Writing Interiority: Too Much vs. Too Little

Recently I talked to some groups of writers about interiority, and the importance of balancing it out in stories. As I've been thinking about the topic some more, I wanted to do a follow-up post on the problems that arise when it is unbalanced.

(Not to mention it also seemed like a good follow-up to my recent post on the internal plotline.)

But first, let's go over what interiority is.

What is Interiority?

Interiority is everything that happens inside your character--typically the viewpoint character.

This includes the character's thoughts (introspection) and feelings that aren't externally observable, like a speeding heart or dry mouth.

Interiority is the internal experience of the character.

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How to Convert Exposition into Ammunition

Exposition is all the facts and information conveyed to the audience. It's facts about the setting, the worldbuilding, the characters, the current situation, the history, the magic or technology, or anything else that is straight-up information. Every story needs some exposition, but for all of us, it's been tricky to handle at one point or another.

One of the quickest ways to tell a beginning writer from an experienced writer, is how he or she handles exposition. Beginners often cram in too much too fast, leading to poor pacing, info-dumps, or maid-and-butler dialogue. Professional writers know how to expertly weave exposition into the story, so that the audience is fed information without hardly noticing it.

Last year, I did a post on how to use turning points to help you discern what info to put in and what info to leave out, when. I mentioned that in his famous book, Story, Robert McKee has a maxim: "Convert exposition into ammunition."

It sounds great, right?

But like some of the most meaningful writing advice, it can be difficult to wrap your head around. 

It sounds great, but like . . . how does one actually do that? And what does that actually mean?

Luckily, McKee does expound a bit on what he means, and today I'd like to expound on what he means by offering my own spin on it.

As McKee points out, "Show, don't tell" is key for exposition--we want to find ways to dramatize the information. Okay, great, chances are if you're reading my blog, you already know that. Still, it's often helpful to start with what you know.

McKee writes:

Dramatized exposition serves two ends: Its primary purpose is to further the immediate conflict. Its secondary purpose is to convey information. The anxious novice reverses that order, putting expositional duty ahead of dramatic necessity.

This is the part I want to emphasize: Its primary purpose is to further the immediate conflict.

Summed up into one simple line, this is what it means to turn exposition into ammunition.

But don't worry, I won't leave you with only that.

Cause if you know me, I like to go deep . . . 

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How Character Creates Context

I've been reading Dwight V. Swain's famous book, Techniques of the Selling Writer; published in 1965, it's kind of considered a classic in the writing world, and so far, I've been impressed with how his advice has held up. This book is most famous for Swain's approach to scene structure ("scene" and "sequel"--if you've heard of that) as well as what he calls motivation reaction units (or MRUs). But it covers plenty of other topics as well, one of which is context. 

Now, when I talk about context, I'm not talking about the year a story is written, who it is written by, or the climate of that time. Context in a story is all the information the audience needs to accurately interpret, understand, and assign value to, what is happening. It includes all the grounding and guiding information the audience may need, such as who the characters are or where it takes place, as well as any pertinent worldbuilding information, such as taboos of the time period or the rules of a magic system. This enables the audience to derive meaning from what is happening. 

When the audience lacks context, the story becomes very vague, which is a problem for several reasons. (See my post on vague vs. ambiguous for further reading.) If there is no context, there is almost no investment in the story, because the audience doesn't have access to the meaning of any of it. If they don't have access to any clear meaning, they are unable to care about what happens. Perhaps the only time where a lack of context works well is when writing teasers (which must always be short strictly because they lack context). An audience will not sit through a lack of context for very long.

Context will usually be supplied through the viewpoint character or narrator (and in most stories, these will be essentially the same, and usually be the protagonist). Whoever is telling the story, will convey the setup of a scene and slide in any important information--such as the laws of a dystopian society or why the Smith family who lives down the street matters. One thing newer writers need to be careful of, is to not make the context into subtext. Context = what the audience needs, to understand what is happening in the text itself. Subtext = additional information that is implied from the text. Context allows us to understand the text, which then allows us access to subtext.

In his book, Swain talks specifically about how character creates context, which is what I'd like to share with everyone today. 

As events unfold in a story, the reader needs to be able to assign value to whether what happened was good or bad. Say that a big rainstorm comes in the story, is that good or bad (or irrelevant)? What about a bombing raid? Good or bad?

As readers, we might bring some of our own experiences and opinions to the text, but in order to properly experience a story, we need to be able to assign value to events in the story. Some of that value will come from the potential consequences (stakes) of the event. But a lot of that value will come from the characters. 

If the character is suffering a drought, then a big rainstorm will be a blessing. If a character has her clothes hanging out to dry, then a big rainstorm will be a curse. 

"A thing matters only insofar as it relates to and affects and is judged by people. . . . We decide how significant a thing is by the way a particular somebody behaves when faced with a specific instance." - Dwight V. Swain. 

