Fisher
Gulf Coast Writers Association hosts its next meeting Saturday Sept. 19 with award-winning novelist Joni M. Fisher, who will speak on writing suspense and thrillers.
This workshop shows writers how to build tension through high stakes, ticking clocks, foreshadowing, dramatic irony and red herrings. To keep readers turning pages, Fisher points to sensory detail, dilemmas, cliffhangers and strategic pacing. The workshop presents suspense and thrillers as carefully engineered experiences of anticipation, dread and uncertainty.
Fisher shows that suspense works best when readers care deeply about the protagonist and understand what is at risk. The workshop shows how to deepen the emotional pull through the vulnerability of the hero, along with unresolved fears and impossible choices that force the protagonist into painful decisions.
A major teaching of the workshop is how to control what the reader knows and how withholding information builds tension. Fisher shows how layering clues, using unreliable perception, and ending scenes at moments of danger can help a writer create a steady escalation of curiosity and anxiety that feels both thrilling and inevitable.
After a 30-year career in journalism, Fisher turned to crime—as a topic. She writes award-winning, suspenseful stories about heroines who don’t wait to be rescued. Her stories feature friendship, family, faith, and crime. Her books have won awards in the Kindle Book Awards, Reader’s Favorite Book Awards, Christian Indie Book Awards, Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and others. A member of the American Christian Fiction Writers and the Florida Writers Association, she also served on the Southeastern University Arts and Humanities Advisory Board. Her fingerprints are on file with the FBI. Learn about the author at Joni M. Fisher at jonimfisher.com.
The Saturday, Sept. 19 meeting of GCWA will begin at 10 a.m. at Browning Hall on the campus of St. Hilary’s Episcopal Church, 5011 McGregor Blvd. in Fort Myers. Meetings are held the third Saturday of every month. The public is welcome to attend. The first meeting is free. GCWA encourages writers to join the organization via the website gulfcoastwriters.org and receive all the benefits of membership.