Why Ordinary People Make the Best Suspense Characters | Behind the Story

When you read my short stories or my novels, you'll probably notice that I tend to write about everyday people rather than detectives, spies, or professional investigators.

Don't get me wrong. Those can make great stories. I enjoy reading them.

But they don't fascinate me nearly as much as ordinary people making everyday decisions—and what happens because of those decisions.

Think about how many possibilities exist inside a single choice.

If I gave the exact same decision to ten random people, I would probably get ten different answers.

Even if two people made the same choice, they might have completely different reasons for making it.

One person might make a decision out of fear.

Another might make it because they don't want to hurt someone's feelings.

Someone else might choose what seems practical.

Another might know exactly what they should do and choose something completely different anyway.

And every one of those decisions could change what happens next.

That's fascinating to me.

It's also one of the reasons I love the writing prompts I put on my TikTok feed.

I'll give everyone the same photograph, situation, or few opening sentences and ask them where the story goes from there. What comes back is rarely what I expected—and no two people seem to see quite the same story.

Recently, I used a photograph of a tarantula I'd taken while traveling out west. I built a prompt around a woman named Paige who stopped along a deserted road to photograph one. Days after returning home, she received an envelope containing photographs of herself from the trip—including one of her crouched beside that tarantula.

Someone had been watching her.

I knew where my mind wanted to take the story.

Then someone responding to the prompt took it somewhere else.

In Merlene Reyes continuation, Paige discovered another car in the photographs. Then she noticed a man standing almost outside one of the frames.

Suddenly there weren't just questions about who had photographed Paige.

There might be two people involved.

Same beginning. Different writer. Different decisions. Different story.

That's people.

And that's why I keep coming back to ordinary characters.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/9a3490_28a564b3fee243bcaeceb681d1f27725/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

@Merlene12rey - Paige stood in her kitchen examining the envelope for any identifiable information. No writing on the outside. She took the photos out and examined them one by one. Landscape in the first, nothing she immediately recognized. The next was of a few cars in the distance. It looked like the pictures were taken in motion. One after another closer and closer. There was a red car in the foreground that was unknown but then she saw it. Her car. Her car being followed by the same red car in all those initial frames. She examined the next few photographs and her license plate was clearly visible. It was her. Then there it was. The spot where she pulled over to take the photos of the tarantula. What she hadn’t noticed at the time was that there was a figure standing almost out of frame. She threw the photos down on the table like a reflex to a flame. She ran to her door to look outside and made sure it was locked. Who was that man? And who was the one taking the photographs? Was it a warning?

Ordinary People Don't Know the Rules

A detective investigating a suspicious death knows to preserve evidence. A police officer understands that certain behavior might be significant. A spy is trained to notice when someone is following them.

Most of us aren't.

If something strange happens in our kitchen, we're probably not putting on gloves and preserving the scene.

We're cleaning it up.

If someone we know starts behaving a little differently, we don't immediately begin an investigation.

We might decide they're tired.

Or stressed.

Or having a bad day.

We explain things.

We overlook things.

Sometimes we make exactly the wrong decision because, with the information we have at that particular moment, it feels like the perfectly reasonable one.

That's where I think some of the best suspense begins.

Not with a character who knows danger is coming.

With someone who has absolutely no reason to believe they're in danger at all.

The Decisions Don't Have to Be Big

I think we sometimes imagine that the decisions that change our lives must be enormous.

Take the job.

Marry the person.

Buy the house.

Get on the plane.

But sometimes it's much smaller than that.

Answer the phone.

Invite someone inside.

Accept the offer of help.

Ignore something that doesn't quite make sense.

Decide not to ask the question because you don't want to start an argument.

Trust someone because they've never given you a reason not to.

None of those decisions necessarily feels important when it's made.

But what happens if it turns out to be the wrong one?

That's the question I love playing with.

That's How Bernice Became Bernice

It's also at the heart of A Quiet Kind of Poison.

Bernice Barbier isn't a detective. She isn't investigating anyone. She doesn't wake up one morning and decide there is a mystery she needs to solve.

She's a wife, a mother, a hairdresser, a friend.

She's an ordinary woman whose life has been changed by grief.

When she needs help, she responds the way plenty of people would.

She accepts it.

That's not a foolish decision. That's not Bernice walking into the dark basement when everyone reading the book is yelling at her to stay upstairs.

It's a perfectly ordinary decision.

Someone needs help.

Someone else offers it.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

As the reader, you have an advantage Bernice doesn't. You picked up a book with the word Poison on the cover. You know you're reading suspense.

Bernice doesn't.

She's simply living her life.

And the decisions she makes have consequences.

We're All Capable of Choosing Differently

That's what makes ordinary people endlessly interesting to me.

Take ten people and put them in the same room.

Give them the same problem.

Give them the same information.

Then watch what happens.

One will leave.

One will stay.

One will ask questions.

One won't want to cause trouble.

One will become suspicious.

One will trust completely.

One might notice something everyone else missed.

And one might make a decision none of the other nine even considered.

Not because one of them is necessarily smarter than the others.

Because we're people.

We bring everything we've experienced into every decision we make. Our childhoods. Our relationships. Our fears. Our confidence. Our insecurities. The people we've trusted before. The people who taught us not to trust.

Even something as simple as whether we listen to that uncomfortable feeling in our stomach can change what happens next.

That's why I don't need my characters to be spies or detectives.

Give me the woman standing in her kitchen trying to decide whether something is strange enough to mention to her husband.

Give me the neighbor wondering whether she's imagining things.

Give me the husband who accepts an explanation because the alternative doesn't make sense yet.

Give me the person who opens the envelope even though there's no return address.

Give me ordinary people.

Then give them a choice.

Because sometimes the most frightening part of a suspense story isn't what someone does to us.

It's realizing how much can change because of one perfectly ordinary decision.

What about you? If ten people were given the same situation, what do you think influences their decisions the most—personality, past experience, fear, instinct, or something else?