Essay: Building Suspense


by O'Keefe

Greetings, audience. I'm sure you have noticed that suspense is the one thing that keeps us from dropping the fool book we are reading, or stomping out of a theater and demanding our ill-spent bread back (bread is slang for money - or so I'm told). The average superhero movie is packed with this tool; for if it weren't, Iron Man wouldn't be as iron as he is today. For example, if the film was merely about the goofy-dressed hero fighting crime with his expendable loyal friend, and revealing his identity to his girlfriend (who has red hair) in an obscure location, you would fall asleep halfway into the movie. But there has to be a villain, who has cool armor, and really gets the audience going (though not out of the theater). Usually it's a letdown. The villain either is goofily evil or a crybaby. But you always hear the fool viewers argue, "Well, the suspense was good."
       So no plot is needed. All you need is the classical tool of suspense, which only J.R.R. Tolkein can seem to do without (I hear he uses elf magic to get by). So if you ever wanted to write a successful novel, this article is for you. I will teach you how to build suspense.
But first I must tell you why you need suspense. Oh, wait. I already did. Then I will give you some classic examples of suspense. Remember in the play Julius Caesar you didn't read, in which Caesar himself is blabbing on about some information that the audience isn't supposed to care about, while his trustworthy senators are planning to punch holes in him? That was suspense. I bet you were just crying for the assassins to kill the emperor. You were probably on the traitors' side, and cheering when Julius, God rest his soul, finally said, "Et tu, Brute?"
Now I will tell you how to build suspense. But before I do, I will have to tell you a bad way in which suspense can be applied. Remember that math teacher you had who started staring at you as if you did something wrong, and you had to come out of a perfectly fine daydream to have a staring match for half the period? You would be exchanging small sentences with few syllables, in between each a long period of suspenseful silence. The suspense would build like a rocket headed for Hell, and it would be broken by the teacher saying, "Don't do that again." And the worst part being you had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. This is a letdown of suspense. Better had it been that a screaming match erupted, in which you were both tearing up and overflowing with emotion. Maybe even some brawling. But alas, it just ends with you scratching your scalp.
     And now I will tell you how to build suspense.
     But before that happens, I must warn you once again: sometimes, suspense is just plain annoying. There's a piece of information you want to know - you need to know - and the text is going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, and you can't even take in the material, despite it being italicized in an annoying fashion for reasons unknown and probably dumb, and all you want is that one piece of information. I sympathize. I have read many poorly-written how-to articles which use this immature form of suspense, and I want to tear my eyes out and throw them to Canada half the time, while in the other half I just want to scream in the rain, looking up at the sky even though there isn't anything all that interesting to see up there, the ground being a more interesting specimen to scream at. Maybe I would even fall to my knees, but then my tight jeans woupd  muddy, and you don't want that to happen.
     So before I build suspense with you, I will have to caution you: use it wisely. Don't make it goofy, always make it worthwhile. And above all, do not make it a letdown.


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