When I SAY You Can Know It

Despite the pandemic, there’s still been a lot of fantastic storytelling going on. Books. Movies. TV shows. Some of it’s been fun, some of it nostalgic, some of it... well, let’s be honest, some of it was greatly delayed because of said pandemic. Regardless there’s been a lot of enjoyable stuff.

BUT...

As Uncle Ben taught us, with great storytelling comes great spoilers.

As I’m sure you know, spoilers are a matter of great contention. Is it my fault or your fault if I post spoilers to something and you see them? How much time has to pass before spoilers are acceptable? Does getting them really affect my enjoyment of the story? Do spoilers even matter?

I’ve talked about (and in some cases, argued about) all these before, here and on the wider internet. But it’s that last one I wanted to blather on about today. Specifically, a certain angle some folks take with it you may have seen. It goes something like this...

”If knowing a spoiler ruins your story... maybe your story’s not that good.”

This one always makes me grind my teeth. Partly because it’s kind of an inherently smug thing to say, but also because it shows a basic misunderstanding of storytelling. Which is why it’s doubly annoying when I see it from... well, storytellers.

So let’s talk about narrative structure for a few minutes.

I’ve talked about this before at length, so I won’t do too much here (hit that link if you want a lot more). For our immediate purposes, narrative structure’s the order I’ve decided my plot points and character elements need to follow. It’s the sequence I want my audience to receive information in so they’ll get a certain dramatic effect. Simply put, narrative structure is the way I’ve chosen to tell my story.

If I want to tell my story in a straight A-to-Z fashion, that’s my narrative choice. If I want to use a bunch of flashbacks, that’s also up to me as the storyteller. Heck, if I decide to go completely nonlinear and change timeframes every other page without any apparent rhyme or reason... I mean, that’s my call. I’m the one telling the story and I (hopefully) have solid reasons for why I’m telling it in this specific way.

But whichever way I do it—assuming I do have a reason and I’m not just skipping around wildly because I thought it’d be cool—I’ve made a specific choice for my audience to get this piece of information first, this one second, this one third, and so on and so forth up to my five hundred and fortieth piece of information.

Yes, all real novels contain exactly five hundred and forty elements. No more, no less, just as Plato said in his many treatise on storytelling.

Anyway...

Now, that order’s important because my narrative structure is one of the thing that defines my story. If I put them in a different order, it’s a different story. That makes sense, right? An example I’ve used before is The Sixth Sense. If you’ve never seen it before and somehow avoided hearing about it... well, first off, seriously, good for you. Go see it right now. Go! Now! I can’t believe you’ve made it this long. And I’m about to spoil it, so please don’t keep reading.

Did you go away?

Okay, spoiler-filled explanation...

The Sixth Sense is the skin-crawling story of child psychologist named Malcolm who's trying to treat a little boy named Cole. Cole’s haunted by ghosts that only he can see, which leaves him constantly traumatized and in shock. Malcolm helps Cole realize the ghosts are, in their own way, equally scared and asking for help. And as Cole begins to understand that his powers are a gift, not a curse, Malcolm comes to realize that he’s a ghost—that he died over a year ago in an encounter we saw at the start of the movie.

What’s great, though, is that—like I said up above—if you watch the movie a second time (or if someone spoils the twist for you), it becomes a very different story. In fact, knowing the truth about Malcolm and the other ghosts, the story becomes less scary and much more tragic. Almost goofy at points. Now it’s a story about a kid and his ghost friends solving mysteries. It’s pretty much Paranorman.

That’s the key thing here—The Sixth Sense becomes a different story. Not the one Shyamalan intended for us to see. Definitely not the one he narratively structured. The audience learning the truth about Malcolm is intended to be element five hundred and nine, not element one that we knew before we even sat down. Knowing the big twist changes it into a different story.

So the whole “...maybe your story’s not that good” argument doesn’t make a lot of sense, because if I see a bunch of spoilers it means I haven’t seen your story. I saw a different story that had all the same elements, but in a different order and thus with different dramatic weights. It had a completely different narrative structure. I got Paranorman, not The Sixth Sense. Not that there's anything wrong with Paranorman (I love it) but... it's not the initial experience Shyamalan was trying to create for us.

Now, there’s another, related point we can make here. By their nature, spoilers tend to be some kind of reveal. It’s a piece of unknown or unexpected information. Maybe it’s a cool twist. Maybe it’s the identity of the murderer. Maybe it’s just a little cameo/ crossover beat. And sometimes, once that information’s been revealed, we realize this story didn’t have much else going for it. Once we know who the murderer is, we realize it was our own desire to know the answer carrying us through the story, not really the story itself. The story’s not flawed, it’s just... well, also not that great in any way.

Or maybe the answer just wasn’t quite worth the build up. Maybe the murderer turns out to be... well, exactly who we thought it was. Or someone we absolutely never could have considered (“Chris? Who the hell is Chris?”). Maybe the big twist happens and it... doesn’t make a lot of sense? Maybe it doesn’t change anything or doesn’t mean anything (“Chris is actually Pat’s long lost cousin? Well who the hell is Pat?”). In these cases the story beat might land with some impact in the moment, but not so much after the fact.

And, yeah, these stories have problems. I mean, a twist by its very nature should sort of retroactively rewrite large swaths of my story. If it doesn’t do that... well, that means I screwed up. If my flashback doesn’t make linear sense within my story, then I’ve done something wrong. My reveals aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.

But problems with something flawed doesn’t mean the principle is flawed. I can’t say narrative structure doesn’t matter because a couple stories have crappy narrative structure. That’s like saying all sushi is bad because I bought sushi at a gas station once and it made me sick. Or, y’know, that Sharknado5: Global Swarming has a dumb twist that doesn’t change anything, therefore I can give away a bunch of stuff from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

I mean, maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense...

