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

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 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

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

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?