You’ll explore how conflict, desire, obstacles, information withholding and uncertainty drive story momentum through discussion, close reading and hands-on exercises. You’ll experiment with pacing, subtext, atmosphere and vulnerability, discovering how to make every scene matter and every choice count.
By the end of the day, you’ll have sharpened your instincts for suspense, learnt to spot tension killers and discovered how to turn up the pressure until your readers can’t look away.
Please bring a short scene from your work in progress (up to 500 words) to develop during the session. Bring pen and paper or a fully charged device to participate in the writing exercises.
You will learn:
- To identify and use different kinds of narrative tension: character, situational, structural and atmospheric
- To apply pacing, subtext and revelation to create suspense
- To build escalating stakes through character desire, conflict and consequence
- To recognise and fix tension killers
- To craft vivid, emotionally charged scenes that captivate readers
About the tutor:
Sarah Vincent is a published author of fiction and non-fiction. Her memoir Death By Dim Sum was published by Penguin Random House in 2017 and by Audible in 2018. She previously worked at Writers Victoria for five years and has taught creative writing at RMIT since 2018. She was a recipient of the 2024 Affirm Press Varuna Fellowship, and her debut novel, Bloodstains are the New Black, will be published by Affirm Press in 2027.
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