Jack, in the Box
By Donald Maass | March 1, 2023 |
When I was a small child, I had a Jack-in-the-Box. It was a colorful metal container, circus-themed, with a round lid on the top and a small crank handle protruding from the side. When I turned the crank, a tinkling rhythm would play and I knew the lyrics:
All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought ’twas all in fun
POP! Goes the Weasel!
At the point at which the word “pop” would be sung, the lid of the container would blast open and out would leap a little clown, leering grin on his face and arms spread wide. Inside his cloth body was a coiled spring. I suppose his name was Jack.
From this remove I do not recall, but I’m certain that my reaction to Jack leaping from the box was a squeal of mixed terror, surprise and delight. I’m also certain that I quickly learned to stuff Jack back into the box, thus to crank the handle and once again be surprised. And once again. And once again.
Which brings up an interesting point: When I knew exactly what was going to happen, and when, why did I then keep squishing Jack back into the box? Why, every time, did I squeal with terror, surprise and delight? It makes no sense. The surprise part was over the first time. Delight must have quickly waned. The terror surely wore off?
Well, clowns are scary. Perhaps that part of the experience was more durable. Regardless, I know that I went back to Jack and his box again and again. All kids do. So do adults, in a way, when they’re reading fiction. Same goes for watching movies and TV.
Another illustration of this principle is embodied in my wife, Lisa, whose nickname is “The Spoiler”. Watch any TV drama with her and she will—annoyingly—call the plot turns before they happen. “He’s going to give her the money.” “She’s the long-lost daughter.” Like I say, annoying. I swat her on the arm and she grins. However, Lisa is only exhibiting behavior common to all readers and audiences. We can sum it up in one word.
Anticipation.
Readers are not passive recipients of story. They do not sit dumbly, reading without guile, wholly innocent and surprised by everything that happens. Readers are active. They leap ahead of the plot. They guess what will happen. This is clearly the case with readers of mystery fiction but it’s true of readers of all fiction. It’s natural. It’s one aspect of imagination at work.
It’s not only mystery or suspense that stirs that keen expectation of what will happen. There is emotional anticipation, too. When we yearn for characters to kiss or cheer them on to success, we are hoping for a certain outcome. When a character leaps from a plane without a parachute, or opens the door to the cellar, or heads to the bank with a gun, we have a strong expectation for what’s coming. Our senses tingle. We get ready. We hope to be surprised, terrified or delighted. Maybe all three.
There are four fundamental forces that govern physics: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force. What moves the imaginations of readers as invariably is a longer list, but one with many forces familiar to us: mystery, suspense, romance, adventure, horror, quest, need and yearning. We respond to those stimulants as surely as matter responds to the forces at work in the universe.
Underlying those forces, however, is our sense of anticipation. Call it the grand unification of theories of fiction. Well, perhaps that’s overstating it but nevertheless expectancy, hope, impatience, promise, trust and more are effects that we want novels to work upon us. If we’re not anticipating, then it means that we don’t care and that’s not good.
What interests me most is what exactly it is on the page that causes us to anticipate. When we know how that works, in plot dynamics and emotional dynamics too, then we can do more of it.
Plot Anticipation
Lately I’ve been reading some old favorite authors of romantic suspense. Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, Daphne Du Maurier, Isabelle Holland. And of course Eleanor Alice Buford, who wrote as Victoria Holt, Jean Plaidy, Philippa Carr and others. Their prose was plain. Their emotional palette was purple. They wrote too much about plants. But, oh, those ladies could spin a yarn and as a young reader they held me spellbound.
A typical tale is Victoria Holt’s The Mask of the Enchantress (1980), published in the twilight of the Gothic era. I was aware of the title but at the time of its publication I was reading manuscripts for an editor friend, Kate Duffy, for a new paperback line offering the (then) new-style of romance (containing actual sex) called Rendezvous Romances—name later changed to Silhouette Books.
