In his interviews with French filmmaker Francois Truffault, Alfred Hitchcock constantly emphasized one point: Emotion. Good storytelling connects with audiences at the most visceral level.
And what better technique to create tension than time? By setting deadlines, we create a race against time. By slowing time, we offer an opportunity to look carefully at people, places, and moments.
Every scene, Hitch said, has to consciously manipulate time. We can’t just let one thing happen, then another and another. We have to create a sense of urgency,
“The very nature of suspense require a constant play with the flux of time,” Truffault noted, “either by compressing it or, more often, by distending it. … A fast action has to be geared down and stretched out; otherwise, it is almost imperceptible to the viewer.”
Hitch agreed on the need for a “bold manipulation of time.” He suggests using pieces of dialogue, references to time (like clocks and setting suns) to foster a sense of urgency.
In the thrilling Strangers on a Train, Bruno meets a fading tennis star named Guy and suggests the two swap murders. Bruno will kill Guy’s estranged wife and Guy will kill Bruno’s father. Guy wants no part of the “criss-cross” deal. But Bruno kills Guy’s wife and demands that he reciprocate. When he won’t Guy goes to the amusement park where he committed murder to plant Guy’s cigarette lighter to implicate him.
“When he asks someone at the amusement park, At what time does it dark around here?’ everything is decompressed,” Hitch explains. “Real-life time takes over while he waits for nightfall. That dramatic play with time is really stunning.”
Playing with time can also emphasize the dreary parts of life.
In Psycho, the camera zooms in on a clock in the hotel room where Marion Crane has an affair.
“I did that to lead up to a very important fact: that it was 2:43 in the afternoon and this is the only time the poor girl has to go to bed with her lover,” Hitch said. “It also allows the viewer to become a Peeping Tom.”
To create mystery, Hitch advised showing the same incident over and over from different perspectives:
“I had a car accident [in a TV show]. … What I did was use five shots of people witnessing the incident before I showed the accident itself. … These are moments when you have to stop time, to stretch it out.”
This slow, desultory scene raises several questions.
“The basic question: When will the girl be found out? That’s one question and the other one is: What’s the matter with this girl” Why won’t she go to bed with her husband?”
Time is tricky. Sometimes moving quickly can elongate a moment. In Rear Window, Lisa Fremont moves into Jeff Jeffries’s apartment unannounced and moves toward him directly to kiss him. Hitch wastes no time in getting to that moment, but then slows down the action to bring the audience into the embrace.
“I want to get right to the important point without wasting any time,” Hitch said.
Arnold Toynbee once said that history is “just one damn thing after another.” Hitchcock said that stories are just one moment of tension after another.
“Sequences can never stand still,” he said. “They must carry the action forward, just as the wheels of a ratchet mountain railway move the train up the slope, cog by cog. … There must be this steady development of the plot.”
Great storytellers use time, the most finite of all resources, to strengthen all the other tricks of narrative.
Before you go . . .
• Like this content? For more posts on writing, visit the Elements of Writing Blog. Check out the posts on Storytelling, Writing Mechanics, Analysis, and Writers on Writing.
• For a monthly newsletter, chock full of hacks, interviews, and writing opportunities, sign up here.
• To transform writing in your organization, with in-person or online seminars, email us here for a free consultation.