Without someone to orient us as to whether something is good or bad, we are just reading about events. 

Meaning and significance only take real effect when we know about the characters. As an audience, what we have to gain or lose from an event in a story, will be based on what the characters have to gain or lose and who we are rooting for. What the character wants (goal), what the character has to lose (stakes), and how the character feels about events (reaction) help readers assign meaning and interpretation to what happens (plot). Otherwise, it's just stuff happening. (And trust me, I've read passages of "just stuff happening" and it's not very interesting.)

Let's look at an example. Last week I saw the musical Annie. Early in the play, Annie tries and manages to escape from the orphanage . . .

Event: Sneaking out of the orphanage.

Protagonist: Annie

Goal: Escape the orphanage, so she can find her parents

Stakes: If she finds her parents, she can be part of a loving family. If she doesn't find her parents, she'll live the next several years as an orphan under the mean Miss Hannigan (and probably never have a loving family). 

Reaction: Glad (and optimistic) to have escaped and to be looking for her parents

The event itself, "sneaking out of the orphanage," could be interpreted as a good thing or a bad thing. But it's Annie who equips us to properly identify it as a good thing. 

Because Annie is who we care about, and (furthermore) because we know her goal and the stakes tied to it, we view the fact she sneaks out of the orphanage as something successful, as something good. Her reaction strengthens that. Running away from the orphanage is progress. 

However, in contrast, if Miss Hannigan was the focal character, then the same event would be interpreted as something bad. Miss Hannigan's goal is to keep Annie from leaving. If Annie leaves, Miss Hannigan could get in trouble with the law. Annie sneaking out is a setback.

This is all in general, of course, because like all writing things, there are exceptions. It is possible to deviate the audience's experience from the protagonist's experience. After all, in A Christmas Carol, the audience isn't meant to share Scrooge's views on Christmas in the beginning. The narrator, tone, promises made, and simply our own cultural understandings may provide a context that is the exact opposite of the protagonist's experience. However, one may argue, that in some sense, we are being provided more than one "context" or interpretation of events. Scrooge's and our own. 

Also, if you have multiple viewpoint characters throughout your story, it may be that the protagonist of the story, may not be the "protagonist" of a particular scene. You may have a viewpoint character who acts as the focal character for the scene. 

So this can all get pretty messy, pretty fast. 

But notice in these examples, the audience is essentially being given multiple interpretations of the story's events. This creates ambiguity. Ambiguity happens when something has multiple interpretations. Vagueness happens when something has no clear interpretation. Ambiguity is fine and is often a great tool to use. Vagueness is often problematic, as it makes the text inaccessible to the audience. 

So having multiple entities create context for the audience is okay.  Having no entity create clear context is problematic--because the audience can't care about what happens, if they can't interpret it.

As you work on your writing this week, maybe make sure your scene has these things: 

A clear focal character

with a goal

that has stakes.

An event related to that goal

and the focal character's reaction to that event.

This will help draw your audience in, because they'll have context, which allows them to make meaningful interpretations. 

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Context, Text, Subtext: Understand How Each Works in Storytelling

Hi everyone! Today I'm returning to some topics I've visited off and on during the last few years, mainly because I wanted one place that compares and contrasts all of them quickly, with links to the other articles for those ready to go more in depth.

Guys. We do not talk about context vs. text vs. subtext enough in the industry!

And this creates some problems! (which I'll touch on).

So here is a "quick sheet" on these three things.

In writing tips, we talk about text a lot. But I feel like we don't talk enough about context and subtext in this industry. Both are vital to good storytelling and often misunderstood or even mixed up. So today I wanted to go over and define the differences between context, text, and subtext, and explain when and how to use them.

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Context, Text, and Subtext: What They Are and How They Help With Storytelling

Hi everyone! As some of you know, four times a year I coach over at WritersHelpingWriters.net, and that's what I'm doing today. So for this week's tip, I'm going to send you over there (hope you don't mind!), where I'm talking about the difference between context, text, and subtext in writing, how each functions and where each fits in storytelling. I've designed this post to give you a clear but quick rundown, because we don't talk about these three terms enough.

But if you are on the fence, here is the opening to help you decide if you want to read further. . . .

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In writing tips, we talk about text a lot. But I feel like we don’t talk enough about context and subtext in this industry. Both are vital to good storytelling and often misunderstood or even mixed up. So today I wanted to go over and define the differences between context, text, and subtext, and explain how they work.

Context

Often when we think of context, we think of things like the date a work was published, who it was written by, or the climate of the time. But context is very important within your fictive universe as well. Context in this sense is all the grounding and guiding information that the audience needs, such as who the characters are, where they are, what time of day it is, etc. Context can also be any other additional information the audience needs to interpret and accurately understand what is happening in the story.

