Tighten Tension with Unity in Time and Place

Imagine being buried alive in a coffin underground. That’s the premise of a movie called “Buried” where Ryan Reynolds plays an American truck driver who gets captured in Iraq. Now his goal is to survive and escape.

This situation creates tremendous suspense because each moment in the underground coffin means the hero’s flashlight battery is dying and his only link to the outside world, a mobile phone, also has a battery that’s dying. If nobody finds him before the batteries run out, they’ll never find him at all.

What makes “Buried” such a tense story is that it keeps the hero stuck in a specific place (buried underground) and in a specific time (a few days). The more time a story spends in one place within a limited time period, the greater the suspense and tension.

What happens if you stretch time or place? You get a weaker story.

In “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”, the time of the story stretches from when Furiosa is a little girl until she grows up. That’s roughly ten years. The location of the story ranges from Furiosa’s original home to her journeys throughout the Wasteland. Basically, the story takes place in so many locations that it dissipates any sense of confinement.

Is it any wonder that “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” isn’t that popular? The more you stretch the time and place of a story, the less involved we’ll feel towards the hero’s story.

In “Buried”, the action takes place over a few days within the confinement of the underground coffin. If the hero doesn’t find a way out in those few days, he’s dead. This deadline makes every action critical because one mistake could doom him for good.

In “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”, the action takes place over years so there’s no sense of a deadline to meet. Without a deadline driving the action towards a specific conclusion, the story lacks urgency and thus lacks tension. Because the action isn’t confined to specific locations, there’s no suspense in the character trying to leave a location or get to a new location.

In “Die Hard”, the hero is trapped in a skyscraper (place) and must save his wife before the terrorists complete their plane (time). This unity of time and place acts like a pressure cooker, keeping suspense as high as possible.

What would happen if “Die Hard” took place over several years? There would be a lack of urgency and thus a lack of suspense. What if “Die Hard” took place in multiple skyscrapers in different cities around the world over a period of a decade or two? Suddenly there’s no sense of impending doom if the hero fails to act in time.

When you stretch time and place too far, your story loses tension. When you confine time and place as much as possible, you increase suspense.

Most stories take place within a limited number of locations. In “Legally Blonde”, the first major location is the University of Southern California (USC). Then the second major location is Harvard law school (with a minor location at a beauty parlor). The third major location is the court room. With any location, the hero must struggle to get to that location, stay in that location, and eventually leave that location.

In “Legally Blonde”, Elle must study hard to get into law school, then study harder to stay in law school. Finally because she excels in her classes, she’s picked to temporarily leave law school and help in the court room.

Keep adding major locations and story like “Legally Blonde” wold feel much weaker with Elle running around from one location to another for a brief period of time before rushing off to another location for another brief moment in time. The less time spent in any location, the weaker the tension and suspense, and that’s exactly the problem with “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”.

Watch this opening scene from “Buried” to see how compressing time and place creates a greater sense of tension.

Now watch this trailer for “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” to see how the story covers a large part of Furiosa’s life, from when she’s a child to a grown woman. Amazingly, the villain even disappears in the middle of the story because Furiosa’s life takes her away from him. So a large chunk of the story doesn’t involve the villain at all.

If you want to create a great story, focus on keeping the time and place of your story as confined as possible. A story about a man trying to save his wife in one night (“Die Hard”) while trapped in a skyscraper is far more compelling than a story about a woman spending her whole life trying to get back home while roaming around a desert (“Furiosa” A Mad Max Saga”).

The fewer the locations and the more compressed the time span, the greater the tension of the story. That’s a lesson even Hollywood’s A-list directors still haven’t figured out.

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