Surprise Ending

Not all of us love a surprise party, but most of us probably enjoy a well-crafted and unexpected turn of events in the stories we read (be they fiction or nonfiction) just when we thought we had the whole thing figured out. I'm not talking about those playful-but-clever O. Henry kind of endings, but endings that feel organic and right--satisfying on every level. How do writers come up with those great endings? I wish I knew. I wish there was a simple formula for that -- or even a complicated one. 

Needing a break from my novel and the slow, seemingly never-ending progress I've been making on my third rewrite,  I thought I'd tackle something new for a while -- a project I could start and finish in a month or two -- a short story, maybe, just a few thousand words.  A piece of cake, or so I thought. 

It wasn't difficult to come up with a premise right away. A week later I even had what I thought was a pretty decent rough draft of the first two-thirds of the story.  So far so good, but as always, the final third of the story had my brain tied up in knots.  How do I find that perfect surprise ending, the kind of ending that resonates and sends the reader back to the beginning to see how in the heck I pulled it all off?  An ending that's totally unexpected, but feels in retrospect like the story was working up to that final moment all along...?  

To pull off a surprise like that, we need to really know and understand our characters, especially those who'll be surprising us with their unexpected and seemingly unpredictable actions.  We need to know who they are and what they're capable of.  What motivates them to behave the way they do? Have they shown through past action that they are capable of such behavior?   What are their secret and not-so-secret yearnings and fears? 

In Writing Fiction Step by Step author Josip Novakovich suggests that in order to avoid the sense of "foregone conclusion" when creating and defining our characters we should look beyond simple "character traits" that tend to pigeonhole our protagonists and other characters into behaving in predictable ways:   

When we do what Novakovich suggests above, we need to make sure that we've prepared the reader ahead of time. We don't want to spoil the reader's surprise, but we want the ending -- and the character's unexpected behavior -- to ultimately make sense. 

Brandi Reissenweber, author of the “Ask the Writer” column for The Writer magazine (and my all-time favorite online writing instructor at Gotham Writers Workshop) explains in the following three snippets (from one of her many in-depth lectures on craft) the importance of carefully setting things up so that when the surprise comes it doesn't feel forced:

My favorite bit of advice on "endings" and "surprise" comes from author and creative writing professor John Dufresne in his enthusiastic and inspiring book on craft, The Lie That Tells A Truth.  It comes from his chapter on plot titled "The Queen Died of Grief." I find myself returning to this passage every time I approach the ending of a new story, and I imagine that you will, too:

Below the exercise I've listed a few of my favorite short stories with surprise endings that work really well. I'd love to hear about some of your own favorites. The more we read stories with good surprise endings, the closer we'll get to actually pulling one off ourselves.  Oh, and hey -- if, during your travels and studies, you happen to come across a simple formula for generating the perfect surprise ending, be sure to let me know, would you?

Maass notes that in his workshops, "nearly three-quarters of participants find that they prefer the approach to the scene that this exercise yields.  Why is that? First choices in writing a scene often are the easiest: the ones that make sense and feel safest.  But safe choices make a scene predictable. Reversing motives shakes up a scene.  It makes its course less expected, yet no less logical since the action still comes from your character's true, deep motives." 

Seems to me that you could use this same exercise for the "endings" of stories as well. Or the endings of novels.  Or the endings of chapters in novels. What is it your character yearns for? Make a complete list of his reasons for wanting it.  Come up with several new and surprising "endings" based on each of the motivations on your list and write a brief summary of each.  Do any of these new endings surprise you more than others? If so, find places earlier in the story to show that your character is capable of such an unexpected action. Can you convince the reader through your character's past experiences that his surprising action later in the story is not only plausible, but right? 

A few of my favorite short stories available to read online:

"Neversink" by David Benioff  

"Twin Study" by Stacey Richter 

"The Wig" by Brady Udall (transcript from "This American Life", NPR) -- my favorite flash fiction piece (only 372 words!)

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Josip Novakovich: Writing Fiction Step By Step

Donald Maass:  Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

John Dufresne:  The Lie That Tells A Truth

Brandi Reissenweber: writing instructor for Gotham Writers Workshop and author of the "Ask the Writer" online column for "The Writer" magazine

The Art & Craft of Revelation

A few months ago I attended a writers conference where the impressive and charismatic keynote speaker, novelist Christian Moerk, led a workshop on "Building the Writer's Toolbox." He covered such topics as how to create satisfying chapter openings and closings;  the importance of layering-in details in act one that you can pick up later in the story; and how to create a "skeleton" in the form of a chronological synopsis of your novel.  But the tidbit I found most interesting was Moerk's suggestion that we must include periodic "reveals" in our stories-- at least one every five or six pages or so; and that it's the revelations that will keep the reader engaged and turning the pages. In a recent interview he talked about doing just that when working on his latest novel Darling Jim:  "I wanted to attempt a multi-layered story in which each scene becomes part of a daisy chain; the more you pull on it, the more will be revealed."