Yes, a really good story will still work once you know the big reveal. That’s why there are books we like to re-read and movies we watch three or four times. The storytellers were very careful to make sure  their narrative would still work even when it was forced to switch tracks because we knew things. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t want us to see the original story they planned out.

I know in my own writing I love having a good twists and reveals. Things that’ll make people sit up and go “WhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAATTT???” or maybe even shriek a favorite curse word or two. And I try very, very hard to make sure my books hold up on a second reading, that you’ll catch the little clues and maybe even realize I left some things sitting out in plain sight for you to catch on your second or third read, so that other story is still a fun one for you.

(like page 115 of Paradox Bound, for example. I don’t think anyone’s caught that. Not many people, anyway)

But that’s not the story I want you to read first. There’s a reason I put these things on page one and not page fifty, those things on page one hundred and not on page one, and why I was slightly vague about that so it’d be right where it was supposed to be... but you wouldn’t register what it was until a second or third time through.  Because this is the effect I’m trying to create, not that.

And the awful thing about spoilers is they make sure someone can never read this story. It’s almost impossible to unlearn something, so that experience gets lost forever. They never get to read this story... only that one.

And that’s a shame.

Again, as I mentioned above, still many issues about spoilers past this one. But hopefully—for now, at least—we’ve put the “do they even matter” question to rest. And also the “maybe your story’s not that good” defense of them.

Also-also, that Plato thing about halfway through was a joke. Please put that to rest too. In fact, forget it, just to be safe. Wipe it from your mental hard drive.

Next time...

I’ve got to be honest, I’m juggling four different projects right now and (at the moment) none of them have inspired a ranty blog post. So next week may just be some random cartoons or something unless any of you has a pressing question you’d like me to blather on about.

Until then... go write.

Shhhhhh! Say Nothing!

Let’s have a little moment of truth between us. At some point or another, for any number of possible reasons, most of us have been in a position where it’s in our best interest not to answer a question.  Or, at the very least, to take as long as possible to answer it.  A few such questions might be....

— “Hey, what’s in the bag?”
— “Do these jeans make me look fat?”
— “Are you actually claiming this as a deduction?”
— “Did you eat the last piece of cheesecake?”
— “So, where were you last night?”

Now, by the same token, there are questions that should take no time at all to answer. Things where, if someone asks us and we know the answer, there are very few situations where it makes any sense for us to delay or be evasive. These are the ones where I have to seriously wonder why someone isn’t answering--and they’d better have a damn good reason for their lack of response. A few examples of that would be things like

— “Do you love me?”
— “How the hell do we get out of here?”
— “What are tonight’s specials?”
— “Which one of these is the antidote?”
— “WTF is that thing and how do we kill it?”

I mean, why would you hesitate on any of these? If we need the antidote and I know which vial it is, that's a no-brainer, right? Grab the yellow vial marked #23 and pour it down his throat.

For example, I loved LOST.  Yeah, sorry, absolutely loved it. Even the questionable third season. Yes, I will fight you if you say foolish things about the ending.

But... I can admit LOST suffered a bit when Benjamin Linus became a regular member of the cast. And a big part of that was because we all knew there was a lot of stuff he wasn’t telling anyone. There were still lots of cool mysteries on the island and Michael Emerson is a wonderful actor... but there were also lots of times where the “mystery” was just Ben sitting there... not talking.

A concept I’ve brought up here a bunch of times is withheld information. I’ve mentioned it a couple times recently, but it occurred to me I haven’t’ really explained it in... wow, ten years? Seriously? Okay, so this is long overdue.

Withheld information is when the characters (or really, the writer) hold back information from the audience for no other reason than to drive the plot forward. Characters just don’t talk about things, even though it’d be very natural for them to. Or they make vague statements when they could just as easily make clear ones. We’ve all seen things like this, yes? Where the only reason there are conflicts or challenges is because characters just aren’t saying what they know.

Withheld information’s the clumsy, unskilled version of mystery and suspense. It’s what I fall back on when my story doesn’t actually have a mystery but I’m trying to create the illusion of one. Because there’s more to a mystery—or suspense, or a twist—than me just not telling my readers stuff.

The thing is, withholding information is really just me and my characters... not doing anything. The plot may keep advancing in a clumsy way, but it’s almost always going to end up falling flat. Because information in a story tends to hit a tipping point. There comes a time when that knowledge has to come out because it just makes absolutely no logical sense for it not to. And when it doesn’t...

Y’see, Timmy, the one thing withheld information definitely creates is frustration with my reader. If Wakko’s been poisoned, Phoebe knows which one of the vials is the antidote, and she’s just not telling anyone—that’s just going to annoy the hell out of my reader. I mean, yeah, it makes the scene more tense, but why wouldn’t Phoebe save her friend? Why wouldn’t she help? If she’s the villain, sure, but other than that...?

And, wow, if we get to the end of the story and that’s when we find out Phoebe knew which one was the antidote and didn’t say anything? I mean, I need to have some ironclad reasons for her silence then. That’s when my readers are going to be looking to punch holes in things, so I need things to be sooooo solid if I’m going to go this way.

Now, all of this doesn’t mean I need to tell my readers everything. But what I don’t tell them depends on what kind of effect I’m trying to create in my story. If I withhold (or give out) information at the wrong points, my story’s going to trip over its own feet. So to speak.

So here are three story elements and how they use information.

A mystery is when the main character and the audience are aware a piece of information has been hidden from them, and my story usually involves a search for that unknown fact. At it’s simplest, a mystery is a question someone in my story is asking and trying to find the answer to.

Suspense is when there’s an important piece of information the audience knows and the characters don’t. The key here is that the characters don’t know that they need to know this vital fact. ussually as soon as possible. Like that Phoebe (who Wakko’s taking back to his hotel room) is the murderer. Or there’s a bomb under the table. These are common suspense situations we've all been in, right?

