Revelations and Reveals - how to surprise your reader

I've talked a lot on my blog about creating narrative-interest – what gives a story it's propulsive quality, what makes the reader, audience-member or viewer keep with you until the bitter end.

Certainly a powerful way of achieving this is by promising the audience a pay-off, an answer to a question, a final understanding of a fascinating story. Perhaps this is the reason why I've sat through so many plays that promise nothing and withhold the reason or explanation for the nonsense I'm enduring right to the end in the mistaken belief that narrative interest is being created. This has only happened for plays – stories and novels like this I just put down and go and do something a lot less boring instead. Like watch paint dry.

It's happened so often that for a while I banished this device altogether from my writing repertoire in sheer disgust – the reveal, the revelation, the surprise. Kurt Vonnegut spoke the gospel: give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense.

But then I got to thinking – wasn't it cool when Luke discovered Darth was his dad? Wasn't it a thrill to discover the twist in the movie Sixth Sense. A revelation can make a good story great. Sometimes a surprise can be good, right?

But when? What were the bad plays doing wrong and how do we do it right? Time to look a little harder at the whole deal.

Story revelation vs. Character revelation

If you break it down, there are only really two types of revelation that can be made within a story – revelations about the story and revelations about character. The differences should be fairly self-explanatory – a revelation about the story is when something is revealed outside of character – who the murderer is, who is sleeping with the heroine's husband. Character revelation is when something is revealed about character – a hidden trait, an unrealised dream, a hitherto misinterpreted desire.

Ok, so if these are the types of reveals that can occur – let's think about how they can occur, and who to.

Revelation to the character about himself, about others or about the story

This is where the revelation is made to a character – he discovers something about himself he never realised before, that the woman he really loves is not the beautiful socialite but his childhood sweetheart; that the beautiful socialite is not a dynamic inspiration but shallow and vacuous; that she is actually already sleeping with his dad (about himself, about others, about the story respectively). These sort of revelations should not be the sole driving force behind a story because as alluded to in my introduction this won't be enough – unless of course you have used other techniques like dramatic-irony or foretelling to create suspense or expectation in the reader.

That is one reason why those bad plays failed – key information was withheld without creating in the audience enough interest to want to stick around to learn that information. If it's obvious to the reader that you're hiding something deliberately you'll create frustration not intrigue.

Revelation to the reader

This is where the revelation is for the reader or viewer's benefit – and this is where we begin to tread on dangerous ground – because although we write stories for the reader's benefit, the reader lives the story through the characters in it – if the writer is using a reveal just to shock or surprise the reader, not the characters, it's nothing more than a cheap shot.

To give an example, imagine reading a whole story only to be told at the end it was all just a dream. Great. There have been at least two movies I have loved that employed a technique similar to this – Jacob's Ladder and The Last Temptation of Christ, but these worked because we were taken along those journeys with the main characters. Our delusion was theirs, they were just as much bewildered as we were, we knew as much as the protagonists and our revelation was theirs too.

An example where this didn't work was in Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, having read through the entire novel only to find out at the end that the last third never actually happened in the story-world felt like a waste of my time. A made-up story within a story within a story. Very post-modern. Very irritating.

Funnily enough I found this less offensive in the film because the amount of time I spent being tricked was a lot less due to the format and I was in on the deceit.

Withholding information vs. discovering it

The reader shouldn't be the last person to know what is going on in the story, it should be the characters. While it's perfectly acceptable for the reader to know more than the characters (dramatic-irony) it's rarely acceptable for them to know less. Never withhold information from the reader for the sake of it. The reader must know everything the characters know. Detective stories work because we discover the truth along with the detective, or because we know the story and we anticipate the detective discovering the truth and the dramatic impact that will have. Nobody likes to be the last person to know what's going on. That's the other thing those bad plays got wrong.

You see that's what Vonnegut meant – like we must always believe that a character is taking the simplest route to his goal, we must always feel we know as much information as it is possible to know at that point in the story, through the eyes of the character that we are sharing it with. If the reader feels they are being deliberately kept in the dark, they're just going to go and buy someone else's book – and you wouldn't want that, would you?

How to create suspense

Every writer wants to keep their reader gripped right through to the end of their story - that elusive thing called 'narrative-drive' – but how do we achieve it? Theoretically it's simple enough – create a desire in the reader for something, delay the satisfaction of that desire, then deliver what the reader wants in an anticipated yet unexpected way – the desire-delay-deliver pattern. Simple right?

Right. But knowing something and being able to do it are two very different things. Suspense is one way of achieving powerful narrative drive - and here are some practical techniques for creating it.

Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony is when the reader or audience know something that the protagonist doesn't and if used well can be a very powerful means of creating suspense.  The key is that knowledge the reader has implies a dramatic or significant event that will happen to the protagonist. It's a device that can be easily understood from films but is applied in exactly the same way in fiction. For example, we see a man break into a house and hide himself in the bedroom cupboard - then a young woman enters the house. We immediately have a suspenseful situation. For as long as the girl is unaware that the man is hiding in the bedroom suspense is maintained. A classic filmic example is the shower scene in Psycho. Bear in mind that as soon as the protagonist becomes as aware as the audience are, suspense is lost because the audience now gets the pay-off – the delivery of the anticipated event.

There is a subtlety here – although the event is anticipated it cannot be predictable otherwise the reader will get bored waiting for what it knows will happen. Suspense implies a dramatic pay-off but the outcome should by no means be certain. What will happen when the woman discovers the man in her bedroom? Is he a threat? Will she fight him off? Or perhaps there's a twist – maybe he's her husband.

Cross-cutting

Cross-cutting is the device of jumping between two converging story-lines. This is essentially another way of using dramatic irony but it can have a more accelerative impact as cutting between the two storylines will have the effect of rapid movement toward the anticipated dramatic event – a powerful combination of suspense and pace. It is in effect though just another way of exploiting dramatic irony.

Ticking Clock

This is a device whereby there is an inevitable event that is time driven e.g. a bomb will go off in ten minutes, the plane will crash in thirty seconds, the protagonist has a wound that will kill him if he doesn't get it seen to. This can be employed with or without dramatic irony. Once again the principle of narrative drive is the same – a dramatic event is promised, that event is delayed and its consequences will be dramatic and uncertain.

In this case the protagonist being aware of the ticking clock can actually increase narrative drive, as a protagonist striving for a goal (e.g. to disarm the bomb, rectify the planes descent or get to the doctor) has a propulsive effect all of its own, couple this with the suspense of the ticking clock and you are pretty close to a story that's unputtdownable.

As I say, suspense is just one mechanism for exploiting the desire-delay-deliver pattern that creates narrative drive, but there are many other ways to use it. Romance for example – the reader wants two characters to be together, the writer delays that coming together, then delivers it.

But that's another post.

How professionals generate story ideas

If you're going to make a living writing then one great story idea is not enough. You have to keep churning them out. If you manage to get the attention of an agent or editor with a great piece of writing they will want to know what other ideas you have in your bank. I know this because a Television Story Producer and Script Editor told me. Here's what else I learned from them on how to collate a story portfolio.

Stories must be realer than reality

Reality is a great resource but just because something happened in real life doesn't mean it's going to be believable on the page. Sure, people do crazy unpredictable things in life but in your story-world actions must be motivated and believable in the context in which you create them. People just won't buy it otherwise.

Imitation rarely results in success

Genre and medium conventions always apply if you want to write in those genres for those mediums but don't slavishly copy writers you admire. It's originality and freshness that will make an editor sit up and notice. Remember, these people trawl through acres of new writing. Give them a reason to pick yours.

Practice active listening

You're a creative right? Words should just tumble out of you right? Wrong. If you're looking for ideas you should shut-up and listen. The only words coming out of your mouth should be those open questions you ask when someone is telling you an interesting story.

Research

You don't have to write what you know but you should know what you write. Just enough research to stimulate your imagination and give authenticity to your work – no more is required.

Separate generation and evaluation

Be clear – if you're creating ideas don't start assessing them or trying to work them too early – just keep those ideas coming. One exceptionally good idea is worth ten crap ones. Hell, one good idea is worth a hundred crap ones. So keep those ideas coming. You never know, todays crap idea may actually look pretty good tomorrow.

Develop a writers' network

It's a lonely business, but it doesn't have to be. Don't be afraid to phone a writer friend and talk ideas through. It's just an idea, and ideas can be tested and improved by talking them out with people who understand what you're about. Exercising  ideas like this will help generate new ones and take the originals into places you might not have got to alone.

Other Related Links:

The three phases of creativity

How to keep having great ideas

How to take an idea and develop it into a novel

Capturing ideas without suffocating them

How to make good writing great

You're probably sick of hearing that good writing requires well-drawn characters, exhilarating plots, conflict on every page and lots at stake - but that's really like saying what makes a great pizza is flour, eggs and tomato - we all know it takes a little more than that. Besides, a cursory analysis of what readers really like (i.e. what they keep buying) is a heady combination of story, romance and milieu.

Writing is exceptional when it becomes far greater than the sum of its parts – when the reader forgets the words and sees nothing but the world behind them; when the characters and plot become so entwined that you couldn't pull them apart. When you can't, in fact, see the science behind the magic. But how can we hope to achieve that?

Not easily, if at all. We have to start with the craft – this is the foundation of all great writing – but we can become obsessed with the craft itself and forget that it's just a means to an end. We can't win the race until we learn to drive, but let's make sure we don't stay in the pits fondling the gear-stick forever. We mustn't forget to look beyond the craft and remember why we're doing this. Here are some things to think about to help us achieve that.

