Want to know how to build suspense and surprise in a story? How can you leverage surprise to captivate an audience?
Suspense and surprise are very important when it comes to keeping an audience dialed into your story. Matthew Dicks, an oral storytelling pro, shares techniques for doing both and why they’re so important.
Here are two techniques for building suspense and an explanation of how to leverage surprise.
How to Build Suspense
Dicks explains that building suspense—a sense of nervous anticipation—helps you maintain the audience’s interest in your story. Here are two techniques you can use to build suspense:
1) Foreshadowing: Foreshadowing, which Dicks calls “breadcrumbing,” involves subtly hinting at developments that will unfold later in the story. For example, if your story is about how you faced your fear of heights, you might make an offhand comment early on about your hesitation to go on a ferris wheel. By dropping small, seemingly insignificant clues early on, you weave a thread of tension throughout the narrative and make the audience curious about what’s to come.
2) Slow pacing: When you’re approaching a pivotal moment in your story, intentionally slow the narrative’s pace by incorporating additional, seemingly trivial details. For example, if your story is building up to your discovery of a hidden letter that reveals a family secret, you might describe in detail your painstaking journey through a cluttered attic, focusing on your meticulous examination of old trunks and dusty boxes. Dicks says this slow, deliberate buildup intensifies the suspense, making the eventual reveal more dramatic and impactful.
| Lisa Cron on Building Suspense Dicks argues that suspense is crucial for keeping your audience engaged. In Wired for Story, Cron explains why suspense is such a powerful attention-getter: According to Cron, humans have an innate need to make sense of every piece of information they learn. When you build suspense, you withhold some of the information your audience needs to understand the big picture. As a result, the audience senses that they need to keep reading (or listening) to fill in the gaps. Like Dicks, Cron recommends that you use foreshadowing to create suspense. Cron explains that when you drop small clues about what’s to come, you give your audience memories they can use to connect all the dots in your story. Cron adds that foreshadowing is especially important when the story’s protagonist—in this case, you—makes a decision that seems out of character. Your audience can rely on your early hints to understand the motivation behind that choice, making it feel more believable. Cron also offers tips on pacing. First, she recommends using subplots to give readers some distance from the major conflict and allow them to process what’s happened so far. Say you’re telling a story about your discovery of a hidden letter that reveals a family secret. Introducing a subplot where you navigate a complicated relationship with a family member—like a sibling who doubts the need to uncover the past—can give the audience a chance to weigh the situation’s emotional stakes. Second, you can slow the pace of your story with flashbacks. Cron says you should only incorporate flashbacks when they’re necessary for understanding what happens next. So, for example, as you dig through the attic for the hidden letter, you might insert a flashback that reveals a childhood memory related to your family’s complex history. |
How to Leverage Surprise
Dicks explains that surprise in a story is a powerful emotion that you can leverage to captivate your audience. To create a sense of surprise, Dicks recommends emphasizing contrast: Include details, actions, and events that make it seem as if the story’s going in a predictable direction. Then, follow with an unexpected turn that disrupts the audience’s expectations and redefines the narrative.
(Shortform note: In Story, Robert McKee refers to this technique as a beat: The story’s protagonist takes action toward a goal, and the world changes in an unexpected way. According to McKee, you should weave beats throughout your story instead of relying on one big plot twist at the end. Constantly subverting your audience’s expectations keeps them intellectually and emotionally engaged, which makes your story more compelling.)
Another technique Dicks offers for surprising your audience involves hiding crucial information within less significant details. For example, say your story is about how you pulled off a heist with the help of a local coffee shop owner. You might include a scene where you visit the coffee shop and have a mundane conversation with the owner, which the audience would view as mere background detail. They won’t see it coming when you reveal the identity of your accomplice later.
(Shortform note: The success of director M. Night Shyamalan’s films, which are known for their surprising plot twists, illustrate just how effective this technique can be. Take The Sixth Sense for example: Throughout the film, Shyamalan weaves in minor details like a character’s struggle to open doors or connect with his wife. At the end of the film, the audience learns that these seemingly insignificant details are actually crucial to the plot. Spoiler alert: The character is dead, and these struggles reflect his ghostly state. Critics loved how Shyamalan used this technique to shock his audience,
