Suspense

In narratives

Suspense keeps audiences hooked across literature, film, TV, and plays. It can work in two main ways. Sometimes the outcome is unknown, and the tension comes from wondering who did something, what will happen, or how events will unfold. Other times the ending is already clear from earlier events, and the suspense lies in nervously waiting for when it will occur.

Readers feel suspense when they are eager to know what comes next, or when they have a good idea of what is coming but not the exact method. Even in historical fiction, where major life events are already known, the reason behind them creates suspense. Foreshadowing often supports suspense, like hints of a coming national crisis in Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits.

In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, the audience knows Oedipus killed his father, but the play withholds that knowledge from him, building tension as he investigates his past. George Washington Cable's "Jean-ah Poquelin" makes readers curious about a strange odor and a missing brother. Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson has readers waiting to see what happens after a black infant and a white infant are swapped. Ernest J. Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men keeps readers waiting for a murder trial's verdict.

Paradox of suspense

Some authors have addressed the paradox of suspense: narrative tension that remains effective even when uncertainty is neutralized, as repeat audiences know the resolution. Some theories assume true repeat audiences are rare because we forget many details, and interest arises from memory holes; others claim uncertainty remains because during immersion we forget fictionally what we know factually, or because we expect fictional worlds to differ from reality.

Yanal's position is more radical, postulating that narrative tension effective in true repetition should be distinguished from genuine suspense, as uncertainty is part of its definition. Baroni proposes naming rappel this kind of suspense whose excitement relies on perfect anticipation, especially enjoyable for children with well-known fairy tales. Baroni adds that suspense without uncertainty can emerge from contradiction between what the reader knows about the future and what he desires, particularly in tragedy when the protagonist dies or fails.