Part 6
Here is the sixth installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which is examining "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I'm exploring this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and provisional. I'd be very happy if interested bloggers would post comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights and examples from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
__________________________________________________
Suspense generated by:
Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
Foreshadowing occurs when authors insert into the text hints and intimations of events or situations that ostensibly will come later in the narrative. Foreshadowing, a highly effective means of generating Suspense, is to be distinguished from foretelling, and from planning future actions, as in a “caper novel”.
Foreshadowings presage, prefigure, or raise the possibility of future events. Foreshadowing may take many different forms—a passing remark, a puzzling artifact discovered in an old desk, an eccentric person’s observed habits, the arrival in a small town of a notorious person just released from prison, a cluster of disturbing physical symptoms that may presage a serious illness, a casual discussion regarding the nature of avalanches, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters (in environments where these things could happen).
There’s a maxim from theatrical production that’s useful here: “If a gun is introduced to the audience in the first act, it had better be used in the third.” (I suppose Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is one of the best examples of this principle in action.) Conversely, if someone is shot in Act 3, it’s helpful for the audience to have been made aware in Act 1 of the gun’s presence onstage. (And of course, if much is made of the gun in Act 1, the audience’s having to wait to see how it will ultimately be used will contribute to their Suspense).
The playwright’s revelation of the gun in Act 1 is a “plant”(a device which I would contrast with foreshadowing). Though the gun’s appearance in Act 1 is a preparation for its later use, its “planting” does not per se specify how it might be used in Act 3—just that it will have some role to play. On the other hand, I’d suggest that, while sometimes vague in precisely what they portend for later narrative incidents, foreshadowings are generally less open-ended than plants because they tend to point forward in specific directions, toward particular situations and events.
Foreshadowings can have several functions. By hinting at potential future events, (1) they prepare the way and generate suspense by whetting the reader’s anticipation. By occurring in the text prior to the events and situations they presage, (2) they lay a foundation which lends credibility to the events and situations when they do occur. And (3) if they take place in dialogue, they may possibly reveal the speakers’ anticipations, opinions, hopes and fears regarding the matters presaged—if they do, those revelations will have the collateral benefit of contributing greater depth to the speakers' characterizations.
Available to authors writing in the first person point of view and in the third-person omniscient, there’s a heavy-handed version of assertive intimation which I call “there-you-have-it” foreshadowing. Like the cliffhanger, it is frequently seen as a blatant attempt to generate suspense: “I got home late and went straight to sleep. When the alarm woke me at six, I got dressed and went to the office. I should have stayed in bed.” Or, “After some soul-searching, she did XYZ. It would prove to be a mistake.” Or, “He decided not to send the gift. Later he wished that he had.” Open-ended, for sure, and inherently vague. Of note: implied negative consequences seem to be more capable of generating suspense than implied positive consequences: “Thelma wondered if she should divorce George or kill him. She finally decided to kill him—the best decision she could have made.” These “there-you-have-it” foreshadowings leap off the page. If used often in a single work, they come to be extremely obnoxious. If they’re to be used at all, it should be only rarely, when they are the best way of achieving some sought-after special effect; and, possibly, with authors’ tongue-in-cheek awareness that their presence can evoke genre-based self-referential humor.
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The growth of misunderstanding or the emergence of crucial revelations within dialogue
In writing fiction, dialogue is one of the author’s most powerful tools for advancing the story. What characters say can look backward to what’s already happened, point forward to what might happen in the future, and engage immediately with the ongoing present. And more: dialogue can establish story-line continuity; make possible evaluative and critical assessments of past events; remind readers of what they should remember; foreshadow events to come, increasing readers’ anticipation; highlight those things that speakers regard as important; deepen the speakers’ characterizations by showing how they say things, what they reveal, what they withhold, and if they dissemble (their habits of mind as well as speech).
Dialogue can suggest a vital key to a puzzle or introduce red herrings to confuse the trail; empower debate/joint planning/teamwork in fashioning hypotheses and sketching possible scenarios for solving crimes; present opportunities for making apologies and promises, issuing admonitions and warnings; allow occasions for witty repartee and humor, as well as invective, put-down, sarcasm, and insult; and, finally, teach readers useful facts about bee-keeping, poisons, family relationships, history, law, gambling, the environment, forensic technology, the binomial theorem, monastic life, military matters, the square on the hypotenuse, etc.
In addition to all of the above, dialogue is one of the author’s most powerful tools for intensifying readers’ Suspense. Not only because of what speakers say regarding future events and the making of plans, but also because the sequential give and take of verbal exchanges between two or more people is inherently dramatic and suspenseful. Dramatic because verbal exchanges demonstrate in “real time” the interactions of personalities with issues at stake. Suspenseful because it’s not possible for readers to know with absolute certainty how one person will respond to something said by the other. (Even the response to a simple yes-or-no question might result in surprise: if from previous knowledge readers know that, to be truthful, the responder should say ‘yes’ and expects that this will be the answer, the responder, in fact, might lie and say ‘no.’ Or the responder might equivocate, or throw up a verbal smokescreen (“Now why would I do that?”). Or not answer at all (silence is a response, too).
It is impossible for readers to know for certain what will occur next in conversation as utterances alternate between speakers, each of whom has personal needs, concerns, motives, purposes, and a unique view of the world. Readers can guess what the response will be to a particular utterance, but they cannot know for sure. To find out, they must continue reading. Not knowing what’s coming next, but wanting to know, and caring about the outcome constitutes Suspense.
In addition to its inherent suspensefulness, dialogue can also intensify readers’ Suspense through specific means. Let’s look at a few of these—not an exhaustive list; I’m sure you can come up with others.
Suspense can be created through dialogue when:
a) on the basis of their prior knowledge, readers can observe that the speakers unwittingly are talking at cross purposes, or past each other; or watch with dismay as a fundamental misunderstanding worsens and grows more profound (or heated) as the dialogue progresses.
b) when readers share the frustrations felt by protagonists or material witnesses who, truly knowing what happened/where the bodies are buried/the names behind the cover-up/the identity of the masked man, etc., try to impart this information to others but can’t get anyone to take them seriously or believe what they say. (Won’t Cassandra ever be believed? the reader wonders.) This device is used so often it’s more than a cliché; it’s an iconic fixture of the mystery genre, frequently predictable in the plotline and therefore tedious:—but still capable of creating Suspense as frustration builds (despite readers’ possible irritation at having encountered the too-familiar device yet once again).
c) when readers, having identified with the protagonist (an amateur sleuth or private eye), experience frustration/irritation when that detective is shown disrespect, condescension, contempt, or outright hostility by the professional police investigators. (This too is an iconic fixture of the genre, frequently encountered.) (An analogous parallel occurs in the police procedural, when friction develops because of jurisdictional rivalries or turf battles—municipal police versus the FBI; precinct vs. precinct; Homicide vs. Vice; regulars vs. Internal Affairs).
d) when through observing a series of conversations—perhaps the detective’s interviews with witnesses or the murder victim’s associates, or brainstorming sessions among members of an investigative team—readers gain assorted facts (or encounter crucial revelations) which enable them to start fitting things together and formulating a theory of the crime. (Suspense arises through excitement and anticipation as the picture emerges.)
e) when something is said in conversation that gives readers crucial information (perhaps recognized as such because of things they’ve “heard” in earlier conversations), but whose significance is not grasped by the speakers themselves. (The reader then comes to know and understand something that the speakers don’t.)
f) when a speaker says something that readers know to be untrue. (The suspense arises from knowing that the other speaker is being lied to, or misled, and wondering what later consequences this will have.)
In The Maltese Falcon1 Dashiell Hammett wrote a masterful bit of dialogue which illustrates some of the points I’ve been making. Detective Sam Spade and “the fat man”, Casper Gutman, have met for the first time in a context of mutual suspicion and distrust. Each is trying to get the measure of the other. [I have stripped away most of the narrative description and the ascription tags identifying the speakers to reveal more clearly what Hammett has accomplished through dialogue alone. It’s interesting to observe that in excellent dialogue (with only two speakers) ascription tags generally aren’t needed for readers to know which character is talking (alternating speeches and internal cues do the job).
________________________________________________
(Gutman pours Spade a glass of whiskey, and Spade does not stop his pouring by saying “When.”)
Gutman: We begin well, sir. I distrust a man that says when. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does. … Well, sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding. … [They drink.] You’re a close-mouthed man?
Spade: I like to talk.
Better and better! I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice. … We’ll get along, sir, that we will. … A cigar, sir. [Gives Spade a cigar. They light up.] … Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. And I’ll tell you right out that I’m a man who likes talking to a man that likes to talk.
Swell. Will we talk about the black bird?
Will we? … We will. … You’re the man for me, sir, a man cut along my own lines. No beating about the bush, but right to the point. ‘Will we talk about the black bird?’ We will. I like that, sir. I like that way of doing business. Let us talk about the black bird by all means, but first, sir, answer me a question, please, though maybe it’s an unnecessary one, so we’ll understand each other from the beginning. You’re here as Miss O’Shaughnessy’s representative?
I can’t say yes or no. There’s nothing certain about it either way, yet. … It depends.
It depends on—?
If I knew what it depends on I could say yes or no.
Maybe it depends on Cairo?
Maybe.
You could say, then, that the question is which of them you’ll represent?
You could put it that way.
It will be one or the other?
I didn’t say that.
Who else is there?
There’s me.
That’s wonderful, sir. … That’s wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he’s looking out for himself. Don’t we all? I don’t trust a man that says he’s not. And the man that’s telling the truth when he says he’s not I distrust most of all, because he’s an ass that’s going contrary to the laws of nature.
Uh-huh. Now let’s talk about the black bird.
_______________________________________________
Encountered in this form, Hammett’s dialogue has a theatrical effect—a story advanced through speeches and minimal physical business (like a stage play). If heard, accompanied by sound effects (the clink of glasses, the pouring of whiskey, the striking of a match), it could be a radio drama (and has indeed been presented in that format). What does the dialogue accomplish? It provides information about the personalities, temperaments, purposes, and verbal habits of the speakers. It advances the story by bringing Spade and Gutman into an edgy first encounter and intimates that information regarding the black bird will be forthcoming.
It pulls Brigid O’Shaughnessy and Joel Cairo (whom both Spade and the reader have met previously) into the ambient mix, and suggests to the reader that anyone who distrusts as many types of people as Gutman does is perhaps not to be trusted himself. Spade clearly doesn’t trust him, as evidenced by his laconic answers. Gutman, who doesn’t trust Spade, puts off for as long as possible discussing the black bird—a man who clearly likes to hear himself talk, and is himself willing to “beat about the bush” with high-sounding repetitious filler to avoid telling Spade anything of substance until he’s “sure” of where the detective stands. Spade, with singular focus, will not be deflected from wanting to know about the bird.
