Twisting the Inevitable
By Dave King | August 20, 2013 |
photo by DerrickT
I recently caught an interview with Aaron Sorkin about the new season of “Newsroom.” He explained how he generates tension when viewers already know what the main plot twists are going to be – the current season deals with the 2012 election. It’s hard to surprise your readers when your major story developments are literally last year’s news.
This problem shows up in writing more often than you might imagine. Writers of historical fiction have to deal with the fact that history happened and we’re stuck with it. A lot of mysteries have to spell out the situation that leads to the killing before the body drops, which is hard to do without having readers guess the victim. And sometimes the nature of the story just makes some developments inevitable.
There are techniques that can help you disguise these plot twists — I’ve collected a few on my website — but these techniques only go so far. How do you generate surprise or maintain tension when your readers can see what’s coming?
One way to work a twist into an inevitable event is to make it mean something your readers didn’t expect. Part of the ominous future hanging over Matthew Shardlake, the hero of C. J. Sansom’s mysteries set in the reign of Henry VIII, is the coming fall from grace and imprisonment of Thomas Cromwell. (It’s not as well known as last year’s election, but it’s the sort of thing Sansom’s readers would know is coming.) Cromwell is Matthew’s patron, and in the cutthroat world of Tudor England, the loss of a patron usually means disaster. Yet in Dark Fire, the second book of the series, Matthew is on an assignment from Cromwell on behalf of the king. When the assignment ends badly, Matthew knows Cromwell will be furious and the king may be murderous. But on the day Matthew is to give his report, Cromwell is imprisoned, and Matthew’s assignment is forgotten. Essentially, Sansom has turned the anticipated disaster into a moment of relief.
You can also build tension around an important subplot while your readers are waiting for the main plot development to arrive. I had a client with a mystery whose murder had complex motives that required a lot of setup — he had to show how and why a lot of different people hated the future victim. This both made the victim obvious and gave readers a long wait before the victim eventually dropped. I suggested that he add a prologue that showed the discovery of a body in the woods without revealing whose body it was. Since the intended victim drives a couple of other characters near to suicide, the possibility that one of the other characters might give in to despair kept the tension high until the intended victim finally got what was coming to him.
You can draw your tension not from the events themselves, but from how the events will affect your characters – this was Sorkin’s approach. In fact, your readers may feel even more tense as they watch your characters blithely living their lives, unaware of the coming disaster. Or as Sorkin put it, “When you go see ‘Titanic,’ you know the ship isn’t going to pull into New York Harbor.”
One recent client told the story of a young woman who needed a heart transplant. Early in the manuscript, he also introduced a young man in a parallel story. There was really no way to hide the fact that the young man was going to be the transplant donor. Instead, I suggested that the client bring the donor’s father, who had become very depressed after his wife’s death, more prominently into the story. Because readers began to wonder how the father would handle the son’s inevitable death, the story gained tension.
Most plot twists rely on events that the readers didn’t anticipate. But good stories work at several levels. So if you’re ever stuck with events your readers can’t help but see coming, look past the surface level. Drill down into your characters’ internal lives and the subtleties of your plot. The results will surprise you – and your readers, too.
What’s your favorite example of how a writer dealt with plot inevitability? Have you found other ways to work around an easily foreseen plot development?
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
Good post, Dave! Now you’ve really got me thinking….
Dave,
Interesting question. Creating parallel stakes for the MC is a good technique when the main outcome is known to the reader. The only example that comes to mind is The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. He uses an unusual narrative technique and some misdirection to sustain interest, even though the reader knows the outcome from the beginning.
Well said, Dave!
When reading this post, The Hunger Games came to mind. For me the plot of book one was really quite predictable. You have a sense Katniss is going to get picked for the reeping, but you’re shocked when it’s her sister. From there it’s clear Katniss will have to fight in the games yet won’t die (since she’s in book two and three), but it’s how the game goes down, how the character translates what happens, that hits the heart. Then there is the love story with Peeta, which is (to a certain extent) a subplot that keeps the heart invested in the characters.
I could go on but I’m sure you get the point. Nothing surprising, yet the reader is hooked on the way it all goes down.
Denise Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth
Very nice example, Denise. It is inevitable that Katniss survive, but Collins manages to wring a number of satisfying twists both in the surface story — the rule change mid-game — and the deeper emotional story – Katniss’ uncertain feelings toward Peeta.
When I finish every scene, I ask myself what questions are left unanswered. And I store those answers in their own slot in my scene template (https://liebjabberings.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/plot-holes-and-maximus-dog-scene-template-part-2/).