I missed The Mask of the Enchantress but caught up with it recently. It’s a novel that provokes high anticipation not because it is predictable but because the author wants to build excitement. The plot concerns a young, late Nineteenth Century girl, Suewellyn Mateland, who spends her first six years fostered by a grim elderly couple, “Aunt” Amelia and “Uncle” William. She is visited occasionally by a beautiful and glamorous woman named Miss Anabel.
I’m sure you can guess the true relationship between Miss Anabel and Suewellyn. Holt, however, teases it out knowingly, as in this early visit by Miss Anabel:
There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask Miss Anabel but I remembered my promise to Aunt Amelia to behave in the manner of a well-brought-up child.
Gothic manipulation? Sure, but deliberately leading.
On her sixth birthday, Suewellyn is taken by Miss Anabel on a train ride to a picnic near a grand castle, seen only from afar. A handsome doctor, Joel, a second son who lives at the castle, rides up to join them. His relationship to Suewellyn and Anabel, too, is obvious but again Holt leaves what is evident unspoken. Soon thereafter, Suewellyn is whisked away one frantic night by Anabel and Joel, and the trio board a ship bound for Australia. Only then do the grownups reveal to Suewellyn that they are her parents, a conclusion we readers have reached pages before. And yet the announcement is even so a relief. The withheld information has been building tension. We knew and yet we did not know–not finally. Holt knows this and consciously uses that certainty gap.
Suewellyn’s parents are fleeing from a crime: Joel is married to Anabel’s childhood friend, but fathered Suewellyn with Anabel and killed his lecherous brother in a duel. The fugitive family make a home on a volcanic island a week’s journey by ship from Sydney. The island is called Vulcan. The volcano is not wholly dormant. The native islanders call it the Grumbling Giant and believe it is a god who makes his displeasure about island doings known with rumblings and smoke.
Golly, do you think that the volcano is going to erupt at some point? It’s the gun on the mantlepiece—yes! Of course, it is going to erupt! But when? Holt’s offers a number of points at which an eruption would be expected and dramatic, but no eruption happens. The tease is lengthy.
Then, when Suewellyn is sixteen, a mystery visitor arrives on the island: Susannah, her cousin and daughter of the childhood friend, now dead, whom her mother Anabel betrayed. Susannah is sugary sweet and simultaneously poisonous, and resembles Suewellyn—not perfectly, but closely. Golly, do you think there’s going to be an identity switch?
Holt knows that you are anticipating it but, again, plays out a lengthy tease. Better still, she wraps up in one swoop the anticipation she has been building. Suewellyn leaves the island to attend the wedding of a friend from boarding school in Syndey, and it is during the return voyage to Vulcan that the volcano finally blows its top. Suewellyn arrives to find the island desolate and everyone dead: gone are the natives, her parents, her home, the hospital her father was building, the junior doctor whom she hoped to marry, and last but not least her awful cousin…whom, you will recall, she resembles closely.
Aaah. With no prospects and no money, Suewellyn decides to adopt her cousin’s identity, return to England and claim the castle (now conveniently Susannah’s to inherit) which she saw only once from afar as a six-year-old. However, what Suewellyn doesn’t know is that her conniving cousin, before she left England, had several lovers and had committed murder to inherit the castle. Suewellyn has adopted the identity of a murderer and by the time she discovers that, she is too far into the deception to wiggle out of it.
Sound Gothic? Seem like a lot of plot manipulation? It is, but Holt is masterful at playing with our expectations. For one thing, she knew that anticipation can be drawn taut by the simple method of delay. She delivers, but not always as expected. For sure, Holt’s novel has plot twists to make Dickens roar and exotic locales to make R.L. Stevenson envious. It’s a manipulative novel but that’s the point. Millions of readers loved her skill at building plot anticipation.
(BTW, if you love Gothic storytelling, check out a superb contemporary practitioner, Susanna Kearsley.)
Emotional Anticipation
As I mentioned, there are many ways to create anticipation: the reader’s expectation that something is likely to happen. Plot is one way but characters afford another way. They can signal their desires and we, in turn, can hope to see them fulfilled. However, how to signal those desires is where building anticipation becomes art.
