After attention is aroused, it will soon relax if it is not handled properly. Therefore, for the artist, the continuity of the audience's attention is more important than the elicitation.

The 19th-century German playwright Herbel wrote in his diary: "The worst plays often begin with the same resemblance to the best plays." A battle that results in a crushing defeat often begins with a thunderbolt that precedes it. This shows that if you can't keep the audience's attention going, then the momentum at the beginning can become a self-mockery.

It is very difficult to keep the audience's attention for a long time. Osborne, a modern British playwright and actor, said: "Part of what I do is trying to get the audience to sit in their seats for about two and a half hours and stay interested, which is a very difficult thing to do. He also said that this matter, which seems to be easy, is not easy to learn, and as long as the theater exists, the dramatists have to keep learning about it.

The most common method in dramatic literature to keep the audience's attention for a long time is the setting of suspense. Suspense is often seen as a theatrical technique, compared to "coincidence", "twist" and the like. In fact, dramatists set up suspense purely for the sake of indulging and controlling the audience's psychology. What is "suspended" is the "thought" of the audience. Strictly speaking, this should be a noun in aesthetic psychology, which is used by screenwriting and directing, but it is just a kind of borrowing.

In order to create the effect of suspense, the technique of suspension is employed. In general, this technique requires the distance between the formulation of the problem and the solution of the problem, so that the audience's attention is maintained at this distance.

Since the maintenance of attention is the basic subject of the process art of drama, the technique of suspense has been used earlier and more commonly in the birthplace of classical drama in the world.

Li Yu said, "If people can't think of it or guess it, it's a good trick and a good drama." guess and then come out, the viewer is confused, and the author is confused"; The ancient Japanese dramatist Ami said, "If you keep something secret, it will have a great effect"; Vega, the founder of the Spanish National Theatre, said that "as soon as the audience knows the ending, they turn around and walk out of the theater", so that they often do not guess that "some of the things implied in the play are far from what is going to be done......

These classical dramatists all recognized the dangers of unobstructed views on drama, so they all talked about the importance of the plot bending and shading. There is an extra layer of curved shade, allowing the audience to have an extra layer of conjecture, and constantly arousing the audience's interest in solving puzzles. Therefore, "can't guess" is an important feature of suspense.

However, here the problem arises. If you can't guess at all, will the audience still have the interest to continue guessing?

Life experience and aesthetic experience tell people that interest arises between the seemingly rare path and the unclear path. Just like walking in the night, if you can't see your fingers and lose any hope and possibility of exploring the way, then you can't talk about the desire and concentration to explore, only by giving a glimmer of light, whether it is a faint light in the dark sky, whether it is a lonely star lamp in the dark mountains, whether it is a pile of wild burns miles away, will bring vitality and interest to the night walkers.

Therefore, more and more dramatists believe that the suspense cannot be set up so that the audience can not guess at all. In fact, Li Yu and Vega said that they wanted to make the audience guess, but their own plays still often give the audience credible signposts. They only wanted to emphasize one point, and failed to analyze the subtle relationship clearly.

In a play, if you go all out to guide the audience to guess, it will cover up and wear out other psychological mechanisms that can be mobilized when the audience is aesthetic. Guessing for the sake of guessing, aesthetic enjoyment will be deprived of logical reasoning, emotional immersion will be replaced by tension, and feelings about the character's character will be expelled by waiting. Originally, suspense is only a means to attract the audience's attention, and if the means are used as an end, it will deviate from the right path of sound aesthetics. Therefore, for the extremely magical suspense, it is neither abandonable nor indulgent, especially not to consume too much energy on speculation and reasoning.

Finally, there are some dramatists who explicitly declare that they want to give all (or most) the secret to the audience, so that the audience can watch it without much guesswork.

Diderot once compared the recognition of siblings in a Greek tragedy with the recognition of flesh and blood in a tragedy written by Voltaire. He said that the Greek tragedy did not expose the relationship between sister and brother that the audience already knew but the people in the play did not know until the last scene, which kept the audience hungry for five acts; And Voltaire's tragedy, without the knowledge of the playwright and the audience, finally announces the flesh-and-blood relationship of a group of people in the play, which can only cause a startling effect and a short-term touch, if the audience had known their flesh-and-blood relationship for a long time, they would have listened to every word they spit out with great attention, and tears would have flowed out long before the people in the play recognized each other. In this regard, Diderot concludes:

Because of the secrecy, the playwright arranged for me a moment of surprise; On the other hand, if he had revealed the inside story to me earlier, he would have caused me to be anxious for a long time.