Before that writers' conference I hadn't thought much about revelations in fiction, or seen much mention of them in any of the books and articles I'd read on craft.  But now it seems they're everywhere. They're popping up in almost every book and article on craft I come across these days.

One of the most detailed references is in John Truby's Anatomy of a Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller.  Truby defines a revelation as "a surprising piece of new information" that forces a character to "make a decision and move in a new direction." As part of the 22 steps he breaks down the different types of revelations and where they typically occur (or should occur) in a well-told story. 

One such reveal is the protagonist's "self-revelation" that comes just after his apparent defeat (some refer to this point in the story as the end of Act III):

Just after the apparent defeat, the hero almost always has another major revelation.  If he doesn't, the apparent defeat is real, and the story is over.  So at this point, the hero gets a new piece of information that shows him that victory is still possible.  Now he decides to get back into the game and resume his quest for the goal….  The story turns in a new direction.

In his book Rewrite, Paul Chitlik describes this revelation as coming just before the beginning of his last, biggest battle, the final struggle to the summit: when your hero "sees something, hears something, or even remembers something that reanimates him and gives him the will to continue."

As part of Truby's 22 story steps all the major story revelations are covered: the protagonist's first revelation and decision near the end of the beginning; added revelations in the middle to keep the plot from stalling; the second major revelation after the hero's apparent defeat; an important audience reveal (information that the reader receives before the hero learns it); a third and powerful revelation for the hero when he learns new information about a supposed ally; the all-important self-revelation at the story's crisis point; and if you're looking to "express your character's change with more complexity and emotional impact than the standard method allows, he offers the advanced technique of the "double reversal".  A reversal is "a reveal in which the audience's understanding of everything in the story is turned on its head." 

For each of these different reveals, Truby goes into detail about why it's important, how to write it well, and how to make the revelation meaningful.  I can't recommend this book enough.

Christian Moerk talks about reveals as being  a reward for the reader, that you should present the reader with just enough information to keep him going until the next reveal a few pages down the road.   His advice when writing is to start at the end (of the reveal) and work backwards so you can lay out your "clues" along the way.

Donald Maass, in his Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, describes these revelations in character as "high moments" in the story -- moments that make him "suck in his breath, lower the book for a second, and admire what the author has just made happen." These moments (or story events) don't need to be huge to have an impact.  Examples of character revelations might be an unexpected act of forgiveness, a small but surprising act of self-sacrifice, or a simple, perhaps sudden realization by one character that things aren't quite the way he thought they were (as in the example in the exercise below). 

John Truby writes that "the more revelations you have, the richer and more complex the plot will be." And here's a surprising assessment:  Truby says that revelations are usually missing in average (as opposed to great) stories.  What?? Really??? Well…we're not going to allow "revelations" to be missing from our stories, are we?

Exercise  

Part I:

The following excerpt is from Writing Fiction Step by Step by Josip Novakovich, novelist, short story writer, and professor of English at Penn State University.  This book, and his popular Fiction Writers Workshop, are two of my all-time favorite books on the craft of fiction.  I'll talk more about his books in a later post, but for now I'll just say that if you love a good writing exercise, especially one you can hone to your current work-in-progress, and one that'll help make your scenes sing out loud, you've got to get your hands on a copy of Writing Fiction Step by Step!

Read this excerpt from Novakovich's story "Hats and Veils" and pay attention to how the scene flows forward and backward in time, ending with a revelation.  Novakovich: "Chronologically, we follow father and daughter on the bus, on a short ride.  We deviate into the past reveries a little to prepare us for the present, which is the mainstream of the scene:

         They climbed onto the bus together.  There were several elderly people; a dozen high-school students; a leathery adolescent with green hair and a ring piercing his lip; and two young women, with black lipstick, in mink coats and torn fishnet stockings….

        "Could we go sailing?" Sonya asked in German, looking at the bouncing sailboats among the choppy waves of the lake.  He did not answer because he was busy with his reveries.

      He remembered how when Sonya was thirteen months old, she had loved fish.  Whenever she saw a drawing of a fish, she'd silently open and close her mouth.  When he showed her a red starfish picture -- and said, "Starfish!" -- her finger tried to trace the mouth, and not finding it, got confused, stopped on the picture of a submarine rock.  She put her tiny forefinger back in her fist, and stared at Vadim openmouthed, as though confronted with the concept of a lie for the first time.  Later, on a moonless night with a breeze murmuring through pines, when he pointed to the sky and said "Stars!" she opened and closed her mouth happily, and turned to him to show him how well she was doing.  She's learned to accept all kinds of fishes, in their variety, even those that did not have mouths and that swam in the sky at night.