Marilynne Robinson’s novel Jack (2020) is set in the Ohio town of her previous novels Gilead, Home and Lila. (Gilead won a Pulitzer.) It’s the story of the wayward son of a Presbyterian minister and a sweet high school teacher, also a minister’s child. Jack is white. Della is Black. It’s a romance that captures the condition of America.
Robinson opens her novel in a manner that flies in the face of my expert and incontestable advice (in a future post, watch this space): She starts in medias res. Not only that, she uses only dialogue to set things up:
He was walking along almost beside her, two steps behind. She did not look back. She said, “Im not talking to you.”
“I completely understand.”
“If you did completely understand, you wouldn’t be following me.”
He said, “When a fellow takes a girl out to dinner, he has to see her home.”
“No, he doesn’t have to. Not if she tells him to go away and leave her alone.”
“I can’t help the way I was brought up,” he said. But he crossed the street and walked along beside her, across the street. When they were a block from where she lived, he came across the street again. He said, “I do want to apologize.”
“I don’t want to hear it. And don’t bother trying to explain.”
“Thank you. I mean I’d rather not try to explain. If that’ s all right.”
“Nothing is all right. All right has no place in this conversation.” Still, her voice was soft.
“I understand, of course. But I can’t quite resign myself.”
She said, “I have never been so embarrassed. Never in my life.”
He said, “Well, you haven’t known me very long.”
That’s the first page. Let me ask you, what do you anticipate for these two? We know almost nothing about them. Not names. Not professions. Not how they met. (Cute?) Nor even how their dinner date went wrong. (Heavyweight debt collectors intruded.) But if you are a reader, you know exactly what you hope for: romance.
Robinson causes us to feel that using the same strategy as in The Taming of the Shrew. There’s no way this is going to work. No. Way. In. Hell. Nope. Forget it. And yet…there’s something winning about these mismatched people. She’s standing up for herself. He’s self-effacing, charmingly so. He’s bad but good at heart. She doesn’t need someone like him in her life, but their non-conversation continues for another five pages, so clearly she does. In other words, Robinson is using reverse psychology, a Tom Sawyer-worthy trick. The more Robinson tells us this match won’t work, the more we hope that it does.
Or, put in today’s terms, Robinson is causing us to anticipate.
More Anticipation
Want to explore more methods of building anticipation? Sorry, you’ll have to wait. No, seriously, there are many ways to go about it. Another is moral anticipation: Playing on our belief that wrongs need to be set right, or that fate should be a balancing force, or that virtue should be rewarded, or—you get the idea.
Still another is toying with the anticipation we call fear and the other that we call hope. In a story founded on fear, we worry that the worst possible thing will happen. In a story rooted in hope, we hope for the impossible to come true. That’s anticipation. Will the worst happen? Maybe, but have we really considered what is the worst? Will our hope be fulfilled? Could it be that there are things even more impossible and more wonderful that what we at first dreamed of?
Finally, there is anticipation reversal, utterly upending our expectations. Bombshells. Lightning changes in fortune. Bolts from the blue. When we are caught off guard, gob smacked and floored, it shows us that we were anticipating something already, but—heh-heh—what we were thinking is not how it’s going to go.
Readers are participants in your stories. In one sense, there are no stories without them. Stories are just words. They come to life in readers’ imaginations, in their emotions and in their expectations. Is causing anticipation giving things away too easily, too soon? Do the signals of what to anticipate rob a story of surprise?
Ask me, anticipation is delivering readers one crucial thing they need for a story to do its work.
What do you want readers to anticipate in your WIP? And how are you signaling to them what that is?
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).
[coffee]
I’ve been watching old reruns of the original Perry Mason series. They are quite formulaic but the earliest ones are based on Garner’s books and are an excellent example of anticipation. Perry almost always wins, but how will he beat Hamilton Burger this time and who will the culprit be. I love them.
I read every single Perry Mason mystery, and every single Donald Lam/Bertha Cool mystery too. Mysteries are built on the anticipation of the unanswered question: Whodunnit? Gardner kept us guessing about other things too, though, like when was Perry going to acknowledge his relationship with his adoring secretary, Della Street? I mean, come on now! Gardner himself married one of his secretaries, so you’d think he’s want us to know. But no, he kept us in a state of anticipation.