For those who have been hit in an instant, I can only give a moment of mercy. But if the blow doesn't happen immediately, how would I feel if I saw lightning gathering over my or someone else's head for a long time without striking it?

Voltaire

In terms of practical artistic treatment, Diderot believed that it should be "made clear to the audience, but as far as possible so that the people in the play do not recognize each other".

William Ya discusses this issue in more detail in The Dramatist, and his opinion is concentrated on the analysis of an example. There is a plot in the British 18th-century dramatist Xie Lidan's masterpiece "The School of Rumors", a lady behind the screen hears a scandalous conversation closely related to herself, and finally the screen is torn down, and the interlocutor who did not know that there is someone behind the screen is surprised. Lady Olifen, author of The English Writer, thinks of this plot: "It would certainly be a more clever art if the playwright could deceive us as he deceived the people in the play, and made us equally surprised by this discovery." Yacho meant the opposite, he believed that the wonderful effect of this scene could only be based on the fact that the audience knew that the lady was hiding behind the screen. Matthews, a professor of dramatic literature, believes that the audience can still be interested in watching this play even if they know the secret, mainly because they want to wait for the people in the play to be embarrassed after the screen is torn down.

It seems that Mrs. Olivien understood the means of suspense as secrecy, and the effect of suspense as surprise; Professor Matthews understands suspense as anticipation in a clear general situation. On the premise of rejecting Mrs. Oliphon and affirming Professor Matthews, Ya adds that assuming that the audience is so familiar with the scene that they can even recite the lines of the characters in the play after the screen has fallen, they are still willing to watch the scene again and again and enjoy it every time, "perhaps because of the author's ingenuity in framing the scene."

In this way, the audience's attention is poured into the artistic technique when they watch the play repeatedly. Ya himself was skeptical of this. Because far from all audiences are playwrights and critics, and even if playwrights and critics watch the play repeatedly, they don't really care about technique.

Therefore, Ya has come to his fundamental conclusion: the audience's interest and attention in repeating the play arises precisely because they know better than the people in the play; In other words, it is a sense of superiority that sees everything, and puts the viewer in a state of excitement and satisfaction.

Ya Ke vividly pointed out that when we look at the stage in the theater as an audience, we are quite condescending:

We clearly see the full background, relationships, and intricacies of a state of affairs in which at least two of the people involved are blindly and ignorantly moving towards an outcome they themselves never dreamed of. In fact, it is as if we are in the position of God, watching with incredible insight as the poor, ignorant mortals stumble and wander through the labyrinth of life. Our seats in the theater are like the hedonists' ideal Olympus mountain, from which we can see the intricate reactions of all human destiny without ourselves being involved or responsible. This sense of superiority will never annoy us. When Othello comes to the stage radiant, convinced of Desdemona's love, our familiarity with his future is a hundred times more intriguing to him than the mere curiosity of longing to know what is to come. It is because we know in advance that Nala's departure at the end of the last act makes her appearance at the beginning of the first act so dramatic.

According to the popular theatrical concept, the curiosity of the audience is more important than the above-mentioned superiority of insight into everything, which is not true, or at least a shallow understanding.

The fact that there are such different opinions on the question of suspense actually shows the multiple functions of suspense on the audience's attention:

- For viewers who do not know the plot, the playwright's combination of secrecy and disclosure can stimulate their interest in speculation and attract their attention for a long time;

- For audiences who are familiar with the plot, the possibility of attracting their attention for a long time is mostly out of assumptions and expectations of the various reactions of the people in the play;

- For viewers who are familiar with the plot, their attention is often generated at the same time as their own sense of superiority in insight into the secrets of the play that no one knows, and it is perpetuated......

In short, the suspense needs to be set up against two tendencies: one is to have an unobstructed view, and the other is to keep it completely secret. Because none of them can attract and retain the attention of the audience, let alone anything else.

Traditional Chinese opera has always been opposed to revealing its simplicity, but it also clearly rejects the conjectural way of hiding. Generally speaking, Chinese audiences are more inclined to a condescending and more relaxed attitude of appreciation, and do not like to spend too much effort in the theater. In this regard, Gai called the sky and broke it in a few words:

In a bad scene, the actor shook his sleeves and read the introduction, and the audience in the following scene had already expected eight or nine points. In such a scene, the audience smoked and drank tea on their own. A good play, the audience doesn't know what will happen next, with the actors, with the changes of the play, step by step, layer by layer, go deeper, and watch it with relish. The best play is the storyline, the audience knows it all, and even sings it themselves, but every time I watch it, I feel fresh every time, it's always like the first time I watch it, and the play can only be considered home if it can be performed like this.

