1. Goals
The first step in creating expectations is to identify a goal (or destination) in the character's mind. A killer sits alone in a room, far less suspenseful than a killer chasing a victim;
A long-distance runner wandering aimlessly around the corner is far less suspenseful than he is when he goes to a marathon. Killers and long-distance runners need targets.
Once they have a goal, we suddenly wonder if they can achieve it. Expectations were born.
2. Increase the chips
Goal is an important first step. A person going out to throw away garbage is also a goal, but it does not constitute a suspense that makes our hearts beat faster. One way to create suspense is to raise the chips.
Let's assume that the cleaner comes to collect the garbage once a week, and now he is ringing the doorbell outside the door, and our protagonist has missed the time to throw the garbage for three consecutive weeks.
His narrow foyer was piled high with foul-smelling garbage, and if he missed the opportunity again this time, his landlady would have to drive him out.
The garbage truck has started its engine and is about to leave. Now that the chips have increased, our protagonist has suddenly gone out to throw away the garbage.
Consider the importance of the goal to your character. In this way, seemingly mundane goals can become very important, creating suspense.
How much did he crave it? How long has he longed for it? For example, a paralyzed patient has been struggling to move his fingers for 10 years. For the first time, he was able to move it an inch.
Our hearts beat violently as a result, even though it's nothing to other people.
Considering the importance of one character's goals to others can also increase the stakes. Let's look again at the courier who delivers blood bags to dying patients.
For the courier himself, the matter itself is of no particular importance; but for the person receiving the blood bag, it is a matter of life and death.
So for this courier (if he's like most people), the task of transporting blood bags also becomes very important—we often value other people's things more than our own.
3. Danger
Danger is an effective way to increase suspense. Suppose a character's goal is to swim across a river. Let's add weight to the stakes: if he can't get by, he won't be able to travel with his companions.
The suspense of this scene is moderate. Now let's change the scene, assuming that there are many hungry crocodiles and dangerous whirlpools in the river,
90% of those who tried to cross the river failed, and there was an army behind him chasing him, and if he did not try to cross the river he would be shot. We add to the suspense by increasing the danger.
It can also create suspense when other characters are in danger – especially when your character needs to work to rescue them.
Suspense doesn't necessarily come from our concern for other people, but from our character getting involved in an urgent, high-stakes, urgent goal about something he (theoretically should) care about, or something that might put him at risk.
If your character bumps into a man on the street and is beaten, and he is determined to fight, then suspense will arise.
The suspense could have been stronger, though, because we don't know what kind of person the stranger who was beaten was, and maybe he deserved to be beaten, maybe he provoked a fight, or maybe he might take revenge.
On the other hand, if your character sees that it was his brother who was beaten, the suspense suddenly becomes stronger. Now there was no way he could turn around and walk away because it had something to do with him.
Finally, we must remember that the danger is purely conceptual. Let us feel the danger, it doesn't have to be real in the real world – it just needs to be in the minds of the characters.
For example, a paranoid man believed that someone was chasing him, so he began to run away. Even though no one was actually chasing him, we could feel the suspense in him.
4. Ticking clock
Adding time limits goes a long way toward creating suspense. A student who takes an exam and turns in whenever he wants is obviously not as suspenseful as having to answer in 60 seconds.
Clocks can be used in specific scenarios—such as classrooms—or they can be used to frame the entire work. Some works—especially action thrillers—advance entirely in this way.
Rescue the president in 24 hours (The Great Escape from New York), find the criminal in 48 hours ("48 Hours"), spend all the money in 30 days (The Winemaker's Million Windfall), and so on.
The clock by itself doesn't add to the suspense — the suspense depends entirely on how you use the clock. If the character never looks at the watch, the ticking clock is useless;
But if his eyes are fixed on every movement of the hand, the clock plays an important role. In Night of the Evil Desires, we are given a time limit from the first act:
Detectives must catch the killer within three weeks before the full moon. From the first minute of the movie, stress is everywhere.
The writers weren't satisfied with this, and many scenes had time limits attached, such as the reconnaissance team having to solve a complex riddle within 25 minutes before the newspaper was printed.
What drives us in every scene is the temporal pressure, and the greater temporal pressure pushes us on the level of the whole work and gives the work direction.
5. Nothing can be done
One of the most effective ways to create suspense is to have a character have an important goal and not be able to act.
In the parking lot, a killer walked toward the girl. The girl tried desperately to turn the key, but she couldn't open the car door. The killer got closer. Our hearts began to beat wildly.
Or a girl who recognizes the rapist who hurt her in a crowd and wants to tell someone else, but can't make a sound.
The suspense of the last scene in Rear Window comes from the protagonist's broken leg; he hears the suspect approaching him, but he can't go anywhere. If he could escape from the fire ladder, the suspense would not exist.
A character can also be unable to take intellectual, psychological, or spiritual actions. For example, a person is about to open a safe when he suddenly forgets his password: his mind comes to a standstill.
Or maybe he's not very clever, scheming by a snob who can't respond (like Anthony Hopkins' "Gone to the Sun", where the suspense of a major scene falls).
Psychologically, a mother is unable to help her son, who is in severe depression, and has to watch him become increasingly depressed, and finally ends her life.
Spiritually, a priest comforted a woman who was grieving over the death of her son, but was unable to give her peace of mind.
In all these cases, suspense is painful because we want our characters to act and they can't do anything about it.
6. Unknown
Suppose a character must walk into a basement. In Scene 1, he was told that someone would grab his leg when he reached the third step.
Our figure turned on the light, went down the stairs, saw the man coming, and grabbed his leg on the third step. Everything happened as planned, and there was no suspense here.
