The dragging agony of suspense in the latter made the reader lean tensely forward, devour the page, gulp.…
Or at least, I hope it did.
But there’s the point. Keep your reader wondering which of two things will happen (i.e., will Smith get through or will he be discovered) and you get his interest. You focus his mind on an intricate succession of events and that is much better than getting him a little groggy with one swift sock to the medulla oblongata.
That is about the only way you can heighten drama out of melodrama.
It is not possible, of course, to list all the ways this method can be used. But it is possible to keep in mind the fact that suspense is better than fight action.
And speaking of fight action, there is one place where Old Man Suspense can be made to work like an Elkton marrying parson.
Fights, at best, are gap fillers. The writer who introduces them for the sake of the fight itself and not for the effects upon the characters is a writer headed for eventual oblivion even in the purely action books.
Confirmed by the prevailing trend, I can state that the old saw about action for the sake of action was right. A story jammed and packed with blow-by-blow accounts of what the hero did to the villain and what the villain did to the hero, with fists, knives, guns, bombs, machine guns, belaying pins, bayonets, poison gas, strychnine, teeth, knees and calks is about as interesting to read as the Congressional Record and about twice as dull. You leave yourself wide open to a reader comment, “Well, what of it?”
But fights accompanied by suspense are another matter.
Witness the situation in which the party of the first part is fighting for possession of a schooner, a girl or a bag of pearls. Unless you have a better example of trite plotting, we proceed. We are on the schooner. The hero sneaks out of the cabin and there is the villain on his way to sink the ship. So we have a fight:
Jim dived at Bart’s legs, but Bart was not easily thrown. They stood apart. Jim led with his left, followed through with his right. Black Bart countered the blows. Bone and sinew cracked in the mighty thunder of conflict.… Jim hit with his right.… Bart countered with a kick in the shins.…
There you have a masterpiece for wastebasket filing. But, believe it, this same old plot and this same old fight look a lot different when you have your suspense added. They might even sell if extracted and toned like this:
Jim glanced out of the chart room and saw Black Bart. Water dripping from his clothes, his teeth bared, his chest heaving from his long swim, Bart stood in a growing pool which slid down his arms and legs. In his hand he clutched an ax, ready to sever the hawser and release them into the millrace of the sweeping tide.…
This is Jim’s cue, of course, to knock the stuffing out of Black Bart, but that doesn’t make good reading nor very much wordage, for thirty words are enough in which to recount any battle as such, up to and including wars. So we add suspense. For some reason Jim can’t leap into the fray right at that moment. Suppose we add that he has these pearls right there and he’s afraid Ringo, Black Bart’s henchman, will up and swipe them when Jim’s back is turned. So first Jim has to stow the pearls.
This gets Bart halfway across the deck toward that straining hawser which he must cut to wreck the schooner and ruin the hero.
Now, you say, we dive into it. Nix. We’ve got a spot here for some swell suspense. Is Black Bart going to cut that hawser? Is Jim going to get there?
Jim starts. Ringo hasn’t been on his way to steal the pearls but to knife Jim, so Jim tangles with Ringo, and Black Bart races toward the hawser some more.
Jim’s fight with Ringo is short. About like this:
Ringo charged, eyes rolling, black face set. Jim glanced toward Bart. He could not turn his back on this charging demon. Yet he had to get that ax.
Jim whirled to meet Ringo. His boot came up and the knife sailed over the rail and into the sea. Ringo reached out with his mighty hands. Jim stepped through and nailed a right on Ringo’s button. Skidding, Ringo went down.
Jim sprinted forward toward Bart. The black-bearded Colossus spun about to meet the rush, ax upraised.
Now, if you want to, you can dust off this scrap. But don’t give it slug by slug. Hand it out, thus:
The ax bit down into the planking. Jim tried to recover from his dodge. Bart was upon him, slippery in Jim’s grasp. In vain Jim tried to land a solid blow, but Bart was holding him hard.
“Ringo!” roared Bart. “Cut that hawser!”
Ringo, dazed by Jim’s blow, struggled up. Held tight in Bart’s grasp, Jim saw Ringo lurch forward and yank the ax out of the planking.
“That hawser!” thundered Bart. “I can’t hold this fool forever!”
Now, if you wanted that hawser cut in the first place (which you did, because that means more trouble and the suspense of wondering how the schooner will get out of it), cut that hawser right now before the reader suspects that this writing business is just about as mechanical as fixing a Ford.
Action suspense is easy to handle, but you have to know when to quit and you have to evaluate your drama and ladle it out accordingly.
Even in what the writers call the psychological story you have to rely upon suspense just as mechanical as this.
Give your reader a chance to wonder for a while about the final outcome.
There is one type of suspense, however, so mechanical that it clanks. I mean foreshadowing.
To foreshadow anything is weak. It is like a boxer stalling for the bell. You have to be mighty sure that you’ve got something outstanding to foreshadow or the reader will nail up your scalp.
