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The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Surprise
A portion of this post was originally part of the Tension, Suspense and Surprise series.
In science, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states, basically, that if you know an object’s momentum, you cannot know its precise location at the exact same time. And to apply this principle in writing . . . okay, I’m pretty much just stealing the name because of the word “Uncertainty.”
Uncertainty doesn’t sound like something we want in our fiction, unless we’re going for experimental or highly literary works. But I think that uncertainty—and its cousin, surprise—are a vital part of a work in any genre.
Uncertainty is what keeps people reading. We have to know if the hero and heroine will get together, or if they’ll defeat the bad guys, etc. The principle actually comes straight from real life (and neuroscience):
Livia Blackburne posted a fascinating study on uncertainty in romance: when college-aged women were shown profiles of men who’d seen and rated the women’s profiles, the women were most attracted to the men when they were not told whether the men had rated them average or highly.
The uncertainty made all the difference—the women who were told the men (imaginary, by the way) rated them highly were interested, but not as much as the uncertain women. The uncertain women also reported thinking about the men more often.
For a writer, uncertainty is a powerful tool, and not just in romance. The uncertainty in any story question is a major factor in keeping people reading, and the question of a developing relationship is the biggest draw in a romance (which, it should be noted, is heavily read by women, of course).
I think part of the reason why that uncertainty is so appealing is that the outcome is something we might not expect. While it’s definitely possible to build the uncertainty around something we’re pretty sure will happen (romance and mysteries generally only have one option for a successful ending, and there’s uncertainty throughout), it’s important to remember that a jolt of something unpredictable is vital for a fresh read.
Or, as Arthur Plotnik says in Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style:
Scientists have identified a patch of the forebrain called the nucleus accumbens as a center of pleasure in humans. Imaging shows heightened activity in this area of the brain when people receive a reward—whether sugar treats, money, or drugs. . . .
Unpredictable stimuli excite the nucleus accumbens, while expected stimuli elicit no response. In the experiment that led to this conclusion, researchers Gregory Bruns (Emory University) and E. Read Montague (Baylor College of Medicine) administered squirts of Kool-Aid and plain water to human test subjects in either predictable (alternating) or random patterns. Pleasure-wise, random squirts won it all.
A fresh locution may not be quite the same as Kool-Aid, but writers can extrapolate from the experiment’s conclusion: Brains love that little squirt of surprise. (12)
Uncertainty, and the tension and suspense that come from it, and unexpectedness are both really important in a novel. When you’ve got a huge event coming in your novel you have two choices. You can lead up to it with a lot of anticipation, promises, foreshadowing and/or dramatic irony—building suspense, making it uncertain whether it will happen, generally getting readers anxious. Or you can throw your readers for a loop and just drop it on them (though at least a little foreshadowing is usually good here—hence the spectrum).
Alfred Hitchcock has famously explained the difference (emphasis added):
There is a distinct difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise’, and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean.
We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, ‘Boom!’ There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table, and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the décor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene.
The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: ‘You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb underneath you and it’s about to explode!’
In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second case we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.
—Hitchcock by François Truffaut, p 79-80, as quoted by senses of cinema
Not to disagree with my good friend Alfred, but both surprise and suspense are important. For major events and big promises, suspense is generally better. But for smaller events—especially things that don’t need the extra explaining and won’t live up to the level of suspense—surprise is a great thing.
If we lead up to all the events in a story, we run the risk of being too predictable. If we lead up to none of them, our readers are more likely to experience PTSD than suspense. One is probably better for your event and your story.
How do you determine whether your event should be a surprise or be used to create suspense? Hitchcock’s guideline is a starting place: if it’s a twist ending, surprise is pretty dang important. On the other hand, if that surprise would heighten the suspense throughout the book (without dragging it out too much) and if you can set it up for the audience to know without informing the characters, you could think about whether you could use the extra layer of suspense.
Conversely, consider whether you spend too long building up to minor events—what if you cut all the foreshadowing? Would the reader be slighted or delighted when the surprise is sprung?
What do you think? How do you decide whether an event will be used for suspense or surprise?
Photo by Invizible Man
The virtues(?) of surprise(!)
There is a difference (or delicate balance) between suspense and surprise. As Alfred Hitchcock points out, we can either seed clues and create suspense, drawing our audience’s emotions out, or shoot for surprise, and go for a big but short-lived emotional bang from the audience. Hitchcock says that suspense is better—and he’s right for the most part—but surprises still play an important role in all fiction.
Most of the time, surprises shouldn’t come out of left field from the other side of the Green Monster. As writers, it can be very gratifying to pull one over on your readers. But it’s even more gratifying if you’ve surprised them despite the foreshadowing and clues you’ve planted throughout your story. Without something the reader can go back through and identify as a clue (“Oh, man, I should have seen it coming!”), they’re likely to feel betrayed.
The clues and foreshadowing can be a great tool to build an amorphous suspense. If you keep them vague but strong, that sense of foreboding will carry through your work, pulling the readers with it—and they’ll still be stunned when you pull off the big reveal.
