Options for Suspense – Hitchcock’s bomb

How many ways are there to write suspense into a scene? It’s a major question—especially since really tightening the tension can be some of the heaviest lifting in a story we thought we’d already planned out. And don’t we want every scene to do more to pull the reader in, not just with danger but that any kind of scene builds that “what’s next??” eagerness about whatever’s going on? Still, let’s explore this through Alfred Hitchcock’s famous example of the bomb ticking under the table.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

(No, this is not another discussion about Surprise versus Suspense. It’s less about how to use a given plot thread than about how many things you can twist, so you can apply the Master’s method or his challengers’ to whichever you want.)

So, about that bomb…

What I always ask myself is to take the whole chain of events that are needed for a thing, and ask “What could go wrong?” In this case, that means about keeping the bomb and the people together, and what else could affect them. And for each idea I get, I then ask “What am I assuming?” to look for more variations on where to twist.

Hitchcock talks mostly about the bomb’s targets not knowing what the audience does, and making the audience mentally scream at them to get up from that table and run for their lives. Of course that’s because the obvious thing about a bomb is that it’s not obvious until it blows, that the victims have no idea what’s about to happen. And so their survival probably comes down, not to outfighting or outwitting the problem, but to blind luck about whether they’re in the blast or not. –Which is about as scary as it gets, of course.

So the purest way to write that bomb scene would be to use nothing but the petty details of the moment. How many small, everyday things just might make someone get up and walk away to safety? It might be as simple as them starting a meal and either hating the food or deciding to linger over seconds. Or does someone have to take a phone call—although to really apply Hitchcock’s logic, even the call shouldn’t come out of the blue, it should come from factors we can watch changing before our eyes. (Now if the table discussion is actually whether one guy’s girl is going to call to forgive him for a fight, or if someone says he might get a call but then gets so into the conversation he stops to switch off his cell phone…)

Of course the real roller-coaster of stay/go factors is probably the people’s conversation. So we can work out the excruciating twists and turns of how they’re deciding the fate of the world or planning their futures, or just who walks the dog tomorrow, so the reader follows all this knowing that whether they have a future may depend on how they drag things out or maybe spiral into a fight and storm off to safety. This grounds the thrills because we’re probably all more interested in things depending on people than in if the roast is burned, and a detailed conversation is easier to write twists in anyway. (Then again, really blind luck has its own chills.)

But here’s one assumption within that: thinking of people moved around by conversations or other issues, does it have to be only the people already at the table? You can change the whole scene by calling someone else over into the bomb’s reach—maybe some Much Less Expendable character, or the bomber himself so he’s struggling to find an excuse to get away again.

And there we’re moving into another dimension: characters not just affected by chance but the consequences of those who do know about the bomb. It might still start with the same people and/or luck, maybe the old “drop the fork, what’s that under the table” if you can explore ways to either prolong the scene or have other excitement despite it. (Say, what if the woman who spots the bomb actually wants to STAY near it a bit longer, to test if the man she’s sitting with knew about it…) Or is someone else figuring out the bomb plot meanwhile, or racing across town to warn them? (Okay, racing to escape the villain and grab anyone with a cell phone.) Is the bomber having second thoughts, maybe because the wrong person is too close to the bomb?

Then there are assumptions about the bomb itself. It goes off, but when? Hitchcock’s example tells the audience when and puts a clock in the background so we can take in everything in terms of that image. (Though of course, this is easiest as a visual method; in print we may have to look for reasons for characters, unlike camera angles, to keep noticing the time. Or just write 5:49. John said…) But writers have done more convoluted tricks like “oh, that clock’s five minutes slow—boom!” or made the scheme something like “it blows when the birds fly” so our hearts stop when a flock of pigeons is startled up but then realize that next door the Midtown High Hawks are about to get out of practice. Maybe the subtlest way of all is to never show the time, if you can really manipulate the feeling in a vacuum that it must be about to run out…

Or does the bomb even go off right? One recent story (no, no spoilers which) actually had the much-built-up bomb misfire… of course, the bomber had time to re-rig it so it was just a stall, but this is the kind of thing you can get away with if you think your story’s good enough that readers forgive the obvious manipulation and then love you for showing anything is possible. (One reviewer called it “a magnificent cheat”, which about sums it up.) –Of course, it always helps if it’s being plotted in terms of the bomber using shoddy materials or rushing his work.

Another assumption: must the blast kill everyone, if you can make it convincing that a victim’s standing just at the edge, maybe behind a big shielding truck? Or if your story actually has a character that’s invulnerable, you can do whole different things with the bomb plot, probably about him revealing his power or mourning the people who do die.

There’s one more assumption to vary here: besides what makes someone live or die, we can also plot around how the reader cares about that death. A conversation could build toward a couple baring their souls and getting engaged, or a petty scumball looks like he’s about to reveal who the killer us. –After all, if the readers see us raising or changing the stakes, the very fact that we bother to do it also looks like a sign that we’re about to push the button. Similarly, what if one of the prospective victims is revealed to be a killer himself, and about to go do something villanous, and the reader hopes he stays for the explosion after all? We could even walk the line of making him only unsympathetic but layered, so the reader starts wanting him to die but is aware he’s wishing death on someone just for one fallible sin…

I do love a subtle explosion.

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