It is nice to start ominously like this:
I knew that night as I sloshed through the driving rain that all was not well. I had a chilly sense of foreboding as though a monster dogged my steps.…
If I only had known then what awaited me when the big chimes in the tower should strike midnight, I would have collapsed with terror.…
Very good openings. Very, very good. Proven goods, even though the nap is a bit worn. But how many times have writers lived up to those openings? Not very many.
You get off in high, but after you finish you will probably tear out these opening paragraphs—even though Poe was able to get away with this device. Remember the opening of “The Fall of the House of Usher”? You know, the one that goes something like this: “Through the whole of a dark and dismal afternoon.”
That is foreshadowing. However, few besides Poe have been able to get away with suspense created by atmosphere alone.
One particular magazine makes a practice of inserting a foreshadow as a first paragraph in every story. I have come to suspect that this is done editorially because the foreshadow is always worse than the story gives you.
It’s a far cry from the jungles of Malaysia to New York, and there’s a great difference between the yowl of the tiger and the rattle of the L, but in the city that night there stalked the lust of the jungle killers and a man who had one eye.…
I have been guilty of using such a mechanism to shoot out in high, but I don’t let the paragraph stand until I am pretty doggone sure that I’ve got everything it takes in the way of plot and menace to back it up.
If you were to take all the suspense out of a story, no matter how many unusual facts and characters you had in it, I don’t think it would be read very far.
If you were to take every blow of action out of a story and still leave its suspense (this is possible, because I’ve done it), you might still have a fine story, probably a better story than before.
There is not, unhappily, any firm from which you can take out a suspense insurance policy. The only way you can do it is to make sure that the reader is sitting there tensely wondering which of two or three momentous things is going to happen first. If you can do that, adroitly, to some of those manuscripts which have come bouncing back, they may be
made to stay put.
The Death Flyer
written by
L. Ron Hubbard
illustrated by
Ven Locklear
* * *
ABOUT THE STORY
Hubbard’s story “The Death Flyer,” is his earliest blending of mystery and the supernatural. In this superbly crafted story, a runaway passenger train speeds forever from the past into the future, racing toward an unknowable destiny.
And so begins a strange encounter with a young girl in a flame-colored dress.
This masterful tale still holds the same unremitting suspense today that it did more than six decades ago, in April 1936, upon its original release. It embodies qualities detailed in the article “Suspense,” included in this volume, of which L. Ron Hubbard said “the most intangible thing in this business of writing is that quantity ‘Suspense.’”
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Ven Locklear is a concept artist and illustrator whose imaginative work involves bizarre creatures, epic fantasy scenes, menacing monsters, and surreal characters. Ven currently creates concept art and illustrations for Liquid Development, where he works on projects for WB Games, Zynga, Disney Interactive, 343 Industries, and Bethesda. Previously, he worked at Triptych Games, where he was lead concept artist on Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt. He has also taken on projects in the music industry, where he develops creative projects for DJ/Producer Excision.
Ven graduated with a BFA in Illustration from Pacific Northwest College of Art. He is a former quarterly winner of the Illustrators of the Future award. His artwork was published in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 26.
The Death Flyer
Lost deep in the ebon tangle and echoing against the starless, sullen sky, the owl’s dismal chatter came like the rattle in a dying man’s throat.
Jim Bellamy paused on the ties, the beat of his heart surging through his throat. The hoot of an owl meant that someone would die.
He forced a smile to his lips at that and shrugged, setting off again through the lonesome tangle which matted the ancient and decayed tracks. He had been a fool to start back this late. He might fall into a hole or through a rotten trestle and break his neck.
But for all his smile, his big shoulders were hunched under his checkered flannel shirt and the scuff of his calks on the gritty cinders fell upon his ears like thunder in the silence.
He had not particularly enjoyed this job of surveying, but in these days, a civil engineer had to take what he could get, even though it meant the tangles and swamps and insects of northern Maine.
He had overstayed himself, checking over his shots. He had sent his crew back to their isolated lumber camp. If anything happened to him that he could not return, they would merely assume that he had chosen to spend the night in the open.
And an inner self or outer self kept telling him that something would happen, that this night was not like other nights. A vibration of unrest was in the air.
He stumbled along the tracks he could not see, and blessed them and cursed them in one breath. This railroad had been deserted for about ten years. Why, he could not exactly remember. Something about their rolling stock going up in smoke. Some wreck or other, he supposed.
Now that his mind was started along that channel, he persisted in digging out fragmentary details of what he had heard. Loggers talk and a civil engineer pretends to listen. Loggers were a superstitious lot, given to tall imaginings.
Yes, he remembered what had happened now. A train had gone through a bridge into a swollen stream and the road had never been able to rebuild for lack of funds and interest on the part of shippers who remembered the incident. It was a shame for all this work to go to waste this way. Rails and ties were still there, all in place. No one in this forgotten forest had had any use for them.
The owl gave his death rattle again. Jim Bellamy quickened his pace. Suddenly he tripped. His stomach felt light. He heard a growing roar reverberate through the trees.
When he tried to get up he was blinded by a yellow eye which grew larger and larger with the noise. He rolled to one side but he could not get off the tracks.
Something was holding his shirt, pinning him down, and the yellow eye stabbed straight through him and held him horror-stricken to the ties.
Good God, it was a train and he was in its path!
The Death Flyer by Ven Locklear
He shut his eyes tightly. The roar shook the earth and through it he seemed to hear the call of the owl which had foretold his death.
A shrill screech bit through the roar and then the thunder died to a hiss. Jim Bellamy sat up. Somehow he was no longer on the track but beside it. A mountain of rust-eaten steel reared up before him. Flame licked out and illuminated a cab. A shadowy face peered down.
“Y’all right, stranger?”
“Sure,” said Bellamy in a shaky voice. “Sure. I’m all right.”
“Well then, why the hell don’t you get aboard? You think I’ve got all night?”
“Sure,” said Bellamy, stumbling up to the tender.
“Not here, you fool. What do ya think we got coaches for? Get back there and get aboard. I’m in a hurry tonight. D’ you realize it’s a quarter past nine?”
Dazedly, Bellamy went back along the line of weather-beaten wooden coaches. Through the dirty windows he could see faces peering curiously at him. The lights which burned in the train, thought Bellamy with a start, threw no reflection on the ground.
He swung himself up into a vestibule which smelled of cinders and soft coal gas and stale cigars and opened the door into a coach. The old-fashioned lamps threw a dismal greenish light along the scarred red plush seats. Half a dozen silent passengers stared moodily ahead, paying him no heed.
Bellamy slid into a seat near the door. The engine panted, the couplings clanked as the engineer took up the slack and then the train went rolling off along the uneven bed.
Bellamy found that he could not think clearly or connectedly. The fall must have given him a nasty crack on the head. Maybe it was worse than he had thought.
He sat motionless for some time. Of his fellow travelers he could see little more than the backs of their heads. There was something unnatural about the way they sat. Tense was the word. Tense and expectant.
A man with dull, corroded brass buttons slouched into the car. His cap was pulled far down over his face and in his gloved hands he held a battered ticket puncher. He came back to where Bellamy sat.
“Ticket, please,” and the voice was weary.
Bellamy sat up straight, staring at the face over him. The flesh hung in loose gouts from under the eyes. The teeth were broken behind black lips. A scar on the forehead bled down over the gray flesh but no blood touched the floor. The eyes were unseen, merely black holes in the ashen putty.
Bellamy recovered his voice. “I have no ticket.”
The empty voice whined a little. “You’re a new one. I never saw you before. We’re late now and I can’t stop to put you off.”
Bellamy fumbled with the breast pocket of his checkered flannel shirt. “I’ll give you the money.”
“Money? I have no need of money. Not now. All I want is your ticket. Haven’t you got a ticket?”
Bellamy detected a motion farther up the car. He saw that the six passengers were getting slowly to their feet and coming back.
They ranged themselves behind the conductor, staring at Bellamy. The air was charged with an evil, decayed smell. Bellamy came halfway to his feet, gripping the edges of the seat, his face blanching.
Not one of those six had visible eyes. Their flesh was the color of dirty lard. Their lips were black and their faces were slashed with many cuts.
A small man, older than the rest, better dressed, pointed a thin, clattering finger at Bellamy. “He is not one of us. He doesn’t belong here!”
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Bellamy moved closer to the window. The conductor stood to one side. The six, hands loose at their sides, moved slowly ahead, swaying and jolting under the influence of the train.
It was several seconds before Bellamy understood what they were trying to do. Then he realized that their unseen eyes held the threat of death.
He stood up, crouching forward, and though his face was white, his jaw was stubbornly set.
A lanky thing reached him first. Bellamy lashed out with his fist and rocked the tall body back into the others. But they came slowly on as though they hadn’t seen. The lanky one was with them again.
Bellamy felt like a trapped animal about to be mangled by a hunter. Big as he was, he was no match for six. Fleshless hands reached out and gripped him. Bodies pressed him back.
He struck as hard as he could, twisting and writhing to get away.
Suddenly, above the clatter of steel wheels on rails, a clear, controlled voice said, “Let him be. He does not know.”
The six fell away, backing into the aisle, looking neither to the right nor the left. They were like marionettes on strings, jiggling loosely as the train swayed.
Bellamy braced himself and rubbed at his throat where red marks were beginning to appear. Looking through the six, he was startled to see a young girl in a flame-colored dress poised in the aisle.
Her cheeks were as white as flour, but there was a certain beauty about her which Bellamy could not at once define. She was small, not over five feet four in height. The dress clung to her smooth body and rippled as she moved. Her eyes were dark and sad.
“Go back to your seats,” she said.
The six moved woodenly to their places and seated themselves without a backward glance. But the conductor stood his ground.
“He has no ticket,” said the conductor.
“I have it,” replied the girl with a tired sigh. “I have had it for a long, long while.”
She reached into a small red purse she carried and drew out a crumpled green slip which she handed to the man with the corroded brass buttons. He scanned it, and then punched it with a quick snap.