Other uses of Anticipatory Suspense

There's more to this anticipation thread...

Episode 2 of Heroes: Mohinder is explaining his dead father's thesis on the human genome to his father's neighbour, showing the map of the world upon which coloured pins and coloured string has been attached. Mohinder is developing some exposition when... the phone goes, the answerphone picks up. The caller leaves no message but the neighbour sees that there are saved messages.

She plays them - the first regards Mohinder's father's lizard - which was due to be taken somewhere, for something - probably back to a lab... They're about to discuss it when the next message plays - it's from Sylar (we've already heard about him through another plot strand involving a murdered couple - one skewered by lots of household implements, the other frozen with his head sawn off... his brain missing. Sylar is blamed). On the message, Mohinder's father picks up and they have a short conversation developing the serial killer element. It finishes and Mohinder begins to talk about Sylar, and his father's "Patient Zero". Now then, patient zero is the key to understanding the subplot of Heroes regarding certain humans becoming special in some way. But, as he's about to go into more detail, there's a loud crash and both Mohinder and the neighbour spin around... to find the lizard has made an appearance.

So, we change tack. We'll have to learn about Patient Zero later... meanwhile the neighbour puts the lizard back in his aquarium thing and discovers a USB memory stick hidden there.

The lizard has served two purposes... to stop the conversation on Sylar and Patient Zero, and to help uncover the memory stick - which yields Mohinder's father's genome detection utility (which tracks special humans), and is purportedly the reason why the sinister people are after him and probably killed the father. Actually, there's three reasons... the third being that as Mohinder and the neighbour search for the lizard on the floor, they bump into one another, and regard each other for a moment - possibly foreshadowing of a burgeoning relationship... maybe not, but you get the idea.

Anticipation

One of these many tomes I've read over the past year talked about the most important kind of suspense being anticipatory suspense (I think it's a few posts back on here actually). I thought, having read that point, that it was good to bear in mind, but like the adage: 'Write what you know', I didn't really apply it generally, but rather I applied it to those moments when I would want to squeeze tension into my works, raise questions, consider plotting, etc...

But, just as 'Write what you know', actually refers to writing about scenarios, descriptions, genres, etc that you know - as in, not just a topic that you know, but try to meld every part of your experiences into a book, because you will be better informed over your choices and topics; Anticipation as a suspense tool doesn't just relate to end of chapter moments, cliffhangers, and the such like. It relates also to use as a distraction, an almost had, almost understood - to keep the info from the character or audience that little while longer.

Anticipation can be used to keep the audience/reader involved by holding off on providing information through the use of distracting characters - taking tangent to what is being discussed through use of new characters introduced to a scene, an outburst, ramping up action, increased tension through sudden developments, one character's agenda over-riding another, etc.

I was watching episode one of Heroes with my wife this morning and I noticed for the first time the use of Anticipation to hold the audience, whether it was opening, ad break, midscene, end.

The use of timing in these matters is crucial, and it goes hand in hand with beats - the use of changing a character or situation's objective. This is also cleverly used to get the writer out of a tight spot, lull in dialogue or action. When the Japanese character, Hiro, stops time and then goes to tell his friend. They play off of each other - Hiro explaining what and how, and his friend disregarding it. Their conversation comes to its end, there isn't really anything left to say, but rather than end the scene there, the writer gets Hiro's boss to intervene and drag Hiro back to his desk - it's kind of Deus ex Machina, but helps to show the environment they're in as well as give the scene a natural end.

Take this example from midway through episode one of Hereoes: where Niki and her son Micah have fled their house. Niki takes Micah to a friends house. He moans about how he hates the place, Niki calms him and rings the bell (key point in the scene regarding setup), she kneels beside her son, waiting for the door to be answered and answers his questions briefly on being in trouble. But then he asks his key question: 'Why'd you break that mirror, mom?' (Sorry, this is from the original script - the scene on tv is slightly different).

Anyhoo - If Niki were to tell Micah the truth, then the cat would be out of the bag. We'd have no more setup, or moments of audience questioning. At the moment Niki knows more than us, and whilst she holds off telling us, we still want to know.

So, how does the writer get out of answering the question? The door is answered - character distraction.

Simple but effective.