Here is an example of a passage without context.

Mack shut the Hummer’s hood. “Should be fine now,” he said to John.
 “Great. Thanks, Karl.” John got in the driver’s seat and stuck his key in the ignition. 

Why did John call Mack, Karl? We have no idea. There is nothing in the text to help us interpret and accurately understand what his motives are. Is it an accident? Intentional? A nickname? Is this a typo or mistake the author made?

This passage lacks context.

This can happen when the writer is trying to make their story mysterious, exciting, or engaging by leaving room for readers to come to their own conclusions and interpretations (which is what subtext is for). Sometimes it can happen from trying to follow the “Show, Don’t Tell” rule too religiously.
When the audience lacks context, the story becomes very vague, which is a problem for several reasons. (See my post on vague vs. ambiguous.) If there is no context, there is almost no investment in the story, because if the audience doesn’t have access to any clear meaning, they are unable to care about what happens. The only time where a lack of context works is when writing teasers.

Read the full (short) post at Writers Helping Writers

Have a great week!

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Validating the Reader

Two years ago, I wrote this article called "Validating the Reader's Concerns." I felt pretty good about it at the time, but have since realized that validating the reader is an aspect of writing way bigger and more generalized than that article. In fact, I've realized that all successful writers do it--even if they don't know it.

But not all unpublished or beginning writers do. Which can be a setback.

How come no one ever talks about this?

Hopefully you are familiar with the term and concept of validation when it comes to day-to-day life. I am because, personally, validation used to be a huge stumbling block for me. But today, I don't want to think of validation as something that is good or bad for a person, but more of something that just is.

Here is the dictionary definition:

Recognition or affirmation that a person or their feelings or opinions are valid or worthwhile.

In writing, validation is part of context. It's validating the reader's experience--sort of like a reassurance that yes, I am aware of what you are thinking and experiencing as you read my passage.

I'm not talking about validating the reader's experience in his or her personal life, I'm talking about validating how they are reacting to your story.

In short, writers have to be mind readers.

To some extent.

It's like communicating with someone in real life--when you need to tell them something, and you already know how they are going to react, so you sit and think out how you are going to present it so they listen and understand you and what you want to convey

In storytelling, you don't need to validate everything, but the reality is, if you aren't validating what the reader is experiencing in some way, your story is broken. And 95% of the time, you need to be using validation.

Luckily most of us validate the reader without ever realizing it.

But there might be times where we don't and the story breaks--often it breaks by becoming unbelievable. 

 Just for example, let's say that Dumbledore dies in Harry Potter, and no one cries or shows any signs of real grief.

Huh?

Doesn't that seem weird? Especially when the characters and audience have spent so much time with him, getting to know him, and valuing him?

The reader will feel sad that Dumbledore died, or at the very least, expect some of the characters to feel sad.

But if that's not on the page, that feeling or thought isn't being validated, and there is going to be a problem. A few things might happen:

- The story will feel unbelievable.

- The reader will feel cheated.

- The audience loses trust in the writer

The audience can lose trust in the writer because they may start to think that the writer doesn't realize something is wrong in this part of the story when the audience does. Of course, this often isn't something the audience is consciously aware of--they may not be able to put it into language, but they'll know that something is wrong or broken. And that's when it swings back around and relates back to a lack of context.

The Dumbledore example is an obvious one, which is why I picked it first to illustrate the point. A lack of validation might sneak in your manuscript in other ways.

Let's go back to my example from my other post on validation: the fact that The Force Awakens includes essentially another "Death Star" (Starkiller Base).

This fact would have been hugely annoying to almost all audience members, had it not been validated.

I mean, really? Another Death Star?

That is how the audience would have responded

But the filmmakers validate and deal with how the audience would react.

Instead of ignoring the audience's concern about a third Death Star, they acknowledge it and even poke fun at it. Han says something like, "There's got to be a way to blow it up. There always is." And instead of being annoyed about this plotting and possibly laughing at it, we are laughing with it and the characters, and everything is fine. We accept the fact that this movie has another "Death Star" in it.

A lack of validation can show up almost whenever the thoughts or feelings of the audience aren't being affirmed in some way.

Let's go back to another example I've used in yet another post.

Mack shut the Hummer's hood. "Should be fine now," he said to John.

"Great. Thanks, Karl." John got in the driver's seat and stuck his key in the ignition. The Hummer roared to life.

John headed for the main road.

Why does John call Mack, Karl? We don't know. Not only do we have no context to interpret this exchange, but we have no validation that this exchange is even weird, which is what the audience is thinking. They might go back and look at it again, searching for some context, or at least some validation. But it's not there. Which leads to the conversation either feeling unbelievable, or to the audience questioning how much they can trust this writer to tell this story, since the writer is apparently unaware of this issue.

