Character is onscreen for three seconds

Question

I have a character Joe who leads the task force hunting my MC. His reputation is known to the MC and he is well aware of how effective he is. Joe is also a good friend of another character, Fred, and it is decided to try and tranquilize him, instead of kill him, out of respect both to his skills and for the mutual friend, Fred.

In this scene, I had Joe lead his men into the community hall and be shot by a well-prepared sniper from a catwalk, who darts him. Joe essentially steps across the threshold, gets shot, looks at the dart, looks up at the catwalk and points, losing consciousness. Temporarily sidelined.

Joe is later referred to by his lieutenant, Sam, and becomes an incentive for the members of the task force who have captured the MC to consider a trade. Sam comes to wonder what color his hat is when they came to eliminate him and were met by non-lethal force.

Joe is taken hostage, becoming a bargaining chip. In my original version, the first full scene with this character is a proof-of-life Skype chat where he is delighted the plan worked and livid that his men might throw it all away just to save him. They would have to start over, chasing him again. They have him and now they are thinking of a trade? Preposterous.

I can give Joe a bit more time before he is darted and temporarily sidelined.

Both are clear, but I feel the original has more tension and is more intriguing.

Would giving this character more screen time increase tension or reduce it?

Answer 1

I think you're fine.

In a novel, mentioning a character is very much like showing a character. In the sense of how this character embeds himself in the reader's mind. Obviously, it matters how you mention/show a character, but not as much if it's the narrator describing them vs another character describing them.

In a movie, seeing is everything. You say "screenplay" even though you've talked about this work before as a novel. So in the off chance you meant screenplay literally (or as contrast)...

In the case of a movie, you'd want to establish the character early, so the viewer recognizes him and knows he's important to watch. Then you can have him in the background in multiple scenes. Once the viewer knows to watch for him, s/he'll see him at every turn. This will cement his importance to your audience.

This is basically what you're doing in a novel too. Those frequent mentions are building him up in a way such that, when he's in trouble, your readers will care. The difference is that there are no visuals in a novel (usually) beyond what is inside the reader's head. How you get the character inside the reader's head is not as important as the fact that he's there.

Answer 2

What I do in similar cases is

write both variants

– you will very likely have a clear feeling for which variant works best.

Answer 3

I think adding more text about an anonymous and irrelevant character would destroy any tension you may have built. You have some anonymous character, who is taken prisoner in the event that MC's party need a bargaining chip. This anonymous character is thus defined enough from the perspective of the story, and as long as it does not serve any other purpose in the plot, it could be temporarily replaced by a bag of potatoes as a placeholder.

However, there is another place where you can add excellent tension. In fact, you have the conflict within the MC's party on whether to kidnap Bag-of-Potatoes or to kill it. You can write down the heated argument in favor of either solution, and even use the grudge that may linger afterwards to create some cracks in the unity of the party.