Words are in service to your Story

You might want to be a poet, a word-smith, or a lyrical writer – but thinking of your work in those terms is already putting a barrier up between your story-world and your reader. If the reader is in awe of your beautifully constructed sentence she's not really being transported into your story-world or swept away by your characters. If that's the kind of writer you want to be then fine, but it will only invoke a superficial response from the reader, because

Emotion is the key to memorable writing

You probably laugh a lot a books, you may even find sequences breath-taking, but how often have you wept at a book you're reading, how often has your chest ached, and your heart gone out to characters? Not very often, and the books that made you do that are probably some of the best you've ever read. A character simply being emotional will not invoke an emotional response in the reader, a sad event alone will not do it either, because

Characters are inseparable from Story

The story reveals character and the characters make the story – you can have one without the other, and they can both be brilliantly constructed – but it's only when the two are intimately entwined do they really become effective. No one cares about a character without a story, and a story means nothing if it effects no-one. This is why context is the key to an emotional response in the reader, because

The effect of the story is more important than the story itself

A child being killed is a sad story, if you've characterised the mother of that child before you take the child away it's far sadder, if the reader of that story happens to be a mother she's going to feel it even more. Emotion is created in the reader when a cared-for and understood character is subjected to emotional events. Events are emotional because of what they mean to the character - either positive or negative. By doing this, we're on our way to making

Memorable moments

There will be only a handful of scenes, or moments, from all the books you've read which you will never forget, and the majority of these moments (if not all) will be events that had significant emotional impact for a character you cared about.

The effect of story-events on the reader is likely to be heightened if they tap into universal fears and hopes because the reader is more likely to share them with the character, or if the writer has particularly increased the significance of those fears and hopes pertinent to the character, so the reader can share with them through empathy. How best to let the reader understand your characters? Through action, because

Every hero needs a crisis

You don't really know a person until you see them under stress, which means (again) that character is revealed through action (i.e. plot) and the story will be driven by the character's response. Once again, we've come around to the point we made right at the start - that a truly great story is inseparable from its characters.

You see, if we manage that, we'll be famous.

4 ways your protagonist can learn the truth

It's not just detective stories that require the protagonist to discover hidden truths. An MC actively pursuing some hidden knowledge will provide strong narrative propulsion to any story – providing it is done right. Here are four paths to discovery that you could use in your work.

The chain

This is perhaps the simplest causal structure outlined here, whereby the MC discovers a series of indicators that eventually lead him to the truth. One discovery leads him to a place where he discovers another piece of knowledge or understanding which leads him to another place where he discovers something else etc. etc.

The pieces of knowledge could be a clues, insights into a personal trauma, understandings about a relationship he didn't have before or a mixture of all the above – anything that is appropriate to your story. The key is that each discovery drives the character onto to the next – hence 'the chain'.

The convergence

This is where a series of possibilities are known or suspected by the MC and the story is about him discovering which one of these is correct. In the simplest sense this could be a detective trying to discover the murderer from a fixed set of suspects – the classic Agatha Christie-esque situation – but it could equally apply to a whole heap of other stories. The MC then (either knowingly or unknowingly) eliminates all the possibilities until alighting on the correct one.

You can have all sorts of fun with this set-up – using dramatic irony where the audience/reader knows the truth while the MC doesn't, or keep the reader as ignorant as the MC. Exceptionally clever writers can convince the MC and the reader that one possibility is a dead certainty, only to discover it's false and a least suspected option is actually the case.

The divergence

This is where the truth seems simple to the protagonist but the situation is far more complex than he imagines. A classic example of this is where an event occurs, which could be quite innocuous, but there turns out to be a massive conspiracy behind it. With 'the convergence' the solution is simple and manageable, but with 'the divergence' it is anything but. Perhaps the MC can do something about it, perhaps the reality is so large (or cosmic) that he can do nothing at all. One way to make a distinction between 'the convergence' and 'the divergence' is that in the former the problem gets smaller and more is known, but in the latter, it gets bigger.

The thunderbolt

Probably the simplest and cheapest device of the lot – where the knowledge comes right out of the blue for the character. This can be a twist (re. Sixth Sense) or reveal (Darth and Lukes' relationship) – and can provide dramatic interest or insight, but used alone will not provide narrative drive unless it leads on to the more causal structures outlined above.

Obviously your not compelled to use only one of these devices, you can use them all – and it's worth noting that these aren't the only ways to provide narrative drive. Mash it up and use of many of them as you can, and you'll be half-way to writing a story that's unputdownable.

Happy New Year and good luck.

Four ways to kill narrative drive

If you took all the books that were ever written and laid them end-to-end you'd have a very long line of books – the point being that with so much to read if you're lucky enough to have a reader take a look you don't want to give them any excuse to put your book down and move onto the next – but if you insist, here's four ways to do it.

