Dramatic suspense, typical of Hollywood films, is well researched. The hero or heroine strives toward a goal; they achieve it — we hope — they do not achieve it — we fear. The desire to learn the answer to the central question can practically tear us from our seats.
The other, less intense form of suspense is more difficult to grasp. Precisely because it is weaker, vaguer. Because it hides in texts and films that are more diverse than the schematically structured Hollywood movies, and because it goes by many names.
Yet it is just as important and effective as dramatic suspense — my research has taught me that. That is why, to bring it into the spotlight, I have given it its own name and christened it “mild suspense.” I call dramatic suspense “wild suspense.”
Mild suspense also plays an important role in Hollywood films. For exhibitions, however, it is especially important, because wild suspense can only be generated in them to a certain degree. If I use powerful music or a storm of lights, the effect can be intense, even dramatic, no question.
But solely with narrative means, it is difficult to let visitors fully immerse themselves in what is happening and to hold their attention continuously. Again and again, they are catapulted out of the world of stories, because exhibitions are fragmentary, static, resistant.
This is precisely why suspense techniques are so valuable: dramatic tools such as the “hero’s journey,” whose effect in an exhibition will be weaker than in a Hollywood film, but which nevertheless invites visitors to ask themselves: How will things continue for this person? Or mild techniques, such as small questions that do not raise the visitors’ pulse but still make them curious: What happens next? I would like to know that…