We have proposed a theory of narrative suspense that – in opposition to most classical approaches – takes the explanatory burden off of content-related notions such as danger, preferences, likelihood and importance. It mainly focuses on a novel erotetic concept that capures the intuition that suspense happens when the consumer (reader) has the recurring impression of "now, it will happen. I can feel it". What we assume as the basic notion of suspense is a relation between a main question that spans the whole narrative and a series of small but relevant micro questions. The relevant relation is a relation of asymmetric dependency: One possible answer to the micro question resolves the main question while the other does not. We call these suspence-inducing micro questions "potential inquiry terminating (micro) questions (PIT(M)Qs)."

For more details, see: Köppe, T., Onea, E. The Nearly Missed Account of Narrative Suspense. In: Frontiers of Narrative Studies 9 (2023), 273-289.