My parents, my brother, and I had a lot of fun watching those Perry Mason TV shows, competing to be the first to name not only the guilty party, but also (in the first quarter of the show) which one of several possibilities would be killed! This was even more fun because my dad was an attorney, looked a bit like Raymond Burr, the actor who played Perry, and my dad’s secretary’s last name was… Street. But I did not enjoy the books. The puzzle was never worth the boredom of slogging through such dreary, flat writing.
Once again, Don, you and WU have come through for me as I work on my research-based narrative NF project, which contains plenty of material for sustaining anticipation without violating the facts. Thanks for the instruction woven into an entertaining ride.
Meanwhile, your wife is a kindred spirit. My family and I relax in the evenings by watching old reruns of Hercule Poirot and Death in Paradise (which have similar structures–durable stuff, yes?) and competing to be first to identify the perpetrator.
In your list of vintage authors of suspense, don’t forget Charlotte Armstrong. Back in the day I read every book she wrote.
In my favorite ever April Fool’s Day prank, I bought of those After-Dinner Mints cans, the one with the spring snake that jumps out when you open it. If you’ve seen the prank before, there’s no mistaking what it is, because it’s in exceptionally bright colors, and there’s no nutritional information on the side of the can.
I took out the spring snake, and replaced it with actual mints.
I took it to school and very beguilingly singled out the most too-clever-for-this person in a crowd. “Want some MINTS?” Oh, yes, they were smarter than that, and were going to point the can at me, except…
Well, then I got to act all indignant that they spilled the mints (they were wrapped) all over the floor. Bwa-ha-ha.
I love messing with people. I generally introduce my new hobby by asking people if they thought bards would be cool if only lutes were…bigger, then watch their faces when they google the word “theorbo.”
For my WIP, there is a lot of this (because obviously, I’m me), but currently, I’ve been developing anticipation starting in the second chapter (we’re now on chapter 25 or something) that one particular character is involved in some nasty political intrigue and is probably just using my protagonist as a future fall guy. Now the jig is up, the scheme is revealed, we expect that Mr. Sketchy will try to off the protagonist, and then…nope! Because a jilted would-be lover shows up just in time, tries to kill my protagonist *first*, my protagonist proves himself to be unkillable, or, rather, he has powerful friends who are very good at killing and are happy to do it on his behalf, which means that Mr. Sketchy isn’t actually able to actually hire an assassin. No one will take the job, because they don’t want to end up exiled or dead!
Stymied, Mr. Sketchy turns to making the protagonist teach teenagers.
From your comments today and previously on WU, I perceive that you have a puckish spirit, Linguist. And into the category of fates worse than death goes this dark gem: teaching teenagers.
Thank you, Donald, for another excellent article on craft, and also for some novel recommendations.
You’re welcome. You can find me here on the first Wednesday of every month.
A well-chosen title can be a tease of anticipation – East of Eden, for example.
I am currently reading Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel – The East of Eden Letters. In it he muses and debates the title. (It started out as The Salinas Valley.) But then, he says (totally paraphrased), this is not a local story. This is the story of Cain and Abel, the most profound story of mankind, without it psychiatrists would have nothing to do. Since this is my frame, why conceal it from the reader? Would it not be better to let him know, even in the title what the story is about?
Thanks for those blast from the past authors, Don. It brings back such good reading memories.
I often cite East of Eden as a model of novel titles that intrigue. It’s a Biblical reference with strong associations and immediately makes us wonder how the novel behind that title will play with the familiar story…which, as Steinbeck’s letters indicate, it deliberately does.
While reading in my genre, I recently spent some time with Cassandra Clare, who managed to keep me anticipating through 700-plus pages. What I noted throughout were her switch-ups between creating suspense, mystery, and dramatic irony (this kept me going through the way too many descriptions of clothes). As for Jack-in-the boxes, I revisit LOTR every couple of years and lately I’ve been wanting to re-read (for maybe the sixth time) Daphne Du Maurier’s House on the Strand – partly for sheer delight and partly to study the art. Thank you once again for a fun and instructive post!
