it's 2am here's a braindump on suspense

so i was reading a rather long and rather mediocre multichapter fanfic during my commute this week, right

and while reading this morning in particular, i noticed a funny thing

see, the final plot arc in this story had been going on for a while, and it very clearly could only end in one of two ways. either our dashing heroes would come up with a solution for the Perilous and Tragic End that awaited them, or it was going to end with one of them meeting a tragic end and the other one being sad and spilling large puddles of angst everywhere.*

and i had no idea which route this author was going to pick.

not because of any of the reasons you’d expect. i wasn’t clutching my kindle, desperate to see what shocking twist would bring us closer to one end or the other. i wasn’t super-invested in the conflict. i wasn’t suspicious of any of the characters.

it was just that, the tone and the plot turns and the direction of the piece had been so erratic and inconsistent that i straight-up had no idea. i couldn’t tell if the author was building up toward tragedy & heartbreak, or shock & awe, or sweetness & goodness, or what. there had been lovely patches of fluff throughout the fic but also angsty patches of angst. action and diversions and such seemed to happen on the basis of “whatever the author felt like writing when they sat down that day” rather than on something particularly coherent or driving. i mean, it made sense, inasmuch as, each scene led to the next in some logical way, but it just didn’t feel… whole.

so it occurred to me, if you ever want a case study in “suspense != your readers not knowing what’s going to happen next,” this would be it. i liked the characters well enough (the mighty upshot of fanfiction: “at least i know i’ll like the characters!”), and i had no clue what was going to happen, but turns out randomness and confusion doesn’t get a reader excited; only order and direction can. or something.

and also—it’s kind of interesting in an almost meta sense, right? here, i don’t think the author was intending to confuse their readers; i think the tone/direction made perfect sense in their head. but i’m curious, if you were a particularly skilled writer, and very cognizant of your tone/mood/whatever, what sorts of clever, effective misdirections could you do solely through that sort of thing, rather than the usual suspense-keypins of character and plot and such?

it strikes me as dicey. i can think of a couple examples of this sort of thing in like, modern/experimental art, but nothing that quite plays with it for suspense-y purposes. well, and i guess dark lord of derkholm comes to mind. that book was trying to get away with weird tone/mood shifts for comedy/parody reasons, though, which i think is a slightly different beast, and also, i didn’t find that book entirely effective—the constant, rapid shifts in mood from “lol d&d parody” to “viscerally upsetting violence / gang rape / etc” gave me emotional whiplash and made it hard to finish.

(for the record: finished reading the fic while busing home tonight, and it wound up going with the sad ending.)

* i’m being deliberately vague since i have no desire to embarrass the author personally or anything. i highly doubt anyone here’s read this fic and the details aren’t too exciting anyway :P