When something goes along exactly as planned or is merely a funny back-and-forth exchange, it can catch your attention momentarily but what keeps you from leaving your seat for two hours, even though you REALLY have to go to the bathroom/work/etc? If you feel the tension building in a story, maybe you know what’s going to happen but the main character doesn’t, or you feel something isn’t right and it’s about to come to a head but it hasn’t happened yet. You just want to hang on and see how it goes down and how the main character recovers from it.
