Do you create a suspense question for your stories?

Telling a good story is much more than just organizing a series of interesting chronological events. There is the “how” of storytelling in addition to the “what.” Skilled fiction writers use a variety of dramatic devices to make their stories much more attractive and emotional for audiences.

In the next few editions of the Story Guy Newsletter, I will be briefly discussing some of the main dramatic techniques that all storytellers should be applying in their stories. Essential to these dramatic techniques is how a writer gives (or in one case doesn’t give) information to the audience to inspire specific thoughts, ideas, and emotions in them. First up is suspense. Every story must create a feeling of suspense in its readers or viewers.

What is Suspense?

Suspense is the feeling of worry or curiosity about the uncertainty regarding an expected event. That is, for example, an audience has been given a story conflict (information!) to worry about but doesn’t know the exact conclusion or result of this conflict. Arguably, suspense is the top way writers seduce and manipulate an audience. Audiences enjoy being held in suspense and skilled writers know how to manipulate readers or viewers to feel suspense by the way they play their story events. More specifically, to create suspense, writers play their conflicts and events so that the audience will ask questions about them. Such big questions as:

What will happen next?

Who will win?

What will this character choose?

What will result from this terrible choice?

What will this character do when he/she learns this vital information?

Writing Takeaway

Every story needs one big main suspense question that pulls the audience into and through the events. The major way to do this is to develop a suspense question about the protagonist’s main goal and its biggest conflict/obstacle. Audiences will then anxiously consume the whole story to find out, for example, who wins or loses this main conflict and how and why.

Consider these film examples of good main suspense questions:

Die Hard: Will John McClane rescue his wife to safety and reunite with her?

Saving Mr. Banks: Will P. L. Travers change so she can accept Walt Disney’s offer to produce her Mary Poppins book as a film?

Casablanca: Will Rick and Ilsa reunite and love each other?

If you do not create and play a high-stakes main suspense question for your story, you will not engage your audience. As a storyteller, you must be consciously aware of what is a suspense question so you can devise, progress, and climax it in your story. Then you can really hook an audience!

Stories are ideas in action!

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