This leads me to two points:

- We need to validate what would come naturally (sadness over Dumbledore's death)

- And we need to validate anything improbable/unusual (like the third Death Star and John calling Mack, Karl)

Sometimes these things go together. For example, if no one is sad over Dumbledore's death (hard to believe, but hypothetically) then we need that fact validated by telling the reader why no one is sad.

In short, as I said before, we need to validate just about everything.

And naturally we will, most of the time.

But sometimes we as writers don't.

I think this probably happens most with speculative fiction and mystery plot lines, but it can also come from following the "Show, don't Tell" rule too religiously.

There isn't much to say about validating what is normal other than it should be there--it's expected to be there, so when it's not, something is probably broken. And you are probably doing this almost all the time naturally (if not, that's something to look at).

Just remember that the stronger the natural reaction to something, the more validation needs to be present. For example, having a line that simply says "Harry was sad" about Dumbledore isn't going to cut it for that situation. Because death causes such powerful emotional responses, we need more validation.

As for the other point, remember that the more unusual or atypical or unlikely something is, the more it needs validation.

The more unusual or atypical or unlikely something is, the more direct or louder validation it needs.

If Harry is looking at a picture of Dumbledore for the first time, and Dumbledore walks out of the frame, and Harry doesn't react, that's a problem. There's no validation. 

So how do we validate the reader?

Let me count the ways.

Dialogue

Validation can simply come from character dialogue.

Mack shut the Hummer's hood. "Should be fine now," he said to John.

"Great. Thanks, Karl." John got in the driver's seat.

"Did you just call me 'Karl'?" Mack asked.

John laughed. "Must be getting old. Sorry about that." He stuck his key in the ignition. The Hummer roared to life.

"Not a problem, Todd," Mack said.

"Don't tell that's going to be a 'thing' now."

"Of course not, Jacob."

John sighed, but it was a mock sigh.

He smiled as he headed for the main road.

See how the dialogue exchange validates that it was strange John called Mack the wrong name?

Validation.

Action

You can use characters' actions to validate something.

Say that our protagonist, Mary, finally got the nerve to ask her crush out, and he rejected her. How should she be feeling right now? Well, I'll tell you that if she is in any way human, she should at least be feeling something, and since she's our protagonist, the reader should too.

"Sorry, but I'm not really interested," Chad said.

"Oh, well, see you around," Mary said.

As soon as she turned the corner and Chad was out of sight, she dropped her face into her hands. Peeking through her fingers, she beelined for the nearest restroom. Someone was in there, so she quickly opened the very first stall and locked herself in.

Her actions validate her feelings and the reader's concerns about the situation.

Feelings

You can validate something through a character's feelings, which can be written through dialogue or actions, or some other way, but I feel that it's still its own thing. The above example validated that Mary was feeling something through actions.

Often we want to render feelings through action--or showing--but sometimes it's completely fine to just tell them. It depends on the situation. And then there are thoughts, which I'll get to in a second.

But my point of this section is that we can validate the reader by having a character feel a certain way.

For example, if something really strange just happened, you can validate that by having a character be surprised, curious, or mystified on the page.

Harry looked back at the trading card. The frame was empty.

"He's gone!" (Surprise)

Notice how Ron's response creates context to let the reader know that this is normal in the wizarding world.

"Well you can't expect him to hang around all day," Ron said.

Often this is why in many stories that deal with outlandish things, you need a character who is the skeptic. If you don't have one, it will be mighty hard to validate some of the audience's natural thoughts and feelings.

In the X-Files, Agent Scully needed to be skeptical in order to provide validation for the audience about Agent Mulder's paranormal theories. If she wasn't, the writer would have had to squeeze in another character to do the job, and if Chris Carter didn't do that, then the whole series would have had one validation problem after another. It would have been broken.

Which leads me to the next section.

Thoughts

Like feelings, thoughts can come through action and dialogue, or, in writing, as a thought itself.

In the X-Files, it's important that Scully is always confronting Mulder and questioning his outlandish theories--it's important that her thought-process is almost always different than his. Likewise, on the few occasions where Scully does believe in something outlandish, Mulder then becomes her counterpoint in the framework of that particular episode.

Start looking for the skeptic in shows, even reality t.v. shows, and you'll start seeing them everywhere. It's because if no one asks those questions or thinks those things, then the story won't be able to fully validate the audience's thoughts and/or feelings, and may become unbelievable.

In writing, we use our viewpoint character's inner thoughts to validate the reader in addition to dialogue and action. This is especially important when dialogue and action aren't or can't validate.

For example, let's go back to Mary and Chad.

Maybe Mary wants no one to possibly know what she is actually thinking and feeling. The exchange might be like this.

"Sorry, but I'm not really interested," Chad said.

"Oh, it's fine. I don't mind," Mary said.

How could this be happening? she thought.

