Suspense Creation Quotes

I'm a visual filmmaker so the camera is a big part of my storytelling tool and it's something that I really rely on to tell a scene or create the suspense that I need and create the emotion of a scene or a sequence.

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

I often will write a scene from three different points of view to find out which has the most tension and which way I'm able to conceal the information I'm trying to conceal. And that is, at the end of the day, what writing suspense is all about.

I think crafting a new, effective horror movie is not just about when night falls and things get scary. It's about setting a tone and mood that permeates throughout the entire movie. So even during the daytime, things are never quite safe-feeling.

I myself, as I'm writing, don't know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don't know the conclusion at all and I don't know what's going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don't know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there's no purpose to writing the story.

With a horror movie most of the actual jumps and scares are made in the edit. It's often not very scary on set and then you watch the film and suddenly it's very scary because the way the jump scares fit together building up the suspense in the audience because it's making them jump when they're least expecting it.

You might ask yourself why you want to surprise your readers in the first place. A surprise ending is sort of like a surprise party. Probably some people, somewhere, enjoy having friends and trusted colleagues lunge at them in the sudden blinding light of their own living room, but I don't think most of us do.

What some of the early horror genre masters knew, and what I know, is that the audience are perverts, but in the best possible way.

Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write a book so when the reader gets to the end of the chapter, he or she must turn one more page.