Results

We have developed a novel paradigm of measuring suspense, and the suspense-arc of a range of texts was experimentally measured at a high level of granularity (word level).


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 and mainly focuses on the novel erotetic concept called potential inquiry terminating questions (PITQs).


Based on this theory, questions that emerge during the reading of narratives were annotated for a number of texts and a so-called ‘erotetic activation index’ was computed that showed a remarkable correlation with the measured suspense level. The main result of the project so far is the observation that a model based on activation of PITQs in a narrative captures a significant proportion of suspense-variation in various narratives at a high level of granularity.