"Girl on the Train" Author Knows How to Keep the Reader in Suspence

There will be NO spoiler alerts in this blog post, so if you haven't read the book or seen the movie, go ahead, read on!

If you're looking for help in figuring out how to build suspense in your book, I suggest you pick up "The Girl on a Train" by Paula Hawkins.

Perhaps the ominous TV trailer ads were what sets up the suspense. And I can't be sure that I would have felt exactly the same way had I simply read a book description and started reading.

But regardless, this book offers an excellent lesson in how to keep readers in suspense.

What I like best about it is that my anxiety that something was going to happen started with page 1 and kept going -- and building -- throughout the entire book.

But I had no idea what that 'something' was. I mean, I had an assumption, because the movie trailor set me up for that. But I didn't know who, I didn't know how, I didn't know when, and I didn't know why. And the book doesn't reveal any of that until the last quarter of the book, so I was really on the edge of my seat the whole way through.

"Not" revealing everything, I think, is one of the hardest things to do when I'm writing, because, as an author, I have to "think from the end." So I always know, mostly know anyway, how one of my books is going to finish before I commit even one typed character to computer.

For example, with my second book, a story of self-discovery about a woman who hits rock bottom and rebuilds herself to a future of happiness, I wrote the entire book in my head over a period of several months before I even knew it was going to be a book.

Did Paula Hawkins have Girl on a Train completely figured out before she started writing? Did she know who, what when, where, how and why before she committed one character to digital paper? I don't know the answer, but I do know that not every author works that way. Some prefer to "start" and just let the "flow" take them. That happens for me with conversation threads, but not with the direction of the book.

How does it work for you?

In any case, I highly recommend that fiction writers read The Girl on the Train. It's an excellent primer for fostering ideas on how to build suspense in your own book.

Happy writing (and reading) !

If you like suspense, please check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon.