Why ‘suddenly’ can spoil your crime fiction or thriller

8/5/2018

Learn about why the word ‘suddenly’ can damage the tension in crime fiction and thrillers unless used judiciously and with intention.

Why some authors struggle to omit ‘suddenly’

There’s one word that great crime and thriller writers put on the page with care – 'suddenly'. However, many new or developing writers struggle to leave it out.

Two reasons for overuse stand out:

The writer is trying to counter wordiness.
The writer doesn’t realize their existing words have done the job.

I’ve grabbed a handful of crime fiction from my own bookshelves, and taken examples from these books to show you how 'suddenly'-free writing can be more immediate and immersive.

1. Countering wordiness

Some developing writers record every nod, every furrowed brow. All that mundane stuff happens in real life. And in the movies we get to see it played out onscreen. That doesn’t mean it all needs to go into a novel.

Readers don’t behave like viewers. When I’m watching a film I expect to be spoon-fed to a degree – dialogue, facial expression, action, and a healthy dollop of incidental music to tell me who’s feeling what and why.

The reason it works with film is because a chunk of that stuff happens simultaneously, and even I, impatient soul that I am, don’t get bored.

When I’m reading a book, my brain works differently. I don’t want all that stage direction. Too much of it distracts me and that’s when I’m most likely to lose interest.

When a new writer hasn’t learned the art of crafting the story so that there are just enough nudges to keep the narrative rich, but not so many that it becomes tedious, 'suddenly' rears its head. 'Suddenly' becomes an apology for overwriting – an exciting reward for sticking around.

Only it doesn’t work. It’s just one more word on the page that the reader doesn’t need.

Solution: Keep your crime writing lean
Not every writer wants to strip their writing back to the bare bones but ask yourself whether you’ve introduced a sentence with 'Suddenly' purely to reengage the reader.

If so, tighten up the preceding narrative so that you don’t lose them in the first place. Less is sometimes more.

Example
Here’s a scene from Tell No Lies by Gregg Hurwitz, featuring the protagonist, Daniel Brasher (p. 393):

He was ushered into a dank room with a stall terminating in a shield of ballistic glass that looked onto the mirror image of a facing stall. A coaster-size speaking hole in the glass rendered jailhouse phones unnecessary.
He waited, counting the seconds, working to stay calm.
A metallic boom announced the opening of an out-of-sight metal door [...]

A less experienced writer might have been tempted to overwork the preceding description and the line conveying Daniel’s anxiety ... and that could have led to a Suddenly barging its way onto the starting blocks of the final sentence to drag the reader out of the protagonist’s head and back into the external action.

It could have gone like this:

He was ushered through the door into a small, dank, grey windowless room with a stall terminating in a shield of ballistic glass that looked onto the mirror image of a facing stall. Only a steel table and two chairs furnished the room. A coaster-size speaking hole in the glass rendered jailhouse phones unnecessary.
He waited, counting the seconds, working to stay calm. Sweat dripped from his forehead, ran down his back and soaked his shirt. He massaged his temples to stave off the growing panic and raked a clammy hand through his damp hair. Just relax, he thought. You’re in control.
Suddenly, a metallic boom announced the opening of an out-of-sight metal door ...

Instead, Hurwitz has given us just enough to know that our protagonist is fretful. We hear the metallic boom in the same moment Daniel does. We imagine how it might make him jump. There are 58 words instead of 114.

And the writing in the shorter, published example is tighter, the tension higher. The boom comes suddenly, but Hurwitz doesn’t tell us so. He doesn’t need to.

2. Redundancy – the verb’s already done the work

Even those novice writers who’ve conquered their noisy narrative can still be tempted to nudge unnecessarily with 'suddenly'.

I see this most often in the following scene types, where I've made up some examples to show you how that might look on the page.

Fights: Suddenly, the masked man launched himself forward and crashed into Jake.
Realizations: Suddenly, it dawned on her. It’d been staring her in the face all along.
Emotional shifts: Suddenly, Ash’s face lit up with excitement.
Grisly action: Suddenly, the woman’s torso exploded.
Unexpected sounds: The phone trilled suddenly from his inside pocket.
Shock events: Suddenly, Emma slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt.

Certainly, writers who use 'suddenly' are doing so with good intention – to give the reader a now-nudge. However, in most cases it’s unnecessary to convey immediacy and adds nothing to the narrative.

In the above examples, the immediacy is rendered perfectly with the verbs 'launched', 'dawned', 'lit up', 'exploded', 'trilled' and 'slammed'.

By adding 'suddenly' into the mix, the reader is pulled out of the story, as if the author has tapped them on the shoulder and whispered, ‘Hey, you, something big’s coming. Just so you know. Right then, as you were. Carry on reading.’ That’s an interruption – the opposite of what the writer intended.

Now the reader’s no longer moving at the same pace as the character. They’re one step ahead rather than immersed in the moment.

Solution: Test the sentence out loud
Say it first with 'suddenly', then without. Ninety per cent of the time, the slimline version will work better. When that’s the case, hit the delete button.

Here are the revised sentences for each scene type, with 'suddenly' removed so you can compare them with the originals above.

Fights: The masked man launched himself forward and crashed into Jake.
Realizations: Then it dawned on her. It’d been staring her in the face all along.
Emotional shifts: Ash’s face lit up with excitement.
Grisly action: The woman’s torso exploded.
Unexpected sounds: The phone trilled from his inside pocket.
Shock events: Emma slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt.

Published ‘suddenly’-free examples

Here are some published examples for comparison. None of the authors felt the need to nudge the reader into immediacy.

SHOCK EVENT AND FIGHT

He was ten meters away when Candy burst out, her raised fist firing muzzle flares. [...] He scissor-kicked for her Achilles, but she leapt over him, her hand swinging to aim as he popped to his feet. He lunged inside her reach, grabbing the gun as it grazed his cheek. Her hand blocked the rising shotgun.
Gregg Hurwitz, Orphan X, p. 340

EMOTIONAL SHIFT

Colour rushed up Olivia’s cheeks. ‘Now look what you’ve gone and done!’
Stuart MacBride, 22 Dead Little Bodies, p. 173

UNEXPECTED SOUND

He was woken once by a bang that might have been a gunshot.
Jo Nesbo, The Bat, p. 384

GRISLY ACTION

Cory found his hands around her neck. He pushed her up against the wall and squeezed with everything he had. She put up a good fight, he had to give her that. Kicked and flailed about, but he didn’t let go, didn’t stop squeezing. Not until she slid down the wall and crumpled into a heap on the floor.
Linwood Barclay, Parting Shot, p. 376

The Barclay example above is particularly interesting. The narrative point of view in this chapter is that of the antagonist. From his perspective, the violence is almost mundane, which renders the scene all the more horrific for the reader.

A now-nudge in this paragraph wouldn’t have been just superfluous; it would have countered the perversity of our tension being heightened through being forced to immerse ourselves in Cory’s psychosis.

When ‘suddenly’ works a treat

'Suddenly'-free isn’t a rule. Don’t ban it from your novel! There are times when it works beautifully:

There were ten of them, all big, corralling the guy into the corner. Pip watched, feeling suddenly vulnerable.

In this made-up example, the inclusion of 'suddenly' gently changes our perspective of Pip’s situation. There's a subtle immediacy to his discomfort that has emerged only now, in that during the seconds before he’d watched but not felt threatened.

And so it’s not that 'suddenly' does or doesn’t work. Rather, it depends on the writer’s intention.

About Louise Harnby

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.