Continuing our current discussion about suspense, today’s post is all about when an author fails at crafting suspense. When does suspense turn gimmicky?

Why does tension sometimes feel like bad writing, or make us shrug our shoulders in a “take it or leave it” kind of way, instead of drawing us in?

Suspense is always a delicate balancing act: like a lot of things in fiction.

Balance, again….It feels like I’m always saying that good writing is a mix of this and this, of that and that, without going too far in one direction.

This is also true of breaking the “rules,” and I have written an entire post about that. Break the rules two or three times for a purpose, and you’re being creative and forceful. Break them too much, and you just look like you don’t know them.

Balance: that’s one example of it. Another example of balance…