You can build suspense through structure alone (and we’ll get to that), but better to start with a character who readers are invested in. You do this by creating a well-rounded, complicated character (see listening, above), with all the quirks, foibles, and unpredictable impulses real people have, and by getting your reader inside that character’s head. The first step is to create a character people care about. Possession of a well-stocked toolbox will serve you well if you want to write a mystery, nonfiction, or an experimental literary novel.

Other tools you may want to add-and maybe I will tell you about them someday-are how to create a character and how to build themes. If you learn how to build a page-turning quality into your work, you have more choices-more tools to use. I want to tell you this this not because I think your book should be suspenseful, not because I want you to adhere to genre conventions, not because I think literature can be reduced to formulas, but because I want you have as many tools in your toolbox as it can hold.

I am going to tell you a few methods to write suspense. I don’t know what they do at fancy writing schools, but I strongly suspect they’re trying to teach the part that can’t be taught and neglecting the part that can. I thought I’ll do the comedy on the stage, and I’ll make the tragedy version offstage.And then there’s the craft of writing. The whole play is catalyzed by this hidden desire. And one goes down the road of comedy, and one goes down the road of tragedy-but it starts with that desire. They take this wild, transgressive action in order to make it so. That got me thinking about Macbeth, because for me there’s this connection between the two: Macbeth and Helen both have a desire that can’t be realized within the world of the play. She’s so polarizing she’s a villainess and she’s also heroic. She is this kind of orphan-wrench girl, who has an incredible desire for a man, and she turns the world of the play upside-down, in order to get what she wants. The heroine seemed really disturbing to me-so single-minded and pushy and powerful in ways other heroines in her position (she’s an orphan) wouldn’t really be. I became very attached to All’s Well That Ends Well. At the time, given what I was going through, those reversals of fortune-those kinds of possibilities-became exciting to me. I think part of the reason why is because Shakespeare has these incredible reversals of fortune. I was in a Shakespeare class and so compelled by the plays. I was struggling with chronic pain when I was a graduate student. It’s interesting because the question of Shakespeare and then the question of pain, which the book deals with a lot, are intertwined for me personally.

I was like cool, I’m sold, let’s go! Why Shakespeare? And why these particular plays? I remember just seeing just the blurb that you were writing a Shakespeare book.

Drew: I was so excited when this book got announced.

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