This episode of Writing Excuses features our special guest, Smokey-Smoke Sanderson who spent the first half of September on tour abusing his voice.

Suspense! What is it? What isn’t it? What is the relationship between suspense and mystery, and for that matter horror, humor, and adventure? This ‘cast is chock full of pithy quotes, useful advice, and anecdotal examples.

Oh, and a bomb. THERE IS A BOMB HIDDEN UNDER THE TABLE.

DUN DUN DUN DUUNNNN!

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson, which was the #1 bestselling book on Audible the week prior to this recording. Forty-five hours and thirty minutes of Sandersonian fantastical goodness, read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading.

Writing Prompt: “I have coated my left hand with magical ink.”

That Episode on Pacing We Promised to Link To: Right here, and it features James Dashner!

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Transcript

As transcribed by Mike Barker

Key Points: Put a bomb under the table. If it goes off, that’s action. If it doesn’t go off, that’s suspense. Mystery is when you can’t see what’s under the table. Mystery is about ideas that we don’t understand, while suspense is about characters we don’t understand. Both create tension. Think hard about killing a character just to create tension — it may come across to readers as a cheap trick. Make sure that there are good reasons for them to die, or use some alternate significant loss. Consider ticking time bombs and other tricks for introducing a sense of progress, too.

[Brandon] This is Writing Excuses Season Five Episode Four, Creating Suspense.
[Howard] [musical dun-dun-dun-dun!] 15 minutes long because you’re in a hurry.
[Dan] And we’re not that smart.
[Brandon] I’m Brandon.
[Dan] I’m Dan.
[Howard] [musical dun-dun-dun-dun!] I’m Howard.
[Brandon] I apologize for my voice this week, guys. This is what happens when you tour for a couple of weeks. It kind of throws out your voice.
[Dan] And take up smoking.

[Brandon] Creating suspense. We want to ask Dan how to do this.
[Dan] Okay.
[Brandon] Hah!
[Howard] Nice seg.
[Dan] Sure. Just because I write thrillers, huh?
[Brandon] Uh-huh.
[Dan] I’m going to let Alfred Hitchcock answer this question.
[Brandon] Is he here?
[Dan] With one of my favorite writing quotes of all time. I actually can’t do a Hitchcock impersonation. I apologize. But… he said, “You put a bomb under the table. If it goes off, that’s action. If it doesn’t go off, that’s suspense.” You can sit and listen to people talking about baseball instead of being blown up by a bomb, and that increases the suspense of the scene, because you know what the problem is and it hasn’t happened yet.
[Brandon] Okay. So how do we do that?

[Howard] I think one of the best examples of that in recent film is… and I’m not recommending anybody actually go see this… in Glorious Bastards, there are two or three scenes in that that are full of dialogue in which you know that all of the pieces are in place for something absolutely horrible to happen, and it keeps not happening. Now, it is an action film. There is plenty of action in there. But that has two of the absolute tensest scenes in it I’ve ever seen. One is where the evil Jew-hunting Nazi is questioning a French man in English because he knows that the man is hiding Jews in the basement and they don’t speak English. That conversation turns darker and darker and darker, and we know something horrible is going to happen. But he’s got such a pleasant tone of voice. It’s very sneaky. I don’t know if you guys have seen the film.
[Brandon] I haven’t.
[Dan] Another great movie example of this, of how to create suspense by putting the bomb under the table, is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. At the end, when he has to choose the cup. He knows if he gets the right cup, it will bring everlasting life, and if he gets the wrong cup, something bad will happen. But we don’t know what that is. So, the moviemakers show us someone choose the wrong cup, and we see exactly what happens and how horrible it is. Then he makes Indiana Jones choose. So we sit there, full of suspense because we know exactly what’s going to happen, if he chooses wrong.
[Brandon] One thing that keeps popping in my head as we’re talking about this. When I was a newer writer, I always had trouble determining what the difference between mystery and suspense was. I think maybe just talking to people about that might be useful, because what we were talking about… we actually are talking about suspense, not mystery. It actually occurs to me that suspense and mystery are polar opposites in some ways. Because you have suspense by giving away a little bit of the mystery, like Dan just explained. We have a mystery, what happens when you take the cup. Well, that can be suspenseful, but it’s not going to be suspenseful unless enough information has been given to know that it’s horrifying. An excellent example of this… oh, go ahead, Howard.