The dialogue shows clearly how difficult it is for readers to predict with certainty what the content will be of any response to a particular utterance. Readers must read on to discover these responses, and in so doing will try to glean what they can of reliable and pertinent information relating to the problem or puzzle at hand. While readers may not consciously analyze what the dialogue is accomplishing from the author’s point of view, careful readers will at the very least assimilate the gist of what it is the author’s trying to impart regarding characterization and story. All of this, the conscious and the subliminal, contributes to the readers’ Suspense.
QUERY TO FRIENDS AND BLOGGERS: IS THIS MAKING SENSE?
I NEED SOME FEEDBACK. THANKS. (Vergil)
1 The Maltese Falcon © renewed by Dashiell Hammett, 1957
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Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Importance of Suspense -- Part 5
Part 5
Here is the fifth installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which is discussing "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I'm exploring this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and provisional. I'd be very happy if interested bloggers would post comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights and examples from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
______________________________________
Suspense is generated by:
Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relation, distrust, deceit, betrayal)
Characters are the lifeblood of mystery fiction. Without them, there would be no mystery demanding solution; it’s human consciousness, after all, that interprets a set of circumstances and events as constituting a mystery.
In large measure, readers read to associate with the characters—enjoying their diverse personalities, observing them responding to events, identifying with them, fearing for them, urging them on, second-guessing them, judging them, wishing them well. And of course authors enjoy the characters too: they’re fun to create, launch into play, and orchestrate in their interactions. Suspense as I’ve defined it arises from characters’ interaction with events, or their interactions with each other. I’ll discuss the former in the next section. Here I want to discuss Suspense that arises from “interpersonal” engagements.
Many types of human interaction are capable of generating Suspense. People disagree, compete, fall in love, harbor bigotry and prejudice, mistrust others’ motives, lie, cheat, betray, nurse grudges, seek revenge, pass judgments, and enter into seductions. The particular interactions that might produce Suspense for the reader are as infinite as the individual characters that authors create to people their stories.
The following types of interactions come to mind by way of illustration: any conflict with an uncertain outcome; any misunderstanding needing to be resolved; a proposal of marriage; providing counsel or advice to a close-minded, headstrong person (who might be in denial); convincing an aged but stubborn parent to give up the car keys; disagreements regarding the significance of something; a person’s making a report and telling a truth, but not being taken seriously, nor believed; betrayal of a trusting friend for personal advantage; hiding a shameful secret from someone who has a need or right to know; mistrusting someone (insurance salesman, lawyer, nursing home director, cop, judge, or mortician) who promises something of benefit; a child’s providing emotional support to a grandparent at a time of crisis; spouse’s deceiving spouse to hide an adulterous affair, etc. And of course the necessary baseline conflict between the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s) is a given. For readers, Suspense arises from not knowing the outcome of the particular interactions the fictional characters engage in, but wanting to know, and reading on to see what happens. (Will she say yes, or reject him? will Aged Parent give up control of the keys? will “Cassandra”, who knows the truth, ever be believed? will Millicent find out that Edward is cheating on her?)
_________________________________________
Characters’ engagements with action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time? Etc.)
Characters’ interactions with events are a common source of Suspense for readers. These interactions include characters’ responses to events that have already happened or are currently in process, as well as those yet to come that they’re anticipating or planning for. Some stories are chockablock with stressful events that hurl the protagonist from crisis to crisis so fast there’s no breathing space or oasis of calm. In a long work, such a rapid and unremitting pace can fatigue the reader; and by the narrative’s always being in a state of crisis, particular crises lose their force, emotional impact, and what special meaning they might’ve had.
The manufacturing of crises whose outcomes aren’t immediately certain is, I think, a relatively easy way to create Suspense: simply put the hero in harm’s way, push the button, and let the chips scatter as they must. Authors who wish to write thrillers (and even lazy authors) can fabricate a reasonably propulsive tale that satisfies readers who enjoy, and are content with, the titillation of constant Action. But this ease of using crisis to generate Suspense should be a warning to authors who aspire to write fiction of a different sort than action-thrillers.
And truly, “event” encompasses much more than crisis. It can be something as small as opening a door, or cleaning a wound, winning a bet, or sending an e-mail. On the other hand, it can be a longterm process, like settling a labor strike, or writing a novel, planting a garden, or planning a heist. It’s by identifying with characters as they interact with events which have significant but uncertain consequences, and thereby vicariously sharing in this interaction, that readers themselves experience Suspense.
Some actions and events are inherently more suspenseful than others. A standard device for generating suspense is The Chase. Though they are a cliché, chases do quicken the reader’s pulse; it’s their effectiveness at doing so that’s made them a cliché. And to be sure, they contribute legitimate suspense to a story (unless there are too many of them, in which case they become repetitious and a drag). For all his story-telling skills, the late Robert Ludlum seems to have been much given to The Chase: in the books of his I’ve read (and I stopped after six) it seemed that his protagonists were always on the run. A final word regarding The Chase: for the reader, pursuit can be as suspenseful as flight.
Suspense is created when characters are forced to interact with events that present them with overwhelming odds, that hinder them with apparently insurmountable obstacles, that confront them with catastrophic situations which can be defused only by luck, pluck, cleverness, and speed. (Can the protagonist forestall the scheduled assassination and thus prevent a war? find and deactivate the ticking bomb in the next four minutes? discover where the kidnapped girl’s been hidden and rescue her before she goes into diabetic coma? Etc.)
Again, these devices frequently embody cliché: just consider how many novels, short stories, stage plays, radio dramas, films, and crime & detective TV series have used them. But skillful writers are able to avoid readers’ seeing them as clichés by employing them in fresh and surprising ways—so effectively that readers don’t consciously recognize them as something they’ve seen before. And they haven’t:—because in the hands of skillful mystery writers the devices come to have a new life in unique surroundings, freshly minted in a space not visited before, a space inhabited by original, interesting characters embarked on what for them is an uncharted journey. Once enmeshed in the author’s well-woven web of suspense, readers have little choice but to join in and continue the journey with these characters, responding to events and circumstances as they come.
____________________________________________
A series of connected events whose sequential unfolding produces consequences (the domino effect) that can be partially foreseen
A useful way of generating suspense is for the author to plan a logical series of connected events which, when set in motion, go down sequentially like dominoes to produce consequences which readers can partially foresee. (Each of these consequences, in turn, becomes a new event with its own potentials for generating suspense.)
When this device is used, readers’ Suspense arises from a (partial) understanding of the projected series of events and the fact that the occurrence of one will trigger the occurrence of the next, and so on. To the extent that readers can foresee the sequence, they feel excitement and suspenseful anticipation based in either hopefulness or dread. (Frequently the “caper novel” exemplifies the use of this device.)
I stress that the reader’s foreknowledge must be only partial, because, as I said in Part 1, “Predictability is the great enemy of Suspense. Readers should not be allowed to know with certainty what lies ahead, and authors should sprinkle the path with surprises.” While generating Suspense through partial foreknowledge and anticipation, authors must always allow for an element of surprise and the unexpected. Knowing (from experience) that the author they’re reading is inclined to spring surprises also intensifies the readers’ Suspense.
___________________________________
Yet to come:
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!” (Not available in 1st. person)
SUSPENSE AS A FUNCTION OF:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
GENERAL COMMENTS:
Narration:
Point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient narrator) and how each can or cannot generate certain types of Suspense
Multiple points of view to tell the story
The unreliable or untrustworthy first person narrator
The frame narrative (first or third person)
The first-person narrator an observer/sidekick/companion of the detective protagonist
Ways of withholding information (to increase Suspense and trigger Surprise)
Flashbacks?
Miscellaneous:
Playing fair with readers’ needs and expectations
Jokes as creators of Suspense (an analogy with mystery-writing)
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Here is the fifth installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which is discussing "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I'm exploring this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and provisional. I'd be very happy if interested bloggers would post comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights and examples from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
______________________________________
Suspense is generated by:
Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relation, distrust, deceit, betrayal)
Characters are the lifeblood of mystery fiction. Without them, there would be no mystery demanding solution; it’s human consciousness, after all, that interprets a set of circumstances and events as constituting a mystery.
In large measure, readers read to associate with the characters—enjoying their diverse personalities, observing them responding to events, identifying with them, fearing for them, urging them on, second-guessing them, judging them, wishing them well. And of course authors enjoy the characters too: they’re fun to create, launch into play, and orchestrate in their interactions. Suspense as I’ve defined it arises from characters’ interaction with events, or their interactions with each other. I’ll discuss the former in the next section. Here I want to discuss Suspense that arises from “interpersonal” engagements.
Many types of human interaction are capable of generating Suspense. People disagree, compete, fall in love, harbor bigotry and prejudice, mistrust others’ motives, lie, cheat, betray, nurse grudges, seek revenge, pass judgments, and enter into seductions. The particular interactions that might produce Suspense for the reader are as infinite as the individual characters that authors create to people their stories.
The following types of interactions come to mind by way of illustration: any conflict with an uncertain outcome; any misunderstanding needing to be resolved; a proposal of marriage; providing counsel or advice to a close-minded, headstrong person (who might be in denial); convincing an aged but stubborn parent to give up the car keys; disagreements regarding the significance of something; a person’s making a report and telling a truth, but not being taken seriously, nor believed; betrayal of a trusting friend for personal advantage; hiding a shameful secret from someone who has a need or right to know; mistrusting someone (insurance salesman, lawyer, nursing home director, cop, judge, or mortician) who promises something of benefit; a child’s providing emotional support to a grandparent at a time of crisis; spouse’s deceiving spouse to hide an adulterous affair, etc. And of course the necessary baseline conflict between the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s) is a given. For readers, Suspense arises from not knowing the outcome of the particular interactions the fictional characters engage in, but wanting to know, and reading on to see what happens. (Will she say yes, or reject him? will Aged Parent give up control of the keys? will “Cassandra”, who knows the truth, ever be believed? will Millicent find out that Edward is cheating on her?)
_________________________________________
Characters’ engagements with action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time? Etc.)
Characters’ interactions with events are a common source of Suspense for readers. These interactions include characters’ responses to events that have already happened or are currently in process, as well as those yet to come that they’re anticipating or planning for. Some stories are chockablock with stressful events that hurl the protagonist from crisis to crisis so fast there’s no breathing space or oasis of calm. In a long work, such a rapid and unremitting pace can fatigue the reader; and by the narrative’s always being in a state of crisis, particular crises lose their force, emotional impact, and what special meaning they might’ve had.
The manufacturing of crises whose outcomes aren’t immediately certain is, I think, a relatively easy way to create Suspense: simply put the hero in harm’s way, push the button, and let the chips scatter as they must. Authors who wish to write thrillers (and even lazy authors) can fabricate a reasonably propulsive tale that satisfies readers who enjoy, and are content with, the titillation of constant Action. But this ease of using crisis to generate Suspense should be a warning to authors who aspire to write fiction of a different sort than action-thrillers.
