The Effects of Limited Narration [Guideline]

[Flux]

Hey everybody. This is going to be the closest thing I have to a "guide" on here right now, and it's not really even my guide. I'll be sharing some information I came across recently with you, and then I'll give you my take on it and how it can be used for roleplaying purposes and creative writing in general.

Anyway, I recently read an article about Alfred Hitchcock and some of his philosophies on film making. In particular, he talks about the difference between surprise and suspense and how they come about in a movie. The primary ideas are his, which is again why I can't take credit for this, but I will give some thoughts on turning this idea from film to roleplaying. Here's the important point -- Hitchcock's "Bomb under the table" analogy. You may have read this before, or at least heard of it. Maybe not. Whatever the case, here it is in Hitchcock's words:

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock, and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There’s a bomb beneath you and it’s about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second case we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense.

I'm going to try to summarize what he said there and how we can utilize this to make roleplaying scenarios more effective and exciting for those involved. It all comes down to the title of this thread: Limits on information. As hosts, we have complete control over how much information we give our roleplayers. While I think most hosts do think a little bit about that, we don't really put a whole lot of thought as to what exact details we have given our readers, and that is a very important point. What Hitchcock is saying is that by keeping close control over the information you let the reader know, you can change a bland narrative into an exciting scenario of suspense or surprise. It all depends on what you let the reader know.

Take surprise, for example. For our purposes in writing, we can define surprise as the moment an unexpected event occurs. It catches you off guard, gives you a few seconds of adrenaline. Surprise is a great tool to utilize when you want to quickly change the focus of a scene and generate quick energy in writing. This works especially well in an RP setting, where you have players participating. Surprise will get the players excited over the plot twist, and they will likely feel inspired to write up a good reply quickly. The best way for us as hosts to generate surprise is to LIMIT INFORMATION. For a scene to truly catch your players and readers by surprise, you want them to have no hint of what is going to happen prior. The information you give them has to be extremely limited. As the writer, we often want to reveal so many things to the players about our world and plot at once that we overlook the effectiveness of strictly limiting what we tell them. As such, or "surprise" scenes may not be as effective as we had planned them to be. This is why we should place a greater focus on the exact details we write.

Suspense, on the other hand, is a little bit different. We can define suspense as the gradual buildup of tension in a scene, and potentially the buildup of anxiety in the reader. A truly suspenseful scene is one of the most effective feelings a writer can portray upon their readers. Suspense keeps the readers/players curious and focused on your writing, which is obviously going to be key to being a successful writer or host. To create a suspenseful scene, a host still needs to limit information, but you also have to allow a certain amount of information to slip through. A truly suspenseful scene is a perfect balance of limited and released information. You need to let the readers/players know that something is coming, but still restrict their knowledge of the event. You do not want them to be as all-knowing as your are; that takes all excitement and suspense away from the scene. You should release hints and information to the players and readers, while making sure that the characters know nothing of what is to come. This builds up tension in the players, as they want to warn the characters that something is going to happen, but they cannot.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say. I hope some of you can find this helpful or useful in some way, as I think it's something we can all try to focus on a little bit more. I think it will help our community improve and grow as a whole. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read all of this, and I'll see your around the forums!

[Felicity]

This is interesting for me because I prefer to write from first person in my own works, a mix of keeping tight control over the audiences vision and using First Person Snark. Naturally first person doesn't allow for much of this suspense unless you do things very, very slightly. Give characters a small detail in appearance that means nothing to the possibly distracted character but everything to the Overly-conscious Audience. to build suspense for the audience in first person you have to pay attention to what the first person is looking at, how tense the character themselves are, and also to the details that the audience gets the luxury of absorbing at a slower pace. What doesn't occur to a distraught character will occur to the calm audience.