[Howard] I was going to say… to add to Hitchcock’s pithy quote… action’s when the bomb explodes, suspense is when the bomb doesn’t explode, and mystery is when we can’t see what’s under the table.
[Brandon] Exactly. A great example of this distinction would be Dune. I’ve mentioned Dune often before because it does some very interesting things. The people who aren’t themselves writers don’t sometimes notice. Dune, of course, is an omniscient. We’ve talked about it being omniscient before. One of the fascinating things is when a character walks onstage who is a traitor or a rebel or something, it goes into their heads and they think, “I’m going to betray these people.” That… on the books, sometimes, you might say, “Well, that’s the wrong thing to do. You’re giving away the mystery, you’re giving away who the bad guy is, you’re giving away all of their plans.” But it works fantastically because number one hit someone who knows how to write omniscient being true to the omniscient form which is a completely different podcast but also it’s giving up mystery for suspense. Oh, we know that this person is going to betray them and that they are in serious trouble. What’s going to happen when the traitor comes out? Is he actually going to be able to pull off his dastardly plot or is he not going to? That sense of tension is just wonderful in that story.
[Howard] Coming back to the metaphor, in Dune, we want the characters to lift up the tablecloth and look at the bomb. Please, it’s right there. Because it’s written in omniscient, we’ve already been able to peek under the tablecloth. We know how unlikely it is. The tablecloth is perfectly placed, and has been there for generations. I love the Dune books for exactly that reason. We could see all of the motivations and all the betrayal coming, and we are scared of it for that exact reason.

[Brandon] So how do we decide, if we are a writer, when we want mystery and when we went suspense? Because it’s inherently by giving away mystery, you can gain suspense. There’s a trade-off.
[Howard] Both of them create tension.
[Brandon] Which is good.
[Howard] Which is awesome. We love that. For me, I think I do better with suspense then with mystery because of the punch line. I need to keep revealing things in order for the funny to happen. That makes it hard to carry a mystery. But it’s not hard to carry suspense. I can throw enough threads down that…
[Dan] One of the reasons for that, and this will be my answer to the question, is you can choose whether you want mystery or suspense depending on what you want the scene to accomplish and how character driven you want it to be. Because when you’re dealing with mystery, really you’re dealing with ideas. We have tension because there are ideas we don’t understand. Whereas with suspense, it really comes down to the character. We know what’s going on. But we don’t know how the characters will react or if they will react in time. It brings it, I think, a little more personal.

[Brandon] I do think we’re downplaying mystery a little bit too much. Sometimes there are things that when revealed themselves… that you have that pop of “oh, that’s cool.” But if you revealed them early, may not actually build that suspense. There are some things where you’ve got a mystery. I look at some of the books I’ve written or I’ve read… where you’ve got some sort of cool twist… for instance, with the magic system. If you were to reveal this early, it would actually deflate the tension. The how-does-it-work is its own mystery, driving it forward.
[Dan] Definitely. Yes.
[Howard] But then when you reveal… yeah, so the reader is saying or asking themselves, “Gosh, how is this going to play out? What’s the reveal going to be?” Then there’s a reveal. Now they’re looking at that… whether it’s a magic system or whatever. They’re looking at it and saying, “Oh. Boy, this changes everything. I sure hope they figure it out in time.” Now you’ve moved from mystery to suspense. But you’ve maintained the tension. I think that tool right there… if you want to maintain the tension, but not have the reader just go to pieces and lose all their hair, switching between mystery and suspense is probably a good way to do it.