Traditional Chinese opera is good at directly expressing the psychological state of the characters, and often explains the ins and outs of the matter as soon as they come on the stage, and even the conspiracy plans of the bad guys are fully revealed. "The opera writer should not keep any secrets from the audience, but let the audience know what he has designed for the characters, so as to arouse the audience's interest in how they act." Sometimes, "the more nervous the characters on stage, the more relaxed the audience is." Although I know what is in the 'baggage', I must also see what kind of scene is after shaking." In this case, "it seems that there is no suspense, but in fact this is the biggest suspense". That is to say, Chinese dramatists' understanding of the problem of using suspense to attract and retain the audience's attention is basically different from that of Madame Oliphon and closer to that of Diderot, Matthews and Archo.

The setting of suspense creates conditions for the audience's attention to continue in principle, but can a long performance rely on a total suspense to ensure that the audience's attention is not relaxed from beginning to end? This brings us to the issue of attention reinforcement.

There are two main ways to strengthen attention: one is the connection of small suspense, and the other is the adjustment of rhythm.

Let's talk about the interweaving of small suspense first.

From the beginning of the question to the final solution, it constitutes a big suspense, without which the direction of the audience's attention will shake at will, and even the attention will be scattered due to the loss of the ultimate goal, just like the flow of water without a fixed direction is lost in the dry soil of yellow sand. However, if there is only this big goal without a series of intermediate links, the water flow will still be difficult to reach. There is a big suspense in the audience's mind, but their attention is faced with one after another small suspense. A wave is not settled, another wave rises, waves are surging, peaks and loops turn, and finally looking up, it turns out that it is time to solve the big suspense. In some particularly complex scenes, small suspense can be composed of smaller, more elaborate miniature suspense.

Western dramatists have once described a schematic diagram of this series of suspense: it is an arc-shaped curve, representing the overall suspense of the whole play; On closer inspection, this arc curve is made up of many small arcs, just like a curvy lace; If you look closely, the small arc is composed of dense layers of smaller arcs.

This diagram shows that in order to hold the audience's attention tightly, the combination of suspense will reach the point where there is no room for suspense. If any well-structured drama is taken and analyzed, people can see that in the opening and closing, every thing, every scene, and every entanglement has new problems raised and solved, and one link is closely linked to the other, leading to the climax. Jiao Juyin once called this method of strengthening the audience's attention "serial set", he said:

The development of the plot is best to be one ring after another, one button after another, like a nine-ring. The writer weaves the story together with the accidental and inevitable events that are in line with the logic of life, and in the middle, the main events are highlighted, so as to attract the audience. ...... the plot arrangement of "The Four Jinshi", that's it. Buying a wife from Yang Chun led to the contradiction between Yang Suzhen and him, met Mao Peng's private visit, found the grievance, and wrote a letter for Suzhen. Yang Chun tore up the marriage certificate, became a brother and sister with Su Zhen, and was willing to help her file a lawsuit. On the way, the brothers and sisters were scattered, Su Zhen met the hooligans, and the hooligans met the injustice-loving Song Shijie. …… As this continues, the events become more and more complex, the more characters are involved, and the contradictions are getting bigger and bigger......

Jiao Juyin believes that the use of this technique comes from the artist's natural refinement of the logic of life, so it is easy for the audience to accept.

Let's talk about the rhythm adjustment.

The interlocking and layered attention is also easy to make the audience tired. As a kind of process art that drags on for a long time, only knowing the amount of stimulation without knowing how to adjust it will be counterproductive.

The night voyage of the river and sea, the navigation lights flicker and flash, and the lights are on and off, not to save electricity, but to experience that they can stimulate the attention of navigators more than the non-stop ever-bright lights. In the play, in order to maintain the audience's attention and anticipation until the end of the play, it is necessary to constantly change the speed and rhythm and overcome any kind of monotony, including the heavy monotony, because any monotony will make the audience's attention disappear.