But I think the worst kind of surprise is when we base a surprise on something the point of view character already knows but hasn’t told the reader. To me, that’s basically lying—leading the reader to believe that we’ll all be together and we’ll tell the reader everything, but holding back the one thing that our character would know or think or realize that would make the experience complete for the reader.
I don’t mean that we have to spell out everything the character knows the exact second he or she knows it—or have the characters spill their guts to one another. But if the main character has known the truth all along—or they came into the story knowing some arcane fact that’s going to solve the case—that’s the kind of surprise that’s going to ring false to a reader unless it’s supposed to be the point of the whole story (and even then . . . ouch).
So how much foreshadowing is enough? It depends on how big the surprise is—and how central it is to the plot. (Helpful, I know.)
What do you think? How have surprises you’ve read (or written) fallen flat?
This post, with a different introduction, originally ran 15 February 2010 as part of the series on Tension, suspense and surprise.
Photo by Benson Kua
Posted in Technique
Tagged betrayal, clues, foreshadow, forshadowing, lying to the reader, reader betrayal, surprise
1 Comment
Clues in non-mysteries
Every book, no matter what the style or genre, has some element of mystery, whether that’s “whodunnit” or “What happens next?” While surprise is fun to play with in a story, the major plot and character movements should really come from somewhere, set up with foreshadowing, or clues.
And let’s face it, these clues are a tough balancing act. We have to let the reader know there’s something coming for them, that these events that don’t seem significant will be—but at the same time, we can’t build small things up too much, or we’ll disappoint our readers instead of rewarding them with the payoff, and probably more importantly, we don’t want to give away the coming twists.
Whether you’re writing a mystery or romance or literary fiction, there’s always something we’ll want to “bury” so our readers don’t realize its significance at first. In this series, we’ll look at what these clues might be and several ways to hide them!
What do you think? What kind of “clues” do you see in non mysteries?
Photo by Jake Bouma
Why suspense?
Why are suspense, tension and surprise all so important? We’ve established that suspense and tension draw the readers along through your story, and compel them to keep reading. But it’s more than just making readers read, and rewarding them (with surprise sometimes)—it’s making them want to read your book (and your next one).
James Scott Bell highlights one reason why these elements are so important: “Modulating tension is one of the keys to writing fiction” (Revision And Self-Editing, 82). We started off our series with a quote from agent Noah Lukeman: “Suspense, more than any other element, affects the immediate, short term experience of the work” (The Plot Thickens, 119).
But Lukeman further explains why being conscious of tension and suspense are so important:
The presence of suspense is . . . a feat and shows promise, since it indicates that the writer is writing more for the reader than for himself. (120)
I think it’s easy—and for many of us, important—to draft for ourselves. I’m told Stephen King says you should write the first draft “with the door closed”—with little to no input or interference from others, so that you can get out the story you’re trying to tell. Remember the delight, the way you relish the scenes that you’ve been waiting for your whole book long?
But when we’re ready to open that door, to share your writing with an eye to improving it, it’s not about what you loved writing and what you still love reading anymore. It’s about what someone else—an agent, an editor, a customer in a bookstore—will love reading, what will suck them in and drag them on a relentless, compelling journey with your characters. Focusing on the experience of your readers shows that you’re not just in it to entertain yourself and a few friends—you’re here to tell a story, to get people reading—to entertain.
What do you think? Why are suspense, tension and surprise so important?
Photo credit: Aart von Bezooyen
Any final words (on suspense)?
Well, we’re winding down the series on suspense, tension and surprise. We’ve looked into assessing our stories, ratcheting up the tension and increasing the suspense. We’ve used lots and lots of resources (the most I have for any series), and I’ve talked a lot about things I’ve found in 
looking at my own work.
But, man, that still seems a little one-sided. I’d hate to leave you in suspense over your greatest suspense, tension or surprise issues—and I’d hate for all of us to miss out on the things you‘ve found to make your work better in these areas.
So, do you have any other questions or fixes on suspense, tension or surprise? (Comments and questions here may get “promoted” into posts of their own, so ask or share away—and be sure to put your link in the URL box!)
Photo credits: question—Svilen Mushkatov
Surprise fix: Telegraphing the pass (or not)
Yesterday, Deb Salisbury left a comment that’s worth discussing (or “foreblogging,” as I’ve heard it):
Sigh. I foreshadow until I’m afraid of telegraphing, but my crit partners complain about not seeing the surprise coming. I’m doing something wrong. ={
Perhaps, perhaps not, Deb. I’ve been there, too. (If one critique partner pegs the killer by page 30 and another says that the surprise reveal was unfulfilling because it wasn’t foreshadowed, which one is right?) Naturally, there are detriments to foreshadowing too heavily:
(You only have to watch 15 seconds to get the message; you don’t have to actually learn the bball technique.)
I watched a movie recently where every time a “little fact” was mentioned, I could see the plot twist they thought they were “foreshadowing.” (“I don’t swim,” says one character. I called it—she was going to fall out of the boat and the lead would have to save her. Took about 30 minutes to get there.) Maybe I’ve just seen too many movies and thought about these things too much, but total predictability is definitely not our goal as writers.
