_3. Pause Creates Effective Suspense_

 

Suspense is responsible for a great share of our interest in life; it will be

the same with your speech. A play or a novel is often robbed of much of its

interest if you know the plot beforehand. We like to keep guessing as to the

outcome. The ability to create suspense is part of woman's power to hold the

other sex. The circus acrobat employs this principle when he fails purposely in

several attempts to perform a feat, and then achieves it. Even the deliberate

manner in which he arranges the preliminaries increases our expectation--we like

to be kept waiting. In the last act of the play, "Polly of the Circus," there is

a circus scene in which a little dog turns a backward somersault on the back of

a running pony. One night when he hesitated and had to be coaxed and worked with

a long time before he would perform his feat he got a great deal more applause

than when he did his trick at once. We not only like to wait but we appreciate

what we wait for. If fish bite too readily the sport soon ceases to be a sport.

 

It is this same principle of suspense that holds you in a Sherlock Holmes

story--you wait to see how the mystery is solved, and if it is solved too soon

you throw down the tale unfinished. Wilkie Collins' receipt for fiction writing

well applies to public speech: "Make 'em laugh; make 'em weep; make 'em wait."

Above all else make them wait; if they will not do that you may be sure they

will neither laugh nor weep.

 

Thus pause is a valuable instrument in the hands of a trained speaker to arouse

and maintain suspense. We once heard Mr. Bryan say in a speech: "It was my