Keep in mind that what a character directly thinks in that moment though, depends on how raw the emotion is.

Since this is in the moment, Mary's feelings are going to be very raw, and probably not perfectly thought out. Later, maybe that night, we could have a line like this.

I was so embarrassed,  Mary admitted to herself. Uugh, I hate rejection.

Negative Description

Negative description is when you explain or describe what something is not. The "negative" part doesn't refer to it being down and depressing, but is used more in the sense of "negative space"--what isn't there.

Sometimes you can't validate the reader through any of the things listed above because there literally isn't anyone present in the scene who can validate it.

They might be atypical or unusual characters, or even creatures, who don't share the same thoughts or feelings about the moment that the average reader would have.

In my perpetual work-in-progress, I have a character who often doesn't think or respond to things in ways that most people would. I don't want to give a big background, because it's kind of complicated, but here's a small excerpt of when I've used this. My character, James, can be pretty atypical about situations.

Watch how he responds when learning about something supernatural for the first time, and how the text still validates what would be someone's typical response.

James stepped over animal dung. “This is a sacred place?”

Dustin tapped James’s arm. He shook his head and pointed to a knuckle of the rock formation that was lower than the others, about 25 feet up.

“Up there?” James asked.

Dustin nodded. “Not sacred in our plane, but in their plane,” he said. “That’s not the exact spot, alright? But that’s as close as you or I are gonna get to it, it’s in the rock.”

Someone else might have cocked a brow, rolled their eyes, or argued. James just said, “Okay.”

James isn't the type who would act skeptical in this situation, but perhaps most people would. Dustin is the one teaching James about the otherworldly, and he's not going to validate the strangeness either in this moment. So the only way to get in on the page is to use some negative description--what James doesn't do.

Stacking Validators

Often you'll be validating the reader in more than one way--in thoughts and feelings and dialogue and actions (negative description might be more rare). In fact, in some situations, it's required you do. The death of an important character, for example, probably needs to use almost all of the above to fully validate the audience. Combine multiple ways for most important moments.

When Experiences Deviate

Keep in mind that sometimes the reader's experience deviates from the characters', but the reader still needs validation. It's just that while the character is feeling a particular emotion, the reader needs to see that emotion not so that it validates their feelings, but rather so it validates them intellectually--how and what they think that a character should be reacting and feeling

Validation: Vital to a Satisfying Denouement

According to David Farland, one of the places in a story where validation is most important is in the denouement. After the climax, and the protagonist has triumphed, or, at least learned something valuable, the denouement needs to validate that. If it's a romance, validation might happen through a wedding. If it's an epic fantasy, it might be that the world is in peace and evil has been vanquished. If it's a detective story, the criminal is sentenced. If a character has gained wisdom, we see it validated--Scrooge donates money, goes to his nephew's party, buys dinner for Tiny Tim, wishes everyone a Merry Christmas.

Often powerful denouements validate multiple points in multiple ways.
 
Related Posts
Validating the Reader's Concerns
Deviating the Reader's Experience from the Character's
Inconceivable! Dealing with Problems of Unbelievability 
Context vs. Subtext (Context Should Not Become Subtext)
Raw vs. Subdued Emotion (Getting them Right in Your Story)

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5 Types of Surprises

Last time I talked about the differences between surprise and suspense, saying that we should actually try to use both in our writing. I don't see enough articles that speak to how to write surprises and how to write them well. So I've broken down the element of surprise into five categories that may help.

Out of the Blue

The out-of-the-blue surprise is what it sounds like--it comes out of the blue. It isn't foreshadowed or expected in any way. In some ways, this can be the hardest surprise to pull off. Not because it's difficult to write, but because if you do it wrong the audience will feel cheated or disappointed.

One of the most important aspects of writing surprises is that the surprise isn't a disappointment. You want to make sure it doesn't undermine or cheat the reader. You don't want that being the surprise. If the out-of-the-blue surprise isn't a disappointment, it can be a fun one to throw into the story simply because the audience won't be expecting it.

For example, it could turn out in the story that the protagonist's cousin and close friend is actually working with the antagonist. If this was not foreshadowed and the audience was not prepared for this revelation in any way, it's an out-of-the-blue surprise. However, if your audience knows the cousin character well and this revelation seems to go against all that she is and what they believe of her, you run the risk of unbelievability. It may not sit well with them. In some cases, the audience may feel that the writer threw it in there for shock or in an effort to try to make the story more interesting.

But, if the revelation comes and it fits the character in some way (though not foreshadowed), it will be a big surprise, and while shocking, will still be believable.

The out-of-the-blue surprise is probably the easiest to write but the most difficult for the audience to accept.

