Stephen King is one of the most acclaimed writers today, the top writer of horror fiction in the USA. But you don’t need to be a fan of King’s to learn a few things from him about writing. You’re not writing a thriller a horror story or even modern fiction but you don’t need to be because what you can learn from the master of horror is how to write suspense and this is one of the most important tools that any writer must have in his or her toolkit.

Stephen King uses three steps in writing suspense. First, he will mention something or drop a few hints about something that will elicit one of three things from a reader – worry, a problem or curiosity. The second thing he does is mention this particular thing many times after it is first introduced and before it all happens, known as a callback. Third, during the payoff, he will whip the suspense up to a peak. The payoff in King’s books, by the way, is when his horror reaches an incredibly tense pitch.

With Stephen King, much of his suspense surrounds making a reader worry about something. He writes with the intention of making a reader feel that, somewhere down the line, something really terrible will happen to a character that the reader has formed a kind of bond with. Take the book he released in 1987, Misery; the suspense is as clear as a bell from the minute the reader realizes that the writer, Paul, is trapped. Annie isn’t letting him go and he is completely at her mercy. Much of the suspense is built by an internal monologue from that character, a monologue that goes on for the duration of the book, building, and building until it peaks. Because the character worries that something terrible is going to happen, so too do the readers.

With Misery, the story is set up in a way that a continued pattern of suspense is built up. Most of the situation comes to us from the thoughts of the main character and the actual situation the character is in is used as a separate means to create that suspense. The fact that our hero is physically confined and is partially paralyzed is enough of a story to cause worry in a reader’s mind, but add in a sadistic caretaker, a crazed fan of the writer, and the suspense becomes nail-biting. There is no way that any reader wouldn’t start to feel apprehensive about what’s coming.

The second step that King uses, the callback, is brought into the story whenever the sadistic jailor, Annie, says the words, “Now I must rinse.” When she says it for the first time, the writer is tortured. Whenever the phrase is said again, the reader knows that there is going to be more punishment. The third part, the payoff, comes at the end when Paul finally fights back and kills Annie although his injuries make it a massive effort to do it.

That’s Misery, but what about other books that King has written? How does he achieve the same in those?