Which type of story do you like better?

A.

I think B takes away the suspense.

I think you could be talking about the difference between thriller (audience gasps as the character opens the door to reveal -- the waiting axe murderer!), and suspense (audience already knows the axe murderer is waiting behind the door, don't open it, please don't open it!). Crap analogy, apologies.

-Derek

The audience should never be ahead of the characters.

But I think thrills and suspense go hand in hand - they should complement each other.

Red Eye is a good example of suspense and thrills working together.

I think if the audience knows something the character does not, it's similar to omniscient POV in novels, which I'm personally not fond of. And as has been mentioned, it can remove the suspense. I think.

But what do I know. I shouldn't even be in this forum. I write fiction novels!

Bye!

lakewriter said:

I keep reading about an analogy from Hitchcock. He said something like if there was a bomb planted under a table and the characters didn't know it (and neither did you) and it went off, it would be a few seconds of surprise. But if you knew the bomb was there, you'd have 15 minutes of suspense wondering if it would go off.

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Yeah, that's true but I said the audience should never be ahead of the characters. As in, why was the bomb was planted, how will the hero will stop it, what's going to happen next. They can certainly know things the characters don't but the second the audience is waiting for the hero to catch up is when attention starts to drift.

I've seen superior position (audience knows what the characters don't) discussed in a few articles and how-to books, e.g.
Link removed by request of the other site's webmaster
-Derek

There is a difference but the difference between knowing things the characters don't and being ahead of those characters in terms of story is like chalk and cheese.

Knowing things is good - knowing how those things are going to conclude the story half an hour before it happens is not so good.

I like either one

Sort of like Halloween-1978 we know who the killer is from the beginning yet it's very suspenseful and works well

I like stories about cake.

Much obliged.

dpaterso said:

I've seen superior position (audience knows what the characters don't) discussed in a few articles and how-to books, e.g.



WRITING ROMANTIC COMEDIES by Michael Hauge
http://www.screenplaymastery.com/RomanticComedies.htm


-Derek

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But in the egs above, the MC is still in the know; s/he is the one perpetrating the 'fraud' in all the rom-coms I can remember off the top of my head.

In one of my scripts I've introduced characters that the MC doesn't know yet, and been told it's an unwritten rule that the audience should only see a new character when the MC does. Hm. Ignoring that one, just for that script.

In lakewriter's example b) - In 'The Omen', we know the nanny's a wrong-un before Greg Peck does. I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of them right now. But I don't think the audience knowing something ahead of the hero removes the suspense. It puts the audience in the 'shouting at the screen' position that always works for me!

A few come to mind (SPOILERS)

It may be that some of the characters will learn about things along with the audience, while aothers are kept in the dark. Affairs are a classic example, though others exist as well.

A few examples of different approaches.

Something about Mary; We the audience and Ben Stiller's character learn about Lee Evan's character's secret before Mary does. The audience's anticipation is in how will Mary learn of it.

Sleeping with the Enemy; The audience is well aware Patrick Bergin's character Martin, is in pursuit of Julia Robert's character Laura before she herself really knows.

Silence of the Lambs; The audience pretty much finds out things about Hannibal as Agent Starling does. I think good detective stories should do that, all the while dropping clues for the audience to play with.

Perfect Stranger; Again, the audience pretty much learns about the story as Halle Berry (supposedly) does. We are right there with her as the mystery unravels. I think this film had lots of great 'Red Herrings' and clues for the audience to play with. However, we the audience get one final 'superior' at the very last second.

21 grams; The audience knows Sean Penn's secret long before Naomi Watt's character finds out.


p


www.alexwhitmer.wordpress.com

The Stepfather is a great little potboiler which combines both:

Guy moves from town to town marrying women, then killing them when his idea of the "perfect family" turns sour. Very first scene of the movie, he's killed his current family; you see right off the bat what kind of psycho he is and the threat he poses.

Next thing you know, he's married again. This time, he has a stepdaughter who doesn't like him and doesn't care that he knows it. It's just a matter of time before this "perfect family" goes sour, too. The daughter and mother are in danger and don't know it. But we do. And we bite our nails waiting for the other shoe to drop. SUSPENSE.

The stepdaughter catches her new dad having a psychotic episode in the basement. Time to learn more about him. Though we're aware of the threat he poses, we only learn the details of his past as she does, and the people she talks to about it turn up dead. THRILLER.

Anyway...good flick to check out for an example of a film which plays both sides very well.

A lot of other posts reflect my thoughts on this, but I too would rather find out stuff as the character does. For instance, we think that the protagonist got away from a trap set by the antagonist, only to realize that they either stepped into another one, or the first trap was never a problem.

Some kind of silly examples below, but this is all I could think of right now.

For me anyway, I'd rather find out stuff as the character does, so that when it's revealed, we smack our head and say "Why didn't I see that coming?"

I hate it when a character does something most people would normally never do, such as running into that big scary house, or opening the door where you hear some creepy noises coming out of.



spoiler alerts----------------



For example, in Speed, the main character (Keanu Reeves) stops a guy from blowing up a building (or was it elevator?). Problem solved, we, and the character assumes.

Then in the next scene, the character is walking down the street, only to see a bus explode. The bad guy then calls the protagonist and tells him that more bombs are set up, and if he wants to stop them, he'd better act fast.


In another example, in Stargate, one of the characters (Kurt Russell's character) brings an atomic bomb, which no other character knows about, to blow up the portal to a new world they just recently uncovered.

Unfortunately for them, the bad guy discovers this bomb, and intends to use it by sending it back to Earth with some stuff that would make the bomb even more powerful. He further complicates things when one of the good guys tries disarming the bomb, only to realize they can't because the bad guy rigged it so that would continue to count down regardless.


In perhaps the most referenced movie for this example, in Sixth Sense, the psychiatrist (played by Bruce Willis) is obsessed with trying to help a little kid after his apparent failure at saving/helping another guy, who then shoots the psychiatrist and then himself (in the head). The little kid claims he can see dead people, but nobody seems to believe him. And while Bruce Willis tries to have some conversations with his wife, she seems to totally ignore him, perhaps showing that their relationship may not be as good as it was in the beginning.


We later find out towards the end that Bruce Willis himself is in fact dead as well, but like the other ghosts the little boy was seeing, he refused to accept that fact till the very end. Again, there are clues to this, but it's so subtle and we get distracted by those other scary ghosts that we never really pay attention to that fact till the end.

zahra said:

But in the egs above, the MC is still in the know; s/he is the one perpetrating the 'fraud' in all the rom-coms I can remember off the top of my head.

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Look at what Ben Stiller's character doesn't know in There's Something About Mary -- Matt Dillon, Lee Evans et al are up to all kinds of stuff with Cameron Diaz behind his back. And what about Shallow Hal? That's maybe an unfair example since the MC's perception is warped by hypnosis, but Jack Black has no idea that dear sweet Gwyneth Paltrow is a "300-pound rhino."

-Derek

So, when does suspense become a thriller, and when does a thriller become horror. Seems like some fine lines can and do exisit. And, maybe all three could found in a film or two. (?)

Suspense: Anxiety or apprehension resulting from an uncertain, undecided, or mysterious situation.

Thriller: a book, play, or movie that has an exciting plot involving crime, mystery, or espionage. Suspensefull adventure.

Horror: An intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear.



p


www.alexwhitmer.wordpress.com

I love dramatic irony (give me Romeo & Juliet and Oedipus any day...).

I love knowing things before the character and dreading them finding out. Or when I can't wait for them to find out. Either way, I like it.