And truly, “event” encompasses much more than crisis. It can be something as small as opening a door, or cleaning a wound, winning a bet, or sending an e-mail. On the other hand, it can be a longterm process, like settling a labor strike, or writing a novel, planting a garden, or planning a heist. It’s by identifying with characters as they interact with events which have significant but uncertain consequences, and thereby vicariously sharing in this interaction, that readers themselves experience Suspense.
Some actions and events are inherently more suspenseful than others. A standard device for generating suspense is The Chase. Though they are a cliché, chases do quicken the reader’s pulse; it’s their effectiveness at doing so that’s made them a cliché. And to be sure, they contribute legitimate suspense to a story (unless there are too many of them, in which case they become repetitious and a drag). For all his story-telling skills, the late Robert Ludlum seems to have been much given to The Chase: in the books of his I’ve read (and I stopped after six) it seemed that his protagonists were always on the run. A final word regarding The Chase: for the reader, pursuit can be as suspenseful as flight.
Suspense is created when characters are forced to interact with events that present them with overwhelming odds, that hinder them with apparently insurmountable obstacles, that confront them with catastrophic situations which can be defused only by luck, pluck, cleverness, and speed. (Can the protagonist forestall the scheduled assassination and thus prevent a war? find and deactivate the ticking bomb in the next four minutes? discover where the kidnapped girl’s been hidden and rescue her before she goes into diabetic coma? Etc.)
Again, these devices frequently embody cliché: just consider how many novels, short stories, stage plays, radio dramas, films, and crime & detective TV series have used them. But skillful writers are able to avoid readers’ seeing them as clichés by employing them in fresh and surprising ways—so effectively that readers don’t consciously recognize them as something they’ve seen before. And they haven’t:—because in the hands of skillful mystery writers the devices come to have a new life in unique surroundings, freshly minted in a space not visited before, a space inhabited by original, interesting characters embarked on what for them is an uncharted journey. Once enmeshed in the author’s well-woven web of suspense, readers have little choice but to join in and continue the journey with these characters, responding to events and circumstances as they come.
____________________________________________
A series of connected events whose sequential unfolding produces consequences (the domino effect) that can be partially foreseen
A useful way of generating suspense is for the author to plan a logical series of connected events which, when set in motion, go down sequentially like dominoes to produce consequences which readers can partially foresee. (Each of these consequences, in turn, becomes a new event with its own potentials for generating suspense.)
When this device is used, readers’ Suspense arises from a (partial) understanding of the projected series of events and the fact that the occurrence of one will trigger the occurrence of the next, and so on. To the extent that readers can foresee the sequence, they feel excitement and suspenseful anticipation based in either hopefulness or dread. (Frequently the “caper novel” exemplifies the use of this device.)
I stress that the reader’s foreknowledge must be only partial, because, as I said in Part 1, “Predictability is the great enemy of Suspense. Readers should not be allowed to know with certainty what lies ahead, and authors should sprinkle the path with surprises.” While generating Suspense through partial foreknowledge and anticipation, authors must always allow for an element of surprise and the unexpected. Knowing (from experience) that the author they’re reading is inclined to spring surprises also intensifies the readers’ Suspense.
___________________________________
Yet to come:
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!” (Not available in 1st. person)
SUSPENSE AS A FUNCTION OF:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
GENERAL COMMENTS:
Narration:
Point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient narrator) and how each can or cannot generate certain types of Suspense
Multiple points of view to tell the story
The unreliable or untrustworthy first person narrator
The frame narrative (first or third person)
The first-person narrator an observer/sidekick/companion of the detective protagonist
Ways of withholding information (to increase Suspense and trigger Surprise)
Flashbacks?
Miscellaneous:
Playing fair with readers’ needs and expectations
Jokes as creators of Suspense (an analogy with mystery-writing)
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The Importance of Suspense -- Part 4
PART 4
Here is the fourth installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which hopes to explore "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I'm exploring this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and provisional. I'd be very happy if interested bloggers would post comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights and examples from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
_________________________________________
Merriam-Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1973) defines ‘suspense’ as “2 a: a mental uncertainty: ANXIETY b: pleasant excitement as to a decision or outcome [a novel of ~].” To my mind, this definition is neither specific nor detailed enough to provide much insight into what readers experience in reading mysteries, or much help to authors in deciding how best they can keep their readers turning pages.
Therefore, in Part 1 of this thread, I presented the following general definition of ‘Suspense’ as, hopefully, more suggestive and useful to writers as they ply their craft: “In a literary context, Suspense is a state of mind created when readers (a) do not know what’s coming next in the narrative or what the outcome of a conflict or sequence of events will be, but (b) want to know, and (c) care about what happens.
Since authors use various tactical narrative devices to induce the “state of mind” defined by (a-c) above, and since these devices create many different types, or categories, of suspense, I suggested in Part 2 that it would be useful to conceive ‘Suspense’ as a plural. These diverse categories feed into and undergird the inherent baseline Suspense that readers experience in reading a mystery: and, in so doing, they produce a state of mind constantly assaulted, tweaked, and played upon by combinations of stressors which delay, impede, misdirect, and complexify readers’ attempts to satisfy their need to know. Suspense is intensified by readers’ encounters with deceitful people and shocking events, threats and perils, unforeseen twists in storyline, dark forebodings, frightening images, physical dangers, the expectation of surprise, etc., etc. These the author plans and choreographs to maximize readers’ pleasure and to keep them turning pages.
Continuing to unpack the toolbox— Suspense is generated by:
Danger to be faced or escaped from
Danger (however manifested, and whether anticipated, immediately threatened, or actually in process) produces anxiety and requires some sort of defensive response (evasion, forestalling, flight, counter-threat/-strike, escape). Suspense arises (1) from readers’ not knowing whether, or how, the protagonist will successfully withstand or neutralize or escape from the danger, (2) from (perhaps) not knowing the source of the danger or the shape it will take, or (3) from knowing full well what the nature of the danger is, and what its consequences will be. Suspense also can arise from readers’ identifying with protagonists as they face additional and subsidiary dangers in battling to survive or in making their escape. Most thrillers, whether focused on action, psychology, or the supernatural, rely on actual, threatened, or anticipated dangers to propel their narratives.
Being confronted, stalked, or endangered by an Unknown Menace
A subclass of the preceding is danger emanating from an Unknown Menace. Suspense of high intensity can be generated by readers’ identifying with protagonists who (1) are aware of their being threatened with danger, or are actually experiencing it, but (2) do not know why they are. And, feasibly, (3) do not know who or what is behind it. A shadowy “faceless” menace (perhaps diffuse or indiscriminate in its victims) is inherently frightening, because one does not know what the extent or parameters of the danger might be, what forms it will take in manifesting itself, or even what is motivating it. The source might be a solitary anonymous stalker, a criminal conspiracy (drug cartel, combine of multinational corporations, rogue government agency, terrorists, etc.), an individual or group threatened by the protagonist’s activities, or—in the novel of paranormal terror—a malevolent supernatural force (e.g., Anson’s The Amityville Horror, Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”, Blackwood’s “The Wendigo”, Dorothy McArdle’s The Uninvited, etc.) (I am not including in this discussion the suspense generated by stories of disaster we’re all familiar with: volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, burning skyscrapers, epidemics, mountain climbing accidents, and sinking ocean liners. Somebody else can explore that topic.)
Readers tend to identify with protagonists in peril (and thus share with them whatever Suspense they experience). This is a boon to story-tellers. To increase readers’ Suspense, authors simply have to augment and intensify the dangers faced by the protagonists and the anxiety they feel. However, the relative ease of revving things up presents a danger to authors themselves. Simply stated, they may fail to make the conclusion fulfill the promise of the buildup. They paint themselves into a corner, their imagination peters out, they find that their initial premise (window dressing aside) is thin and lame.
After they have caused readers to experience keen anxiety and to eagerly anticipate a resolution commensurate with their emotional investment, authors have an obligation to provide a worthy outcome. When I read The Da Vinci Code, I thought it started well. But somewhere around the middle of the book I began to sense signs of strain, a falling off of novelty and imaginative vigor, a kind of repetition, growing predictability. I began to lose interest, fearing the worst. It came, with an ending so weak I almost felt that I had wasted my time. It’s not the only suspenseful book I’ve read that let me down at the end. I’ll bet you’ve read some, too.
But authors who hope to satisfy their readers and gain a following cannot afford to let people down. When people pick up a book to read, they are committing part of their life-time to the effort. Authors should remember this and make sure the reader's experience is worth that very precious time.
Yet to come:
SUSPENSE GENERATED BY:
• Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relation, distrust, deceit, betrayal)
• Action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time?, etc.)
• Sequence of connected events (the domino effect) which (perhaps) can be partially foreseen
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!” (Not available in 1st. person)
SUSPENSE AS A FUNCTION OF:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
GENERAL COMMENTS:
Narration:
Point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient narrator) and how each can or cannot generate certain types of Suspense
Multiple points of view to tell the story
The unreliable or untrustworthy first person narrator
The frame narrative (first or third person)
The first-person narrator an observer/sidekick/companion of the detective protagonist
Ways of withholding information (to increase Suspense and trigger Surprise)
Flashbacks?
Miscellaneous:
Playing fair with readers’ needs and expectations
Jokes as creators of Suspense (an analogy with mystery-writing)
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Here is the fourth installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which hopes to explore "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I'm exploring this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and provisional. I'd be very happy if interested bloggers would post comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights and examples from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
_________________________________________
Merriam-Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1973) defines ‘suspense’ as “2 a: a mental uncertainty: ANXIETY b: pleasant excitement as to a decision or outcome [a novel of ~].” To my mind, this definition is neither specific nor detailed enough to provide much insight into what readers experience in reading mysteries, or much help to authors in deciding how best they can keep their readers turning pages.
Therefore, in Part 1 of this thread, I presented the following general definition of ‘Suspense’ as, hopefully, more suggestive and useful to writers as they ply their craft: “In a literary context, Suspense is a state of mind created when readers (a) do not know what’s coming next in the narrative or what the outcome of a conflict or sequence of events will be, but (b) want to know, and (c) care about what happens.
Since authors use various tactical narrative devices to induce the “state of mind” defined by (a-c) above, and since these devices create many different types, or categories, of suspense, I suggested in Part 2 that it would be useful to conceive ‘Suspense’ as a plural. These diverse categories feed into and undergird the inherent baseline Suspense that readers experience in reading a mystery: and, in so doing, they produce a state of mind constantly assaulted, tweaked, and played upon by combinations of stressors which delay, impede, misdirect, and complexify readers’ attempts to satisfy their need to know. Suspense is intensified by readers’ encounters with deceitful people and shocking events, threats and perils, unforeseen twists in storyline, dark forebodings, frightening images, physical dangers, the expectation of surprise, etc., etc. These the author plans and choreographs to maximize readers’ pleasure and to keep them turning pages.
