A new post on Industrial Scripts offers tip for writing suspense. “No film technique elicits the fear of the unknown more effectively than writing suspense,” the article says. “As humans, we’d rather know something bad is coming, than be in the unknown. This is why suspenseful movies grab us.”
The tricks to writing great suspense include:
- High Stakes. If the outcome isn’t important, your attempts at suspense will fall flat. Even when the audience knows that your protagonist will succeed, some elements should be in doubt. For example, in The Dark Knight, we might expect Batman to defeat the Joker in the end, but we don’t know whether he’ll be able to save Harvey Dent or Rachel Dawes. By putting the hero’s values – love and duty – in conflict, the writers added emotional suspense to the scene.
- The Ticking Clock. In that scene, there’s also a ticking clock. Batman and the police have a finite amount of time to save Rachel and Harvey.
- Audience Knowledge. Alfred Hitchcock had a famous definition of the difference between surprise and suspense. If a bomb goes off beneath your protagonist’s feet, that’s a surprise. However, if the audience sees a bomb that the hero does not, you’ve created suspense. In the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds, the audience knows about the Jewish family hiding beneath the floorboards of a farmhouse, while the farmer is interrogated by a Nazi.
- Rules. “Establishing a rule means creating circumstances within a story that drives the actions of the characters,” the article explains. “Establishing a rule that triggers suspense and anxiousness could be powerful for just one scene, or for an entire story, even if it’s not technically a ‘suspenseful movie.'” In The Banshees of Inisherin, one character tells another that he will cut off one of his own fingers every time the other bothers him. Will he follow through on this threat of self-harm? The audience doesn’t know.
- The Story World. In some cases, your setting will provide its own suspense. Films set in a war zone have multiple opportunities to create suspense using background details and side events that intersect with the main character arc. “The rules and nature of the world at hand helps heighten the stakes and create suspense in every moment, setting a standard for the story to always be circling around,” the article says.
