: Re: How to create suspense when the conclusion is known? How can there be suspense if the reader knows the conclusion from the beginning? I am writing an apocalyptic survival story, and I chose

How, not what

You create suspense for illustrating how the journey leads the story to the known conclusion - in this case, the conclusion can't be the climax, the other events have to take on a pivotal role.

Perhaps it's worth to look for inspiration at stories where it's not just that most of the audience would know the eventual outcome, but at the pacing for stories where the eventual outcome (or at least part of it) is explicitly shown early on. There are many stories that 'start with the end', here are some examples that came to my mind.

The story of Memento starts with one of the main characters killing another, and then proceeds to reveal earlier and earlier events. There's lots of suspense involved in the audience beginning to understand how and why they got to this critical point.

The TV Series 'Chernobyl' - while most viewers would know that Chernobyl turns out to be a disaster, the first episode starts with the death of one of the main characters (which IMHO wasn't known to most viewers), and then proceeds to show all the events that lead to it. Here IMHO the main suspense is about the fate of all the other characters involved; and also about him overcoming various obstacles where the price is not his life but other goals.

Forrest Gump starts with the protagonist telling his life story, so he obviously survived up to this point. That does not prevent suspense in, for example, his scenes during war. For one, there are all kinds of unwelcome things which could happen to him that are survivable, so there's the fear of that, and also of course there's the suspense about whether he'll achieve his goals and what will happen to the other characters.

To summarize, the key points seen in such stories seem to involve suspense about goals other than survival, and suspense about the fate of any other characters - possibly secondary, but still emotionally important.

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