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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4693
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/4693
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm afraid this piece feels far too jumbled for me to be intrigued by it. I feel like a lot of unrelated information is being thrown at me, and most of it isn't even real information - it's vague hints at details that haven't been revealed yet, and at this point I still have no idea why these details might be interesting.

This may be counter-intuitive, but you need to give away more if you want to be suspenseful. Without enough grounding, your hinting and foreshadowing feel like amorphic hyperbole, and don't encourage me to continue.

## A Glut of Foreshadowing

Consider: you've asked whether there's enough suspense "with every line." That's a _great_ question. Now look at your piece: one line talk about being dead. The next about a "leap of fate." Then about "captors." By the time we're at the third line, we're lost all the power the first line had, because we're talking about something else already.

Similarly, I think I can safely say that the _method_ you're using to generate suspense is by using vague foreshadowing. You mention:

- Somebody "dead," but speaking to us.
- Despised captors. 
- A "she" who allowed the narrator's mind to "work without reason," whom we will "get to know, eventually"
- An "unexpected ripple" which could apparantly be anything
- "A change that will add to a world’s history"
- "Friends" given "jobs," and this is somehow alarming
- A school on the other side of the moon, for prodigies, which is "not just a school"
- There is more to it (to what?) than Adam's mother is saying (even though we don't understand yet what she's said)
- A worldwide alert to evacuate the coast
- A warning to RUN

All this, you'll note, occurs before the "story" has really "started." (In fact, the next line implies a complete change of scenery to somewhere _else_.) I think the effect you're aiming for is to excite the reader about various elements the story will be addressing later. But when you throw in so many hints with so little concrete detail, with no characters or setting for us to latch onto yet, that's not what happens. The reader can't keep track of all these hints; there's so many of them, and none of them connects to anything yet. Even when you _do_ start clearing things up, this passage won't have helped, because the reader won't have understood enough to remember the details of this scene 50 pages later. And it certainly doesn't create suspense _now._

## Suspense Comes From Open Questions

I've always considered suspense to be built around specific, tantalizing questions. Try choosing **one or two questions** to intrigue your reader with, and rewrite so that the focus is on making _only those subjects_ suspenseful. Everything else should either be clear, or clearly irrelevant at the moment, or cut out entirely.

Examples for suspenseful questions could be:

- **Why are Adam's friends suddenly receiving jobs?** In this case, your focus is on Adam's surprise at this, and what the implications may be. The suspense of "why arethey being given jobs? what does this mean?" allows you to go into detail regarding who Adam's friends are, what the "jobs" are, and why they're significant. The suspense is tied into the "why now?" element, and the significance this development holds for Adama and the world.
- **What is the big event about to be announced?** This is mysterious within the story-world; Adam might be wondering about this too. He might also have inside information, giving him a better direction than most people have. You can use the suspense of "what is NASA hiding?" to reveal Adam's character and background, and the current state of the world, and concrete potential threats to it.
- **What is the school behind the moon?** As opposed to other name-dropping references your piece makes, this is one that gives concrete detail and raises interesting questions. You could take that further, make the scene _about_ amping up the suspense regarding the school. Tell more about who goes there, why it's significant, what Adam's connection to the school is. 

In any event, "What did the author mean in the line [XXX]" is _not_ a good question to build suspense around. It's a question of understanding, with no immediate implications (as far as the reader knows); it doesn't set the reader looking forward to anything because they have no idea what to expect from that element.

So, try picking just one or two "suspenseful" questions, and building the scene _only_ around those. Keep everything else clear and comprehensible. That'll keep the reader grounded enough to understand what's going on now - so they can wonder what'll happen next.

Original score: 9