IMPORTANT: HANDOUT FOR FEBRUARY GENERAL MEETING VIA ZOOM

Hello again,

Kimmery Martin provided a handout for her presentation, "No Matter the Genre, Suspense Is the Key to a Successful Novel," she will give during our monthly meeting this Tuesday, February 16. Attached here: Kimmery Martin - Suspense - Charlotte Writers Handout.docx

We hope you can join us!

The link to join the meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83900770635?pwd=QmpqcEV2d25SdmVTK2NNZENPNVk5Zz09

Let’s examine the basic structure of a story: it consists of a character – the protagonist – who wants something – and an obstacle or adversary – the antagonist – who threatens to keep the hero from getting what she so desperately wants.

If you want the novel to work, you have to put the reader through some degree of hell. It’s paradoxical. In real life people tend not to enjoy the sensation of constantly being on edge, but in fiction tension is what keeps them turning the page. In this program we’ll discuss a list of specific strategies for building tension and suspense in your novel, plus some things to avoid.

Kimmery Martin lives in Charlotte, is an emergency medicine doctor and self-proclaimed “literary nerd” whose voracious reading led her to “become curious if I could write a book too.” That self-imposed question led to her first novel, The Queen of Hearts (2018), described by Publishers Weekly as “difficult to put down. . . “a story of friendship shrewdly plotted [that] contains a cast of flawed, rich, believable characters.” Her second book, The Antidote for Everything – “Intense and vibrant . . . a binge-worthy page-turner” (Kerry Lonsdale, bestselling Wall Street Journal author) – followed two years later. She is currently at work on a novel about an infectious disease specialist whose children become ill during an emerging viral pandemic (scheduled for publication by Penguin Random House, Fall 2021).

We look forward to seeing you!