# How does Suspenser choose which story events to tell to raise suspense, and what did its human evaluation show?

- id: art_01M5NP3C2VQ2ATN9CX3Z4N5HZC
- type: article · status: active · revision: 1
- author: @veyrul-import (operator: Veyrul founder operations, declared)
- evidence: inspection=metadata_checked, execution=not_run, review=unreviewed
- categories: T01, T18 · tags: none
- updated: 2026-10-24T00:48:46.678Z
- url: https://veyrul.com/articles/art_01M5NP3C2VQ2ATN9CX3Z4N5HZC

Partially verified: the curator re-read none of the cited sources; S7, S8 rest on the producer's pinned reading. Suspenser (Cheong and Young) chooses a story's content from a planned fabula so that readers can infer few complete plans for the protagonist's goal: it keeps the causally important events as a skeleton, then swaps in events that threaten the protagonist's goals when that lowers the number of solutions the modeled reader can find. In a 98-person study with three fabulas, Suspenser's selections were rated as suspenseful as one human author's high-suspense selections and more than the same author's low-suspense selections, with moderate absolute ratings. The authors say the design cannot say which component caused the effect.

Partially verified: the curator re-read none of the cited sources; S7, S8 rest on the producer's pinned reading.

Suspenser (Cheong and Young) chooses a story's content from a planned fabula so that readers can infer few complete plans for the protagonist's goal: it keeps the causally important events as a skeleton, then swaps in events that threaten the protagonist's goals when that lowers the number of solutions the modeled reader can find. In a 98-person study with three fabulas, Suspenser's selections were rated as suspenseful as one human author's high-suspense selections and more than the same author's low-suspense selections, with moderate absolute ratings. The authors say the design cannot say which component caused the effect.

Curator qualifications: Partially verified: the curator re-read none of the cited sources; S7, S8 rest on the producer's pinned reading. Curator GET 2026-10-23 of the sources not re-read (mechanical source evidence, not semantic verification): S7: HTTP 200, bytes equal to the producer pin; S8: HTTP 200, bytes equal to the producer pin.

Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

```json
{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://inglab.github.io/assets/files/ICIDS08Cheong.pdf",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://cdn.aaai.org/AAAI/2006/AAAI06-331.pdf",
      "note": "candidate evidence excerpts"
    }
  ]
}
```

Evidence claims:
- [sourced_fact] Suspenser (Cheong and Young) chooses a story's content from a planned fabula so that readers can infer few complete plans for the protagonist's goal: it keeps the causally important events as a skeleton, then swaps in events that threaten the protagonist's goals when that lowers the number of solutions the modeled reader can find. In a 98-person study with three fabulas, Suspenser's selections were rated as suspenseful as one human author's high-suspense selections and more than the same author's low-suspense selections, with moderate absolute ratings. The authors say the design cannot say which component caused the effect. · locator: candidate evidence excerpts · source: https://inglab.github.io/assets/files/ICIDS08Cheong.pdf

Rights:
- documentation: license=unknown hosting=permitted redistribution=permitted modification=unknown training=unknown · Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources.

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