Reversals
By Donald Maass | November 2, 2011 |
Ever had a change of fortune? Did you see it coming?
Probably not. Windfalls are like that. Losses too. We’re taken by surprise. Suddenly we’re hurtling the wrong direction down the highway. Assumptions flip over. The world spins upside down. Coins fall out of our pockets, or into them. We’re weightless. We’re falling, or rising, unsure when or where we’ll come to ground.
Turnabouts and reversals are dramatic in fiction, too. They’re also rare. In most manuscripts things unfold in a familiar pattern. Tension may be high but we’re pretty sure where we’re heading. The expected destination arrives.
Turning your protagonist’s world upside down is hard to do. It’s messy. It’s scary. But, oh, the impact on the reader is huge. Here are some prompts to help you reverse directions in your story.
- Do your protagonist’s fortunes rise or fall? Pick a character whose fortunes will do the reverse. Develop and add.
- Pick an ally of your protagonist. What’s the worst betrayal this character could do? Do it. Pick an enemy. What’s the most improbable way in which this enemy could help? Do it.
- Where is your protagonist heading right now? Shut down that road. Force a detour. What changes the most? How does your protagonist change as well?
- Create a mind-fuck: About what is your protagonist utterly, irrevocably right? Pull the rug. Make her utterly wrong. List the implications. Enact each one.
- Pick a character. Drop a bomb. Destroy or transform his world. Nothing is as imagined. Everything is different. Work backward to make this character’s foundations rock solid. Work forward to scatter the wreckage.
- Send a gift to your protagonist. Make it huge. What problem does it solve? What’s its hidden cost? Add.
- What’s one thing your protagonist dearly hopes for? What would make that impossible? Do it. What does your protagonist get instead? Quietly plant that earlier.
The weightless moment when the roller coaster tops the highest peak, the scary plunge about to begin, is breathless and alive. To create that effect in your fiction you’ve first got to construct the roller coaster rise. Crank your characters up, up, up.then fling them out into the blue.
Will they fly or crash? That’s up to you. Either way, there’s going to be a radical change of direction-and a weightless, breathless, exhilarating moment in your story.
Photo courtesy Flickr’s peggyhr
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Some of my favorite books in my genre have these breath-taking reversals. They’re the books you talk about, in some cases for years. These are great reminders and techniques for incorporating that energy into my own work. As always, brilliant and bookmarked. Thanks, Donald!
I’m going to write “mind-fuck” on a Post-It and slap it to my monitor.
I agree about the effect turning your character’s world upside down has on your book! Thanks for the tips!
Brittany Roshelle
The Write Stuff
I have been wondering about reversals lately. I’m at the end of my first draft, the whole story has been about my protagonists life being totally not what she grew up thinking it was, and having her find a “new normal.” I have been concerned it is too much, but it makes it really interesting-at least to me :) Is there a way to know when drama falls over into melodrama?
I like it when my characters stupidly think about how life just couldn’t get any more perfect. Mwah ah ah!
Lara-
When does drama tip into melodrama? Melodrama is story that we don’t believe, is too much, over the top. Thus, the counter to that is to make your reversal something we accept and believe.
How to do *that*–? It takes some work. For readers to believe it could really happen some backfill (explanation) is necessary. The fact is that the turnabout you’re creating *doesn’t* happen, at least not usually, so why in this case does it? List the reasons. Find a way to work each one in. The easiest approach is for your protagonist to cry, “But, this can’t happen!” Let another character explain why it did.
Second, the repercussions of the reversal need to be real, comprehensive and actually occur. So, drop a reveral on your protagonist…how much will of necessity change? Leave nothing out. When you’ve got your list of consequences, work every one of them in. Make every one of them happen.
In short, the melodramatic tinge of a reversal evaporates steadily as you make the event more and more realistic.
Hope that helps.
What I like most about your tips is that you encourage writers to think BIG. Do huge, daring things in fiction and there are great rewards for your readers.
