suspense

The Next Three Days

June 2, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

If you want to see a good example of how tension and anticipation can be used to effectively create suspense, I recommend a movie called The Next Three Days. It was written and directed by Paul Haggis, who also wrote Million Dollar Baby and Crash.

Because every person’s emotional response to a work is different, I’ll leave it to you to analyze how the movie generates the suspense and emotion you feel. If you want to talk about your response to the story, and how Haggis’ craft choices created that effects you felt, I’d be glad to do so in the comments.

— Mark Barrett

WIG&TSSIP: Tension and Anticipation

May 25, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

As agents of suspense, mystery and conflict have something in common: they prompt anticipation. But anticipation is not inherently good. Problems arise when what’s anticipated works against other aspects of an intended experience.

Imagine it’s your birthday. You’re so excited and focused on your presents that you are oblivious to the people in attendance, the food, the cake, the ice cream, the decorations and the effort others have made on your behalf. When you open your presents your are rewarded for your anticipation, but at what cost?

Now imagine you were raised to be less of a self-centered jerk. At your birthday party you greet and spend time with each guest. You taste and savor the food, you appreciate the effort made by all, and you recognize the compliment of the party itself. By the time you open your gifts you are overflowing with feelings of love, friendship and family.

In each example the event is the same. But because of preparation (in the way your parents raised you) the experience is completely different. In the first example you have a shallow, vain, dismissive, two-dimensional experience that can only be measured by the value (economic and otherwise) of the items you accumulate. In the second example you have a deep, rich, full, inclusive experience that also infuses each gift with meaning beyond its value or utility.

The lesson, again, is that successful storytelling is always about preparation. Preparation that narrowly focuses reader anticipation should generally be avoided, while preparation that broadens and harmonizes reader anticipation should be pursued. [ Read more ]

WIG&TSSIP: Conflict and Uncertainty

May 19, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

I’ve read a lot of how-to books about storytelling. Back when I was devouring such works on a daily basis, but before I ran across Hills’ book, I developed a dull negative reaction to the topic of conflict. The more a book talked about conflict as being central to drama, the less interested I generally was in that author’s storytelling advice.

Why? Because equating conflict to drama always struck me as meaningless. It’s like equating water to melted ice. What in life isn’t about conflict? Dog. Cat. Mouse. Fleas. Plague. Death. Culture. Religion. Life. Gravity. Comet. Fire. Water. Ice. Is it really saying something insightful to say that drama is about conflict? Or is saying something easy and obvious?

When I finally did come across Hills’ book the first paragraph in this section brought my dull discomforts into focus:

Conflict is thought by many to be a basic element in fiction, and certainly it is true that conflict of some sort is present in most stories.

…

Considered for the moment, however, purely as a plot device, conflict leaves a good deal to be desired when it is made the main structure of a story.

Hills goes on to talk about external conflict, how external conflict must sooner or later be realized as internal conflict, and how internal conflict necessarily devolves into some sort of “willy wonty” choice. While this admittedly creates suspense, at what cost?

Storytelling gurus would have you believe the agonizing characters go through when trying to decide which fork in the road to take necessarily fuels a big payoff initiated by conflict. To tell any story, then, all you have to do is A) set up a conflict and B) flog that conflict until the main character chooses one fork or the other, cliffhanger style, often at the point of a gun. But again, is that really useful information? [ Read more ]

WIG&TSSIP: Mystery and Curiosity

May 16, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

Mystery is the first of three types of suspense that Hills analyzes, and I think it’s fair to say he’s dismissive of mystery as a technique. Despite my own life-long enjoyment of mysteries as a genre, I don’t disagree with his reasoning:

Stories where mystery is deliberately the method, and curiosity about the ending is the whole desired effect, are usually trick stories with wow endings.

Even as you may be bristling at Hills’ highbrow perspective, you probably know exactly what he’s talking about. Mystery can become an all-consuming, story-obliterating objective. As Hills himself notes, everyone has read a book in which the only reason for turning the page sprang from a singular desire — curiosity — to find out the answer to a mystery. Works in which mystery is the “whole desired effect” cannot help be feel insubstantial, if not insincere.

Yet: like sex, mystery does attract attention in fiction. It’s often meaningless attention, resolved by some equally meaningless bit of cleverness, but it works.

To see the raw effect of mystery and curiosity, think about any magazine headline with the word ‘secret’ on it. For a certain percentage of the human species that’s all that’s needed to invoke curiosity, prompting the reader to investigate further. It’s simplistic, even idiotic, but it works. [ Read more ]

WIG&TSSIP: Techniques of Suspense

May 13, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

This entire section is one paragraph. In the paragraph Hills describes three different types of suspense that he intends to discuss in the next three sections.

While Hills has a preference as to which type of suspense is best, it should be noted that they’re not mutually exclusive. In novel-length works it’s possible to use all three types over and over again, in layers, in parallel and in combination, to drive reader interest and promote a full and satisfying experience.

So again we return to a central point: it doesn’t matter whether you’re writing literary works or mainstream fiction. Learning how to control the storytelling process empowers you as a writer.

Did you know that suspense comes in different flavors? Me either.

Next up: Mystery and Curiosity.

— Mark Barrett

WIG&TSSIP: Foreshadowing and Suspense

May 11, 2011 By Mark Leave a Comment

The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

Most writers and readers have at least a passing familiarity with suspense as a fiction technique, as an effect and as a genre. Hills addresses all of these aspects of suspense in this section, and in doing so makes some value judgments you may or may not agree with.

What I think you will agree with is that suspense can be a powerful aspect of foreshadowing, however you choose to approach it. I tend to agree with Hills’ assessment of the pitfalls of suspense, but it’s important to stress that this is not akin to authorial fraud. Suspense, like sex, sells. It has a reliable, predictable effect on the reader, and in a craft driven by the need to attract and hold interest it does both.

The main problem with suspense is that, like sex, it quite often obliterates all other aspects of a work, no matter how well they might have been implemented. Unbridled, suspense has the power to overwhelm any story, becoming not simply an engine of interest, but the only interest. [ Read more ]