Day 274: Suspense

Suspense is something I've been trying to generate in every story I've written so far, but it's the one thing I can't seem to judge very well. The difficult thing about this aspect of storytelling is that, as the writer, I already know what's going to happen. From the oxford dictionary, suspense is a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen. That uncertainty is key. I can still tell when suspense is present in stories I've read before, but it just isn't quite as potent. Its even worse for stories I've written myself. I'm too caught up in judging the quality of the writing to really feel it. Being the creator of a work leaves me without any uncertainty whatsoever as to what will happen. It feels like I'm reading the material while blind to its effects, like a painter who can't see color or a musician whose tone deaf. It's really strange.

That said, there are patterns I've noticed in other work that I try to replicate to generate some suspense. My favorite kind is a sense of wonder when it comes to the state of the world. I love being left in suspense over how deep the magic goes, or what mysterious individual is pulling the strings in the background. This sort of suspense I like to linger on as much as possible, slowly drip feeding information about the world to the reader as it becomes relevant. I think of it like a videogame. There's a certain rule in open world games where you don't want the player to go more than forty five seconds without stumbling onto a point of interest. The designers do their best to fill the world with juicy stuff so the player never quite gets bored. The second you think 'man, how far will I have to run to find this place?' there's something waiting for you there. Going from one to the next to the next on the way to a far-off goal creates a sensation of getting lost in a world that I try to mimic in my stories. The balance is delicate. Too much random crap in the player's way feels annoying. Not enough and the world starts to feel empty. I try to dot my stories with small points of interest that satisfy curiosity while also maintaining a sense that there is much left to know in order to retain the suspense.

Another kind of suspense is the one everyone is probably most familiar with, when the events of the story have yet to play out, but you just have to know what's going to happen. The cheapest way to generate this kind of suspense is with a cliffhanger. Unfortunately, I find it really, really hard to do so more subtly. Usually there is one big conflict to solve that keeps the story moving, and that of course generates an overarching sense of suspense, but the hard part is layering the development of that conflict over the course of a whole book. In several of the more instructional books I've read, this concept is touched on when the authors discuss the promises a book makes. When you set up a court trial for example, you promise to have a jury make a judgement at some point. Like the points of interest, delivering on too many of the promises made in the beginning too quickly can feel overwhelming, or worse, empty. Nobody likes it when every little thing winds up immediately solved. It feels contrived. The opposite can happen too though. The reader might lose interest if the promises aren't steadily worked on, and the book may seem to lose its focus. Get lost in the weeds of a character's backstory for too long, and suddenly the story is way off track. Focus too heavily on the events of the plot, and now the inherent promise to get know an interesting character is left unanswered. If you're like me, you've definitely read a book and thought, 'oh what a waste, if only that character were explored more deeply.' I try my best to avoid these two extremes.

The last type of suspense I've noticed is something a little more ephemeral. Sometimes I read a book and expect certain things going in. It may be because I've read the author's other works, or the genre has imbued the work with certain promises like I mentioned before. These aren't promises explicitly laid out in the text, but they do still exist in the reader's mind. It's difficult to get a grasp on these because the writer has the least control over what a reader has already read. Using a trope to your advantage to generate suspense is still a great way to keep a reader interested though. Will you deliver on the standard promises of the trope, or will you defy traditional logic and go in a completely different direction? This, I think, is what makes 'The Empire Strikes Back' so suspenseful. Everyone expects Luke and friends to come out on top because hey, it's basically a fairy tale. But then, you already read the title of the movie and you know the Empire is going to strike back. Every hint along the way suggests that Luke is walking into something terrible. Preconceived expectations argue that it can't be the case though. What kind of fantastical story has it's protagonists lose? It just can't happen. Oh, but maybe it will? Don't just leave me hanging!

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley