Sometimes writers leave open gaps, unexplained scenes, uncertainty, in order to keep people tuned in. But this tactic won’t get you far, and taken to the extreme, it will make the tension feel contrived and may even make the audience feel cheated. How much uncertainty is too much?

When one first starts reading a story, the foremost question is “What’s this about?” That’s enough to keep me reading for a paragraph or two, or maybe for a page of a novel. But you really have to give me something more to go on, some reason to care, something more than just “What’s going on here?”

Yet so many writers drag out the uncertainty, as though that should keep me reading. In fact, they purposely withhold information to try to heighten the tension artificially. But it doesn’t work. When I first start reading, I’m already asking “What’s going on here?” Making me ask “What’s going on here?” isn’t going to keep me reading. You get a paragraph or two for free, but after that you have to pay for my attention. You have to give me some reason to care.

Now, sometimes, it’s natural to withhold information or explanation: The detective story in which we don’t have all the pieces to the puzzle until just before the end. That’s natural because the detective doesn’t have all the pieces until just before the end. But what about a detective story in which the detective discovers some core information or develops a core theory and shares this information with all of the other characters, but the author withholds this information from us. That’s just frustrating.

Monk fans may recognize the feeling from the recent episode “Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show” in which Adrian Monk and Captain Stottlemeyer put into action a plan to trap the murderer and his accomplice, but no one tells us what they’re up to. Of course, this episode broke the rules of a detective story in other ways, too. The end result was that I didn’t know what was going on, and I felt cheated.

How much uncertainty is too much? It’s not a matter of amount, but of setting. If the narrator should reasonably know the answer to the imminent question occupying the audience’s mind, he should reveal it. If the characters know the answer, they should reveal it.

The best tension comes from answers that are more confusing than the questions themselves. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did this well in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Tell me what’s going on, which gets me involved in the story. But once I understand the surface-level explanation as to what’s going on, that just brings up other underlying issues. And now I’m not only involved in the story, I’m also engaged. That’s how to keep me on the edge of my seat.

-TimK