Suspense Plot Clarification:
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > SHAPE > DIAGRAM > INCITING > PLOTS > SUSPENSE > TECHNIQUES > EXAMPLE >

'. . . whatever the risk of being turned a cold shoulder, I still don't want to talk to people only about the surface aspects of their lives, the sort of things that acquaintances laugh and chatter about on ordinary social occasions. I feel that they get plenty of that, and heaven knows so do I, before and after the little interval of time in which I have their attention and say what I have to say to them.'

-- Tennessee Williams

Here's an annotated version of the introduction and clarification of a Suspense Plot in miniature from CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF . . .

Inciting Incident introduces Suspense Plot


MARGARET tells BRICK his brother and 
sister-in-law are up to something disgusting.

Clarifying Suspense Plot


BRICK asks what these two are doing.

MARGARET tells him he already knows.

BRICK denies knowing.

Suspense Plot clarified


MARGARET tells him they're trying to get his
father to leave nothing in his will to Brick.

And here's the annotated scene as Tennessee Williams wrote it . . .

CAT's Clarification Scene
With Dialogue

He's using the same approach Marsha Norman used many years later in 'NIGHT, MOTHER -- building to the clarification of the Suspense Plot with an escalating series of references. He wrapped this all up in less than a page. But she's more daring: we get that first vague reference with the Inciting Incident on I-1 when Jesse asks her mother for more old towels and plastic sheeting. But the light doesn't dawn until I-9.

And there's yet another way to stretch a Suspense Plot . . .

Using a 'Red Herring'

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Suspense Plot Clarification: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof