English 9 / Unit 1: Reading Fiction: Plot, Setting and Conflict
1.5 Suspense and Pacing
Notes
Suspense is the reader's anxious curiosity about what will happen next. Pacing is how fast or slow a story moves.
- Build suspense with cliffhangers, danger, time limits, withheld information and foreshadowing.
- Short sentences and fragments speed up pacing in action scenes.
- Long sentences and detailed description slow pacing down.
- Dramatic irony (reader knows something a character does not) also builds suspense.
- Example: "The footsteps stopped. Silence. Then the doorknob turned."
Practice
"Ten seconds. The wire was red, or was it blue? Nine. Eight." What effect do the short sentences create?
Short bursts mimic a racing countdown.
A reader knows a monster is hiding in the closet, but the character happily opens the door. This creates suspense through:
The reader knows something the character does not.
Which technique would most likely slow a story's pacing?
Lengthy description slows the reader down.
Ready for more? Take the Unit 1 test.