The Power of Dramatic Irony

Can you tell what these three images have in common?

The answer is...

...dramatic irony.

Correct.

In every single moment, the audience knows more than one (or more) characters.

We experience a form of anxiety when we see Banksy's picture because we know more than the husband does. We know the lover is down there, and so we fear that he might get caught.

We are afraid for the woman in Hitchcock's suspense film Dial M for Murder in the black and white picture because we know more than she does. We can see the killer looming right behind her, and we are powerless to help her.

And in Jaws, well, it's obvious isn't it?

Perhaps this sounds simple and even obvious. But how many times have you employed dramatic irony as a storyteller in your narratives? Have you created a moment, or a scene in a story where you allow the audience to know more than one (or more) characters? This simple tool was one of the first, and most useful things I learned as a screenwriter. It can create suspense, it can leave the audience hanging on the edge of their seats.

It's the ingredient you want to add into your story if you want your audience not to change the channel.

Oh, no.

He's right behind you.

Hitchcock said it best when he used his "Baseball" example. He said something along these lines... If you show me a couple in an apartment talking about baseball for one whole hour and then in the last minute a bomb goes off, BOOM! Then you'll have 59 minutes of expositional boring dialogue, and one minute of surprise. Because you don't care about baseball that much.

However if you show your audience there's a bomb under the table, then suddenly the conversation becomes interesting. Why? Because you're on the edge of your seat and it no longer matters that they're talking about baseball. All you care about is that the bomb doesn't go off. So you then you have 59 minutes of suspense and one minute of surprise. Why?

Because of Dramatic Irony.

I invite you to comment with other examples of dramatic irony you can think of!