Foreshadowed Surprise

A foreshadowed surprise is--yup, you guessed it--a surprise that has been foreshadowed. Now in order for it to actually be a surprise, you can't be heavy-handed with the foreshadowing. When you are heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, the audience guesses the outcome before it happens, so it's not actually a surprise.

To be successful at this, the foreshadowing is there, but it's subtle. If we use the example from the last section, we might give hints earlier in the story that the cousin character is working with the antagonist character, without actually revealing that fact outright, until the proper moment.

When you subtly foreshadow, and then the surprise happens, the audience thinks back and says, "Oh yeah, that makes sense. I see that now."

A foreshadowed surprise takes a bit more skill to write, but it's easier for the audience to accept, because it makes sense with what came prior.

A good example of a foreshadowed surprise in Harry Potter is **spoiler** that Harry is a Horcrux. There is enough foreshadowing in the seven books, but it's very subtle. So when we find out, it's a big surprise, but it all fits. 

The Twist

People love a good twist. It's almost its own thing. But in order to pull off a good twist, it needs an element of surprise. It belongs in the surprise, not suspense, category.

I've talked about this in other posts, but a twist works off a shift in context. Sure, of course there is foreshadowing, but we actually move beyond subtle foreshadowing. We give the audience much more context for how to interpret the information they are receiving.

Last time I mentioned the movie the Sixth Sense, which is famous because of its twist. In the Sixth Sense, the audience is given context for everything that is happening with and to Bruce Willis's character. For example, the reason his wife won't talk to him is because they're having marriage problems.

A twist shifts the context. The content is the same it's been (i.e. Bruce Willis's wife won't talk to him), but our interpretation and understanding of it changes with new information or a new revelation about the information we already have (we find out Bruce Willis is dead).

This is what makes a twist so powerful. The content was there in front of us the whole time. We had even interpreted it. But the reality was actually different than we'd assumed.

A twist is probably the most difficult surprise to pull off, but it's the easiest for the audience to believe--they've been staring at the evidence the whole time. They just didn't see it that way. They may say things like, "I can't believe Bruce Willis was dead!" But this comes from surprise and shock, rather than them disbelieving the story to be authentic. They have a hard time taking in the new information--it's not that it ruins their suspension of disbelief, it's that they are so surprised.

Exceeding Expectations

You can surprise your audience by exceeding expectations. You may have heard the concept that if you show a gun hanging on the wall in a story that that gun needs to go off by the end of the story (Chekhov's gun). The audience expects the gun to go off. So you surprise them by not having it go off once, but three, four, five times at the end.

That's the simple way to explain it. Of course, there are other facets in play and things you can do wrong--I mean, if you are writing a cozy story, then having the gun go off and kill five people probably wouldn't fit the tone. However, having it go off five times and hit other things, maybe even humorously, might work.

But it's the idea that you surprise the audience by moving beyond what they expect. You not only give them what they expect, but you take it much further to something they didn't even imagine.

That's surprising.

The Trope Twist

If you aren't familiar with the term "trope," then I highly suggest checking out tvtropes.org, where you can learn more than you ever wanted to about them. A trope is a storytelling technique that has been used enough for the audience to recognize (consciously, or more often, subconsciously). It's a pattern in storytelling. It can be about plot, character, story structure, and just about any number of things. For more about what at trope is, read this page.

Here are some quick examples:

Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World (Story type)

Tsundere (Character type)

Taking the Bullet (Micro-plot element)

It Sucks to be the Chosen One (Story/character element)

Be Yourself (Theme)

The Call Knows Where You Live (Plot element)


Basically, a trope is any thing that is done regularly in storytelling. Some people get a little disheartened learning and exploring tropes for the first time, because tropes may seem to oversimplify their amazing story (not to mention that tvtropes.org uses a witty tone in most all their entries (that is admittedly very entertaining)). But tropes aren't bad, and every story has them. They're only bad when they are handled poorly. And they get annoying if the same tropes seem to keep cropping up in the same ways. For example, after Harry Potter got big, I swear, almost every book had the prophecy trope in it. It was annoying.

That's where surprises come in.

I bring up this example a lot, but one of the reasons I love Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy is because he took familiar tropes and twisted them in unexpected ways, so that even though we as the audience are familiar with the concept of "the chosen one," we couldn't guess the ways Brandon Sanderson ended up twisted them. So we were surprised.

When you twist a trope, you take something familiar to storytelling, and you do something atypical with it.

These work doubly well for writing twists in general. Because the audience knows the trope, they have an expectation (interpretation, context) already for the outcome in a story. But if you do something different, they'll be surprised. They'll say things like, "I didn't see that coming." Well, that's because that trope usually doesn't end that way. You, the writer, did something uncommon with it.

