. Here's a quick trick for increasing the suspense: Let your protagonist walk through a doorway on her way to danger. Film makers use this technique frequently. Next time you watch a thriller, cop drama or horror movie, observe how the camera lingers on the door before the hero enters. Subconsciously, the viewer perceives the door as a barrier: if the protagonist crosses it, she is entering a danger zone. The viewer screams inwardly 'Don't open that door!'. Of course, the protagonist opens it and enters. By now, the viewer is sitting on the edge of her chair, frightened on the hero's behalf, needing to find out what happens next. You can use the same trick in your writing: Put a door between your protagonist and the danger, and l

DR RAYNE'S CURE FOR SIGHS

In thirty years as an editor, I've found the same words blight and bloat the style of many authors. One of them is 'sigh'. In real life, people who constantly sigh soon get on our nerves. Few folks enjoy the company of sighers. The same applies to fiction: readers don't like characters who sigh a lot. Yet, sighs creep into fiction and multiply like vermin. If you're not on your guard, your novel soon reads like this: He sighed....She sighed deeply.... He heaved a deep sigh... A sigh escaped from her lips.... With a sigh, she did this... Sighing, she rose.... He looked at her and sighed... Moreover, a character who sighs at the slightest trigger comes across as a wuss. One sigh is enough for the reader's subconscious to file that character as a wimp. Two sighs make the character a wimpy wimp. By the time your heroine has heaved her third sigh, the reader has lost respect for her. It's raining - sigh. Aunt Agatha is coming - sigh. Little Laura misbe

INTERVIEW WITH HEADSTONES AUTHOR RAYNE HALL Do you ever wander around cemeteries, read the inscriptions on strangers’ headstones, and wonder what their lives were like, how they died, what families they left behind ? Wandering around graveyards is one of my favourite activities when I’m travelling in foreign countries. It’s a great way to learn about the region’s history, culture and people in quiet, peaceful surroundings,. And the admission is free. In my home country, Germany, headstones are often glossy fake marble, inscribed with conventional phrases, and the cemeteries are surrounded by thick hedges of dark yew. In rural England, where I lived for many years, graveyards often surround medieval churches. A giant ancient yew-tree towers over the graves. Headstones tend to be old and grey, encrusted with yellow, white, green and orange lichen, and the chiselled inscriptions – those that haven’t eroded yet – reveal dates from the 1700s and 1800s, some of them

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