As always, your advice comes at the right time for me.
Agreed, Erika. I used to be a bit shy, even when alone with a blank page, and concerned that my reversals, twists or plots were a bit too big, too ambitious. Yet it is the epic that tends to draw people in. There’s a reason wild blockbusters full of explosions make hundreds of millions of dollars while quieter, more serene pictures tend to end up selling a few thousand tickets at a couple of dozen art-house theatres. That’s not to say we should throw unrealistic action into our stories with reckless abandon, but I think audiences by and large are willing to accept pretty big things from stories. They are looking to escape into a fantasy, after all.
If I may I’d like to add a quick and quirky perspective to the idea of reversals. I learned about them from an unusual source – professional wrestling. Of course it’s all pretend, but what fiction isn’t? The matches play out as very physical pantomimes, and there are heroes and villains, and on occasion one becomes the other. This is known as a ‘turn’, and over the years there have been some profound turns that shook the audience and totally turned their own world upside down. Hulk Hogan, for instance, turned bad in the 90s, to the shock of millions. When you upend your audience’s expectations as much as your character’s, you are probably doing something right.
Thank you so much for the specific tips and examples, Donald. It does help a lot. I especially like the idea of writing consequences for the reversal down, so to ensure making the reversal incident more real-to-life. I like lists, though! Thanks again for your help.
I’m so glad I read this, just when I’m in the midst of my revision! It turns out that in writing my first draft, I was a bit too nice too my characters. I have to increase conflict and throw in more obstacles. This post is just what I needed to help me do that! Thank you!
Wow, this is exactly what I needed to hear. I am stuck in my draft right now and these are great questions to get things moving! This post is a keeper. Thanks Donald!
Thank you for this. I am printing it and putting it up on my bulletin board- as I NaNo the first draft of my WIP.
About reversals, do you think it’s alright if they appear in the second half of a novel or should we be unleashing our minefields sooner? Thanks for always helping us take it up a level!
Don,
Thanks for these great tips. Making things tough on your MC is a great way to build tension. This is helpful to those of us working on NaNoWriMo novels. Thanks again.
Don,
What I enjoy so much about your tips is the way in which they challenge a writer to view the emotional fabric of their characters differently. You seem to use good old-fashioned psychological analysis to inspire authentic, stirring scenes.
What could be more helpful in developing characters (& thus their actions) than using personality inventories and psychological studies? How layered and intriguing a character becomes when these inventories are reversed!
Thanks for sharing.
I absolutely love reversals and surprises in books! And you’re right, they are rare! Great advice as usual.
When I first began writing thirty years ago, I was afraid of playing God in my characters’ lives. I felt that I didn’t know enough about the way life worked, as if there were some concealed pattern or plan which a writer had to grasp before his work would sound authentic. My own experience has taught me that this is not so, although the cautious approach did make me go deep into the stuff of human nature and motivation. Now, when I play God and leave my protagonist completely unsupported, I know that it is not only a gripping moment in the story but also a hook for the reader to exercise her own ingenuity, becoming engaged in the process of solving the problem.
Allison-
You ask a good question: Should reversals occur in the second half or sooner?
Let me share with you a exercise I took participants through at last weekend’s “Story Masters” workshop in Houston. We were working on strengthening premise but I think it may answer your question…
What turn of events would make your novel’s main problem utterly impossible to solve? [Think for a minute, write it down.] Now, imagine *opening* your novel with that turn of events.
In other words, from the very outset the problem cannot be solved. I’ts built in. A page one reversal of fortune. Do you see? It’s never too soon to reverse something.
BTW, on the final morning of “Story Masters” with James Scott Bell and Christoper Vogler we jointly broke down To Kill a Mockingbird scene by scene. One thing we illuminated was that Harper Lee structured many of her 31 chapters as reversals. It’s hard to explain just why some of her scenes are so powerful, but that’s the reason.
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