6. Dramatic Irony
For as long as stories have existed, audiences have relished in the practice of knowing something that the characters don't - that's dramatic irony in its most basic form, and Tarantino uses it expertly for long passages of
Django Unchained. In this case, it's the entire Candieland sequence, in which we - as an audience - are the only ones aware that Schultz and Django are pretending to be something they're not. And including sequences like this in your screenplay - especially longer ones - is a guaranteed way to build tension when you need it. The fact that our protagonists are behind enemy lines pretending to be other people is nail-biting, because there are massive stakes. We all know how terrifying it would be in real life to actually pretend to be somebody else - for a former slave to do it in the 19th century antebellum south... well, that's something else entirely. QT knows that. On a more basic level, watching our protagonists pretending to be other people - in this case, "mandingo trainers" - is a hell of a lot of fun. It's massively exciting, in fact, because we're judging every decision, and reviewing every emerging circumstance. With every mistake our characters make, we cringe. With every lie they tell, we feel the tension rising. And if we know that they're to be rumbled eventually... well, all the better, because we all want to see how
that situation plays out, right? Tarantino uses this device a lot. He's a bonafide master of it, in fact, though I'm convinced he doesn't plan to write scenes like this on purpose - they just come naturally to him. Consider the basement bar scene in
Inglourious Basterds, where the levels of dramatic irony reach dizzying new heights: it's a masterclass in tension because there's so many angles at work. If you're looking to grip your audience, look no further than a dose of good old dramatic irony. It'll give any scene an added edge.