A twist is when a piece of information is revealed that my characters and my readers didn’t know was being kept from them. They didn’t even suspect those facts were out there, waiting to affect the story. A twist comes from out of nowhere and changes a lot of perceptions for the reader and probably the characters. We’ve all been assuming <<SPOILERS>> Luke Skywalker’s father is dead, so when we learn that Vader is his father, it’s a twist that alters our view of several things we’ve been told up until now.

Yeah, sorry. Blew the big Skywalker family secret there.

If I’m trying to use one of these devices, I want to make sure I’m using them correctly. I don’t want to just withhold information. My characters should be just as smart and clever as my audience, and if they aren’t talking... well, I should be sure there’s a solid reason why.

Next time, I’m going to try to answer another question that got tossed my way.

Until then, go write.

YOU LIAR!

 No, no, I’m not talking about you.

 I’m talking about him.

You know who you are.

There’s an issue that came up in one of my weekend B-movies recently, and it also came up in a book I was reading last month. Not the first time I’ve seen it in either format. And I thought it was worth talking about for a minute or three.

And that issue is cheating.

I’ve talked about twists many times here on the ranty blog. I friggin’ love a good twist.  Seriously. I will forgive a story a lot if it can knock me over with a completely unexpected reveal that seems obvious in retrospect. That’s the kind of thing that makes me want to grab a book and read the whole thing again. There are movies I love to rewatch just to see how beautifully the filmmakers set up a fantastic twist.

Now, in the past, I’ve addressed a problem some writers have when they try to set up a twist. And that’s when the revealed information—the twist—is something the reader couldn’t possibly have known or even guessed. If I tell you Wakko is actually the clone, it makes us realize how we-misinterpreted some parts of the story and a couple things line up now that didn’t before. If I tell you Phoebe is actually the clone, it makes us ask who the hell Phoebe is. Is she even from this story? Also, wait, this story is about clones...?

In the past I’ve tried to soften this criticism by saying the writer didn’t understand how to set up a twist. And while that’s still true in the big scheme of things, I think it might be  a little more helpful to just be direct. When this happens, the author is cheating in how they tell the story. They’re lying to the readers.

And sometimes, you just have to call out the liars.

Yeah, this sounds a little harsh and a few folks may already be raising their defenses, so let’s take a moment and be clear what we’re talking about. This is a very specific thing I’m referring to. Cheating is a deliberate thing, a choice, as opposed to a simple mistake.

All that said, let’s talk about what makes a good twist. I’ve talked about these all at different times, but I think a good twist always has four distinct elements.

1) My readers and my characters don’t expect a twist is coming. If I tell you there’s a big secret about my cat you’ll never guess, you’ve been flat-out told there’s something about my cat you wouldn’t expect. Likewise, if the shadowy figure is constantly referencing things only certain people could know, they’re probably connected to one or more of those people. It’s hard for any twist to land well when people are on the lookout for it.

2) The information a twist reveals has to be something my readers and characters didn’t already know. Telling you I have cats is not a big reveal, especially if you follow me on Instagram. This information has no weight. Telling you one of my cats is a cyborg is a reveal—that’s something you didn’t know.

3) The information revealed in a twist has to change how my readers and characters look at past events in the story but (very important) this information can’t contradict the information they’ve been given up until now. I can’t say my cat’s actually a plush toy dog after calling her a cat for a hundred pages and talking about the vet bills when she got her cyborg parts. Worth noting—this is when a lot of twists go wrong.

4) Finally, a twist needs a certain amount of time to build up strength. It’s really tough to have a good twist in the first five pages of a novel. As I mentioned above, a twist needs to alter our view of past events, which means... there have to be past events. If my cat’s showing off her laser eyes and adamantium claws on page eight, this isn’t a twist—I’m just introducing a character.

Granted, these are my own requirements, not something (to the best of my knowledge) taught in any courses or books. For this little rant of mine, it’s 2) and 3) we’re most concerned, because that’s where the cheating often comes into play. Because cheating (and lying) usually involve the manipulation of information to suit your own needs.

Now, right up front, it’s really common for me, as a writer, to lead my audience into believing something. To carefully choose words and phrases to make them think X when the truth is Y. This is a standard aspect of storytelling—what I want the reader to know and when I want them to know it.

But it’s important that I don’t cheat. I may leave a few facts out. I may deliberately guide them down a different path. But I can’t lie to them. The moment I lie—even if I’m doing it to make the story “better”—I’ve broken the contract. They’ve got no reason to trust me, and it’s not unfair for them to start doubting and questioning everything in the story.

So what do I mean when I’m saying cheating or lying? Let’s break it down by those two points from above...

As far as 2) goes, I need to be revealing information the audience doesn’t know, but it has to be information they could know. It can’t break the characters or the world I’ve established. It needs to fit within that context.

For example, if my twist is that Bron from Game of Thrones has psychic powers because he’s actually a mutant from an alternate future timeline... well, it’s definitely information we didn’t know. But we never could’ve known it. With everything we’ve been told it’s just an impossibility in this story. Likewise, if I’m writing a murder mystery and the big twist is that the murderer is Phoebe... we should all know who Phoebe is. Revealing a name we’ve never heard before at a critical moment doesn’t really solve anything.

A good way to think of it is whatever information I’m revealing in my twist is something my readers should be able to guess—even if it might mean a few guesses. If I have twenty characters/potential suspects in my murder mystery, the reader shouldn't need thirty-seven guesses to name the murderer. If I’m three hundred pages into my grimdark medieval fantasy story, I can’t abruptly say the dark lord’s secret weapon that’s wiped out armies is a battlemech with a meson death ray. Why would anyone ever guess that?