Continuing to unpack the toolbox— Suspense is generated by:
Danger to be faced or escaped from
Danger (however manifested, and whether anticipated, immediately threatened, or actually in process) produces anxiety and requires some sort of defensive response (evasion, forestalling, flight, counter-threat/-strike, escape). Suspense arises (1) from readers’ not knowing whether, or how, the protagonist will successfully withstand or neutralize or escape from the danger, (2) from (perhaps) not knowing the source of the danger or the shape it will take, or (3) from knowing full well what the nature of the danger is, and what its consequences will be. Suspense also can arise from readers’ identifying with protagonists as they face additional and subsidiary dangers in battling to survive or in making their escape. Most thrillers, whether focused on action, psychology, or the supernatural, rely on actual, threatened, or anticipated dangers to propel their narratives.
Being confronted, stalked, or endangered by an Unknown Menace
A subclass of the preceding is danger emanating from an Unknown Menace. Suspense of high intensity can be generated by readers’ identifying with protagonists who (1) are aware of their being threatened with danger, or are actually experiencing it, but (2) do not know why they are. And, feasibly, (3) do not know who or what is behind it. A shadowy “faceless” menace (perhaps diffuse or indiscriminate in its victims) is inherently frightening, because one does not know what the extent or parameters of the danger might be, what forms it will take in manifesting itself, or even what is motivating it. The source might be a solitary anonymous stalker, a criminal conspiracy (drug cartel, combine of multinational corporations, rogue government agency, terrorists, etc.), an individual or group threatened by the protagonist’s activities, or—in the novel of paranormal terror—a malevolent supernatural force (e.g., Anson’s The Amityville Horror, Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”, Blackwood’s “The Wendigo”, Dorothy McArdle’s The Uninvited, etc.) (I am not including in this discussion the suspense generated by stories of disaster we’re all familiar with: volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, burning skyscrapers, epidemics, mountain climbing accidents, and sinking ocean liners. Somebody else can explore that topic.)
Readers tend to identify with protagonists in peril (and thus share with them whatever Suspense they experience). This is a boon to story-tellers. To increase readers’ Suspense, authors simply have to augment and intensify the dangers faced by the protagonists and the anxiety they feel. However, the relative ease of revving things up presents a danger to authors themselves. Simply stated, they may fail to make the conclusion fulfill the promise of the buildup. They paint themselves into a corner, their imagination peters out, they find that their initial premise (window dressing aside) is thin and lame.
After they have caused readers to experience keen anxiety and to eagerly anticipate a resolution commensurate with their emotional investment, authors have an obligation to provide a worthy outcome. When I read The Da Vinci Code, I thought it started well. But somewhere around the middle of the book I began to sense signs of strain, a falling off of novelty and imaginative vigor, a kind of repetition, growing predictability. I began to lose interest, fearing the worst. It came, with an ending so weak I almost felt that I had wasted my time. It’s not the only suspenseful book I’ve read that let me down at the end. I’ll bet you’ve read some, too.
But authors who hope to satisfy their readers and gain a following cannot afford to let people down. When people pick up a book to read, they are committing part of their life-time to the effort. Authors should remember this and make sure the reader's experience is worth that very precious time.
Yet to come:
SUSPENSE GENERATED BY:
• Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relation, distrust, deceit, betrayal)
• Action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time?, etc.)
• Sequence of connected events (the domino effect) which (perhaps) can be partially foreseen
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!” (Not available in 1st. person)
SUSPENSE AS A FUNCTION OF:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
GENERAL COMMENTS:
Narration:
Point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient narrator) and how each can or cannot generate certain types of Suspense
Multiple points of view to tell the story
The unreliable or untrustworthy first person narrator
The frame narrative (first or third person)
The first-person narrator an observer/sidekick/companion of the detective protagonist
Ways of withholding information (to increase Suspense and trigger Surprise)
Flashbacks?
Miscellaneous:
Playing fair with readers’ needs and expectations
Jokes as creators of Suspense (an analogy with mystery-writing)
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Thriller Writing Mistakes
Here are "The Six Most Common Mistakes That Thriller Writers Make," lifted from David Montgomery's summary of Joseph Finder's presentation at ThrillerFest a while back. This was posted at David's Crime Fiction Dossier blog and I hope he won't mind it being posted here as well. I think I need to memorize these as I get into the sequel to BLEEDER this summer.
MISTAKE #1: The Passive Hero
Too many thrillers have heroes who don't act; they remain passive while events take place around them. The hero must advance the plot; s/he must take action. The hero can't simply investigate what's going on -- he must do something about it.
MISTAKE #2: The Long Setup
The story takes too long to get moving. Authors shouldn't just dump story on the reader; they should reveal it through action. Too many books start with a good opening, but then slow down to a crawl. One way to avoid this is to start the story as late as possible. If necessary, you can then go back and fill in details later on.
MISTAKE #3: The Weak Second Act
Too many books bog down in the middle, degenerating into repetitive conflict and simply regurgitating the same plot points over and over. The characters aren't progressing and changing. The conflict of a plot must progress and escalate; the plot points must change and vary throughout the narrative. This escalation of conflict, as well as variance of conflict, will not only keep the reader's interest, but help to develop and reveal character as well. The introduction of subplots will also help keep the second act moving. Whenever things start to get dull, remember: REVERSE, REVEAL, SURPRISE. Every scene must advance the plot.
MISTAKE #4: Predictability
Authors should never underestimate their readers, most of whom have read a lot of books and seen even more movies and TV shows. Readers know the tropes and cliches of the genre. If the story is predictable, they'll see where it's going a long way off and get bored. The key is to surprise them. Veer off from the expected course. If the obvious development is to take the plot in a certain direction, consider taking it in a different direction instead. One way to avoid this trap is not to over-outline. Be spontaneous in your writing. Allow the characters and the plot to surprise you.
MISTAKE #5: The Lousy Ending
Too many books send the reader off on a sour note by finishing with a lousy ending. A great ending is second only to a great beginning in importance. The ending should not consist of explaining everything that happened before or tying up all the loose ends. You should explain as little as possible; let the reader figure out the smaller details on his/her own. Great endings off have symmetry to the beginning. Twists can be good, but they must be earned. They must be set up earlier in the book and prepared for. When you finish the book, get out of there ASAP. Don't draw things out.
MISTAKE #6: Showing Off
Too many writers make the mistake of: "I've done the research; I'm going to cram it all in there." You should tell the reader the minimum they need in order to understand the plot; just the tip of the iceberg. Pare it down, leaving only the juiciest nuggets behind. Too much info will only slow down the story.
BONUS MISTAKE #1: Overly Explicit Dialogue
People don't narrate a story when they speak; they don't dump details and information.
People speak elliptically. Watch out for expository dialogue.
BONUS MISTAKE #2: All Plot, No People
The story won't matter if we don't care about the characters. On its own, the plot is abstract; it requires the characters to make it real and make it matter to the reader. Also, the stakes of the plot must matter to the characters in order for us to care as readers.
BONUS MISTAKE #3: Action Is Boring
Unlike in film where action scenes can be exciting, in books they too often are boring. What is interesting to the reader is how the characters react to the action and how they interact with each other. There should also be variety in your scenes; don't follow an action scene with another action scene and another action scene. Vary the pace, vary the types of scenes, slow down and speed up in order to give the reader a break and keep them interested.
BONUS MISTAKE #4: Backstory Dump
Don't make the mistake of dumping the characters' backstory on the reader all at once. It will bring your plot to a halt and bore the reader. Reveal the backstory slowly, in pieces, as necessary. Drop references in here and there; include mentions in dialogue; intersperse little details throughout the plot. There is always a trade-off of CHARACTER vs. PACE. It's important to find the balance of revealing enough about the characters in order to make them interesting and make the reader care about them, versus the need to keep the plot moving.
MISTAKE #1: The Passive Hero
Too many thrillers have heroes who don't act; they remain passive while events take place around them. The hero must advance the plot; s/he must take action. The hero can't simply investigate what's going on -- he must do something about it.
MISTAKE #2: The Long Setup
The story takes too long to get moving. Authors shouldn't just dump story on the reader; they should reveal it through action. Too many books start with a good opening, but then slow down to a crawl. One way to avoid this is to start the story as late as possible. If necessary, you can then go back and fill in details later on.
MISTAKE #3: The Weak Second Act
Too many books bog down in the middle, degenerating into repetitive conflict and simply regurgitating the same plot points over and over. The characters aren't progressing and changing. The conflict of a plot must progress and escalate; the plot points must change and vary throughout the narrative. This escalation of conflict, as well as variance of conflict, will not only keep the reader's interest, but help to develop and reveal character as well. The introduction of subplots will also help keep the second act moving. Whenever things start to get dull, remember: REVERSE, REVEAL, SURPRISE. Every scene must advance the plot.
MISTAKE #4: Predictability
Authors should never underestimate their readers, most of whom have read a lot of books and seen even more movies and TV shows. Readers know the tropes and cliches of the genre. If the story is predictable, they'll see where it's going a long way off and get bored. The key is to surprise them. Veer off from the expected course. If the obvious development is to take the plot in a certain direction, consider taking it in a different direction instead. One way to avoid this trap is not to over-outline. Be spontaneous in your writing. Allow the characters and the plot to surprise you.
MISTAKE #5: The Lousy Ending
Too many books send the reader off on a sour note by finishing with a lousy ending. A great ending is second only to a great beginning in importance. The ending should not consist of explaining everything that happened before or tying up all the loose ends. You should explain as little as possible; let the reader figure out the smaller details on his/her own. Great endings off have symmetry to the beginning. Twists can be good, but they must be earned. They must be set up earlier in the book and prepared for. When you finish the book, get out of there ASAP. Don't draw things out.
MISTAKE #6: Showing Off
Too many writers make the mistake of: "I've done the research; I'm going to cram it all in there." You should tell the reader the minimum they need in order to understand the plot; just the tip of the iceberg. Pare it down, leaving only the juiciest nuggets behind. Too much info will only slow down the story.
BONUS MISTAKE #1: Overly Explicit Dialogue
People don't narrate a story when they speak; they don't dump details and information.
People speak elliptically. Watch out for expository dialogue.
BONUS MISTAKE #2: All Plot, No People
The story won't matter if we don't care about the characters. On its own, the plot is abstract; it requires the characters to make it real and make it matter to the reader. Also, the stakes of the plot must matter to the characters in order for us to care as readers.
