Technique Exercise 1

Write the paragraph that would appear in a piece of fiction just before the discovery of a body. You might perhaps describe the character's approach to the body (s)he will find, or the location, or both. The purpose of this exercise is to develop the technique of at once attracting the reader toward the paragraph to follow, making her want to skip ahead, and holding her on this paragraph by virtue of its interest. Without the ability to write such foreplay paragraphs, one can never achieve real suspense.