When we’re talking about 3), the big cheat is usually just a straight contradiction. The facts I give on page 150 or 200 just don’t line up at all with the facts I’ve given you before. I’ve told you two or three times that Wakko’s a computer programmer but then it turns out really he’s a genetic engineer.  Numerous characters have said there’s nothing within a hundred miles of our village, but then they escape to the town on the other side of the valley. And if you find out on page 175 of my political thriller that the secret informant is actually an angry ghost... well, I’d understand if you tossed it aside at that point.

One of the worst examples of cheating is when we’ve been seeing over a character’s shoulder or “hearing” their thoughts for a hundred or so pages and they just, y’know, never happened to think about the fact they’re the serial killer the whole city’s searching for. Or that Wakko constantly calls himself as a computer programmer (even in private) until we find out he’s the genetic engineer who activated Dot’s Zoanoid genes (double-geekery reference). This is the kind of things that make readers grind their teeth, and it really stands out on a re-read.

In the end, these lies are just about no being honest with my readers. I’m lying to them about what Wakko does. I’m lying about what’s going on in his head. I’m cheating to create a certain effect rather than actually creating the effect.

Y'see, Timmy, I think the reason some writers fall back on these blatant cheats and lies is... it’s easier. Doing the work is tough. Lying is simple. And if I just don’t feel like doing the work, it’s really tempting to just say Wakko’s a computer programmer and move on.

Good writing is tough. It’s work. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is. There are a lot of nuances to this art and they’re going to take actual effort if I want to come close to mastering them. To pull off a really good twist is probably going to mean going over my manuscript two or three times, making sure everything lines up and fits together just right.

But when you do it--when you do the work and don’t lie, don’t cheat—that’s when you make something that sticks with people. Something fantastic they’ll remember and talk to people about and recommend constantly. Because a great twist makes a good book twice as good. The readers get to enjoy the whole story, and then they get to enjoy it again, seeing and appreciating how everything fits seamlessly together.

True story. Like a lot of my books, Ex-Patriots has a twist in it. It’s such a big twist that, when one reader hit it, she couldn’t believe I could’ve slipped this past her for the entire book without her noticing. In fact she immediately re-read the whole book, convinced I had to have cheated. And when she realized I hadn’t, she (somehow) hunted down my phone number and called me to rave about it and congratulate me.

And that, friends, is how I met Seanan McGuire.

Do the work. Don’t cheat. Don’t lie.

Good advice for writing and life.

Next time, I wanted to talk to you a bit about characters.

Until then, go write.

The Big Lead-Up To...

Hahahhaaa... okay, so I had this post that I’d been working on for a while, but I never got it quite right and I kept pushing it back and pushing it back. And it just posted because, jeeez, mid-November? I won’t have to worry about that for a while.

Time is funny. Anyway... what I wanted to talk to you about.

A little earlier this year, I set down a book without finishing it. Might not sound big to you, but it’s big for me. It’s really rare for me to pick a book up and not finish it.  Don’t think it’s happened in over a year, easy, and I read around forty or fifty books a year, on average.

One of the big reasons I put it down is... well, to be honest, I’ve got no idea what’s going on. I’m more than halfway through and the plot in the book bears no resemblance to the one described on the back of the book.  Or anything  else really. When I set it down the other night, I described it to my partner as “watching a crime scene investigation where I don’t know who any of the people are, what their jobs are, what crime was committed, or what sort of legal system this is.”  There were things happening, but I had no idea what any of it meant or implied. It was just... stuff happening

Okay, I’m lying, I did finish the book. I have a problem,okay? I went back and read the last 117 pages and it went... I mean, pretty much just like I thought. We finally had the big reveal (which was the story described on the back of the book) and then had a minor twist to add a tiny bit more flavor.

Anyway, I thought it might be worth addressing this—the book’s problem, not my own compulsive need to consume bad things—because it’s something I’ve seen before. It’s an unusual issue because it’s a story problem I can only fully identify in retrospect.

So, quick recap on reveals and twists. I’ve talked about them here before a few times, so I don’t think we need more than that. I want to get to the heart of this particular issue.

The reveal is pretty much the standard way we get information across to our readers. New facts are presented to them, and depending on exactly what it is and what kind of ramifications it could have, these facts can have different levels of impact. We might just nod and accept it, or maybe it’ll have a ton of weight and impact.

A twist is a very specific type of reveal. Again, talked about them at length before, but the short form is that twists are information that the characters and the reader didn’t know was out there, and (importantly) this information forces us to look at a lot of previous facts in a new light. It’s also worth noting that twists almost always come later in my story because I need to establish those facts that need twisting. Make sense?

It’s the “later in the story” aspect of this I wanted to talk about. The issue I’ve been seeing is that a story will have a later twist, but it doesn’t establish any of the things its (hypothetically) twisting. I just tell you “Yakko is a redhead!” and expect that to have some kind of emotional or narrative weight. These stories try to tell us X is the really important thing, but they’d never really gone out of their way to convince anything else was important.

This is even worse in longer-form stories like novels or movies. We essentially go through two thirds or more of the story to get to “the good stuff,” but there’s nothing supporting it. There’s just been a lot of stalling and not talking about things until we get to that point.

Like... okay, imagine an old Twilight Zone episode where we see a spaceship land on a planet and they get out, wander around, and then maybe find a sign that basically says “hey, losers, you’ve been on Earth this whole time.” You know this episode, right? Is it even an actual episode? You know this archetypal story, right?

But here’s the thing—these stories have a lot more than that. They have assumptions and discussions about which planet this is and what did or didn’t happen here. Maybe even about who the astronauts are. We need to have strong reason to think this isn’t Earth for that twist to have any impact. Make sense? Up until that reveal everyone should be acting like it’s an alien world. Yeah, we’re going to find out the thing scratching at the door’s  just a beagle. But for now, before we get to that reveal... it’s a hideous alien monster. No, it can’t really hurt my characters, but they don’t know that. And they need to act accordingly.