You can twist tropes in a number of ways. You can deviate from expectation. You can also move the expectation up, so that it happens and is dealt with much sooner than is typical. For example, "the chosen one" dies before Mistborn even starts. What a clever way to start a story. What happens when the supposed chosen one dies trying to defeat the ultimate villain? What's next? When you read the back cover of Mistborn, it's surprising. You can twist typical character roles. You can twist typical character tropes. You can twist typical plot outcomes.

When you mess around with tropes, you can come up with something surprising.

However, you can also, like the other surprises, end up with a worse story, if you don't do it right. Which leads me to the next important point.

Where Surprises Go Wrong

Surprises work off doing something the audience doesn't expect. But as I mentioned earlier, they can go wrong when that something is a disappointment or "lesser" than what is expected. The audience will feel cheated or shortchanged. You need to keep your promises to the audience. Whatever the surprise is, it should either be just as good as what the audience expected from the story, or better.

Surprises can alter the overall outcome of the story.

Or they add to the overall story.

But they should not takeaway from the overall story.

You don't want to "cheat" the audience by promising them vanilla ice cream and then giving them broccoli by the end. You can surprise them by promising vanilla ice cream and then giving them chocolate ice cream instead (assuming they like chocolate as much as vanilla, so the exchange is equal). And you can surprise them by promising broccoli and then giving them ice cream instead (something they like even better). And you can surprise them by promising them broccoli, delivering that dish, and also vanilla and chocolate ice cream (exceeding expectations).

But you should definitely not promise food and serve them nothing.

(I understand that people will grumble different dissents to my metaphor because they don't like ice cream or whatever the case, but it's to illustrate my point, all right?)

So, go forth and surprise me.

Related Posts

Crafting a Killer Undercurrent for Your Story 
The Mechanics of Rendering Mysteries and Undercurrents
How to Write What's Not Written (Subtext)
Vague vs. Ambiguous: Which are You Writing
Context vs. Subtext (Context Should Not Become Subtext)
Surprise vs. Suspense--Which is Better?
Validating the Reader's Concerns
Hiding What the Main Character Knows from the Reader

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Working with Teasers

About a year ago I went to the bookstore and started pulling books off the shelf to see how many of them had prologues, then I grabbed about a dozen books with prologues, sat down, and started reading them.

A lot of people in the writing world say prologues are horrible and that you should never ever ever ever ever write one.

I've always had mixed feelings about that advice.

Especially since all growing up, I liked prologues. Still do.

As I started reading all these prologues, I realized not only did the books do a no-no by having a prologue in the first place, but so many of the prologues broke dozens of writing rules. It would be enough to make any aspiring author want to rip out her hair. How come everyone who is teaching me to write stories tells me not to do these things, but then a quarter of the books on shelves are doing them in the very opening?

But I realized when reading through prologues that day, that most of them were teasers. A teaser functions different than other parts of the story, and if you don't know how to discern them or understand them, it can mess up your writing. Not enough people talk about teasers, which is why I'm doing this post.

Teasers inherently break a lot of writing rules, so it's unfair to compare them to everything else. They have a different purpose and function in storytelling. Teasers function off emotional promises to the audience.

Let's start with where the general public has heard the term--in reference to movie trailers. There are two main types of movie trailers: theatrical trailers and teaser trailers. A theatrical trailer is longer than a teaser trailer. It conveys the basic plot of the story. It communicates what the story is about.

Since I'm getting excited for the second season of Stranger Things to come out this month, let's look at their trailers for examples.

Here is the Stranger Things theatrical trailer.




Notice how the trailer guides us through the plot's set-up. It conveys to the audience that the story starts with a boy who has gone missing, having met some kind of ill fate, and his mom and others are looking for him. Eventually, his friends meet a girl who might know where he is.

Now, most theatrical trailers will have some kind of voice over or text on the screen to guide the viewers, and tell them what the story is about.

A teaser trailer is different. They're short. They usually don't really guide the audience through the plot's set-up, but instead show flashes of what kinds of emotional appeals the story is making to the audience.

Watch this Stranger Things season 2 teaser.



While there is text on the screen, it doesn't actually tell us about the plot of the story. But what it does do is make promises to the audience about what kind of emotional appeals it has.

- We get the retro 80's feel from the very beginning, which appeals to that feeling of nostalgia.

- We get yelling and then heavy breathing, which appeals to the feeling of fear.

- We see friends together, which appeals to the feeling of camaraderie--buddy stories.

- We see hints of a government conspiracy, which appeals to a feeling of wonder and horror and stirs the intellect.

- Finally, we get the feeling of wonder and horror when we see a dark creature outside.

Teasers don't tell us a whole lot about what the plot is about--just glimpses of it. They don't give us much, if any, context. They promise the emotional journey that will be delivered if you watch this show.

However, what else teasers promise, is that if the audience watches, they'll get the context.

One of the most important things about teasers is that they are short. If you want to do some research, look up theatrical trailers and teaser trailers for the same movies. The teaser is always shorter.

