Creating Pace and Tension Through Character, Setting and Dialogue

Crime readers are a discerning bunch and if you asked a hundred what draws them to the genre, I’d put money on the words “pace” and “tension” topping most lists. You can have a beautifully constructed plot with an exquisitely satisfying ending – but unless you keep the reader promising themselves just one more chapter, your efforts will be wasted. 

Pacy, gripping crime fiction is hard to sustain over 80k plus words. It’s both exhausting and cruel to the reader to try to achieve it by writing fight after car chase after clifftop shootout. Plot and action can’t do all the lifting, so here are three lower-octane aspects of writing that will keep the screws turning… 

Character 

In the words of acclaimed US author Dennis Lehane, ‘You create a bunch of characters and let them bounce into one another. That’s how a good story happens.’  

But how? First, set your protagonist and antagonists up so the reader will care about (not necessarily like) them.  

• What kind of person are they?  

• What do they want most in life?  

• What would they kill / die for?  

• What are their secrets?  

• How do they justify their behaviour to themselves and others? 

• Why are they and their opponents such adversaries?  

• Why does the fight / journey / case mean so much to them?  

• What are their redeeming / damning features? 

Now, use every opportunity to set up conflict between them. That doesn’t mean them brawling every time they meet – but keep ratcheting up the stakes. Make your antagonist dump impossible jeopardy on your protagonist time and again, culminating in the mother of all showdowns. 

Your cast will not only carry the story, they are the story. It’s not the events themselves that matter, but the impact each has on your main characters: both in the moment, and as their arcs, and that of your story, progress. 

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Setting 

You don’t even need people to up the ante. One of the most beautiful crime novels I’ve read this year is All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker.  

In this scene, Saint, a young girl, ventures into the wilderness in a last-ditched effort to rescue her kidnapped friend, Patch. Without once mentioning how she feels, Whitaker lets the setting do all the work:  

She checked her map a dozen times before she found a hard yellow sign. CAUTION MINIMUM MAINTENANCE ROAD LEVEL B SERVICE ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.…A tractor sprayed with mud, its scoop left buried in the dirt. The track fed the mouth of woodland so dense she slowed as possum haw leaves slid to a gulley… Saint splashed through a stream crossing, her sneakers soon filled with the brace of cold. … above ravens watched her like prey. At the first fall of rain she looked through a canopy that stammered light as wind parted it.  

For me this is the gold standard of conjuring terror through setting. Vivid descriptions peppered with metaphors of abandonment – ‘the scoop left buried in the dirt’ – and fear – ‘her sneaker filled with the brace of cold’. These are images to die for, in my humble crime writing opinion. 

Take how Stevenson, in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, through the rise then fall of the fog, evokes incredible eeriness as Mr Utterson travels to find Hyde, wanted for murder: 

The fog lifted a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French eating house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a million sterling. 

Dialogue 

We all know to ‘show, not tell’ where appropriate, and dialogue is one of the strongest ways of vividly moving a plot on. Without info dumping, by using character traits and speech patterns you can build tension, create conflict and even craft legendary scenes (remember the ‘You can’t handle the truth’ courtroom exchange in A Few Good Men?)  

Some great tips for dramatic dialogue are to: 

• Create and sustain subtext through unspoken thoughts and memorable lines 

• Build conflict, remembering less is more so avoid melodrama 

• Avoid niceties and fillers; make every line count 

• Reveal something new, however small, in each passage 

• Use action to underline meaning and drama 

• End on a dramatic high. 

The key to great dialogue is authenticity and differentiation. If you can hear your characters’ distinct voices, as if they’re people actually speaking and sparking off one another, you have the makings of a thrilling scene with escalating tension that races the story along. 

Throughout the Jericho Writers’ Crime and Thriller Course, we study all these techniques. It’s fascinating how the students adapt to applying the principles and examples we focus on, and how dramatic their stories become as a result.  

Try them for yourself and see how they work for you.