I think a lot of this tends to come down to... well, not having an actual story. There’s nothing going on except that big reveal, so all my characters just sort of stand around twiddling their thumbs until we get to it. I’ve been so focused on what happens after the reveal that I haven’t considered what everyone’s supposed to be thinking or doing before that moment.

Just to be clear—I’m not saying mid-book twists aren’t cool. They’re super-cool.  They’re fantastic and I love ‘em. But y’see Timmy, there has to be a story before we get there.  Even if it’s all a bunch of misconceptions or faulty beliefs—my characters have to be doing something somewhat motivated in a world we can at least vaguely understand.

Have you read (or maybe seen) Wayward Pines? It was a fun series by Blake Crouch that became a pretty good television series. And it had a pretty solid twist quite a ways into it. A really perfect, made-you-reconsider-everything twist. But the main character, Ethan, is still doing stuff before then. He makes his own assessments of the small town he finds himself in, based off all the information he has, and he acts. He does things. Ethan treats the world he’s in like... well, the world he’s in, and not just a glorified waiting room until the “real” story begins.

I can have the cool twist. I can have a great reveal. But these things don’t stand alone. They need to be carefully woven into my story. There needs to be elements supporting them and guiding my readers to them.

Because nobody wants to read about a bunch of people standing around waiting for the big reveal.

Next time... well, we haven’t talked about how stupid I am for a while now.

Until then, go write.

In Context

            I’m writing up this post as I levitate upside down in my office.  Which—cool thing about this new house—exists in an orbiting satellite that’s only accessible through a teleport array we found in the attic.  Really cuts down on the commute to work, let me tell you...

            Okay, we’ll get back to that.

            I wanted to expand a little bit off something I touched on last week, and that’s the idea of context within a story.  When we talked about it before, I was using it to show how I can’t pull random elements from that story, copy them into my story, and expect them to work the same way

            Quick semi-related question.  What does it mean if I walk up and smack someone?  Full on, five fingers, hard across the face.

            Well, it could mean any number of things.  It could mean they’re a complete jackass.  Or maybe I am.  Maybe they deserved it.  Maybe they're in shock and I'm trying to bring them around.  We don’t know enough about the circumstances, the background, the existing relationships between me and the person I smacked.

            What if I just walked up and kissed them?  Or slapped their ass.?  Kinda the same thing, right?  We don’t know enough.  Maybe I’m a complete sleaze.  Maybe this is my partner of several years.  Hell, this could mean different things depending on where it happens. Doing it at the office could be extremely inappropriate, but in the locker room this could be a congratulations, and in the bedroom it might be foreplay.

            All of this additional information—the stuff we don’t know in these situations—is the context.  It what makes actions creepy or exciting or exciting in that other way.  As I’ve said before, there can be many different interpretations of the same thing depending on all the other things around it. 

            This becomes extremely important in genre fiction, because one of the big aspects of genre is that we tend to tweak the world a bit.  Maybe superheroes are real.  Or dragons. Or cybernetic implants.  Maybe they’re not just real, they’re common.  Boring, almost.

            For example, take my opening paragraph.  It probably made you smile, because it’s absurd in two or three different ways, right?  Complete nonsense, because we all know how the real world works and I am, no matter how many times I’ve wished otherwise, part of said real world.

            In a genre story, though, all of that could easily be true.  Then it isn’t laughable—it’s setting.  Possibly important plot elements. 

            Charlie Jane Anders made a wonderful observation a while back about how some of her least favorite stories were the ones that got pitched as something like “it’s a world just like ours, except everyone can turn invisible.”  The problem with these stories is that if everyone could turn invisible... well, the world would be completely different.  Views on privacy would’ve changed massively, possibly in different directions depending on how long this power’s been available.  Social views would be different, because anyone might be listening.  Heck, traffic laws would need to be adjusted because what if an invisible three year old wandered into the street?  Technology would be different, because there’d be whole-new priorities in this world.

            And if none of these things have changed... well, that just doesn’t make sense, does it?  Try to think of an aspect of your life that wouldn’t be different if there could be two or three invisible people in the room with you.  Any room.  At any time.

            Context lets me know what is and isn’t possible in this world.  By extension, it lets me know when people’s reactions are appropriate or wildly inappropriate.  If my story doesn’t explain what the limits of my world or characters are–or if I don’t give my readers enough to figure it out—it’s going to limit their investment and immersion in the story.

            For example...

            I watched this movie a while back where a guy hires a live-in maid (occupations and genders may be changed to protect... I don’t know, surely somebody deserves it).  Nothing weird or unusual there, right?  Except when the maid shows up, she’s kind of... well, unnatural.  Pallid, almost gray skin.  Dark circles under the eyes.  Blank stare.  Never speaks.  Tends to move in a kind of slow, lurching way.

            You can kinda see where this is going, right?  Zombie maid.  Clearly.

            But here’s the thing.  Our protagonist and his roommate don’t notice anything unusual about her.  They act like she’s totally normal.  One of them even thinks she’s kinda hot.  Same with other people who stop by.  They all just treat her like... well, the maid.  Or, at the very least, the woman staying at Yakko and Wakko’s place.

            And let me save you an assumption.  This wasn’t a comedy movie.  It bordered on melodramatic horror, really.  Except... nobody was horrified. 

            Well, maybe me...

            So what was going on?

            I watched the whole damned movie and I still don’t know.  Was she a normal woman who just happened to look and act like a zombie for some reason?  Maybe?  But if that was the case, wouldn’t people comment on it?  Since nobody in the movie ever mentions that the new housekeeper looks like one of the walking dead, it seems like this might be, well, a common thing.  In fact, there are two or three scenes where the characters pretty much treat her like an appliance, even putting her in a storeroom at one point.

