Creating Suspense

[donutsweeper]

Another writing/reading question for people.

What are your opinions on creation suspense/tension by using exposition to show something outside of what the characters are aware of? For example:

Neither of them noticed the man on hill, watching their every move.

In visual media this is quite powerful, usually done by shifting the camera behind a bush and watching the heroes for a minute through that perspective (possibly with the slightest hint of someone or something pushing some of the branches out of the way.)

Is it a jarring effect in prose? Does it depend on the overall POV of the story?

Comments

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I think this is another one where 'it all depends'. It's the kind of thing that I instinctively feel you shouldn't do, because it won't work, but done properly, it can absolutely work.

Personally, I shy away from it, but then I tend to write tightly in a characters' POV, and pulling out of it breaks the flow for me. But if you're going to do 'ominous' for a little while, I think it could work. I'd want more hints than just this, and to really, really build the tension up before revealing what's going on and the pay off would have to be worth it, but. Done right, it could work, just not in my writing :)

It's the kind of thing... *tries to find the words* I'd want to know the writer had done it deliberately, knowing what they're doing, not as a shortcut, if that makes sense.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I'm debating how to work something in to a story and my instinct, in this case, is it would be a cop out to do it this way. It's such an easy solution though, and I was wondering what other people thought.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*smiles* If your instinct is that it's a cop out, then it probably is ;)

Humans do have a sixth sense for when they're being watched, though. Could you work it in that way somehow, with the characters *feeling* like they're being watched, and build it that way? Maybe?

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

hmmm, that might work. Jack starting to have a niggly notion, but then random distraction that must be dealt with then and there and lets the unease slide. Maybe.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I think especially if it's Jack, he'd *know*. That's another good traditional trope - someone 'senses' something suspicious, but someone else distracts them and the feeling goes away.

I don't mean trope to be a bad thing, btw. It's like a signal to the reader that Something Is Happening, almost a short-hand if you do it right :) For me, that's better than having to pull out of POV, but that is just me...

[aeron-lanart.livejournal.com]

If you're doing omni, it will work. If you're doing a tighter pov then you probably shouldn't use it. Agree with Jades about the *feeling* of being watched though and then there's the 'seeing things from the corner of your eye' thing too. I'm sure there's a posh word for that, but I can't remember it but if I do, I want to use it as the title for my TBB!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the Something Is Happening, with caps for emphasis. I know what you mean.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I don't tend to write omni POV, usually it's pure 3rd person with no depth or specific focus. I don't remember the word for that.

Corner of the eye thing can be powerful, if written well. I suppose that's the key to all the 'on writing' thinky discussion I've been posting lately. It has to be written well.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. But then, I pretty much hate 3rd person omniscient.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

It's just a cop out *nods*
\
I knew that, but I needed others to push me into accepting it.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

I'd shy away from the "sensing someone watching", though, unless the person has some sort of stated psychic powers. No one will "sense" someone watching them from a distance. They might feel exposed in the open or suspect the bad guy could be watching (because that's what *they'd* do), but unless the watcher is close enough to be heard or even smelled (cologne, cigar, even *garlic*), anything else for a normal human is going to be jarring. The only thing that'll work from a distance would be, as someone mentioned, movement out of the corner of the eye, but that could be almost anything and the character should realize that, even if he decides to err on the side of caution. Oh, catching sight of a vague shape that doesn't belong, could possibly work, too. But that's a tad more than simply 'sensing'.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

:-) Yeah. There are better ways to build suspense. Shoot, depending on the character, his own fears could do a far better job.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Jack does appear to have some psychic abilities, or at least a better sense of the world around him than most. But any good investigation/cop/etc when at a crime scene can have that niggly feeling that there's something else there that they are missing

[tejas.livejournal.com]

That's not extrasensory perception, though, that's experience and pattern matching and all sorts of things that go into being a good investigator. Intuition isn't ESP, it has to do with the way the brain processes data acquired by normal senses.

Any additional senses Jack might have, I'll leave to you because I don't know that canon well enough to say yea or nay. :-)

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

True, intuition is not ESP, but it can lead the character to think that something isn't right about the crime scene, which is probably all I need to make known.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Just make sure that whatever his intuition tells him is something that's in the realm of possibility. It has to be something within range of his five senses or be something he can put together from his experience and knowledge.

[snufflesdbear.livejournal.com]

Nothing to add. Just wanted to say Thanks, these have been great Thiny Thoughht discussioons you've been having!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I'll have to play around with it to make it work. *nods* writing can be complicated to try to do properly, but better that than just going with the easy route, right?

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Glad you're appreciating them. Sometimes, like this time, I wind up answering my own question, but if I hadn't written it all out, I might not have come up with the answer!

[tejas.livejournal.com]

YES! And, the best part is that what's hard to do today gets easier every time you approach it. ;-)

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

here's hoping that's the case! :)

Although, sometimes I find it makes reading harder because I'm more critical with the stories I read. Now, when I'm reading something that overuses epithets (for example) it really annoys me.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's a good sign. It means you're reading as a writer. It's an unavoidable condition once you get to a certain point. :-)

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

It certainly has sped up my use of the back button

[tejas.livejournal.com]

LOL!!! Yep. I know the feeling.

[awanderingbard.livejournal.com]

I think it would depend on the POV, definitely. If you are strictly from one person's POV, even if it's 3rd Person, you shouldn't go out of it. That just screams 'writer's trick' to me.

I'm not sure I'd like it in any form, though. In visual media, it's fine and good, but I think there are better ways to build up tension than to randomly throw something like that in. If you want to be very suspenseful, I feel like it would be better to have the reader completely unaware of what was going on until it happened. I mean, if a creature's going to jump on your back, you want the reader to go 'oh sh*t!', not to go 'oh, that's the thing that was mentioned three chapters ago'.

However, I will admit that I don't generally read 'suspenseful' things, so I don't have a lot of experience in the different ways it could be handled.

In a similar vein (vain?), on the show Eleventh Hour, one thing I've found very interesting is that they don't let you wonder about exactly who is committing the crime a lot of the time. You see the villain working and the heroes attempting to catch up with the villain, so there's no 'oh, he did it moment'. I guess it's because the point of the show is 'in what sciency way can we save the world from this bad sciency thing', rather than 'who could be doing such a horrific sciency thing?'.