What the Reader Can’t See: Using Show vs. Tell to Create Suspense

A woman hears a sound downstairs at two in the morning. She sits up and listens. Another sound follows, quieter this time. She reaches for her phone, but before her hand touches it, the bedroom door moves.

Nothing has happened yet. No intruder has appeared. No ghost has floated through the wall. No one has explained the sound downstairs or the door's movement. Yet the reader wants to know what happens next.

That desire illustrates one of the more interesting uses of show versus tell. Writers learn the principle as a choice between stating information and allowing readers to experience it through action, dialogue, sensory detail, or character response. The distinction matters, but show versus tell can do something more sophisticated: it can control how much the reader knows and when the reader knows it.

Around Halloween, when shadows, unexpected noises, and things unseen become part of the season, that idea seems especially appropriate. We expect doors to creak, footsteps to sound a little more suspicious, and ordinary shapes in the dark to become something else for just a moment. Writers can use that same instinct by giving readers enough to notice, but not always enough to explain what they have noticed.

Suspense Lives in the Gap

Readers do not need complete information to become interested in a scene. Sometimes incomplete information creates the interest.

Consider that sound downstairs. Telling the reader immediately that a tree branch struck the kitchen window resolves the uncertainty. Showing a character listening to an unexplained tapping sound prolongs it. Neither approach is inherently better. The writer's purpose determines which one belongs in the scene.

Suspense develops in the gap between what the character experiences and what the reader understands. A writer can widen or narrow that gap by deciding which details to show and which information to withhold.

Too little information produces confusion. Too much eliminates uncertainty. The craft lies somewhere between the two.

A woman looks back at something at the door.

Let the Reader Notice Before You Explain

Writers sometimes get nervous when readers do not immediately understand everything. That anxiety can lead to explanations arriving before readers have an opportunity to observe, wonder, or interpret.

Imagine a character entering her office and discovering that the desk drawer is open. She knows she closed it before leaving. A manuscript page lies on the floor.

The writer could immediately explain that someone has searched the room. Yet allowing the character to notice the drawer, pause, pick up the page, and look toward the door gives the reader time to reach that possibility independently.

That small interval matters. Readers become participants rather than recipients of information.

Showing does not require pages of description. One carefully chosen detail can sometimes create more tension than a paragraph explaining why the character should be afraid.

Ordinary Details Can Become Unsettling

Suspense does not depend on dark forests, abandoned houses, or mysterious footsteps. Familiar objects can become unsettling when something about them is slightly wrong.

A coffee cup sits on a desk when no one else should be home. A porch light that is always on has gone dark. A photograph faces the wall. A dog refuses to enter a room it normally races into. A clock has stopped at a particular time.

None of those details is frightening on its own. Context changes their meaning.

Writers can use this technique well beyond mysteries or horror stories. An unexplained charge on a credit card can create tension in a family drama. An unanswered message can carry enormous weight in a romance. An unexpected name on a meeting agenda can change the atmosphere of a workplace story.

The principle remains the same: show the disruption and let the reader recognize that something doesn't fit. That small moment of uncertainty invites the reader to pause, interpret the clues, and wonder what the disruption might mean before the writer explains it.

Something is Different

Telling Can Increase Suspense Too

“Show, don't tell” is useful advice until writers begin treating it as a rule. Strong storytelling needs both. Sometimes telling gives the reader information the character does not have, and that knowledge creates tension.

Nothing unusual needs to happen during those actions. The reader's knowledge supplies the suspense.

Telling can also move quickly through information that does not deserve a full scene. If a writer shows every action, sensation, expression, and environmental detail, suspense can collapse beneath the weight of description. Pacing matters. Writers need to decide which moments deserve expansion and which need only enough information to move us toward the next important moment.

Showing slows the reader down. Telling can move the reader forward. Suspense frequently depends on controlling both.

Trust the Reader's Imagination

Perhaps the most powerful thing a writer can show is less than the reader wants to see. A partial glimpse, an unfinished action, or a detail that raises more questions than it answers can pull the reader deeper into the scene. Curiosity grows in the space between what has been revealed and what still remains hidden.

A shadow disappears around a corner. A telephone stops ringing the moment someone reaches for it. Footprints cross a muddy yard and end unexpectedly. A character opens an envelope, reads the contents, and sits down without speaking.

Readers begin supplying possibilities. Their imagined explanation may be darker, funnier, sadder, or more surprising than anything the writer could state immediately. Allowing that imagination to work creates investment in the story.

Eventually, of course, writers have to deliver. Mystery without sufficient resolution becomes frustration, and withholding information merely to manipulate the reader can feel artificial. Suspense works when the writer intentionally creates questions the story will ultimately answer.

Woman looking at a dark figure.

Sometimes What We Don't Show Matters Most

Show versus tell is not simply a contest in which showing wins. Both are tools for controlling a reader's experience.

The more interesting question is not always, Can I show this instead of telling it? Writers can ask, What do I want the reader to know right now? What should the reader notice? What should remain uncertain? When should the answer arrive?

Those decisions determine whether readers merely receive the story or participate in discovering it. Perhaps that is why suspense feels so appropriate as Halloween approaches. A closed door is simply a closed door until a writer gives us a reason to wonder what might be behind it. Sometimes the story becomes most compelling not because of what the writer shows us, but because of what the writer makes us imagine.