            But if she was a zombie maid, shouldn’t that come up?  Heck, even if it’s the most normal thing in this world to have undead people cleaning your home, you think someone would mention it.  And plus... the rest of the time they’re talking to her and acting as if she’s a completely normal person.  Hell, like I mentioned before, the roommate’s even mildly obsessed with “how hot she is” and more than once talks about trying to get her in bed.  Which is a bit odd if she’s supposed to be a zombie.  At least worth a small discussion, yes?

            The real problem was that I couldn’t tell how to feel about any of this.  Were the guys being jackasses who objectified their maid—which would imply I shouldn’t like them, right?  Or was this a normal reaction, the way you or I would treat the vacuum cleaner when we weren’t using it?  Was the roommate’s desire to have sex with the maid kinda weird?  Full on creepy?  Hell, maybe even normal?  I don’t understand the world, so I don’t have any context to base these reactions in.

            And just to be utterly, completely clear—there’s nothing wrong with a story about zombie maids.  That’s the basis for a very cool story.  I’d never say otherwise.  Heck, it’s the basis for Fido, a really fun movie.  But if this is the world I’m setting my story in, I need to be clear this is... well, the world my story’s taking place in.

            Now...

            All that said, it’s really common to start off with a story set in “the real world”  and then it suddenly veers off into the realm of magic, aliens, and/or elder gods.  We’ve all seen it.  If you like hearing about three act structure, this kinda thing is a common way the first act ends.  Again, nothing wrong with this.  Like I said, it’s really common and I bet we’ve all got a favorite story or six that does this.

            Why can they do it?  Well, if you look at these stories, the big reveal that zombie cyborg lizard men are secretly running Wall Street is pretty much always structured as a low-level twist—it doesn’t alter the context, it enhances it.  These reveals force us to look at a lot of earlier story events in a new light.  They don’t actually contradict anything we’ve already seen in those first two or three chapters.  And since they happen early in the story, they’re not asking us to rethink a lot of assumptions or beliefs about these characters or the world they live in.

            There’s also another way to pull off this context shift, and it’s one that you’ve probably seen done a couple times.  I do it in Dead Moon.  Heck, J.K. Rowling copied it from the original Predator.  No seriously.

            Okay, not seriously.

            Just tell them right up front.

            Most people tend to forget, but Predator begins with an alien spaceship doing a fly-by of Earth and launching a landing pod as it zooms past.  That’s the very first shot in the movie.  Seriously.  And then it’s half an hour of Arnold and Shane Black shooting guys in the very real-world jungle before we see another hint of the alien.  Same with Harry Potter.  Sure, there’s all that stuff about Harry’s miserable childhood with the Dursleys, but the first chapter’s all about magic cats and a flying motorcycle.  Rowling all but openly says right up front there’s a magic world the Dursleys are desperately trying to ignore, despite their clear connection to it.

            What this does is establish right up front these are genre worlds, no matter how normal they may seem as we ease into the story.  When they take their sharp turn, it isn’t out of nowhere. It’s just a reminder of what we’ve already been told.

            Y’see, Timmy, without this context, my readers are left in a kind of “anything goes” situation.  Which it makes it really hard to have stakes.  Which means they won’t be able to make any kind of investment in either the plot or the characters.

            And no investment means no reason to keep reading.

            Next week is a double-header for me.  It’s Valentine’s Day and I have a new book coming out.  Have I mentioned Dead Moon?  Two or three times?  Today?  Okay, just checking.

            Anyway, I’m going to be busy on Thursday.  But I’ll probably put something up earlier.  In the spirit of the holiday, I’ve been thinking it’s about time we talked about... you know.

            Until then, go write.

Writing Lessons from ROM

Eight-year old me learned a big lesson about storytelling from this one panel...

The Genre-Device Mnemonic Caper

             Middleman reference.

            Very sorry I missed the last two weeks. Lots going on, which I’ll get to in a minute 

            I wanted to toss out a couple of quick, easy genre/device mnemonics for you.  These are a couple of things I’ve heard over the years.  Sometimes—when I’m struggling with something in a story—I’ve found them helpful for getting my head wrapped around things.

            So, what is it you’re working on right now. Maybe keep in mind...

            Suspense is about what’s going to happen

            A thriller’s about what is happening

            A mystery is about something that already happened

            Granted, these are kind of broad definitions, and there’s always going to be an exception or two. But I’ve mentioned once or thrice before the problems that can crop up when I try to push this kind of story into that framework.  And if I’m trying to write a thriller that’s about events that already happened... well, there’s probably a reason I’m having problems with it.  Or maybe my readers are having problems with it.

            It’s not a bad thing to double check what I’m writing about and what I think I’m writing about.

            Now, let’s flip this and talk about devices.

            A mystery is when my characters are actively searching for a piece of information they don’t know.

            Suspense is when my readers—or the audience, in a larger sense—knows a piece of information that my characters need to know but don’t.

            A twist, is when we’re talking about a piece of information that nobody even suspects exists (readers or characters), but once we learn it, it’ll change how we view a lot of what’s already happened in the story.

                       
            I think we all mess these up a lot when we’re starting out. We’re trying to use a device or write in a specific genre, but we fall into the patterns of another one.  Or we’re so focused on having, for example, a cool mystery that we don’t realize we’ve actually set up a twist.  And it’s kind of a weak twist because... well, we’re still trying for a mystery.

            Worse yet, sometimes we learn these mistakes.  They become that thing we’re convinced is right because we never learned anything different. And so we stick with these mistakes for years, focusing on other things instead fo the one clearly-wrong thing.

            Make sense?

