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CHEAP_SUSPENDERS

                                              February 18, 2005
  Suspense vs. Mysery
 
  Once upon a time, I read a few books on
  "Mystery and Suspense" writing.  The author
  of one of them argued:
                           
      "The known is more suspenseful     
      than the unknown."                 
                                         
  In support of this thesis, he asked the
  reader to compare two scenarios.  In one,
  a woman comes home, walks by a closet, and
  a burglar suddenly jumps out and grabs
  her.  In the other, we in the audience see
  the burglar take cover in the closet, and
  as the woman walks back and forth, we
  worry what will happen every time she gets
  near the closet.
                                     
     First thought: this may be more        
     "suspenseful", but it's terrible.      
     This is incredibly cheesy garbage.     
                                            
        And it's symptomatic of the        
        problems with Suspense.


  With Suspense, a wedge is driven between
  the point-of-view and the audience.
  There's an artificial omniscient                 ALL_WRONG
  character written into the scene, an
  observer that knows more than anyone in
  the story does, that often knows more
  than anyone could possibly know.

  In suspense writing, the audience always
  looks on the main character with
  contempt.  "No, don't do that you  
  idiot!  What are you thinking of?!"

  You've got to step back and remind yourself
  that the main character doesn't know about  
  that dangerous character lurking in the closet,
  and that it's not, in fact, reasonable to go
  through life taking precautions against that
  possibility.

  But even after taking that step backwards,
  the audience still remains hyper-critical of
  the main character.  In the (not uncommon)
  event that main character is doing  
  something stupid (perhaps making a mistake
  at the author's behest to move the plot along),
  the audience is unlikely to have much sympathy.


A side issue: once upon a time,
authors of mystery novels looked
down on what they called the "had     I have the impression
I but known" school.                  that the new generation
                                      of writers is completely
  It was a common device, to          unaware that this might
  try to inject suspense into         be an issue.
  a dull narrative: instead of
  "I went in to buy a new set            The corruption of film?
  of tires", it would be "Had            Writing mystery is hard
  I but known what would happen          compared to suspense,
  when I went in to buy a new            especially in the
  set of tires, I would've               compressed timeframe
  driven them bald."                     of a film.

                                            It's very common in a movie
     This is, once                          to begin with a very mysterious
     again, a violation                     situation-- cultivating viewer 
     of viewpoint.                          identification with the       
                                            main character-- and then 
         Instead of asking the              abruptly drop it: an explanation
         reader to identify                 of the mystery is presented
         with the main                      to the audience by just cutting
         character, you're                  to another viewpoint that
         slipping the reader                knows the answer (e.g. the
         information that the               bad guys plotting their next
         main character does                move).
         not yet know.
                                            A good example is "North by
                                            Northwest": the Cary Grant
                                            character is initially plunged
With the Mystery form, there's a            into a strange, nightmarish
different problem.  By design,              situation.  The audience learns
things stay in a strange                    what's actually happening long
unresolved state for a long time.           before he does, in this case by
The other shoe doesn't drop until           cutting to a scene where the
rather late in the story... and             good guys discuss why they
this can be very fatiguing.                 can't tell the main character
                                            what's happening.

   As a practical matter, it's hard for
   the detective to remain in the dark
   all the way up to the end of the
   story, so there's a point where "the
   door is closed" between the viewer
   and the hero, where suddenly the
   viewer can now only guess what the       "Now here's my plan..."
   hero is thinking about.
                                                 An extreme case,
                                                 where the door is
The solution of the mystery rarely               never opened:
makes perfect sense, and rarely
even stands out in your mind.                         GLASS_KEY

If you remember anything about a mystery
novel after putting it down, it's likely
to be a quirk of character, or an
atmospheric detail, or something like
that.  Not some piece of trivia like "who
done it".

Presumably this is why the "fair play"
mystery went out of favor.  The                  CASTLE_SKULL
experience of being mystified is what the
mystery is really about, the intellectual
puzzle is a very minor aspect.


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