Sin City

[barsoomcore]

Okay, try this on for size (if anyone is still listening to my Film Theory 101 geek ideas):

In written media, what the audience DOESN'T KNOW is what keeps them turning pages.

In cinema, what the audience ALREADY KNOWS is what keeps them in their seats.

I dunno if that works. But I'm throwing it out there. Any thoughts?

 

[takyris]

Hmm. Not sure. I think they're both valid techniques, but I also think that you can twist around either to mean the other one.

For example: In the novel I just sent out, a major character gets run through by the bad guy with about three chapters to go. The chapter ends with the character looking up at the moon, trying to get up but with no strength left in his arms -- the usual "Oh, I've been run through" stuff. My mom called me at this point and said, "You didn't really kill ___, did you? Because I'm worried about him. The chapter ended, and now we're with other people, and I'm concerned." So that would be my mom (God love her, she reads anything I write), concerned because of something she doesn't know.

But then, a chapter and a half later, we're in another character's head, and ___ shows up and appears to be fine, and after a fight with bad guys, the other character says, "Hey, ___, it looks like you got cut, there," noticing a smear of blood. And ___ says, "Just a scratch. Don't worry about it. In fact, forget you ever saw it at all," or words to that effect. At which point my mom called me again, and this time, she was in suspense because of something that she DID know -- that this guy did NOT just get a scratch, that something had happened, and it was very very wrong that he was up and about and acting as though nothing had happened. So that would be concern regarding something the reader knows that the character doesn't.

And then you've got movies -- heck, Hitchcock movies being a great example thereof -- in which the director builds suspense by giving us something misleading, something that the audience infers incorrectly and does not, in fact, know. Like when an ominous-sounding conversation that we thought was related to a hunt for a murderer turns out to be two police officers playing chess over the radio or something. That's different from a legitimate suspense-build, because it's not actually due to something we know -- it's due to something that the director faked us out with. The end feeling is the same, but the source is different.

I mean, at a base level, suspense seems to come from the reader or audience being concerned that something bad is going to happen. That can be because the audience knows something the characters don't, because the audience doesn't know something, or because the director is messing around with the audience, but at the end, it seems to all break down to "We, the readers or viewers, are afraid that something bad is going to happen."

But a statement like that rarely generates much conversation.

 

[Pielorinho]

Okay, try this on for size (if anyone is still listening to my Film Theory 101 geek ideas):

In written media, what the audience DOESN'T KNOW is what keeps them turning pages.

In cinema, what the audience ALREADY KNOWS is what keeps them in their seats.

I dunno if that works. But I'm throwing it out there. Any thoughts?

It's interesting, but I'm still not sure I agree. "The Cask of Amontillado" begins:

THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. AT LENGTH I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile NOW was at the thought of his immolation.

From the beginning, we know that this poor fool is going to be having a very, very bad day. It's what we know that keeps us in such suspense. (Sure, we don't know the particulars, and you could say that it's this ignorance that keeps us reading).

Similarly, in the spectacular first novel Secret History, we find out in the first two paragraphs that the character Bunny is going to be murdered by his friends. It's a terrifically suspenseful book, and a lot of the suspense is driven by this dramatic irony: as Bunny is blithely shooting the bull with these people, we know that he's goin down.

Then there's movies like The Vanishing: in the first few minutes, the guy's girlfriend disappears, and the rest of the movie is an exploration of what happens from that point on. We never know anything more than what the protagonist knows: while we've got a general guess as to what happened, so does the protagonist.

Or take--let's see, what's a good example?--okay, what about The Game? It's been awhile since I've seen it, but as I recall, we're smack dab in the middle of the grotesque mindgame right alongside Michael Douglas.

I definitely think that both types of suspense-building are valid, and I agree that neither one plays much part in Sin City. However, it seems to me that both types appear in books and in film.

Daniel

 

[Pielorinho]

Incidentally, I keep referring to "the first few minutes" and "the first few paragraphs" not because I think these are the most important moments for building suspense, but because I don't feel bad about spoiling anything that happens on the first page or the first scene. I hate spoiling stuff further in.

Spoiler

But Fortunato is toast.

Daniel