Knowing How Much Is Left

In 2003, millions of people gathered at theaters to watch the final Lord of the Rings movie. They watched it for a long time: three and a half hours. Many complained they kept thinking the movie was about to end, only to have it keep going; by most counts, the movie had five separate endings. Today, if you were streaming it at home, you’d easily be able to check how much longer you had to go. Does it make a difference to your experience of a work to know how close you are to the end of it?

Key concepts

Suspense Versus Surprise: Hitchcock's distinction. Suspense is the tension of anticipating something you know is coming; surprise is the jolt of something you did not. Sensing that an end is near sharpens the first and destroys the second, so the same information helps one kind of story and ruins the other.

+ 2 more concepts inside

Every work — at a glance

The Return of the King — Peter Jackson (film)

The three-and-a-half-hour finale of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, famous for its five separate endings in a row — Mount Doom, Aragorn's coronation, the return to the Shire, the Grey Havens, and Sam's 'Well, I'm back' — each closing a different thread, with no way in a cinema to see how near the real one is.

What to know

01
Does knowing how close you are change the experience? Yes, and not always for the better. Not knowing can itself be the feature: the cinema audience's repeated 'is this it?' jolt is only available without a progress bar, so the same five separate endings that irritate a home viewer watching the timeline can genuinely move somebody who cannot.

+ 1 more insight inside

Across subjects

Interface design lives on this. A loading bar that seems to speed up near the end makes the same wait feel shorter, so some are faked smooth. Seeing how far you

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

Here the question turns on itself: does answering it precisely make the journey worse? One side says uncertainty is part of the art — not knowing where the end was is what let the 2003 endings land. The other says information is freedom: knowing your position lets you pace yourself and decide whether to stay.

Practice — a sample

LITSuspense is to what you anticipate as surprise is to —

A What you fear
B What you repeat
C What you don't
D What you know
E What you skip

Keep reading the full lesson

The remaining insights, works, and practice come with full access — $9.99/month or $29.99/season.

Unlock full access →

New here? Create a free account to read the free section.