The importance of rhythmic adjustment, transformation, and interspersing to maintain the audience's attention can be seen in many examples. The American theater educator Will Ruth, in his book as a guide to script writing, gave the most simple example of suspense: in a boxing match, a young athlete is knocked down again and again by a big man, he gets up, he is knocked down again, he is beaten to the point of blood, and there is no hope of victory, and he is about to be killed. The flaw in this plot can be seen by comparing it with the next one: the young athlete is knocked down, but he immediately jumps up and knocks the big man down. As soon as the audience saw that they were evenly matched, they immediately raised their interest, and sure enough, "Bang! "The young man was knocked down again, and this time he was injured, and the audience sweated for him. But he stood up again, twisted the big man, beat him hard, and the big man fought back, each with a victory or defeat, until the climax, the young man had been beaten to the point that he could not move, and the referee counted him, and it seemed that it was irretrievable. But he still staggered to his feet and knocked the big man off the stage with a punch, and the crowd cheered......

Based on this illustration, Will Luth points out that the strings of suspense cannot be stretched in the same direction and in the same way, because this will make the viewer tired of repetition, and the result can only be laxity of attention; On the contrary, if the second method is adopted, every part of the play will be closely watched by the audience.

A similar example can also be cited as "Su Xiaomei's Three Dilemma Bridegrooms", which many traditional Chinese opera genres are willing to perform. Su Xiaomei gave her newlywed husband Qin Shaoyou three questions in a row, and only after passing the exam did she have to enter the cave room. For dramatists, how do these three topics match the level of difficulty? The third question should be the hardest, which is fine, but how should the first and second questions be arranged? It can be a climbing style, that is, a question is difficult like a question. However, depending on the need for rhythmic adjustment, you might as well make the second question a little easier. Qin Shaoyou faced the first problem, and used his brain to answer it, and there was still a lot of nervousness in the joy, waiting for the second question. The second question was quite easy, so he was proud, and the audience was relieved with him and no longer worried about him. It was at this time that the third question was read out, which suddenly pushed Qin Shaoyou into a predicament that was difficult to get out of. Since he had been relaxed after answering the second question, the audience was reminded of the interesting comparison. What is especially important is that a question is difficult to climb like a question, and the audience may not be able to relax their attention, but their attention is mainly focused on the exam question itself, which is relatively narrow. And in the middle, Qin Shaoyou breathed a sigh of relief, and the audience's attention will definitely focus on the characters of Qin Shaoyou and even Su Xiaomei, as well as the changes in the atmosphere on the stage. That is to say, once adjusted, the audience's attention is broader, deeper, and more detailed.

Boredom caused by climbing in the same direction

Heighten attention due to ups and downs

In the drama, where it is necessary to depict it with a strong brushstroke, it is best to try to pull the "point" into a "line" to prolong the audience's attention to such a place. And as long as you know how to adjust, you can effectively prolong your attention. Zhou Xinfang's Peking Opera "Heavenly Rain Flower" depicts a snobbish magistrate's deal with Zuo Weiming, the governor of the Eight Prefectures, which can be used as an illustration of the effective prolongation of attention. It stands to reason that a short-distance comparison of the county's arrogant and flattering attitudes towards the lower and the higher can effectively stimulate the audience's perception, but the dramatist is not satisfied with this, but pulls out a long "line" of several ups and downs on this "point". The magistrate didn't know Zuo Weiming, so it was still a practice to order the comer to report his identity, but when the comer just proposed the name of "Zuo Weiming", the magistrate was taken aback, and even called him a capital crime, and bowed respectfully - this has constituted the first change in rhythm; But at this time, the magistrate heard the news of the arrival of the real patrol, so he immediately beat the guest into a prisoner, and regained his voice—this was the second change of rhythm; However, the person who was originally thought to be pretending to be Zuo Weiming was not a liar, but indeed an entourage sent by Zuo Weiming, so when the real Zuo Weiming looked down and saw the person who was kneeling and tied, the magistrate fell into an embarrassing situation again - this is the third change of rhythm. These transformations take a long time, portraying only a focal point, but the audience does not get bored, and the attention is always very focused, because this treatment is very similar to the above boxing match, in the back and forth of psychological adjustment.

Zhou Xinfang "Oolong Courtyard"

Two plot arrangements with the same purpose and different routes

The German thinker Schiller pointed out that the dramatic poet cannot deepen the impression of the audience by stimulation alone, "because the more violently our sensory function is stimulated, the stronger the reaction of our soul to overcome this impression." If the viewer's mind is to be kept on a certain feeling, "it is necessary to interrupt it very cleverly at intervals, or even to replace it with diametrically opposed feelings, so that the feeling will be more powerful when it returns, and the liveliness of the first impression must be constantly restored." Sensory switching is the most powerful means of overcoming fatigue and resisting the effects of habit." Schiller's argument is one of the important principles of audience psychology, and what he calls "feelings" is not limited to one end of the attention spectrum, but also includes attention.