[Brandon] Let’s do our book of the week this week. Howard, you are going to…
[Howard] Oh. You know what, it occurred to me that instead of us picking a book that one of us or all of us have read, we should just go to audible’s site and pick something that’s really popular. Offhand, Brandon, you’ve got your laptop open there in front of you. What was their number one download last week?
[Brandon] Well, Howard, that would have been my book. Surprise, surprise.
[Dan] Oho! Such a twist.
[Howard] I was selling the joke, Brandon.
[Brandon] Yeah, you were reading it straight. There’s no way Dan or I could do that. You have a radio voice. I have no voice. Yes. The Way of Kings. Actually, I think it would be two weeks by now when this thing comes out, was the number one best-selling book on audible last week.
[Howard] And that was read by?
[Brandon] Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, who did the Wheel of Time books. They are fantastic. I asked for them specifically. You can’t ask for a better deal than this. 45 hours and 30 minutes worth of entertainment.
[Howard] Oh my gosh.
[Dan] For free.
[Brandon] For free. If you try the free 14 day trial.
[Howard] 14 day trial.
[Brandon] You go to audiblepodcast.com/excuse. Support the podcast, listen to my book, and get… what… several days worth of entertainment.
[Howard] How many two hour commutes is that? 21?
[Dan] Well, plus the really… the upside… the big selling point here also is that you’re not going to throw your back out lugging that 20 pound book around.
[Brandon] That’s right. That’s right.
[Howard] No, the real upside is… and I’m sorry to say this with a straight face, but I have to… it’s a really, really good book. I mean, it… seriously…
[Brandon] Oh. Well, thank you.
[Dan] For those of you not benefiting from the video feed, he totally had a straight face.
[Howard] Fingers crossed… no.
[Brandon] We will be posting, by the way, all the artwork for it online eventually, so that people who listen to the audio book can go see the artwork. At least, that’s part of it.
[Howard] Oh, sweet.

[Brandon] But enough about my book. Let’s get back to suspense.
[Dan] Okay. I want to take our discussion in a little different direction, if I can.
[Brandon] Oh, wow.
[Howard] [musical dun-dun-dun-dun!]
[Dan] Oh! And talk about creating suspense in a different way, which is basically convincing the audience that you mean business. For example, the movie Serenity which has a big thing that happens at the end, and I’m not going to say who dies, but somebody dies. It’s a beloved character. As soon as that person goes, the audience knows that anyone is game. It creates a lot of suspense in the finale of that movie because anyone else could now die. If the creators have gone that far, they could do it again.
[Brandon] I’m going to say, personally, I hate it when creators do that. I’m going to say it, just because it destroys the illusion for me, particularly when they actually come out and say that. I don’t know if Joss ever did. He might have. I’m thinking of… there was a show, 24. The first season, someone big gets killed at the end. If you’re actually watching the commentary, they say, “We wanted to prove that we would kill anybody.” Which, as a writer, actually drives me up the wall, because I want character depth to be meaningful to the story, and be what the story demands. Not to have them die in order to create suspense. Personally.
[Howard] In the Serenity example, one of the characters says, “Do you really think any of us are going to get out of this alive?” And one of the other characters says, “Well, I might live.” That’s the point at which (a) you realize any of them could die, and (b) you realize Joss Whedon is totally playing me. He killed a character off so that we could have this. I agree with you, Brandon. I feel like if that’s the only way you can pull it off, it’s a crutch, it’s a cheap trick, there’s got to be better ways to create suspense over what’s going to happen than to show something horrible happening just so you can have shown it.
[Brandon] But I will say, it can be very effective.
[Dan] It can work… I don’t think that… I mean, obviously, if you kill someone just because you are capricious as a creator, then certainly, that’s a cheat. But I think that you can kill someone for multiple reasons. I happen to believe this as a serial killer author.
[Brandon] Right. Well, I mean… George R.R. Martin has made a… whatever career he’s on… third or fourth, whatever current incarnation of George R. R. Martin we say this is, he’s made a career of being known as the guy that pulls no punches. He’s done that by consistently killing characters no one thought that he would. Part of that is probably just the fact that he is saying, “I’m going to allow myself to kill anybody.” That creates tension. Now there are some readers who don’t want to read books like that. But you still have to be able to convince them… they want to be convinced that anyone can die… but they don’t want anyone to actually die. How do you do that?