            That’s why I like a lot of these little mnemonics.  They’re easy things to keep in the back of my mind and check my work, so to speak, every now and then. Good for starting out, good for later on, too.

            Next time...

            Okay, truth is, I had surgery last Tuesday.  Nothing super-serious, don’t worry, but it was pretty intense and the painkillers have really knocked me for a loop (and really messed with my sleep). Heck, this post was mostly done last week and I couldn’t pull it together long enough to get this up on the site.  Barely got that cartoon up the other day.

            Long story short—no idea if I’ll have a coherent post done for next week.  August might be my lame month.

            At the least, I’ll put up another cartoon. At the best... well, we’ll see how close I am to reality at the given moment.

            As always, please feel free to toss any requests or suggestions in the comments below. Or any handy mnemonics of your own.

            Until then, no matter what... go write.

Come On and Twist A Little Closer Now

            If you don’t get the title reference, I’m afraid you have to leave.  It’s not my choice, you understand.  It’s the law.

            Anyway...

            I’ve run into a few folks recently talking about spoilers, usually pertaining to twists.  It’s a little bothersome how many times I’ve seen people say that knowing a twist in advance shouldn’t—and doesn’t—affect their view of a story.  And this is... well, just wrong.  That’s not a matter of opinion.  It’s just flat out wrong.

            So I thought it might be worth discussing some of the finer points of a well-executed twist.

            First, though, let’s define a few terms.

            A mystery is when the main character and the readers are aware that information has been hidden from them, and the story usually involves the search for that unknown fact. At it’s simplest, a mystery is when someone in my story asks a question and then tries to find the answer. 

            Suspense is when there’s an important piece of information my readers know and the characters don’t. The key here is that my characters don’t know that they need to know this vital fact. The woman Yakko is going upstairs with is the murderer.  There’s a bomb under the table.  Dot’s going into a meeting with a bunch of her superiors who all know what she did.  These are common suspense situations.

           A twist is when information is revealed that my characters and the audience didn’t know was being kept from them.  They don’t even suspect those facts are out there, waiting to affect the story.  When a twist appears, it comes from out of nowhere and changes a lot of perceptions for the characters and the audience.  We’ve all been told that Luke Skywalker’s father is dead, so when we learn that Darth Vader is his father, it’s a bombshell that alters our view of everything.

            Assuming we didn’t see all the advertising for the prequels...

            But that’s a different discussion...

            Notice that in most of these, the characters and the readers are in the same position.  Their view of things lines up.  The only time it doesn’t (with suspense) is when the characters are in extreme danger because of what they don’t know, which cranks up the tension for the audience.

            Going off the above definitions, one of the main components of a successful twist is that the reader (or audience) doesn’t know it’s coming.  We can’t be surprised or taken off guard by something we’re expecting, right?  So without that element... well, it’s not a twist anymore.  This moment becomes empty, poorly structured suspense, a missed beat in the structure of my story.

            Personally, this is why I’m so nuts about spoilers.  One small spoiler can rip the heart out of a great reveal and leave it flapping in the wind like an empty shirt on a clothesline.  Rather than identifying with the characters, we’re waiting for them to catch up and shaking our heads at how long it’s taking them.

            Y’see, Timmy, saying a twist should still make sense whether or not I know it’s coming is like saying a defibrillator should still work whether or not it’s got electricity running through it.  We’ve removed a vital element that it needs to function.  A working defibrillator won’t always perform the function it was made to, yeah, but it simply can’t when it’s not even plugged in.

            Now, there are two other things that can make a twist flop.  One is when the information the twist reveals isn’t actually a surprise, or it’s something the reader probably figured out on their own.  If you’re a long-time fan of The Simpsons, you may remember one time when Homer told the Nativity story in church.  And he ended his little sermon with these drama-filled words...

            “And did you know that baby Jesus grew up to be... Jesus?”

            It’s a perfect example of this point.  If I’m two or three steps ahead of the characters and the author, a “reveal” like this borders on comedy.  Which is great if I’m writing comedy, not so good if my book is a techno-thriller.  A twist that tells us something we already know, by definition, isn’t a twist, and it doesn’t matter if the author hasn’t specifically spelled it out or not in the book.  If all my readers figure out who Dr. Acula really is on page two, it’s my own fault when the big twist falls flat.

            The second thing that kills a twist is the flipside of what I just said.  It’s also not a twist if there’s absolutely no way we could’ve suspected it.  Yes, a twist depends on us not knowing something’s coming, but when it arrives it needs to fit with everything we’ve been told all along.  A reveal should mesh with what we know, not contradict, and make us look at things in a new way.  Finding out Phoebe is my long-lost cousin in the last fifty pages is a twist.  Finding out Phoebe is a third-gender alien from the year 2241 in the last fifty pages means I should...

          Wait, an alien from 2241?  Hasn’t this a period murder-mystery novel for the past two hundred pages?  What the hell...?

            I once read a book where we found out in the last twenty pages that the leader of the all-woman biker gang is actually a vampire.  And while we’d known this was an urban fantasy novel, there’d been no clue whatsoever that vampires exist.  It was a first person story and the main character had never even told us that vampires were a thing, even though we learned in those final pages that this is the vampire she knew had killed her husband.  The reveal clashed with what I knew about the world and the character, and that clash jarred me out of the book at a point when the author really needed me to be sucked into it.

            And that’s the real killer. When my twist falls flat, for any reason, it breaks the flow of the story.  And since big twists tend to come toward the end of a story, it means I’m giving my readers a reason to stop when I want them to be checking the clock to see how late it is and if they can finish the book tonight.

            A twist is a powerful device, the five-point-palm technique of storytelling.  It needs to be done a certain way, but if I can master it I’ll be unstoppable. And if I do it wrong...  I’m just going to piss off my target.