Withhold information

A sure-fire way to maintain reader interest is to not tell them stuff, right? That way they'll keep reading just to find out, right? No. Utterly, utterly wrong. Giving the reader a question she wants to know the answer to is not the same as withholding the interesting stuff until the end. If you don't put the interesting stuff at the start then, well, the reader just isn't going to be interested enough to keep reading. It's obvious really.

The key is to give the reader interesting stuff right from the start with the promise of more interesting stuff and then keep delivering interesting stuff right to the end. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

Nothing Happens

The power of your voice, the detail of your description, the depth of your characters, all mean nothing if nothing ever happens. Your voice will quickly become droning, your descriptions pointless and your characters irrelevant and uninteresting if not tested by events. 'What happens next' is the simplest mechanism for narrative propulsion – don't be afraid to use it.

Uninteresting Protagonist

So your MC is a humourless plank? Or a spotless do-gooder? Or a bore? Or two-dimensional mouthpiece for your own Freudian hang-ups? I don't want to read about that sort of chump and neither do you. So don't write them.

Predictability

Your scenes should be the natural consequence of previous scenes, and your ending should be inevitable but not predictable. If the reader has your plot figured by page 2 they are less inclined to read on to find out what they know already.

This doesn't mean you can't play with the form – many great stories start with the ending already known (which can have a propulsive effect of it's own), but unpredictability must remain - why and how did this known ending happen? How is this story going to get to that point. Inevitable but unpredictable.

Ok, so that's how not to do it - here's how to actually do it. 

Good luck.

How to create great content for your blog

Producing regular content for your blog can be a daunting task. It can also be a difficult psychological shift for new bloggers to assume the position of authority required to blog with confidence, or to believe that anybody will be interested in what they've got to say – particularly if the last thing you feel like is authoritative or interesting. But the truth is, for your blog to get read, you have to have great content and you have to deliver it in an authoritative and interesting manner. Pretty much like any kind of writing. So how can you produce authoritative content without feeling like a fraud? And how can you talk about stuff without coming across as a pontificating bore? Here are some ideas.

State the obvious

Just because you know something doesn't mean everybody else knows it. Don't be afraid to talk about things that seem obvious to you – there's a whole internet out there and quite a few people who won't know what you know. The added bonus of explaining something obvious is that you'll automatically be an authority on the subject. Believe. Know how to tie shoelaces? Someone doesn't. Know how to make toast? Someone doesn't. You get my drift. A 'How to...' post title always gets a lot of interest because a huge amount of internet traffic is people seeking information – particularly about things that are so obvious that they are afraid to ask their mum/wife/boss about in case they laugh.

Recognise your successes (and your failures)

Getting through your day is a success. Getting enough money together to pay the bills and feed the kids is a success. Getting this far into my blog-post is a success. Recognise these successes and use them as material. 'How to get through your day without killing your boss' is a post anybody would like to read – detail the mechanisms you use to avoid boss-homicide, no matter how trivial they seem. Readers will empathise with situations they recognise, no matter how trivial-seeming they are to you.

Write what you don't know

To produce regular blog-posts requires a lot of material. Eventually you'll come to a point where you feel like you've blogged about everything you know or have ever experienced (in fact, you haven't, but that's beside the point) – this is the time you have to start making shit up. If you've blogged about everything you know now it's time to blog about what you'd like to know. This is an opportunity to broaden your horizons. You've blogged about how to cook risotto, but you'd like to know how to cook a curry – learn how to cook the curry and then blog how to do it, or blog how you learned to cook it, or how you failed to learn how to cook it. All of these things are lessons that readers of your blog could learn from. Obviously you're going to have to do a little research for these kind of posts, but hell, you'll be learning about stuff you want to learn about as well as delivering interesting content.

Write the post you'd want to read

When stuck for ideas come up with a great-sounding post title and build up from there. 'How to fly to space with only a saucepan and a hairclip' is a title that's going to get hits. The challenge then is to come up with the content to support the title. Build five bullet points to support the title, then use these bullet points as sub-titles to support with content. You'll find that as you start writing ideas to support your headlines you may come up with better ones – don't be afraid to change them – the punchier or more interesting the better. Ok, flying to space in a saucepan is a tricky one, but I used this mechanism to produce this post and some of my more audacious (and popular) posts.

Just do it

I'm frequently surprised at what posts get a lot of interest – posts I dashed off shame-facedly go viral, while lovingly crafted sure-fire winners get ignored. Sometimes you've just got to take a chance with a post. Ones you think controversial may barely raise an eye-brow and others you think harmless may kick off a shit-storm. The lesson here is a bad post is better than no post at all – because you never know, that post you thought was hopeless may actually end up being the post that puts your blog on the map.