Diner and Suspense

Matt Weber’s photograph shows a 1978 Challenger viewed from inside a diner. It’s a perplexing, almost ominous scene. Why is the car moving so slowly? Who’s driving it? Is the diner empty? Closed? It’s daytime. Where is everyone?

Writers I work with often think suspense is created by withholding information. This is sort of true but mostly not true. Almost all information is not given to the reader.

In fact, when we think about anything, such as the elements in this photograph, the information that could be given to a reader is probably infinite. The chemical composition of the road on which the car is traveling. The temperature of the air outside and the number of times in recorded history this exact temperature occurred on this exact date. The driver’s genetic make-up. The origin of the fabric from which the driver’s shirt is made. The wage earned by the person who cut the fabric or ran the cutting machine that did. The name of the person who designed the button that fastens the shirt. The color of the hair of the captain of the freighter who brought the shirt closer to market. The name of the partner of the truck driver who delivered the shirt from dock to warehouse.

If we extend this without ceasing, eventually all that IS will be connected to this photograph, and all that has ever been or will ever be. This is because we live in a uni-verse which means that everything is somehow connected to everything else.

Let’s begin…

So if withholding information isn’t the way to create suspense in our work, what is the way?

Suspense is created by raising questions. This photograph is suspenseful because when we look at it the first thing that happens is that we wonder stuff. We wonder what time of day it is and why the driver is staring into an empty restaurant, and where he’s going, and why he’s wearing sunglasses, etc. etc.

The question is, what information do we give to the reader and what do we withhold? And how do we decide? And then how do we implement our decision?

First, let’s remember that in our work we don’t have to answer all the questions. Who bought the diner? Who built it? What do the menus look like? Are the table tops sticky? Are the fries great? The service good?

We get to pick the questions that we want to ask. Or the single question we want to ask. Suspense is the path of this question through the pages of the text.

Suspense isn’t limited to thrillers. Suspense is part of everyday life and is part of every genre. There is tremulous suspense in every good haiku. So if we think of suspense as a car crash, mutilated body, a hit and run driver escaping the scene and the question of who the driver is, we will not bring to our work the suspense it needs.

Because suspense is the raising of questions, it can be deeply interior. In fact, it can be entirely interior. The story of a character who is both paralyzed and unable to communicate with the outside world could be the most suspenseful story ever written. The best suspense can occur in such seeming inactivity and isolation while a car chase, hold up at an ATM, school shooting can be boring. Why?

Because there’s no investment for us as we write the story. Or because there’s no investment in the events by the characters themselves. Either way, the result is there’s no investment by the reader. It’s not drama, it’s not suspense, it’s just stuff.

We need, at some point, to know what the questions are that we are pursuing in writing our text. We can write for months or years, going nowhere because we don’t yet know what we’re really wrestling with. Perhaps we think we’re working on a story about a kidnapped daughter. But we’re really wrestling with something else entirely. Maybe it’s the question, why did my business fail? Why am I a disappointment to my father? Why am I as lucky as I am? Why am I healthy and my twin sister is not? Let’s say, then, we diligently take our writing to our writing coach or editor or peer writing group and it fails. Again and again and again. Others find a good element here or there, but nobody is so engrossed they miss their muni stop. Nobody texts saying they read the first page and are weeping.

And these are the reactions our good work will produce. These are the reactions we live for!

So the challenge is to locate, within ourselves, the real question. The question that we must wrestle with whether we’re in the mood or not. Whether it scares us or not. Whether a thousand books have already dealt with this question or not. Period.

When we get to the real question, our work takes off. This is simply true.  It has happened to me every time, in my own work. And it happens with my students.

Once this occurs,  we think about shaping the text around the pursuit of that question. And we shape the information along the arc of the pursuit of that question. It absolutely doesn’t matter if we tell the ending at the very beginning or at the end. We can say the answer that we came to in the first sentence, leave the rest of the page blank, and on page two begin to tell the story of how that answer was finally found.

It isn’t about having an original question. All of art keeps addressing big questions over and over again. This is just true. And it isn’t even about reaching an answer to the question. The story is about the pursuit of the question and a portrayal of a character who is living in this pursuit. When we do that, we are getting into the arena where art can be made. Here, we can make something of lasting value.

Exercises:

#1   (you may consult the complete image on “photo credits” page)

Put yourself back in the diner. Let’s say it’s early morning and your shift doesn’t start for an hour. You see the car drive by. You hear the noisy engine from the truck going the other way. You have to do all the table set-up. Your to-do list is long. But instead, you sit. The driver is gone. You’re not thinking about him or the heat or the truck or the customers who will show up like they do every morning.

-Get 10 sheets of blank paper and a pen. Write what you are thinking about. Forget your own writing project. Forget your characters. Just be yourself. You, sitting here, in the diner. Write quickly, without stopping. Don’t cross out. Don’t second guess yourself. When you’ve filled the 10 pages, stop.

-Set the pages aside. See if they somehow start to trickle into your work.

#2

Perhaps you wrote about the death of your mother because the funeral will be on the week-end. Or you wrote about a child you’re tutoring and how he did so well in his school’s spelling bee yesterday.

-Take those pages and see what the underlying question is in them. Maybe it’s the question, Was I a good enough son? Or, will my tutoring help my student stay away from gangs?

-Take the larger question and, just as an exercise, map out the twists and turns in a plot line that might be the way this question is explored through the course of a 300 page novel. Or a 20 page story. Or a 14 line sonnet.

It can be a series of scenes or a series of insights or a series of different aspects of a single moment. However you break this down, just move the toward laying out the question.

#3.

Whether we outline first or at the end, whether we are writing a novel or a short story or sonnet, whether we are in first person or third, present tense or past…. in all of these, we are primarily unconscious of our deepest question. We just are.

This means as we try to move in a truly creative way, we are also learning how to exist in great uncertainty. We’re learning to tolerate that un-fun feeling. This is necessary in the production of all art (theatre, painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture). It is necessary in the pursuit of mathematics and every branch of science. It is necessary in parenting.  And it is necessary in every form of love.

As we write, we move from what is known (I am sitting here in this diner) to what is unknown (the answer to the question I am really, deep-down thinking about) and then we move back at the known that is a new-known. This is the arc of artful work.

-Sit your character in this diner. Write what he or she is distracted by. What is your character worried about? Fantasizing about? Happy for? Perplexed by? Be your character. Be him or her. Get out the paper and pen, your notebook, laptop, phone. Fill the 10 pages. Without stopping. See what happens.  See what you get.

#4.

Ask yourself, what does my main character really want? Be specific. Think about this until you can formulate the answer in a single, simple sentence.

My main character wants ______________________________________.

Now, regardless of all the hundreds of pages you might already have written, take this one sentence, type it out, put it in your writing space. Look at it often.

#5.

Take the above sentence as the end point, and set up a series of scenes or moments of insight that will move the character toward this desired thing. It can have false starts and detours, setbacks and discouragements. But lay out this thread. It is like the closet pole on which all of your clothes hang.

Lay out this string of events that lead to the thing your character wants and ignore all the other information that doesn’t somehow pertain to this thread. This is the closet pole of the project. You will hang all of your pages, somehow, on this .

Some exercises here can be done in minute.  This one may take months to figure out.  That’s okay.  It takes what it takes.  And when you do figure this out, celebrate! It is a huge step!

© Mary Rakow, 2019. Please do not reproduce without written permission from the author.