Peagreene
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- Feb 9, 2026
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I've been thinking about Toy Story a lot lately, especially about how it manages to create tension during the scene moment in Pizza Planet when Buzz and Woody get caught in the crane machine.
Something that's hard to do when you're adding mystery or creating tension in storytelling is walking the balance between Revealing and Not Revealing. A character being mysterious can work well, but if there's too much mystery, there's nothing to engage the reader. The engagement comes from revealing Choice Morsels about the character and their situation while leaving enough unexplained so the reader will feel compelled to read on.
Hitchcock talks about this: he describes a scene of people sitting around a table when suddenly a bomb goes off in a suitcase under the table. The viewer has five seconds of shock, and then it's over. Surprise is nice, but it doesn't last and it doesn't pull the viewer in. Compare the same scene where the viewer knows there's a bomb in the suitcase under the table and is waiting for it to go off. Immediate tension that can last for a lot longer, and the viewer is pulled into engaging with the scene as they wait for the inevitable to happen.
In Toy Story, they could have had Buzz and Woody won by a strange kid they don't know. The primary emotion would be frustration because oh no, this random kid is going to take them further away from their goal, which is reaching Andy. Then they arrive at Sid's house to find to their horror that he's a weirdo who likes dismembering and blowing up his toys. Big shock moment, but one that only lasts for a little while.
Compare this to what they actually did, which is introduce Sid way earlier on and demonstrate what he's like. Then, in the crane scene, it's not just frustration that they're being taken away from reaching Andy, but also dread and tension because now we know what the stakes are. By revealing information about Sid's character earlier, instead of saving it up for one Moment Of Shock, the viewer is engaged more fully and for longer.
General curiosity about what's going to happen next only takes a reader so far. Presenting a mystery, especially in the early chapters of a story where we have no connection to the narrator, that we have to care about just because it's an Unknown Thing rarely works. It's the drip feeding of select pieces of information that draws us in.
Tldr; tension is vegetables; shock is fast food; Toy Story is great.
Something that's hard to do when you're adding mystery or creating tension in storytelling is walking the balance between Revealing and Not Revealing. A character being mysterious can work well, but if there's too much mystery, there's nothing to engage the reader. The engagement comes from revealing Choice Morsels about the character and their situation while leaving enough unexplained so the reader will feel compelled to read on.
Hitchcock talks about this: he describes a scene of people sitting around a table when suddenly a bomb goes off in a suitcase under the table. The viewer has five seconds of shock, and then it's over. Surprise is nice, but it doesn't last and it doesn't pull the viewer in. Compare the same scene where the viewer knows there's a bomb in the suitcase under the table and is waiting for it to go off. Immediate tension that can last for a lot longer, and the viewer is pulled into engaging with the scene as they wait for the inevitable to happen.
In Toy Story, they could have had Buzz and Woody won by a strange kid they don't know. The primary emotion would be frustration because oh no, this random kid is going to take them further away from their goal, which is reaching Andy. Then they arrive at Sid's house to find to their horror that he's a weirdo who likes dismembering and blowing up his toys. Big shock moment, but one that only lasts for a little while.
Compare this to what they actually did, which is introduce Sid way earlier on and demonstrate what he's like. Then, in the crane scene, it's not just frustration that they're being taken away from reaching Andy, but also dread and tension because now we know what the stakes are. By revealing information about Sid's character earlier, instead of saving it up for one Moment Of Shock, the viewer is engaged more fully and for longer.
General curiosity about what's going to happen next only takes a reader so far. Presenting a mystery, especially in the early chapters of a story where we have no connection to the narrator, that we have to care about just because it's an Unknown Thing rarely works. It's the drip feeding of select pieces of information that draws us in.
Tldr; tension is vegetables; shock is fast food; Toy Story is great.