BONUS MISTAKE #3: Action Is Boring
Unlike in film where action scenes can be exciting, in books they too often are boring. What is interesting to the reader is how the characters react to the action and how they interact with each other. There should also be variety in your scenes; don't follow an action scene with another action scene and another action scene. Vary the pace, vary the types of scenes, slow down and speed up in order to give the reader a break and keep them interested.
BONUS MISTAKE #4: Backstory Dump
Don't make the mistake of dumping the characters' backstory on the reader all at once. It will bring your plot to a halt and bore the reader. Reveal the backstory slowly, in pieces, as necessary. Drop references in here and there; include mentions in dialogue; intersperse little details throughout the plot. There is always a trade-off of CHARACTER vs. PACE. It's important to find the balance of revealing enough about the characters in order to make them interesting and make the reader care about them, versus the need to keep the plot moving.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Importance of Suspense -- Part 3
PART 3
Here is the third installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which hopes to explore "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I'm thinking through this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and exploratory. I'd be very happy if bloggers would make comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights and examples from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
____________________________________________
Cliffhangers
A “cliffhanger” is a break or pause at a critical juncture in narrative flow which leaves unresolved a crisis in action or plot development that cries for resolution. It creates Suspense for engaged readers by temporarily withholding knowledge regarding the crisis’s outcome which they desperately want to have. When a cliffhanger occurs, it’s usually at the end of a chapter or installment. The use of cliffhangers was common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when popular magazines published long novels in serial installments. Cliffhangers were a device to ensure that readers, to learn what happened, would eagerly anticipate (and purchase) the magazine’s next issue.
Nowadays many people hold cliffhangers in low esteem as a cheap and “easy” way to generate suspense. In books, where chapters are contiguous, and resolutions follow fairly quickly on the heels of crises, the use of cliffhangers is transparently obvious as an attempt to create suspense, and can, if badly handled, smack of sensationalism. As a tactic, the cliffhanger’s value is further diminished when it’s used too frequently in a work, or when readers find the eagerly-awaited resolution to be a disappointing letdown that trivializes the crisis which aroused their concern. It does authors no good for readers to feel that their trust, good will, and emotional investment have been manipulated through the use of a device which is seen to be little more than a cheap trick, or, worse, a type of cheating.
That said, it’s nonetheless true that cliffhangers can and do create Suspense. If well-managed and used judiciously, they have a legitimate place in the author’s inventory of devices for ensnaring readers. And there might well be particular occasions where they would be especially effective. But, all in all, cliffhangers should be used sparingly.
Solution of problem or puzzle (Can it be done? It better be!)
By definition, mystery stories embody and dramatize the solving of puzzles: discovering truth in obscure and murky situations, ascertaining the motives behind unethical and criminal acts, reconstructing time-lines and sequences of events, establishing accountability and determining guilt, forecasting and preventing future harm, interpreting clues to find a missing “treasure”.
These activities produce many types of Suspense, whether the puzzle-solvers are police professionals, amateur sleuths, insurance investigators, or private eyes. Detectives, like readers, are motivated by “not knowing, but wanting to know, and caring about what it is they learn”. How they go about solving their puzzles, and whatever types of suspense they experience in pursuing that activity, echo and parallel the types of Suspense readers feel who identify with them and join their quest. It follows that, whatever else they are, mystery stories—as vehicles for the solution of puzzles—are inherently and quintessentially suspenseful.
However, for this present section, I wish to pull back from the global suspensefulness of the mystery story and focus on the specific type of Suspense that arises from requiring detectives to solve a specific problem or puzzle within the narrative.
These internal problems and puzzles may be highly diverse. In a police procedural, for example, the detectives may be working against time to figure out the MO and personality traits of a serial killer, and clues implicit in the patterning of the murders, in order to save further lives. Or, before the timers detonate them, finding where on the airplane or in the convention hall the bombs have been planted. Working against a deadline or playing “beat the clock” with dire consequences as the price of failure can greatly intensify the suspense that readers feel.
The entire story frequently revolves around solving the puzzle. For example, breaking a code or cipher in espionage thrillers, where lives are at stake, or a battle can be won by monitoring the Enemy’s internal communications without their knowing. In The Da Vinci Code much of the action depends on the decipherment and interpretation of arcane symbols and the messages they imply. In “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” Sherlock Holmes cracks a pictographic cipher and learns that a woman's life is in danger, and then uses the cipher himself to trap her husband's killer; in “The Musgrave Ritual” he processes verbal clues in the form of a riddle to solve a disappearance and find a treasure. Other examples can readily be found in classical and contemporary mysteries.
In this category, the Suspense arises from the reader’s not knowing whether the detective (1) will be able to solve the problem/puzzle, and (2) if so, whether the solution will lead to beneficial consequences, and/or will be accomplished in time to prevent some anticipated catastrophe. (In some stories, part of the suspense in solving a problem or cracking a code may arise from a competition, or race, between the protagonist detective(s) and an antagonist or rival group, with something of value to be gained as the prize for winning.) Success in solving the puzzle must result in a significant payoff (saving lives, preserving a cultural or historical artifact, finding a treasure, etc.) both to maximize the creation of Suspense in “getting there”, and to justify the degree of Suspense which the reader has experienced.
More to come:
SUSPENSE GENERATED BY:
• Danger to be faced or escaped from
• Being confronted, stalked, or endangered by an Unknown Menace
• Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relation, distrust, deceit, betrayal)
• Action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time?, etc.)
• Sequence of connected events (the domino effect) which (perhaps) can be partially foreseen
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!” (Not available in 1st. person)
SUSPENSE AS A FUNCTION OF:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
GENERAL COMMENTS:
Narration:
Point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient narrator) and how each can or cannot generate certain types of Suspense
Multiple points of view to tell the story
The unreliable or untrustworthy first person narrator
The frame narrative (first or third person)
The first-person narrator an observer/sidekick/companion of the detective protagonist
Ways of withholding information (to increase Suspense and trigger Surprise)
Flashbacks?
Miscellaneous:
Playing fair with readers’ needs and expectations
Jokes as creators of Suspense (an analogy with mystery-writing)
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Here is the third installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which hopes to explore "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I'm thinking through this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and exploratory. I'd be very happy if bloggers would make comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights and examples from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
____________________________________________
Cliffhangers
A “cliffhanger” is a break or pause at a critical juncture in narrative flow which leaves unresolved a crisis in action or plot development that cries for resolution. It creates Suspense for engaged readers by temporarily withholding knowledge regarding the crisis’s outcome which they desperately want to have. When a cliffhanger occurs, it’s usually at the end of a chapter or installment. The use of cliffhangers was common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when popular magazines published long novels in serial installments. Cliffhangers were a device to ensure that readers, to learn what happened, would eagerly anticipate (and purchase) the magazine’s next issue.
Nowadays many people hold cliffhangers in low esteem as a cheap and “easy” way to generate suspense. In books, where chapters are contiguous, and resolutions follow fairly quickly on the heels of crises, the use of cliffhangers is transparently obvious as an attempt to create suspense, and can, if badly handled, smack of sensationalism. As a tactic, the cliffhanger’s value is further diminished when it’s used too frequently in a work, or when readers find the eagerly-awaited resolution to be a disappointing letdown that trivializes the crisis which aroused their concern. It does authors no good for readers to feel that their trust, good will, and emotional investment have been manipulated through the use of a device which is seen to be little more than a cheap trick, or, worse, a type of cheating.
That said, it’s nonetheless true that cliffhangers can and do create Suspense. If well-managed and used judiciously, they have a legitimate place in the author’s inventory of devices for ensnaring readers. And there might well be particular occasions where they would be especially effective. But, all in all, cliffhangers should be used sparingly.
Solution of problem or puzzle (Can it be done? It better be!)
By definition, mystery stories embody and dramatize the solving of puzzles: discovering truth in obscure and murky situations, ascertaining the motives behind unethical and criminal acts, reconstructing time-lines and sequences of events, establishing accountability and determining guilt, forecasting and preventing future harm, interpreting clues to find a missing “treasure”.
These activities produce many types of Suspense, whether the puzzle-solvers are police professionals, amateur sleuths, insurance investigators, or private eyes. Detectives, like readers, are motivated by “not knowing, but wanting to know, and caring about what it is they learn”. How they go about solving their puzzles, and whatever types of suspense they experience in pursuing that activity, echo and parallel the types of Suspense readers feel who identify with them and join their quest. It follows that, whatever else they are, mystery stories—as vehicles for the solution of puzzles—are inherently and quintessentially suspenseful.
However, for this present section, I wish to pull back from the global suspensefulness of the mystery story and focus on the specific type of Suspense that arises from requiring detectives to solve a specific problem or puzzle within the narrative.
These internal problems and puzzles may be highly diverse. In a police procedural, for example, the detectives may be working against time to figure out the MO and personality traits of a serial killer, and clues implicit in the patterning of the murders, in order to save further lives. Or, before the timers detonate them, finding where on the airplane or in the convention hall the bombs have been planted. Working against a deadline or playing “beat the clock” with dire consequences as the price of failure can greatly intensify the suspense that readers feel.
The entire story frequently revolves around solving the puzzle. For example, breaking a code or cipher in espionage thrillers, where lives are at stake, or a battle can be won by monitoring the Enemy’s internal communications without their knowing. In The Da Vinci Code much of the action depends on the decipherment and interpretation of arcane symbols and the messages they imply. In “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” Sherlock Holmes cracks a pictographic cipher and learns that a woman's life is in danger, and then uses the cipher himself to trap her husband's killer; in “The Musgrave Ritual” he processes verbal clues in the form of a riddle to solve a disappearance and find a treasure. Other examples can readily be found in classical and contemporary mysteries.
In this category, the Suspense arises from the reader’s not knowing whether the detective (1) will be able to solve the problem/puzzle, and (2) if so, whether the solution will lead to beneficial consequences, and/or will be accomplished in time to prevent some anticipated catastrophe. (In some stories, part of the suspense in solving a problem or cracking a code may arise from a competition, or race, between the protagonist detective(s) and an antagonist or rival group, with something of value to be gained as the prize for winning.) Success in solving the puzzle must result in a significant payoff (saving lives, preserving a cultural or historical artifact, finding a treasure, etc.) both to maximize the creation of Suspense in “getting there”, and to justify the degree of Suspense which the reader has experienced.
More to come:
SUSPENSE GENERATED BY:
• Danger to be faced or escaped from
• Being confronted, stalked, or endangered by an Unknown Menace
• Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relation, distrust, deceit, betrayal)
• Action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time?, etc.)
• Sequence of connected events (the domino effect) which (perhaps) can be partially foreseen
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!” (Not available in 1st. person)
SUSPENSE AS A FUNCTION OF:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
GENERAL COMMENTS:
Narration:
Point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient narrator) and how each can or cannot generate certain types of Suspense
Multiple points of view to tell the story
The unreliable or untrustworthy first person narrator
The frame narrative (first or third person)
The first-person narrator an observer/sidekick/companion of the detective protagonist
Ways of withholding information (to increase Suspense and trigger Surprise)
Flashbacks?
