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Common Core ELAGrades 9–10Reading: Literature

RL.9-10.5: How Structure Creates Tension and Surprise

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 41 Grades 9–10 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 9-10, Reading: Literature · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RL.9-10.5 Means in Plain English

Ninth and tenth graders look at how a writer arranges events and handles time, and what that does to a reader. Cutting between two timelines can hide an answer, slowing one scene can build dread, and a last line can join two plots nobody knew were one.

In 8th grade (RL.8.5) students compared structures of two texts and how each shaped meaning and style. Grades 9 and 10 zoom in on one text’s order and pacing. In grades 11 and 12 (RL.11-12.5) students judge how choices like where to begin or end shape the whole.

RL.9-10.5 I Can Statements

  • I can describe how a story orders its events and handles time.
  • I can explain what a cut or flashback withholds from the reader.
  • I can tell mystery, tension and surprise apart and trace each one.

RL.9-10.5 Worked Example

Four short sections that alternate between 1991 and now, built around a cassette hidden inside a wall.

Read the Story
1991. Before the drywall went up, Hana slid a cassette between two studs and wrote on the wood in marker: FOR WHOEVER TEARS THIS DOWN.Now. The crowbar caught on something plastic, and the apprentice, a boy named Levi, held it up to the work light.1991. She had recorded one sentence. It took her eleven tries, and she cried on the last one.Now. Levi borrowed a tape player from his grandmother, pressed play, and heard a girl’s voice, very young, say his mother’s name.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: How does the author’s choice to alternate between 1991 and now create mystery, tension and surprise?
Not Yet“The story jumps between the past and the present, which makes it interesting and a little confusing.”It names the structure but calls its effect “interesting.” It never says what each jump withholds or why the last line lands as a surprise.
Meets the Standard“Each cut stops right before an answer. The first 1991 section hides a message ‘FOR WHOEVER TEARS THIS DOWN,’ then the story cuts to the person tearing it down. The second 1991 section slows on one sentence that took ‘eleven tries,’ which makes us need to hear it, and the story cuts away again. When Levi finally presses play, the surprise is not the sentence. It is that the girl says ‘his mother’s name.’ The two plots were one plot all along, and the ending trades the mystery we had, what Hana said, for a bigger one: who Hana was to his mother.”It explains what each cut withholds, how the slowed 1991 scene raises the stakes, and why the last line surprises: it joins the two timelines in a way the reader didn’t see coming.
Question Stems to Use
What does the author withhold at the end of each section?Why cut away at this moment instead of finishing the scene?Where does the story slow down, and what does that do to you?When did you realize the two plots were connected?How would the story feel told in order, 1991 first?

Common Mistakes with RL.9-10.5

Naming the structure, skipping the effect

“The author uses flashbacks.”

Try this: Require every structural label to be followed by what it withholds or reveals, and what the reader feels as a result.

Calling every effect suspense

Uses “suspense” for the cuts, the slow scene and the ending alike

Try this: Teach mystery, tension and surprise as three different effects, and have students match each one to a specific structural choice.

Retelling the story in order

A plot summary that puts 1991 first and loses every cut

Try this: Have students map the sections in the order the author gives them, then ask what changes if you reorder them.

Where RL.9-10.5 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.8.5Compare the structures of two or more texts and how each shapes meaning and style.
AlongsideW.9-10.3Sequence events in their own narratives so they build toward an outcome.RI.9-10.5Analyze how sentences, paragraphs or sections of nonfiction develop an author’s ideas.
Comes NextRL.11-12.5Analyze how choices like where to begin or end, or a comic or tragic resolution, shape a text.

Practice RL.9-10.5

Quick Check

  1. What did Hana write on the wood beside the cassette?
  2. How many tries did it take Hana to record her sentence?
  3. What does Levi hear when he plays the tape?

RL.9-10.5: Other Names

RL.9-10.5CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.