Giving your characters a deadline—and suitably disagreeable consequences if they fail to meet it—ups the ante and keeps readers glued to your story suspense. Even better, it’s a super-easy trick to apply to your story!
Your hero’s goal is what shapes your story. Without something he needs or wants, your hero just an interesting personality at best. But even if your hero has a strong goal, readers are likely to lose interest if your character has all the time in the world to achieve that goal.
How to Use a Ticking Clock to Heighten Your Story Suspense
The classic World War II movie The Guns of Navarone, directed by J. Lee Thompson, presents a masterful use of the ticking clock.
The heroes are on a suicide mission to destroy two huge guns in a German fortress. From the very beginning, they’re on tight schedule. If they don’t blow up the guns in a just a few days, hundreds of men stranded on the island of Kyros and everyone in the ships sent to rescue them will be killed.
As if a near-impossible World War II mission into Nazi-held territory was enough to raise the story suspense… (Gregory Peck in The Guns of Navarone (1961), directed by J. Lee Thompson, produced by Columbia Pictures.)
You’d think that would be tension enough, but scriptwriter Carl Foreman took things one step further.
Halfway into their mission, with a wounded man on their hands and half their supplies destroyed, the team gets word the deadline has been moved up a full day. Their already suicidal mission now looks completely impossible.
…the stakes jump even higher when the commanding officer is wounded, the supplies are destroyed, and the mission deadline is moved up a full 24 hours. Tick-tock, tick-tock. (Gregory Peck in The Guns of Navarone (1961), directed by J. Lee Thompson, produced by Columbia Pictures.)
Viewers are on the edge of their seats—and right in the palm of the filmmakers’ hands!
The Easiest Story Suspense Trick of All: Shorten Your Timeline
Putting a time limit on your character’s goals—whether that goal is to destroy an enemy base or just to buy groceries—brings a whole new level of tension to your story.
If your story takes place over a course of weeks, try shortening the timeline to days—and watch that ticking clock energize both your characters and your readers!