To my shame, House on the Strand is one Du Maurier that I haven’t read. I’m currently re-reading her short story collection Don’t Look Now, which has to be one of the finest collections of the 20th Century. Every story in there is a diamond.
House on the Strand has one scene in it that has stuck with me my entire life. Hope you get to it some day!
The Jack-in-the-Box example has got to be the best for this topic. Thank you. And using an old author that my mom liked and I refused to read is too. But now I’ll have to read one of Mom’s dusty old gothics. Great post as always.
Those gold Gothics may creak and (make us) groan, but there’s a lot of technique we can take away from them.
Dear Mr. Maass: Thanks for the gifts of your experience and knowledge, such as your essay above. In my Romance/Suspense-in-progress I shock the reader by placing one of my protagonists in unexpected danger before her frustrated and angry inner heroine is drawn to a cliff where the serial stalker-turned-killer waits for his final push.
Ah, The Cliff! What would a novel of adventure and suspense be without a cliff? Classic. Question is, who’s going to fall off it?
Another great article. I’m in the middle of Daphne du Maurier’s, My Cousin Rachel. I haven’t read much in the genre, but I was captivated from the first page. And I keep asking myself why. I don’t love the characters, not much happens, it’s dark and moody, and yet I’m taking it to work and sneaking snippets during coffee break. Why? Thanks for answering my question, Don. It’s the masterful building of anticipation (the relentless building of anticipation). I’m definitely going to be looking at amping this up in my WIP.
In writing my book The Emotional Craft of Fiction, I was looking around for a passage that would perfectly illustrate the principle that I dubbed “third level emotions”. I found it in My Cousin Rachel, it’s Phillip’s reaction to the letter from his cousin Ambrose in Italy, revealing that he has met and married a distant cousin of theirs, Rachel. Du Maurier was a masterful writer, probably the best storyteller of the 20th Century.
My mother read all of them, Stewart, Whitney, Du Maurier, Holt. I can picture the paper covers bent to keep her place, the books on her bedside table. My mother was a widow, working, raising three children. She needed escape. And though I have never read any of those authors, I have read everything Marilynne Robinson writes. In fact, I grabbed JACK to check. And maybe I’m wrong…Jack and Della first meet in Iowa…all the characters are first brought to us in Gilead, Iowa. I was living in Iowa when Gilead was published, and Robinson was teaching at the University of Iowa. She is a gift. All her novels are intricate, beautifully written. Thus, my conclusion: the Jack in the Box method can entice readers like my mother, who needed escape. But also readers like me…anticipating each sentence, the themes that can uplift as well as shame American readers. Because we have to acknowledge our divisive history. (Della’s family isn’t happy she is in love with a white man. It can only bring her sorrow.) Reading is always part of a writer’s journey…if only I could write like Robinson…thanks, Don.
You’re right, Gilead is an Iowa town, not Ohio. Typo. Thanks for the correction, now let me correct something you said: “…if only I could write like Robinson…” What? You can, whyever not? Then again, why stop there? Why not write make Marilynne Robinson wish that she could write like Elizabeth Havey? Entirely possible.
Thanks, Don. Yes, entirely possible….and so glad you mentioned Robinson. She hasn’t published in a while, and I fear she might be through. We will see…
Such a better concept to focus on than ‘Conflict’. Every one seems so fixated on the need for conflict in a story but is that not really and note of anticipation? A change is about to happen, oooh, I might know what hit is, I need to read on and see. Hard to have anticipation with out something to expect.The tease. Best writing advice I have seen in a long time
Also,
Opening in Medias Res is an immediate hook for me, especially opening in a dialog. I am right on ti. People talking, like eaves dropping to discover what they are all about. Please be positive about this if you are venturing a new commentary, Talk about a tease, anticipation, Who are these people is number one. How can I get into their lives without their knowing? That is why we read books.
