Helps maintain reader interest by creating intensity and anticipation.

Helps maintain reader interest by creating intensity and anticipation.

• A. Suspense
• B. Exposition
• C. Complication
• D. Vignette

Answer: (A)

Suspense is the feeling of anticipation and unresolved questions about what will happen next. It keeps readers engaged by delaying the outcome, raising the stakes, and building tension in a way that makes you want to read on to learn the result. When a passage aims to hold attention through intensity, the mechanism at work is suspense—carefully withholding enough information to keep you turning pages. Exposition supplies background about characters, setting, and situation, but it isn’t focused on creating ongoing tension. A complication introduces problems the characters must deal with, which can generate stress, but the defining effect described here is the sustained anticipation that suspense specifically fosters. A vignette is a brief, descriptive scene that captures mood or detail rather than driving a narrative toward a suspenseful moment.

Suspense is the feeling of anticipation and unresolved questions about what will happen next. It keeps readers engaged by delaying the outcome, raising the stakes, and building tension in a way that makes you want to read on to learn the result. When a passage aims to hold attention through intensity, the mechanism at work is suspense—carefully withholding enough information to keep you turning pages.

Exposition supplies background about characters, setting, and situation, but it isn’t focused on creating ongoing tension. A complication introduces problems the characters must deal with, which can generate stress, but the defining effect described here is the sustained anticipation that suspense specifically fosters. A vignette is a brief, descriptive scene that captures mood or detail rather than driving a narrative toward a suspenseful moment.