Romantic suspense is the perfect blend of hope and justice. You’ve got the romance that gives you that hope at the end, and the romantic suspense offers a sense of justice when you catch the killer. Each is making the situation worse for the other. That’s the best balance for romantic suspense.
The romance may intensify, making the detective work that much harder. As the detective work gets trickier, the romance might get more complicated. So they feed off of each other well. If you want to write romantic suspense, you are in the right place. Follow me!
How to write romantic suspense?
Suspense is the glue that keeps your story going, but you have to be careful how you use it. I’m talking about suspense, mainly in romance writing. So the first thing I want to talk about with suspense is that it’s in every facet of writing that you do as an author. It should be intertwined in plot and characterization, tone, foreshadowing, and misinterpretation.
Suspense is a promise you give the reader to keep them involved and engaged in your story. Without suspense, the reader has little to no encouragement to keep going. Follow these 5 pieces of advice to write suspenseful romance. Let’s go!
1. Give confusion to your main character
Dramatic irony creates suspense by dropping little hints of information about the character, plots, switching points of view, seeing the enemy’s point of view, and knowing something. The main character does not know that’s going to happen. It has the reader on the edge of their seat in romance.
We call this the suspense, or the buildup to how they’re going to end up together or not. So in romance, it is done mainly by point of view in chapters, a chapter switching, but it can also be done the same way through tone, words, and dialogue.
2. Make your story a cliffhanger
You’re giving the reader a promise of what you’re talking about. You’re promising them something that’s going to happen. The premise is the overall asking idea. So if we were making a romance and my promise is that this will be enemies to lovers romance. But the novel’s premise is that they’re in the office, and she is out of his league, and he is super-rich.
We have to see how we’ll get the two of them together at the very end of the novel. How do you build up suspense between them? It would be the dialogue, the messages they send to each other, and how each character interacts with one another.
- Does the hero send her messages regularly? Is it formal messages? Are they more personalized? Is there cussing?
Sometimes cussing can be a big form of tone and strategy, especially in romance writing, and then the payoff. So you don’t want only to give your reader clues that something is going to happen at the end and then make it a cliffhanger.
In my opinion, this was done in Game of Thrones because the whole story, we’re promised that we’re going to find out who Jon Snow’s birth parents are. We finally get to this aha moment where everything comes to an end, and we’re going to be rewarded as the reader.
3. Chasing each other
It can happen to any series in any novel. The same thing with romance, where the hero saves the day or the heroine proves that she is better than everyone else he has been with. So you need to build up to that and make it a big moment. Also, we need there to be that tension and suspension that leaves us there.
4. Add an omnipresent view
Suspense is characters, clues, and information. You drop along to the reader so they can act as themselves, as the detective, or as a part of the novel. For you to be able to intertwine with you, I want to stay away from omnipresent views. The reason why is because it’s so bougie. Even the word omnipresent is Gucci.
If the reader knows everything because the writer knows everything, then it leaves very little room for them to build up that tension in that suspense. So, I would recommend doing something first-person limited or third-person limited as you’re starting out writing other things to remember tone. When I talk about tone words, it’s the feeling, the vagueness, the sensitivity.
5. Satisfying endings
The ending is significant to promote your book freely. When readers find satisfying endings, they will undoubtedly tweet or share your book. So don’t make the ending worst. Try to finish your book with a happy ending or keep them alive with a new romance. If you are writing a series, add some twists to each book so that readers want to read the whole series.
Please share them with me in the comment section if you have any questions. Don’t give up, and try your best. One day, you will be a successful writer. Till then, keep your writing alive and do more research and more. Happy writing!
Read romance books to get more ideas:
15 Best Romantic Suspense Books
5 Possessive Mafia Romance Books
5 Cheating Husband Romance Books
10 Secret Pregnancy Romance Books
15 Best Forbidden Romance Books
15 Best Bodyguard Romance Books
More romance writing tips:
15 Key Tips To Write Enemies To Lovers Novel
7 Key Tips To Write Friend To Lover Romance Novel
5 Essential Tips To Write Romantic Chemistry
15 Tips To Write A Strong Female Character
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