Suspense and Expectation in Crime Fiction with Lori Rader-Day

Instructor: Lori Rader-Day

What makes a reader turn the page? Author Steven James wrote, “Suspense happens in the stillness of your story, in the gaps between the action sequences, in the moments between the promise of something dreadful and its arrival….” But how do you create and use those gaps to their greatest effect? In this class we’ll talk about the expectations readers bring to crime fiction, and how playing with those expectations—frustrating them and satisfying them—creates narrative drive that will keep your readers up late into the night.

Lori Rader-Day, author of Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour, is a three-time Mary Higgins Clark Award nominee, winning the award in 2016. Lori’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Time Out Chicago, and Good Housekeeping. Lori lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the mystery conference Murder and Mayhem in Chicago.