Lots of agreement from me, Sam, but I want to add something about Robinson’s opening in media res. That approach often doesn’t draw us in. In Robinson’s opening it does for two reasons. You’re not going to like the first: conflict. The second is a more subtle effect: In spite of what Della is saying to Jack, we can tell that they’re both good people. We have an immediate reason to care about them and to hope that this relationship–and the novel–is not going to end in one page on Della’s doorstep.
I agree, conflict is overrated. Too much bores me or makes me say “enough! grow up, don’t throw up!” What I write about in my novels is cooperation or its lack or sometimes its futility. But that’s orthogonal to what Donald talks about here because eliciting emotional truth that resonates with the reader supecedes all plot devices. Thanks for this inspiring lesson in craft. I am sure it will make my current project sing if I can find the right notes.
OK but now I HAVE to read both of these books! Lol.
They’re a study in contrasts. Holt’s novel is not artful, nor realistic. Robinson’s is artful, and highly relevant. Yet both get us in their grip. Different styles, different intentions, both engaging, both using skill sets to enact their story purpose. We might think of Robinson, the Pulitzer winner, as the “better” writer, and Holt as a mere “storyteller”, but both are using a ton of great craft from which we can learn.
Thank you for this, Don. Stewart, Holt, Whitney (and Alistair MacLean) cemented my love for reading as I hid them behind my big social studies book in class.
Speaking of cliffs, I recently reread Stewart’s Madam, Will You Talk? with its racing car chases that ended not only with people but also a vehicle going over. I’m looking forward to reading Marilynne Robinson’s Home, which I grabbed recently from a Little Free Library.
Madam, Will you Talk, is a Stewart that I missed! Racing car chases? Must read! Hold on…
…just got it for my Kindle, started reading it, and of course it is now a quarter of an hour since I started typing this reply to you. Sucked me right in.
Don, I had one of those Jack in the Boxes too, and indeed, worked to its reveal of the disturbing clown over and over, in order to be satisfyingly disturbed. (The old rat/lever/cocaine dopamine thing, though your dopamine does reach a repetition-exhaustion point, as mine did, so I took Jack apart, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men…)
I do admire your ambition in positing a grand unification theory of literature—it’s got good gravity. I am reading Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore” now, and its parallel (but out of time, and perhaps out of space) storylines and subplots have flashes of the matador’s cape in quick suggestions—that aren’t quite reveals—of layered connections under every surface. Lots of anticipation and speculation for readers. This reader, at least.
And Marilynne Robinson—wow. I love all the Gilead books; their spare but weighted language is witchcraft. Never read Du Maurier, but you do nudge me her way. Thank you.
You haven’t read Du Maruier???? Oh Tom, you are missing out! Rebecca is one of the great storytelling masterpieces, in the top three certainly, maybe the winner. The latest TV adaptation is pretty good but read the novel. It’s Gothic storytelling elevated far above it’s genre.
Can’t resist a comment here . . . REBECCA is my all-time favorite book and I’ve watched all the movies, too. The latest TV adaption was pretty darn weak, I thought. The best movie and the closest one to the book (best casted as well) is the 1997 version with Charles Dance as Max, Diana Rigg as Mrs. Danvers, and Emelia Fox as the second Mrs. de Winter. Faye Dunaway plays a terrific Mrs. Van Hopper, too.
All I can say is oh my gosh, Victoria Holt! I used to steal those books from my mother. Thanks for the wonderful memory and for the craft advice — both are much appreciated.
Thanks, Liz, there are a number of comments today from folks who loved those old Gothic and romantic suspense writers. Read in one way those novels are dated, but read in another way they are genius. Such stories! Adventure! Suspense! Mystery! Romance! We can learn a lot from them, hence this post today.
