What is the difference between suspense and surprise

While a surprise is a one-time event, suspense builds through a series of events that lead toward a culmination where readers care about what will happen to the protagonist. The series of events in suspense create tension and raise the stakes for your protagonist. Sometimes she wins and other times she fails. Your readers will cheer the wins, seeking resolution.

When she fails, your readers wonder how she will get out of a tough situation. The first step in successful suspense sequence is to create characters readers care about.

Get them to love your protagonist and hate your antagonist. Both characters need to be strong, believe in themselves, and act. Each obstacle or threat is more difficult than the last. As the obstacles increase in intensity, you compound the last fail or win your hero accomplished. Are they afraid of what might happen? Do they replay bad consequences in their heads?

Show your readers the direst outcomes so they can root for your hero. Impact your protagonist with at least one of the bad consequences she imagined. Make it real. The next time you make a promise in the story, your reader will wait to see what happens to your hero and how they get out of the next spot of trouble. Set up a sequence of events that build momentum and increase tension.

In order for the suspense to build, your protagonist cannot win right away. Suspense is about making your readers wait. They will never feel that nothing happens in your story if you get them involved with your main character and then build on the promises of bad consequences.

Let her voice those fears. Suspense builds as your hero and readers try to avoid the consequences and escape inevitable failure. Avoid ruining the suspense by bringing readers out of the story with spelling or grammar errors and clunky sentences.

There are times when suspense could be too great almost killing an individual to know what is going to happen. Movie makers and fiction writers make use of this aspect of writing to keep the readers and audience hooked to the movie or the book.

Surprise is an emotion that one experiences when he is not expecting the outcome from an event. If a lowly ranked team wins a tournament, most people are surprised. The same emotion is felt by the fans of a high ranked tennis player when he is ousted in early rounds in a tournament.

In fiction and movies, surprise is used to a great effect to break the monotony of the plot. Surprise can be neutral, pleasant or even unpleasant as when the top seed loses to an underdog. Surprise becomes a shock when it lasts for too long, or it is very powerful.

Thriller is not an emotional state or a feeling. It is a term used for movies and works of fiction that have lots of suspense. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

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