This is because an audience will sit through a lack of context for only so long. If it goes on too long, especially in the opening of the story (prologue usually), they'll get antsy. They need meaning. They need to be able to interpret what they are viewing or reading on their own, in order to become invested in the story, in order to care. They have to be able to participate, not just be dazzled with camera shots of creepy creatures. Maybe once that would have been enough to hold an audience back in day, but not today where so much entertainment is so accessible.

The less context a teaser has, the shorter it needs to be.

If it has a little more context, it can be a little longer.

If it has a little more context than that, it can be a little longer than that.

But one of the defining qualities of a teaser is the lack of context. If you give full context, it's not a teaser. You might have a theatrical trailer prologue, which is perfectly acceptable, but it's not a teaser.

So how do you handle a teaser? You appeal to emotional promises and beats. Luckily, you do not have to appeal to all your book's emotional beats in a teaser prologue. This is why often after teaser prologues, you get a chapter one that appeals to different emotional beats, and hopefully having dual openings gives your reader a sense of what kind of emotions this story is going to sate overall. And again, not everything needs to be in the opening, just the promises for what kinds of things will be in the story.

If you watch multiple teaser trailers for the same movie, sometimes you'll see that each teaser focuses on certain types of emotional beats. For example, in the Harry Potter movies, you may see how some may focus on the slice-of-life stuff at Hogwarts, while others focus on the dangerous Voldemort stuff. Usually, you'll see appeals to both, but if the movie has a big marketing campaign, you might get emotion-targeted teasers.

Teasers don't only appear in prologues. They may also appear as short scenes in the story, usually in the first half of the story. When you are working with a story where the threat is at a distance until the midpoint, you might get short teasers about what that threat is doing or planning to do, to remind the audience of their presence, promise again that trouble is coming, or sate the audience's emotional need. The movie I am Number Four, is a good example of this. The Twilight movie also does it.

Again, these teasers function the same way. They are short. Have less context. They make emotional promises.

Teasers that take place in the story, as opposed to the prologue or opening, don't have to necessarily promise trouble. They can speak to other things. For example, in a fantasy where your protagonist hasn't yet discovered a magic system, you may show a teaser of the mentor character using it in a fascinating way, with the promise that we will learn more about it in the future.

There are obviously differences between movie trailers and books. For example, movie teasers will often show short clips, quick shots, that inherently appeal to certain emotions. So for romance, there might be a quick shot of two people kissing, then a shot of a couple holding hands. These shots might come from two entirely different scenes from different ends of the movie. We can't and shouldn't write our teasers like that (usually). As a teaser in a story, especially a written one, you're more working with a teaser scene. The audience already lacks some context. Trying to jump between multiple scenes is just going to be more confusing. As a rule of thumb, don't intermingle and jump around scenes like that in your teaser passage. You can probably get away with sequential teaser scenes, as long as the teaser passage doesn't go on too long.

On a micro-level, some teasers aren't scenes, but lines in a scene--a sentence here or there that has that emotional buzz attached. And some of those bleed into this post on the Mechanics of Rendering Mysteries and Undercurrents.

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Context vs. Subtext (Context Should Not Become Subtext)

Context First, Subtext Second

Subtext, especially good subtext, can be tricky to write. But in order to write good subtext, you need to have context first. And in order to do that, you need to understand the difference between them and where each one fits in storytelling.

Some writers make the mistake of trying to make the context into subtext. This is a problem for several reasons, one of the main being that it makes the story very vague. In vague writing, the audience can't really tell what is going on. Without proper context, they aren't sure how to interpret information and actions. Often, this sort of writing manifests when the writer is trying to follow the "show, don't tell" rule too religiously, which usually leads to writing that is too cinematic.

However, creating context does not necessarily mean you have to "tell" straight-out all the time. It can also come from taking advantage of connotations, words with specific feelings attached to them. With that said, though, it's impossible for most stories to have proper context without some telling.

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Making Strengths into Weaknesses (and Vice Versa) through Context

Basics—

When we create characters, we give them strengths and weaknesses to make them more realistic. Let’s say we create a character named Erin. We give her some strengths—she is a great teacher, productive, and focused—and also weaknesses—she’s prideful and a complainer. Just by giving her these strengths and weaknesses, we’ve already made Erin interesting. But you can play with this even more. I’m going to show you how strengths can become weaknesses and weaknesses can become strengths through a shift in context. This can add complexity to your story (and characters).

Taking it Further—

Most people generally agree on what is categorized as a strength or a weakness. If I gave a list of character traits to a class and asked them to separate them into strengths and weaknesses, they would probably all agree on what goes where. If I said “liar” they would probably say “weakness.” If I said “peacemaker,” they would probably say “strength.” But sometimes when we switch the traits’ context, we (if only temporarily) switch their category in the story.

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