Thank you Don. This was the right overview for me to use as perspective on my final review of my completed manuscript. Did I hit these touch points? And good insight as I approach my next story.
andriagoldin.com
This is touching on an issue I’m struggling with in my current novel. It has a strong romantic sub-plot but has enough of a main plot to not be a romance. The opening scene has a bickering vampire and hunter teaming up to escape a mutual for. The reader is going to assume (rightly) that they are going to eventually get together, but it is a slow burn across several books in the series. So how do I get the ‘I don’t read romance’ readers from giving up after the first scene and keep the romance readers from getting mad because there’s not a full HEA by the end of the book. (There’s a definite cessation of hostilities and hints of more to come )
Who doesn’t love a slow burn romance? Such teases have been done successfully many times in novels, film and TV. The first trick is to set two characters at odds. You’re doing that. Vampire and hunter who must team up? Great! The second trick is trickier. We must both like them and sense that beneath their conflict they like each other already, even though they’re not showing it. If we’re having fun watching the interaction of two people who, overtly, would just as soon kill each other, then we’re going to read on in the hope that they’ll get together. Not easily, mind you, but hope carries us a long way.
I always anticipate your posts Don and this was another gem! Thank you. Gilead came on my radar a while back but I never read it, and you make me want to read the entire series, but first, her first book, Housekeeping.
Your question at the end of your essay helped me get to heart of my historical. It is a search for home. I’m showing it by literally evicting my fictional family from their home. I let the worst thing happen to them–it hurt me to do this–and I discovered a safe haven within myself. This writing life is one of wonder. Thank you for teaching us so well.
The yearning for home has long been a theme in fiction. Now, how to make the reader feel that yearning, that anticipation? What will be there when we arrive? What says home? I can tell you one thing that says it for my kids, even at the independent ages of 15 and 17: Mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. Just the idea and they’re six again.
Dammit, Donald – reading your posts gets freaking expensive! So many books to buy and study!
Oh boo-hoo-hoo. More books to read. Such a burden. So tragic. Poor Keith. How can you bear it? (Suggestion: accompany with whiskey and Miles Davis.)
Anticipation is a great topic, Don, one hammered home for me in an unexpected realm: PR. When THE FAR END OF HAPPY came out, my editor at Sourcebooks wanted me to include a letter with the ARCs that spoke of my personal connection to the story. It was no secret that it was a novel based on true events, but when the editor further prodded me to speak about my own experience with my husband’s suicide while promoting the novel, I asked my husband, “Isn’t that a huge spoiler? They’ll know how the story ends.” And my husband said, “We went to see TITANIC. Did you think that maybe this time it wouldn’t sink?” He had a point. And of course like everyone else, it was Rose and Jack, quite specifically, that I hoped wouldn’t sink. Don’t get me wrong—this hasn’t turned me into one of those people who reads the end of a book first. But I’ve come to have a great appreciation for stories where the destination is known, but you’re looking around every corner to see how the characters will end up at this preordained moment. As in Ann Patchett’s THE MAGICIAN’S ASSISTANT, which opens, “Parsifal is dead. That is the end of the story.”
Yes, good point, Kathryn. There are plenty of novels that start at the end, then flash back. The anticipation lies in discovering how we’ll get to the final point we already know. Should have added that to the anticipation menu–thanks!
I see that I’m a day late to this party, but I want to say, Mr. Maass, that with this one, I finally got it: You’re on my side! You want me to write good stuff, and it’s not to feed Mammon. It’s to delight readers. And you! A long time ago, in a galaxy … It was Canada … I asked if you would represent my (first) novel. And you said no. But you did write the letter yourself, a grace note that I ignored because I didn’t know better. Through all my years here at WU, I have read your posts with grudging acknowledgment of your opinions, but always thinking, “Why should I pay attention to this guy? He couldn’t even see that I’m a genius.”
But something in this post and the discussion that followed finally clicked. You love writing and you’re rooting for the wanna-be’s. It’s very clear. So that’s all good.
Now: What the hell happened to Suewellyn? Was she imprisoned for a crime she didn’t commit? Was she hanged? Please! My TBR stack is already taller than I am!
I cannot get passed the first paragraph; its resonance has me fixated. It concisely tells & shows a story synopsis, setting us readers up for the emotion in the backstory. The opening:
Tells who, a young child
Shows, in vivid detail, the what, a jack-in-the-box
Tells when, “when I was…”
Tells where, the narrators memory
Tells why, the Childs yearn for “tinkling rhythm…” and desire to know lyrics
Now, my challenge is to unfix, enough to read and learn from the rest of the essay. This is wonderful, thank you Mr. Maass!