Miscellaneous:
Playing fair with readers’ needs and expectations
Jokes as creators of Suspense (an analogy with mystery-writing)
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
The Importance of Suspense -- Part 2
PART 2
Here is the second installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which hopes to explore "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. This is a subject which has interested me as a writer for a long while. I think that "Suspense" (as I define it in this installment) is a necessary component of effective and successful writing in any genre (but mysteries have their own peculiar requirements and possibilities for generating Suspense which deserve special notice). I'm thinking through this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and exploratory. I'd be very happy if bloggers would make comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
__________________________________________
Broadly speaking, it’s Suspense that keeps readers moving forward through a story. If predictability, the great enemy of Suspense, once manages to come within the gates, readers’ interest will be undermined; indifference and boredom will likely ensue. To hold their readers, authors must, at all costs, avoid boring them.
It strikes me that Suspense is like the head of steam that drives a train or turns the screws that propel an ocean liner on its course. The author's job is to maintain the pressure so that forward movement never flags. There are many ways that authors can do this, many devices and maneuvers that will bind readers fast and keep them turning pages. All these tactics serve the double strategy of making readers want to know what happens, and care about what happens. Since in their diversity these discrete tactics result in various kinds of Suspense, it might be wise to conceive ‘Suspense’ in the plural. Successful authors will empower all of these “suspenses”—whatever their source and causative agency—to work together as a whole to net readers in a web from which they can’t escape. Let’s examine some of these tactics and see where they take us.
STRUCTURAL DEVICES
The “inverted” detective story: reader as spectator
• Pioneered in the early 20th century by R. Austin Freeman, the “inverted detective story” employs a narrative structure where, early on, readers witness the crime and know who the murderer is. What the reader doesn’t know is whether, and by what means, the killer will be caught. Suspense arises from reading on to discover these things, and from watching the detective reconstruct the crime, gather evidence, and apprehend the perpetrator. (The inverted detective story has been represented in recent years by the popular Columbo TV series, with Peter Falk as the detective.) Foreknowledge of the murderer’s identity tends to put readers into the role of spectators rather than that of being detectives in their own right working to unravel the mystery alongside the protagonists or in competition with them. (Readers who like playing detective, or solving puzzles, or matching wits with the protagonist and/or the author, may not be as gripped by the inverted detective story as they would be by a more conventional whodunit. Those who enjoy watching a problem-solving protagonist at work, or observing the psychological unraveling of a criminal ego, may greatly enjoy the inverted detective story.)
The caper: reader as observer/”participant”
• In the subclass of crime novel called “the caper”, the plot entails an illegal undertaking (usually a theft of money, jewels, or rare artifacts—or feasibly an assassination or act of sabotage) organized and planned by a group of conspirators each of whom has a specialized role to play in the enterprise. By the author’s focusing on the personalities of the conspirators and largely adopting their point of view, the criminals become the story’s collective protagonist. The reader is thereby led to identify with them and take an interest in the outcome of their enterprise. To that extent, the reader is not only an observer of the action as it develops, but also a vicarious “participant” in the scheme. Suspense arises from readers’ (a) not knowing whether the undertaking will succeed, and (b) (through having “participated” in the planning of its stages) being aware, in a general sense, of what might go wrong. As the action unfolds, readers’ suspense is intensified as complications aggregate—setbacks, unforeseen accidents, miscues, stumbling blocks, and interpersonal squabbles—that threaten to disrupt the caper or defeat it altogether. (This tendency of well-laid plans to go astray has frequently led caper novelists to invest their stories with irony and humor. But even farce can be productive of Suspense. On the other hand, some capers are deadly serious; and one type of suspense these generate is anticipatory dread.)
Coming up:
SUSPENSE GENERATED BY:
• Cliffhangers
• Solution of problem or puzzle (perhaps against a deadline of some sort), or the cracking of a “code” (can it be done? It better be!)
• Danger to be faced or escaped from
• Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relation, distrust, deceit, betrayal)
• Action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time?, etc.)
• Sequence of connected events (the domino effect) which (perhaps) can be partially foreseen
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!” (Not available in 1st. person)
SUSPENSE AS A FUNCTION OF:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
GENERAL COMMENTS:
Narration:
Point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient narrator) and how each can or cannot generate certain types of Suspense
Multiple points of view to tell the story
The unreliable or untrustworthy first person narrator
The frame narrative (first or third person)
The first-person narrator an observer/sidekick/companion of the detective protagonist
Ways of withholding information (to increase Suspense and trigger Surprise)
Flashbacks?
Miscellaneous:
Playing fair with readers’ needs and expectations
Jokes as creators of Suspense (an analogy with mystery-writing)
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Here is the second installment of the thread called “The Importance of Suspense", which hopes to explore "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. This is a subject which has interested me as a writer for a long while. I think that "Suspense" (as I define it in this installment) is a necessary component of effective and successful writing in any genre (but mysteries have their own peculiar requirements and possibilities for generating Suspense which deserve special notice). I'm thinking through this topic for the first time as the thread progresses; everything is tentative and exploratory. I'd be very happy if bloggers would make comments, register points of agreement and disagreement, provide insights from their own experience, and join in this effort. (Vergil)
__________________________________________
Broadly speaking, it’s Suspense that keeps readers moving forward through a story. If predictability, the great enemy of Suspense, once manages to come within the gates, readers’ interest will be undermined; indifference and boredom will likely ensue. To hold their readers, authors must, at all costs, avoid boring them.
It strikes me that Suspense is like the head of steam that drives a train or turns the screws that propel an ocean liner on its course. The author's job is to maintain the pressure so that forward movement never flags. There are many ways that authors can do this, many devices and maneuvers that will bind readers fast and keep them turning pages. All these tactics serve the double strategy of making readers want to know what happens, and care about what happens. Since in their diversity these discrete tactics result in various kinds of Suspense, it might be wise to conceive ‘Suspense’ in the plural. Successful authors will empower all of these “suspenses”—whatever their source and causative agency—to work together as a whole to net readers in a web from which they can’t escape. Let’s examine some of these tactics and see where they take us.
STRUCTURAL DEVICES
The “inverted” detective story: reader as spectator
• Pioneered in the early 20th century by R. Austin Freeman, the “inverted detective story” employs a narrative structure where, early on, readers witness the crime and know who the murderer is. What the reader doesn’t know is whether, and by what means, the killer will be caught. Suspense arises from reading on to discover these things, and from watching the detective reconstruct the crime, gather evidence, and apprehend the perpetrator. (The inverted detective story has been represented in recent years by the popular Columbo TV series, with Peter Falk as the detective.) Foreknowledge of the murderer’s identity tends to put readers into the role of spectators rather than that of being detectives in their own right working to unravel the mystery alongside the protagonists or in competition with them. (Readers who like playing detective, or solving puzzles, or matching wits with the protagonist and/or the author, may not be as gripped by the inverted detective story as they would be by a more conventional whodunit. Those who enjoy watching a problem-solving protagonist at work, or observing the psychological unraveling of a criminal ego, may greatly enjoy the inverted detective story.)
The caper: reader as observer/”participant”
• In the subclass of crime novel called “the caper”, the plot entails an illegal undertaking (usually a theft of money, jewels, or rare artifacts—or feasibly an assassination or act of sabotage) organized and planned by a group of conspirators each of whom has a specialized role to play in the enterprise. By the author’s focusing on the personalities of the conspirators and largely adopting their point of view, the criminals become the story’s collective protagonist. The reader is thereby led to identify with them and take an interest in the outcome of their enterprise. To that extent, the reader is not only an observer of the action as it develops, but also a vicarious “participant” in the scheme. Suspense arises from readers’ (a) not knowing whether the undertaking will succeed, and (b) (through having “participated” in the planning of its stages) being aware, in a general sense, of what might go wrong. As the action unfolds, readers’ suspense is intensified as complications aggregate—setbacks, unforeseen accidents, miscues, stumbling blocks, and interpersonal squabbles—that threaten to disrupt the caper or defeat it altogether. (This tendency of well-laid plans to go astray has frequently led caper novelists to invest their stories with irony and humor. But even farce can be productive of Suspense. On the other hand, some capers are deadly serious; and one type of suspense these generate is anticipatory dread.)
Coming up:
SUSPENSE GENERATED BY:
• Cliffhangers
• Solution of problem or puzzle (perhaps against a deadline of some sort), or the cracking of a “code” (can it be done? It better be!)
• Danger to be faced or escaped from
• Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relation, distrust, deceit, betrayal)
• Action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time?, etc.)
• Sequence of connected events (the domino effect) which (perhaps) can be partially foreseen
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): giving the reader something to anticipate
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!” (Not available in 1st. person)
SUSPENSE AS A FUNCTION OF:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
GENERAL COMMENTS:
Narration:
Point of view (1st, 2nd, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient narrator) and how each can or cannot generate certain types of Suspense
Multiple points of view to tell the story
The unreliable or untrustworthy first person narrator
The frame narrative (first or third person)
The first-person narrator an observer/sidekick/companion of the detective protagonist
Ways of withholding information (to increase Suspense and trigger Surprise)
Flashbacks?
Miscellaneous:
Playing fair with readers’ needs and expectations
Jokes as creators of Suspense (an analogy with mystery-writing)
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Rules for Suspense and Thrillers
(In 1994, John Grisham revealed to NEWSWEEK that he credited the following article by Brian Garfield with giving him the tools to create his ground-breaking thriller, THE FIRM , as well as subsequent books. Garfield himself is a noted bestselling novelist, as well as a screenwriter, producer, and nonfiction writer. He won the Edgar Award for HOPSCOTCH, which was made into the prize-winning movie of the same name, starring Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson.)
"The English call them thrillers, and in our clumsier way we call them novels of suspense. They contain elements of mystery, romance and adventure, but they don't fall into restrictive categories. And they're not circumscribed by artificial systems of rules like those that govern the whodunit or the gothic romance. The field is wide enough to include Alistair MacLean, Allen Drury, Helen Maclnnes, Robert Crichton, Graham Greene, and Donald E. Westlake. (Now there's a parlay.) The market is not limited by the stigma of genre labels, and therefore the potential for success of a novel in this field is unrestricted: DAY OF THE JACKAL, for instance, was a first novel.
The game's object: To perch the reader on edge --- to keep him flipping pages to find out what's going to happen next. The game's rules are harder to define; they are few, and these are elastic. The seasoned professional learns the rules mainly in order to know how to break them to good effect. But such as they are, the rules can be defined as follows.