Or, to go back to our basketball analogy:
So, what’s the writing equivalent of a no-look pass? I don’t think a reader has to see a surprise coming. But I think that once the surprise is sprung, readers should be able to remember (ideally) or go back and find the clues you’ve been planted along the way.
In The Plot Thickens, Noah Lukeman gives one example of setting up a surprise—specifically, a secret:
For the secret to be used for suspenseful effect, we have to know there is a secret; Norman Bates’s mother is alluded to in shadowy fragments; in Casablanca Ilsa flat out reveals there is something she cannot tell Rick; in the whodunits, we know from the long looks the staff exchange with each other that someone is not saying something. (137)
Conversely, some surprises don’t actually have to be heavily foreshadowed: if you really can’t foreshadow because none of the POV characters have enough information or interactions to come across foreshadowing, or if the surprise is a complicating incident of a level of conflict.
Again, predictability is not a virtue in most storytelling. It’s not a bad thing to surprise your readers. But it is a delicate balance with foreshadowing and betrayal. Make sure your readers have all the pieces your characters do—but beating your readers over the head with the coming surprise is a good way to ruin it.
What do you think? What’s good foreshadowing for a surprise?
Surprise—and betrayal
We haven’t touched on surprise too much, despite it being in the title of our series. There are two reasons I included it: the difference (or delicate balance) between suspense and surprise, and the fact that surprises can be used to create tension and suspense. But surprises can also be done very, very badly.
Most of the time, surprises shouldn’t come out of left field from the other side of the Green Monster. As writers, it can be very gratifying to pull one over on your readers. But it’s even more gratifying if you’ve surprised them despite the foreshadowing and clues you’ve planted throughout your story. Without something the reader can go back through and identify as a clue (“Oh, man, I should have seen it coming!”), they’re likely to feel betrayed.
The clues and foreshadowing can be a great tool to build an amorphous suspense. If you keep them vague but strong, that sense of foreboding will carry through your work, pulling the readers with it—and they’ll still be stunned when you pull off the big reveal.
But I think the worst kind of surprise is when we base a surprise on something the point of view character already knows but hasn’t told the reader. To me, that’s basically lying—leading the reader to believe that we’ll all be together and we’ll tell the reader everything, but holding back the one thing that our character would know or think or realize that would make the experience complete for the reader.
I don’t mean that we have to spell out everything the character knows the exact second he or she knows it—or have the characters spill their guts to one another. But if the main character has known the truth all along—or they came into the story knowing some arcane fact that’s going to solve the case—that’s the kind of surprise that’s going to ring false to a reader unless it’s supposed to be the point of the whole story (and even then . . . ouch).
So how much foreshadowing is enough? It depends on how big the surprise is—and how central it is to the plot. (Helpful, I know.)
What do you think? How have surprises you’ve read (or written) fallen flat?
Photo by Benson Kua
Posted in Technique
Tagged betrayal, clues, foreshadow, forshadowing, lying to the reader, reader betrayal, surprise
3 Comments
Is it suspense or surprise?
Surprise and suspense might seem like polar opposites to be included in the same series. After all, one is all about making promises and putting off their fulfillment, while the other comes out of nowhere. But really, I think they’re just two ways of handling all the new information you’ll give readers in a story—and in some ways, they’re just opposite ends of a spectrum.
You’ve got a huge event coming in your novel, and you have two choices. You can lead up to it with a lot of anticipation, promises, foreshadowing and/or dramatic irony—building suspense. Or you can throw your readers for a loop and just drop it on them (though at least a little foreshadowing is usually good here—hence the spectrum).
Alfred Hitchcock has famously explained the difference (emphasis added):
There is a distinct difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise’, and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean.
We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, ‘Boom!’ There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table, and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the décor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene.
The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: ‘You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb underneath you and it’s about to explode!’
In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second case we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.
—Hitchcock by François Truffaut, p 79-80, as quoted by senses of cinema
Not to disagree with my good friend Alfred, but both surprise and suspense are important. For major events and big promises, suspense is generally better. But for smaller events—especially things that don’t need the extra explaining and won’t live up to the level of suspense—surprise is a great thing.
If we lead up to all the events in a story, we run the risk of being too predictable. If we lead up to none of them, our readers are more likely to experience PTSD than suspense. One is probably better for your event and your story.
How do you determine whether your event should be a surprise or be used to create suspense? Hitchcock’s guideline is a starting place: if it’s a twist ending, surprise is pretty dang important. On the other hand, if that surprise would heighten the suspense throughout the book (without dragging it out too much) and if you can set it up for the audience to know without informing the characters, you could think about whether you could use the extra layer of suspense.
Conversely, consider whether you spend too long building up to minor events—what if you cut all the foreshadowing? Would the reader be slighted or delighted when the surprise is sprung?
What do you think? How do you decide whether an event will be used for suspense or surprise?
Photo by Invizible Man