These questions are the source of plot twists later in the book – like dropped colored threads in a tapestry, they have to be picked up and reconnected to the front of the tapestry and woven back in somewhere later in the novel. By the end, everything will be connected – and the picture will be complete.
No loose ends.
I think it’s part of the writer’s promise to readers.
Nice technique, thanks.
Keep ’em thinking about something else. ;o)
Great tips. Thanks.
My WIP takes place in Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 1st century. There is absolutely no denying that Vesuvius erupts. The way I deal with it is by showing how the main characters deal with the fact that their world and their dreams for the future are crashing down around them. I think it’s much more difficult to write about a known event and to make it real for the reader than to make up an event.
This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about, Ronda. As I say, your readers may feel even more tension watching your characters living out their lives literally in the shadow of the volcano.
I didn’t mention it, but in the interview (on The Daily Show), Aaron Sorkin said he liked working on Newsroom because readers knew what was coming. For him, this wasn’t a bug. It was a feature.
You can draw your tension not from the events themselves, but from how the events will affect your characters.
Thanks. Another motto for my bulletin board.
When I think about this topic, I think of the movie Secretariat, which hit theatres just as my daughter entered her horse-obsessed years, so I’ve seen it 3 or 4 times. And each time, my heart was thumping harder at each of the race scenes, although each time, I knew exactly what would happen. After seeing it that many times, I was able to analyze how they did it. They got us invested, hard, in the stakes for each of the story members — several story arcs converged, several protagonists needed that horse to win, each for his or her own reasons. So we were multiply-invested. And then the filmmakers went way, way into close detail: all those close-ups of horse eyeballs, of stomping feet, of constriction in the gates, the audio stripped of music and just down to horses snorting and the clanking of the gates and random shouts of people. The superclose detail built tension like crazy.
I’m writing about events that people will know, too, so I’ve tried to do both those things — establish multiple stakes, and get into granular detail around the event — but I’ve also made sure that I’m not subtly foreshadowing how things will turn out. I make sure that the characters have no idea what’s coming and that the mood of the build-up isn’t colored by my knowledge of what’s coming.
Great topic — thanks Dave.
Again, excellent example, Natalie. I particularly like the observation about the granular detail. In writing, it would show your characters’ focus on the moment, which helps draw readers in.
Delighted to see someone brave the current taboo on prologues. No disrespect intended to the late Elmore Leonard, but it seems far too many young editors and agents these days rate prologues down there in the slush pile with format, typos and poorly cast plot pitches, earning the miscreant query a snarl and a snub, if not the courtesy of a boilerplate rejection. I write this less from personal experience than from what I read online from the industry youngsters themselves.
I’ve never really been much of one for rules in writing.
https://staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud/2013/05/13/rules-and-tools/
Pat Conroy did it in his latest, South of Broad. He almost literally told us in the very beginning of the book. But then you get lost in the story, and you’re pulled through with the emotion and drama of the book, waiting to see what happens, and WHAM! On the last page, he brings back in what he told you in the VERY beginning and hits you over the head with it. Amazing. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten it, when it clicked into place.
Water For Elephants did it too, with the first scene. It didn’t make sense until the end.
The Sixth Sense did, too.
I’m in awe of these writer’s abilities!
Argo comes to mind. Watching the parallel stories unfold in Iran created great tension. The unraveling of the six embassy staff escapees hiding out in the Canadian ambassador’s residence (the chain smoking and stacks of wine bottles left on the dining table), paralleled with the children piecing together the embassy documents shredded before the takeover, and the Iranian’s reaction when the docs, finally pieced together, reveal that six employees escaped from the US embassy. Also, the comic relief created by John Goodman and Alan Arkin’s characters back in the states—that was a nice twist. And the six escapees reaction to Mendez, their doubts and inner conflict put before us on screen. I loved it. Finally, the tension I felt when the plane was taking off was intense. I found myself gripping my seat.
Another nice example, Anne. The situation where a plot is inevitable really does happen quite often.
“One way to work a twist into an inevitable event is to make it mean something your readers didn’t expect.”
I’m thinking of the romance genre, in which the ultimate outcome is never in doubt, but tension is needed nonetheless. This technique would be the most common, I think, so that the milestones which *should* point to a changing relationship don’t necessarily (first kiss, sex, etc.), but events can pivot on relatively minor moments.
Thanks, Dave. This is helpful stuff.