[Dan] Okay. Well. What I do with my guy in my books…
[Brandon] This is great. Let me just add an addendum to this. You’re writing first-person. We know that your character can’t die. And yet you want the reader to still be afraid for them.
[Dan] Yeah. So I actually cheat in a different manner. What I do with John Cleaver is… it’s first-person, you know he’s not actually going to die. But you don’t know if he’s going to stay a good guy. So I created an alternate fail condition so to speak that is much more easy and much more believable. So if you read the books, at any point, especially as we near the climax, it’s entirely possible… and I’m not going to say whether it’s actually ever happened or not because you will be surprised… that he could trip, that he could fall into the pit of becoming the bad person he’s trying to not become.
[Brandon] I don’t think that’s cheating at all. I think that’s wonderful.
[Howard] That’s not a cheat. That’s actually more grounded in reality than most of the fiction we read. When you think about it, the sort of things that actually builds suspense for us are not, “Whoo, am I going to die today?” It’s “Whoo, am I going to pass that test?”

[Brandon] Right. Well. If we look at something Lovecraftian… why is Lovecraft so much more horrifying than a slasher flick is? It kind of comes into that. Lovecraft… you know… you’re reading. Number one, you could compare the writing styles and things like that. But even a really well written slasher flick, you’re not really caring, because it’s so removed from reality. Yet this whole witnessing a character going insane, even in the bizarre circumstances… there’s something about that. That alternate lose condition of main character goes bonkers, that creates this wonderful sense of suspense.
[Dan] let me add an addendum to this conversation. My new book, the sequel to I Am Not a Serial Killer, comes out in two days on the 28th of September.
[Brandon] Why did we get rid of the whole singing… this has been the most…
[Dan] We’re always pushing our own stuff this week.
[Brandon] We should add an extra minute or two to make up for it.
[Howard] While we’re on the subject of our own stuff…[laughter]… I’m not trying to get anybody to buy anything. I was just going to say, in terms of building suspense in Schlock Mercenary, I’m writing something that a lot of people, they want it to be happy, they want it to be funny, and I still have to have the threat of bad things happening. So taking a page from Dan, rather than putting a bomb under the table and we all worry about whether or not it is going to explode, I have characters in one place talking about, “Well, I sure hope so-and-so doesn’t do such-and-such.” Then we cut over to so-and-so and we see that he or she is about to do such-and-such.
[Brandon] But you also have some sort of… you have this special cheat that you webcomics use, which is the…
[Dan] Man, we are all cheating today.
[Brandon] “Well, I’m not going to tell you what happens until tomorrow.” So you’ve got this… when things get tense, they can get really tense because it’s like, “Oh, what’s going to happen? I can’t find out. I can’t turn the page.”
[Howard] When I was at WorldCon, I met a huge number of people who only read my site like once every three weeks, and I wanted to strangle all of them, because you’re supposed to be there every day, rather than reading it all in one block. But… that’s okay. I didn’t just say I want to strangle my fans who only read occasionally. I did not just say that. Read whenever you want.
[Dan] Please.

[Brandon] All right. I’m going to end this podcast by mentioning one thing we didn’t even touch on in this, is the sense of progress by actually putting a ticking time bomb in your story. As Schlock Mercenary did just recently with saying we’re going to call an end to this on this day. Everything has to be wrapped up by then. How is it going to happen? These sorts of things. We did an entire podcast on sense of progress, I seem to recall. So if you want some extra help on this, I bet you could go listen to that podcast and apply the sort of things we’ve been talking about here to this sense of progress, to give a little bit more information to your readers and then to leave them in suspense.
[Howard] I will totally link to that when I do the writeup.
[Dan] Nice.

[Brandon] Excellent. All right. We have a very special writing prompt for you this week. Producer Jordo was sent a very touching piece of mail by someone in the Netherlands. It was just delightful. We’re going to read just one line from this. You have to take this and make a story out of it.
[Howard] I have coated my left hand with magical ink.
[Brandon] There you go. You’re totally out of excuses. This has been Writing Excuses, and I can’t talk. Now go write!