1. Start with action; explain it later.
This is an extension of Raymond Chandler's famous dictum: When things slow down, bring in a man with a gun. To encourage the reader to turn to page 2, give him something on page 1--conflict, trouble, fear, violence. I realize you've got a lot of background that needs to be established, leading up to the first moments of overt conflict, but you can establish all that in chapter 2. Flash back to it if you need to. But in Chapter 1, get the show on the road.
2. Make it tough for your protagonist.
Give him a worthy antagonist and make things look hopeless. Don't drop convenient solutions in his lap. The tougher the opposition, the more everything is stacked against the protagonist, the better.
3. Plant it early; pay it off later.
Don't bring in new characters or facts at the end to help solve the protagonist's dilemma. He must work out his own solution based on a conflict that's established early in the story. No cavalry to the rescue, and no sudden unearthing of a revealing letter written before he died by a character who was dispatched way back in Chapter 3. (Unless, of course, you established in Chapter 4 that such a letter exists, and followed that revelation with a race between the protagonist and his enemies to see who'll get the letter first.) No cavalry to the rescue.
4. Give the protagonist the initiative.
All good dramatic writing centers on conflict --- interior (alcoholism, oedipal conflicts) or exterior (a dangerous enemy, an alien secret police force). Only in poor gothic fiction is the protagonist habitually and tearfully and hand-wringingly at the mercy of evil opposing forces that push him or her around at will. The best story is usually that in which the protagonist takes active steps to achieve a goal against impossible odds, or to prevent opposing forces from overcoming him or his loved ones. The protagonist may begin by reacting, but in the end he must act from his own initiative.
5. Give the protagonist a personal stake.
No longer is it acceptable for the hero to solve a mystery just because it presents an interesting puzzle. The more intimate his involvement in the main conflict of the story, the better. He himself, or his aims, should be in jeopardy: His own life or those of his loved ones should be in danger, or his best friend has been murdered, or he is the kind of character whose values and principles won't let him sit by and allow injustice to destroy people around him. Whatever the conflict is, if he loses, it's going to cost him horribly; that's the essence.
6. Give the protagonist a tight time limit, and then shorten it.
This doesn't always work because the logic of many stories prohibits it; don't use it unless you can work it in believably. But when time is a factor, and when the brief span of time in which the hero must resolve the conflict is then shortened, you have gone a long way toward heightening the suspense.
7. Choose your character according to your own capacities, as well as his.
Don't use as your protagonist an accomplished professional spy unless you are prepared to do the research and groundwork necessary to create such a character convincingly. It is better, particularly when approaching the early stages of your own professionalism, to stick to the familiar. Some of the most successful suspense-novel protagonists --- many of Eric Ambler's, for instance --- are ordinary innocent people caught up in dangerous webs. The indignant honest idealist makes a good protagonist because his innocence makes the professional opposition all the more frightening. Yet a plot-structure for this character is often difficult to contrive because, in spite of his naiveté, he has to be clever and resourceful enough (not lucky) to prevail over his awesome enemies. The other face of this coin, of course, is the professional-crook-as-protagonist; he's easy to identify with because he's an outcast, an underdog, one man using his wits to survive against society's oppressive machinery. But the pitfalls of this genre are treacherous, and unless you know criminal procedure and feel comfortable competing with Anthony Burgess and Richard Stark, it's better to avoid the crook-hero in the beginning.
8. Know your destination before you set out.
The prevailing weakness of many suspense stories that are otherwise successful is the letdown the reader experiences at the end --- the illogical and disappointing anticlimax. It isn't enough to set up intriguing conflicts and obey all the other rules if you haven't got an ending that fulfills the promise of the preceding chapters. It becomes disgustingly obvious when a writer has confronted his hero with thrilling obstacles only to paint himself into a corner. Presented with his own unsolvable cliffhanger, he is reduced to bringing in deus ex machina to solve the hero's problems for him. It isn't necessary to tie up all loose ends, but the climax should resolve the principal conflict one way or another. (In recent years, to avoid the traditional clichés of virtue-triumphant or ironic-downfall, several talented novelists have resorted to obscure endings that no reader could possibly decipher. I rather hope the fad is dying out; whatever the reasons behind it, it demonstrates lazy thinking and infuriates the reader.) The best key to a good ending is to know what the ending will be before you start writing the book. Whether you write a preliminary outline or not, you should know where the journey will end, and how.
9. Don't rush in where angels fear to tread.
I admit this one is a catchall. Essentially I mean that it is wise to observe not only what the pros do, but also what they avoid doing. The best writers do not jump on bandwagons; they build new ones. The pro doesn't write a caper novel about the world's biggest heist unless he's convinced he can write an unusual story with a unique and important twist. Otherwise he risks unfavorable comparison with the classics in that subgenre. "Why bother with it if it's not as taut as Rififi and not as funny as The Hot Rock?" Yet this should not be taken to mean every writer must obey faddish advice, such as "Spy fiction is dead," or "Historical novels are out this season." There is no such thing as a dead genre because the human imagination is limitless, and there is never a dearth of new ideas, new twists, new talents. The question is, "Is this idea strong enough and important enough to make the story sufficiently different from its predecessors to merit publication?" If a novel is good enough, it will find a publisher whether it is a hard-boiled detective story, a western, a spy novel, a historical adventure, or a novel about bug-eyed monsters from Mars. If it isn't good enough, the publisher may reject it by saying that such novels are out of style, but this is merely a euphemism.
10. Don't write anything you wouldn't want to read.
This one sounds self-evident, but I've met several young writers who decided they wanted to start out by hacking their way through gothics or westerns, just to learn the ropes, because those categories looked easy to imitate. Nuts. If you start out that way, you'll end up a hack. Now if you like to read westerns, then write a western. But don't write into a genre for which you have contempt. If you don't like gothics but insist on writing one, your contempt will show; you can't hide it. I don't say you can't sell books this way; God knows people do, all too often. But if you thoroughly enjoy sea stories --- even if you don't know a thing about nautical life --- you're better off attempting to write a sea story because you'll go into it with enthusiasm."
© 1973, 1994 Brian Garfield (These "rules" for writing suspense fiction were published in WRITER'S DIGEST, Feb. 1973, and reprinted in the 1994 WRITER'S YEARBOOK, pp 22-23. They have since been reprinted frequently.)
_____________________________
You can bet I'll be following these "rules" (maybe breaking one or two creatively) as I work on my next book this summer, a sequel to BLEEDER (Sophia Institute Press, due August 2009).
"The English call them thrillers, and in our clumsier way we call them novels of suspense. They contain elements of mystery, romance and adventure, but they don't fall into restrictive categories. And they're not circumscribed by artificial systems of rules like those that govern the whodunit or the gothic romance. The field is wide enough to include Alistair MacLean, Allen Drury, Helen Maclnnes, Robert Crichton, Graham Greene, and Donald E. Westlake. (Now there's a parlay.) The market is not limited by the stigma of genre labels, and therefore the potential for success of a novel in this field is unrestricted: DAY OF THE JACKAL, for instance, was a first novel.
The game's object: To perch the reader on edge --- to keep him flipping pages to find out what's going to happen next. The game's rules are harder to define; they are few, and these are elastic. The seasoned professional learns the rules mainly in order to know how to break them to good effect. But such as they are, the rules can be defined as follows.
1. Start with action; explain it later.
This is an extension of Raymond Chandler's famous dictum: When things slow down, bring in a man with a gun. To encourage the reader to turn to page 2, give him something on page 1--conflict, trouble, fear, violence. I realize you've got a lot of background that needs to be established, leading up to the first moments of overt conflict, but you can establish all that in chapter 2. Flash back to it if you need to. But in Chapter 1, get the show on the road.
2. Make it tough for your protagonist.
Give him a worthy antagonist and make things look hopeless. Don't drop convenient solutions in his lap. The tougher the opposition, the more everything is stacked against the protagonist, the better.
3. Plant it early; pay it off later.
Don't bring in new characters or facts at the end to help solve the protagonist's dilemma. He must work out his own solution based on a conflict that's established early in the story. No cavalry to the rescue, and no sudden unearthing of a revealing letter written before he died by a character who was dispatched way back in Chapter 3. (Unless, of course, you established in Chapter 4 that such a letter exists, and followed that revelation with a race between the protagonist and his enemies to see who'll get the letter first.) No cavalry to the rescue.
4. Give the protagonist the initiative.
All good dramatic writing centers on conflict --- interior (alcoholism, oedipal conflicts) or exterior (a dangerous enemy, an alien secret police force). Only in poor gothic fiction is the protagonist habitually and tearfully and hand-wringingly at the mercy of evil opposing forces that push him or her around at will. The best story is usually that in which the protagonist takes active steps to achieve a goal against impossible odds, or to prevent opposing forces from overcoming him or his loved ones. The protagonist may begin by reacting, but in the end he must act from his own initiative.
5. Give the protagonist a personal stake.
No longer is it acceptable for the hero to solve a mystery just because it presents an interesting puzzle. The more intimate his involvement in the main conflict of the story, the better. He himself, or his aims, should be in jeopardy: His own life or those of his loved ones should be in danger, or his best friend has been murdered, or he is the kind of character whose values and principles won't let him sit by and allow injustice to destroy people around him. Whatever the conflict is, if he loses, it's going to cost him horribly; that's the essence.
6. Give the protagonist a tight time limit, and then shorten it.
This doesn't always work because the logic of many stories prohibits it; don't use it unless you can work it in believably. But when time is a factor, and when the brief span of time in which the hero must resolve the conflict is then shortened, you have gone a long way toward heightening the suspense.
7. Choose your character according to your own capacities, as well as his.
Don't use as your protagonist an accomplished professional spy unless you are prepared to do the research and groundwork necessary to create such a character convincingly. It is better, particularly when approaching the early stages of your own professionalism, to stick to the familiar. Some of the most successful suspense-novel protagonists --- many of Eric Ambler's, for instance --- are ordinary innocent people caught up in dangerous webs. The indignant honest idealist makes a good protagonist because his innocence makes the professional opposition all the more frightening. Yet a plot-structure for this character is often difficult to contrive because, in spite of his naiveté, he has to be clever and resourceful enough (not lucky) to prevail over his awesome enemies. The other face of this coin, of course, is the professional-crook-as-protagonist; he's easy to identify with because he's an outcast, an underdog, one man using his wits to survive against society's oppressive machinery. But the pitfalls of this genre are treacherous, and unless you know criminal procedure and feel comfortable competing with Anthony Burgess and Richard Stark, it's better to avoid the crook-hero in the beginning.