            Next time, I think we need to discuss paying dues.  Especially those of you who’ve been here for a while.

            Until then, go write.

Another Chapter Comes to a Close...

            Many thanks for your patience. The past week has been an amazing ride for me, traveling up and down the west coast, meeting a few hundred people, and signing a few hundred books.  And losing a few hundred strands of hair...

            Also, if you took part in the pre-order promo for The Fold, word on the web is that galley copies are starting to land.  Hopefully you got one and can now use it as the teaching example it was always intended to be.

            But enough about me and my book.  Let’s talk about you and your book...

            A few weeks back I opened the floor for suggestions (it’s always open, but I just pointed out all the space on the dancefloor) and a good double-handful of ideas came in.  This week’s little rant comes from one of them.  And it’s a good topic I wish I’d thought of before.

            The question was about endings.  More specifically, chapter endings.  How do I find the right moment to end a chapter without it feeling either dragged out or cut off in mid thought?

            Clive Cussler (author of Raise the Titanic and many, many others) commented years back that chapters should be like potato chips.  Each one should be easy to digest and leave you wanting another one.  That was a great rule that stuck with me early on, and I’ve tried very hard to follow it ever since.

            So, here are a half dozen places in a story  I’d usually pick to end a chapter on.

A question—These moments make great chapter endings.  Sometimes the question’s asked out loud, sometimes it’s implied.  When a what/how/why moment comes up in my story, it’s going to make people want to turn the page in the hopes of learning the answer.  So that’s a great place to end a chapter.

            Keep in mind, though, this only works if there’s a real question and the reader doesn’t know the answer.  Whether or not the characters know is irrelevant (I’m the writer, I can make them go to the next chapter with very little effort).  If this question is already answered or the answer is painfully obvious, it’s not a great place to end.  If I’m writing the novelization of Jurassic World. “Wait, there are dinosaurs on this island?” isn’t a great stopping point.

A big reveal—The flipside of the above.  Getting a long-sought answer can be powerful, especially if it’s going to affect what happens next in my story.  Even if it’s not an answer, revealing a solid, key bit on information can give a moment a lot of weight and make it a great place to pause.  When I tell you “the dinosaurs have gotten loose,” that’s a big moment that’s going to change everything from here on in.

            Again, though, this one will only work for me if it’s an actual reveal.  Vague responses and fuzzy reasoning don’t make for good answers, in real life or in a novel.  Neither do answers we already know.  If I try to dramatically reveal that California is on the west coast of the U.S., that’s not going to do much for anyone.

A big twist—Similar to the reveal but not the same.  I’ve talked about the difference between mysteries and twists a few times in the past, so I won’t go into that again here.  A twist is a fantastic moment for me to end a chapter because it’s very nature means everything’s going to change.  My readers will go to the next chapter just to see the fallout from a good twist.

            I need to be very clear, though, on what a twist is and how it works in my story.  If I fumble it, either with my reveal or what I’m revealing, it’s not going to have any weight or ramifications. Which means my readers have no reason to turn the page. 

           

A big setback—Any story’s going to have its ups and downs. When my character gets his or her feet kicked out from under them, deliberately or accidentally, the reader wants to know how that character’s going to recover.  Are they going to stay down?  Fight back?  Come at

things from a new angle?  I need to turn to the next chapter and find out!

            The catch for this one (there’s a lot of catches on these, have you noticed?) is that I need to have either a good solid character or a really compelling plot for this to work.  If my reader doesn’t care about the stakes—either internal or external—they’re not going to care when my characters fail.

A big leap forward—The flipside to the setback.  When my characters find the hidden button, manage to make it past the security system, or get the power running to the velociraptor fences again, this is an achievement.  We can all pause for breath, and that’s a good time to roll things over into the next chapter.  There’s a natural break there, and I should take advantage of that existing rhythm.

            Again, though...I need strong characters or plot for this to work.  I also need to be aware of what’s going to be seen as a leap forward.  Sharpening a pencil or avoiding a sleeping guard are not big accomplishments, so my readers won’t feel that need to pause for a breath.

A cliffhanger—The classic.  I just stop right in the middle of things, right as the action is kicking into high gear.  My antagonist pulls the trigger, the T-Rex gets me cornered in the museum, or the zombies spin around when I accidentally step on a branch.  These are moments when the reader must know what happens next.  And if the next chapter is there, the reader will go to it.

            The catch here is that the reader needs to care about my characters.  If not, there’s no tension when I put said character into that dangerous spot.  It’s like me telling you someone’s in danger.  You care in a sort of abstract way, but how often are you going to ask a follow-up question?

            So, there’s six solid ways to end a chapter.  Each one’s got a slightly different flavor and works better in different situations.

            However, going over this list, there’s sort of a glaring issue, isn’t there?  What if my story doesn’t have any of these things?  What am I supposed to do if I’m a hundred or so pages in and I haven’t had a big setback, or a reveal, or asked any questions?

            Well, my first thought would be... why don’t I have any of these things?

            A while back I did a big block of posts about structure.  As I mentioned above, every story’s going to have ups and downs.  There will be unanswered questions, revealed answers, challenges, and successes.  It doesn’t matter if I’m writing a torrid period romance, a sci-fi space epic, or an apocalyptic horror novel.  Every story is going to have these moments. They’ll take different forms, but they will always be there.

            Y’see Timmy, if those moments aren’t there... well, my story has bigger issues than figuring out where chapter breaks should be.  In fact, this probably is part of the reason I can’t figure out where chapter breaks should go.  Without these highs and lows, my story’s just going to be a drab, monotone mess.  And it’s impossible to place breaks in something like that because it’s all the same.  There aren’t any landmarks that stand out.

            So I need to make sure I have something that can be broken up. And then I can break it up.

            Next time, I might offer a few quick tips on drafting.

            Until then, go write.