Timing and Plot “Construction”

Abstract

As John Russell Taylor observes in The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play, the term “plot construction” is acutely misleading, employing as it does an architectural metaphor although drama is a temporal art form. It is therefore not only appropriate to speak of “timing,” “time management” or “temporal organization” of a play rather than of “construction,” but also advisable to pay particular attention to the way in which the aspect of time is handled when analysing a play. Time management is also essential for the creation of suspense. Thus, Porter defines suspense as “a state of anxiety dependent on a timing device”¹ and the “French crime writers Boileau/Narcejac, in their book Le Roman Policier ask the question: if we call this concept ‘suspense,’ exactly what is it that is being suspended? Their answer is: time.”² François Truffaut ventures the definition of the “stretching of an anticipation”³ in his interview with suspense specialist Alfred Hitchcock.