8. Know your destination before you set out.
The prevailing weakness of many suspense stories that are otherwise successful is the letdown the reader experiences at the end --- the illogical and disappointing anticlimax. It isn't enough to set up intriguing conflicts and obey all the other rules if you haven't got an ending that fulfills the promise of the preceding chapters. It becomes disgustingly obvious when a writer has confronted his hero with thrilling obstacles only to paint himself into a corner. Presented with his own unsolvable cliffhanger, he is reduced to bringing in deus ex machina to solve the hero's problems for him. It isn't necessary to tie up all loose ends, but the climax should resolve the principal conflict one way or another. (In recent years, to avoid the traditional clichés of virtue-triumphant or ironic-downfall, several talented novelists have resorted to obscure endings that no reader could possibly decipher. I rather hope the fad is dying out; whatever the reasons behind it, it demonstrates lazy thinking and infuriates the reader.) The best key to a good ending is to know what the ending will be before you start writing the book. Whether you write a preliminary outline or not, you should know where the journey will end, and how.
9. Don't rush in where angels fear to tread.
I admit this one is a catchall. Essentially I mean that it is wise to observe not only what the pros do, but also what they avoid doing. The best writers do not jump on bandwagons; they build new ones. The pro doesn't write a caper novel about the world's biggest heist unless he's convinced he can write an unusual story with a unique and important twist. Otherwise he risks unfavorable comparison with the classics in that subgenre. "Why bother with it if it's not as taut as Rififi and not as funny as The Hot Rock?" Yet this should not be taken to mean every writer must obey faddish advice, such as "Spy fiction is dead," or "Historical novels are out this season." There is no such thing as a dead genre because the human imagination is limitless, and there is never a dearth of new ideas, new twists, new talents. The question is, "Is this idea strong enough and important enough to make the story sufficiently different from its predecessors to merit publication?" If a novel is good enough, it will find a publisher whether it is a hard-boiled detective story, a western, a spy novel, a historical adventure, or a novel about bug-eyed monsters from Mars. If it isn't good enough, the publisher may reject it by saying that such novels are out of style, but this is merely a euphemism.
10. Don't write anything you wouldn't want to read.
This one sounds self-evident, but I've met several young writers who decided they wanted to start out by hacking their way through gothics or westerns, just to learn the ropes, because those categories looked easy to imitate. Nuts. If you start out that way, you'll end up a hack. Now if you like to read westerns, then write a western. But don't write into a genre for which you have contempt. If you don't like gothics but insist on writing one, your contempt will show; you can't hide it. I don't say you can't sell books this way; God knows people do, all too often. But if you thoroughly enjoy sea stories --- even if you don't know a thing about nautical life --- you're better off attempting to write a sea story because you'll go into it with enthusiasm."
© 1973, 1994 Brian Garfield (These "rules" for writing suspense fiction were published in WRITER'S DIGEST, Feb. 1973, and reprinted in the 1994 WRITER'S YEARBOOK, pp 22-23. They have since been reprinted frequently.)
_____________________________
You can bet I'll be following these "rules" (maybe breaking one or two creatively) as I work on my next book this summer, a sequel to BLEEDER (Sophia Institute Press, due August 2009).
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The Importance of Suspense -- Part 1
PART 1
I'd like to start a thread called “The Importance of Suspense" with a group of posts and comments focusing on "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I’ll kick it off it with a first installment (with more to follow). Please comment; I’d really like to know your thoughts on the topic.
________________________________________
As authors of mysteries, how do we keep our readers turning pages? By netting them in a web of Suspense, using as many types and categories of withholding and surprise as possible. If a story’s interesting and well-told, readers will be curious to know what comes next in the narrative, and how the plot will be resolved. While readers’ curiosity certainly contributes to the creation of the Suspense they experience, management of their curiosity is not totally within the author’s control. But what authors do have complete control over are the devices for generating Suspense which they employ in weaving their web.
Before discussing the devices which produce different categories of Suspense (some of them peculiar to the mystery genre), we need a general definition: In a literary context, Suspense is a state of mind created when readers (a) do not know what’s coming next in the narrative or what the outcome of a conflict or sequence of events will be, but (b) want to know, and (c) care about what happens. The last two are crucial: if readers don’t want to know what happens, or don’t care about events and outcomes, they probably won’t finish the book.
To create a web of suspense, authors must keep their readers continuously “guessing” as to the next developmental incident and the shape of ultimate outcomes. Predictability is the great enemy of Suspense. Readers should not be allowed to know with certainty what lies ahead, and authors should sprinkle the path with surprises.
Knowing that surprises will occur provides readers with pleasurable anticipation and keeps them wondering what they will find around the next bend. This “looking ahead”—informed by (b) and (c) above—urges readers onward, anticipating (1) the probability of being frequently surprised and (2) learning whether their expectations regarding outcomes are to be fulfilled or reversed.
Authors know that anticipation is powerfully conducive of both hope and dread. Once engaged, readers are compelled to read on to discover whether their hopes are vindicated or their dreads justified. But engagement can occur only if the author has successfully made readers want to know and truly care about what happens.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
[More to follow]
Projected topics in this thread:
• R. Austin Freeman’s “inverted detective story” (Dr. Thorndyke), where readers witness the crime and know who the murderer is. This is a special category of Suspense: the generative device is wondering whether and by what means the killer will be caught, and watching the detective reconstruct the crime, gather evidence, and apprehend the perpetrator. (Represented in recent years by the popular Columbo TV series, with Peter Falk as the detective.) The inverted detective story tends to force readers into the role of spectators rather than being detectives in their own right working to unravel the mystery alongside the protagonists or in competition with them.
Suspense generated by:
• Cliffhangers
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!”
• Sequence of connected events (the domino effect) which (perhaps) can be partially foreseen.
• Reader’s “participating” in the planning of events to come: watching the caper being organized, and therefore knowing what could go right or what might go wrong; then watching the caper unfold
• Readers witnessing the introduction of complications and stumbling blocks which might disrupt a well-planned caper.
• Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relationship, etc.)
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue.
• Solution of problem or puzzle (perhaps against a deadline of some sort), or the cracking of a “code” (Can it be done? It better be!)
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): something to anticipate, to look forward to (with eagerness or dread)
• Danger to be faced or escaped from
• Action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time?, etc.)
Suspense as a function of:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
And perhaps we will discover many additional topics and categories.
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
___________
In his short story “Knock”, Fredric Brown says the following:
“There is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long.
‘The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door . . .’
“Two sentences and an ellipsis of three dots. The horror, of course, isn’t in the two sentences at all; it’s in the ellipsis, the implication: what knocked at the door? Faced with the unknown, the human mind supplies something vaguely horrible.”1
1Fredric Brown, “Knock”, in Shot in the Dark, ed. Judith Merril (Bantam Books, 1950), p. 40
I'd like to start a thread called “The Importance of Suspense" with a group of posts and comments focusing on "The Categories of Suspense in Mystery-Writing: How to Launch and Maintain Them”. I’ll kick it off it with a first installment (with more to follow). Please comment; I’d really like to know your thoughts on the topic.
________________________________________
As authors of mysteries, how do we keep our readers turning pages? By netting them in a web of Suspense, using as many types and categories of withholding and surprise as possible. If a story’s interesting and well-told, readers will be curious to know what comes next in the narrative, and how the plot will be resolved. While readers’ curiosity certainly contributes to the creation of the Suspense they experience, management of their curiosity is not totally within the author’s control. But what authors do have complete control over are the devices for generating Suspense which they employ in weaving their web.
Before discussing the devices which produce different categories of Suspense (some of them peculiar to the mystery genre), we need a general definition: In a literary context, Suspense is a state of mind created when readers (a) do not know what’s coming next in the narrative or what the outcome of a conflict or sequence of events will be, but (b) want to know, and (c) care about what happens. The last two are crucial: if readers don’t want to know what happens, or don’t care about events and outcomes, they probably won’t finish the book.
To create a web of suspense, authors must keep their readers continuously “guessing” as to the next developmental incident and the shape of ultimate outcomes. Predictability is the great enemy of Suspense. Readers should not be allowed to know with certainty what lies ahead, and authors should sprinkle the path with surprises.
Knowing that surprises will occur provides readers with pleasurable anticipation and keeps them wondering what they will find around the next bend. This “looking ahead”—informed by (b) and (c) above—urges readers onward, anticipating (1) the probability of being frequently surprised and (2) learning whether their expectations regarding outcomes are to be fulfilled or reversed.
Authors know that anticipation is powerfully conducive of both hope and dread. Once engaged, readers are compelled to read on to discover whether their hopes are vindicated or their dreads justified. But engagement can occur only if the author has successfully made readers want to know and truly care about what happens.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
[More to follow]
Projected topics in this thread:
• R. Austin Freeman’s “inverted detective story” (Dr. Thorndyke), where readers witness the crime and know who the murderer is. This is a special category of Suspense: the generative device is wondering whether and by what means the killer will be caught, and watching the detective reconstruct the crime, gather evidence, and apprehend the perpetrator. (Represented in recent years by the popular Columbo TV series, with Peter Falk as the detective.) The inverted detective story tends to force readers into the role of spectators rather than being detectives in their own right working to unravel the mystery alongside the protagonists or in competition with them.
Suspense generated by:
• Cliffhangers
• Reader’s knowledge of something unknown to the detective: “Don’t open that closet!”
• Sequence of connected events (the domino effect) which (perhaps) can be partially foreseen.
• Reader’s “participating” in the planning of events to come: watching the caper being organized, and therefore knowing what could go right or what might go wrong; then watching the caper unfold
• Readers witnessing the introduction of complications and stumbling blocks which might disrupt a well-planned caper.
• Interaction of characters (competition, misunderstanding, hostility, love relationship, etc.)
• The progress of misunderstanding or crucial revelations within dialogue.
• Solution of problem or puzzle (perhaps against a deadline of some sort), or the cracking of a “code” (Can it be done? It better be!)
• Foreshadowing (perhaps in dialogue): something to anticipate, to look forward to (with eagerness or dread)
• Danger to be faced or escaped from
• Action or event (the chase, the pursuit, a coming assassination, will they find the child in time?, etc.)
Suspense as a function of:
• Verbal choices by the author
• Narrative pacing
• Withholding of information (from reader or protagonist)
• Setting, locale, atmosphere (Dartmoor, Vienna 1882, Mexico, a large hotel, a ski resort, a morgue)
• Isolation (mountain cabin in blizzard, secluded island with no helicopter or telephone, a dark cellar (“No one will hear your screams.”)
And perhaps we will discover many additional topics and categories.
Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009
___________
In his short story “Knock”, Fredric Brown says the following:
“There is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long.
‘The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door . . .’
“Two sentences and an ellipsis of three dots. The horror, of course, isn’t in the two sentences at all; it’s in the ellipsis, the implication: what knocked at the door? Faced with the unknown, the human mind supplies something vaguely horrible.”1
1Fredric Brown, “Knock”, in Shot in the Dark, ed. Judith Merril (Bantam Books, 1950), p. 40
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