In Scene 2, our characters only know what's in the basement, something terrible. He had to go downstairs in total darkness. He didn't know what was going to happen, and groped forward with trepidation.
Suddenly, something grabbed his leg. He would surely scream. So is the audience. In fact, the two scenarios are exactly the same. But Scene 2 has suspense, while Scene 1 doesn't. Why?
There is nothing more terrifying than the unknown. As long as we know what we are going to face, we can endure almost any form of torture.
But let's stay in the dark, give us time to imagine the possibilities, and the suspense will become unbearable. Experts say that's the true face of stress — the anticipation of bad scenarios.
They point out that when we actually experience a bad situation — say, a car accident — our stress level drops to zero. What really causes stress is not the actual scenario, but the unknown.
7. The tension of love
The tension of love can create the strongest suspense. How to use love to create suspense? There are countless possibilities. Forbidden love is one of the most effective methods: a couple of lovers come together despite the opposition of the family (Romeo and Juliet).
The love that occurs between two people in an authoritative and subordinate relationship is often able to create suspense – the teacher and the student ("Peeping Lesson"), the boss and the assistant.
Remember, the most important thing is that once the courtship process is successfully completed and the lovers live happily together, the suspense disappears.
Therefore, to maintain suspense, the writer must extend the process of pursuit as long as possible, or let the lover break up and then let them get back together.
If everything is good in their world, the writer must find a way to sabotage it. An effective way is to create obstacles for their love:
Maybe they have a age gap (Lolita), or a gap in geography, wealth, education, status (Pretty Woman); maybe the woman already belongs to another man (Shakespeare's Love Story).
In many ancient myths, the hero had to go through numerous trials—often impossible or fatal—to win the woman he longed for.
8. Dramatic irony
"Dramatic irony" refers to the fact that we, as readers or viewers, know things that the characters themselves don't know—usually things that affect them.
A young couple swims in the sea, laughing and splashing water on each other. In the distance, a large shark was approaching. The couple was completely unaware of the danger and continued to frolic.
At this point, the shark was closer. This is dramatic irony. There is no suspense for the characters. Neither for sharks. It's a special kind of suspense — a suspense designed only for us. It is very effective.
Let's look at another scene, where our protagonist has dinner with his girlfriend. There is no inherent suspense here.
Now let's make a little change, we know the girl is pregnant and he doesn't know it yet, we know she's ready to tell him the news at dinner. Now that suspense has arisen, we look forward to that moment.
Let's make a little more of a change, we know he was going to propose a breakup at this dinner, but she didn't know it. Now every sentence, every gesture is full of suspense.
A good writer would extend this scene as long as possible; he would fill dinner with false beginnings, hints, distractions, distractions, and silences.
He will torment us for suspense. He can afford to play. It's a powerful setting—because of the dramatic irony—and he'll take everything he can get out of it.
9. Live in the future
An easy way to add suspense is to extend the amount of time a character anticipates something.
If a character is about to take the stage for the most important performance of his life, but has not thought about it beforehand, we will not be nervous about him.
However, if a character is restless on page 100 to meet his girlfriend's parents, our hearts will flutter when he finally steps onto the sidewalk in front of her house—if nothing else, but for him to wait for it for too long.
10. Unresolved
The suspense can be used at the end of a work, making us look forward to a sequel. Pending can also be used in stand-alone scenes.
For example, a person comes home excitedly and eagerly wants to tell his wife a big news at work. They sat down, and he was just about to open his mouth when the doorbell rang. The person who came was his long-lost sister.
They completely forgot what had just happened, and just invited her into the house, followed by a long dinner scene. What helped drive this dinner scene was the previously unresolved scene (his big news) and our desperate need for answers.
In fact, different levels of suspense can be created – perhaps his wife has an important message to tell him.
Maybe their answering machine has 16 messages, and they haven't had a chance to listen, and they know that there is more good news...
With so many unsettled things, the reader will be more engaged in the process of dinner — unless, of course, there are too many unsettled things that make them feel frustrated and simply abandon the whole work.
11. Secrets
If used properly, the secret is enough to create suspense that drives the entire work. Detective fiction is born out of secrecy.
Who is the murderer? What is the thing that the housekeeper did not tell us? Soap operas too. Who is her lover? What was the thing she didn't tell him?
However, you must be careful, because secrets are very obvious means and can appear to be showy and contrived if used excessively or not cleverly enough.
Unfortunately, secrets are also often used as a means of compensating for other suspense deficiencies. Secrets can be used as a complement to suspense on other levels, and should not be shouldered alone.
12. Characters
The type of character you create may help create suspense, or it may hinder it. For example, a horror movie requires a character to be stupid enough to walk into a house that has just been occupied by gangsters and explore on their own.
We know (everyone knows) that gangsters are waiting around the corner, and we'll sigh at the stupidity of the characters. But as he crept through the foyer, we were still nervous.
If the character notices that the door is half open and immediately makes a rational decision to run to the police, there will be no suspense.
Your character can be a hero, and the tension that comes with him standing in front of a house on fire is created because we know he's going to rush in in search of survivors.
Or maybe your character suffers from claustrophobia and collapses whenever he stays in a small space, arranging for him to attend an important business meeting on the 53rd floor of an office building, so he has to take the elevator.
Or maybe your character loves to fight and loves his sister. If we let him know that his sister had just been beaten, our hearts would beat wildly because we knew what he would do according to his personality (Sony in The Godfather).
Simple characters help add suspense to ordinary scenes, which in turn portray character.
Graphics and text are derived from the Web
![The little-known sports story: Meritorious coach Zhang Jing[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)