Whether we’re anticipating a Happy New Year or dreading a deadline, our lives are governed by the clock. In a post on CrimeReads, Andrew Bourelle says nothing creates suspense like a countdown.
“Films—from High Noon to Escape from New York to Back to the Future to practically every James Bond or Mission: Impossible movie—are full of ticking clocks,” Bourelle writes. Alfred Hitchcock famously said that suspense is not the explosion, but waiting for the bomb to go off. The tension is higher when the audience knows about a countdown but the characters do not. “The prom scene in Carrie exemplifies the ‘bomb under the table,’ as the audience sees the bucket of pig blood perched in the rafters long before Carrie steps onto the stage,” Boutelle notes.
“Some writers might think the ticking-clock is a contrived device, but our everyday lives are full of ticking clocks,” he adds. “As a reader, I love when a narrative is unapologetically built on a countdown.” Boutelle highlights some novels that create suspense with deadlines and countdowns, including Charlotte’s Web, Frankenstein, Stephen King’s The Running Man, and Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs.
