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Emotional Rollercoaster: Writing Suspicion
by Apryl Duncan

Suspicion takes many forms and can be an important essential in your fiction writing. Don't force your characters to be suspicious of someone without any foundation, though. Otherwise, your character will come across as paranoid.

The easiest way to add substance to your character's feelings is by establishing the reason behind that suspicion. Justify those feelings with a key phrase from their past, an old memory that is brought up by a certain action or maybe someone has made contradictory statements to arouse your character's suspicion.

Readers should feel the emotion as much as if they were the character themselves. To make in impact, be sure to avoid:

Victoria listened to the message on her boyfriend's answering machine. She had suspected Jake and Mary were sneaking around with each other. She knew it all along.

Boring! Okay, she suspected. Okay, she was right. But did you feel anything? Where were the emotions behind her suspicions?

Another bad example you should stay away from:

Garrett saw the blonde woman walking toward him. Gentlemen prefer blondes. Hardly. He'd always been suspicious of golden haired females.

Garrett may have deep-seeded feelings about females but we'll never know what they are. These sentences are constructed to talk at us not to us.



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