            "Sag mal," Sonya began again. Tell me…

            "Mozda kasnije," he said in Bosnian.  "Maybe later, after I teach you how to ski.  Would you like that?"

            "Hush!" Sonya put her forefinger on her lips, and said in English, while blushing, "Somebody might hear you!"

           As he stared at her red face uncomprehendingly, she whispered in Bosnian, apparently thinking that he was not capable of understanding other languages.  "Keep quiet, people will hear you."

            "So? That's what speech is for!" he said.

            She turned her head away and bit her lips.

           So that's it.  She's ashamed of me.  She's afraid of being identified as Bosnian.  I'm a Bosnian peasant, and she's a Swiss lady.  My child, my best friend, is a foreigner to me.

Novakovich again: "The reveries, with their images of stars and starfish, enhance the man's nostalgia and dreaminess, out of which he is jolted in the conversation with Sonya, when he realizes that she, though he has and is going to sacrifice a lot for her, is actually ashamed of him, and ashamed to be a foreigner."

The following is an exercise not only in revelation, but in the "elements of scene" as well.  Novakovich says:

When you read novels, watch for scenes that work particularly well.  Analyze them.  What do you like in them?  Can you do something similar?  If it's all right in tennis to imitate a good stroke, why not in writing?  You will still end up doing it your own way.

He invites you to steal his scene above and do something similar with your own story.  Using his scene as a general guide, write your own scene, preferably one using two of your own characters --a scene you might use in your current novel or work-in-progress.  As an exercise in structuring a scene and negotiating flashbacks, try doing something similar to Novakovich's scene, keeping it to about 500 words or less:

Begin by briefly describing the setting. What does your POV character notice? If he's been there before, what's different this time?  The other character wants something and a dialogue begins. During the conversation your main character drifts off into a brief memory that will inform the present action.  Bring your character back to the present, being careful to anchor the reader in place and time as you move from present action to memory and back again.  Continue the conversation, bringing it to a close with the main character receiving some kind of meaningful revelation. (500 words or less)

Part II:

"Good writers know that revelations are the key to plot.  That's why it's so important that you take the time to separate the reveals from the rest of the plot and look at them as one unit.  Tracking the "revelations sequence" is one of the most valuable of all storytelling techniques." John Truby, in Anatomy of Story: 22 steps to becoming a master storyteller (read the book to learn much, much more!)

Make a list of all the revelations in your story in the order they're revealed to the protagonist. Beside each reveal, note the effect that the new information has on the POV character.  How does the revelation change his desire? How does it impact his course of action? How does it change everything that follows? 

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Writing Fiction Step by Step, by Josip Novakovich

Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, by John Truby

Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, by Donald Maass
Rewrite, by Paul Chitlik

Christian Moerk, Keynote speaker, 2009 Central Coast Writers' Conference

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Engaging the Reader

I was going through some of the early scenes in my novel recently and realized, sadly, that several of them are just really, really boring and probably at this point irrelevant. Time to wish them a fond goodbye and throw them out with the trash. There were others, however, that were just as boring but necessary to move the story forward.  Those I'll need to keep and revamp. What they're lacking is any kind of tension or emotion-- something, anything, to engage the reader and  make him want to read on. 

Donald Maass, author of Writing the Breakout Novel, says that most writers are aware that having tension on every page is the secret to great storytelling, but that few of us want to put in the time and effort to make it happen. In his Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook Maass shows how even a brief dialogue between buddies can be loaded with tension as in this passage from Harlan Coben's novel Gone for Good.

Another way to add tension to your fiction (or nonfiction) is to create reader anticipation for what's to come.  A few years ago I came across an exercise that was part of a piece by Eric M. Witchey in "The Writer" ["Step by Step: Get the emotion into your fiction].  In this excerpt Witchey illustrates how a writer can take a simple action and expand upon it to "create sympathy and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events":
 

While developing the short story "The Mud Fork Cottonmouth Expedition," which appeared in Polyphony 4 from Wheatland Press, I was faced with my own flaccid prose:

Gordon parked the moped, and we started our hunt.

This line delivers facts, but the reader response is, "So what?"

Contrast that line with Witchey's expanded scene below. To flesh out the scene and develop the reader's experience, he forced his narrator (Rick) to interpret every detail based on attitude specific to his current emotional state.  In the revised scene that follows, "the two boys have just driven a moped to the river to hunt snakes.  Gordon wants to amuse himself.  Rick wants to impress the older boy. As you read, consider how and where the text creates sympathy and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events:

               He pulled a little black pack out from under the seat of the moped.  It unrolled like one of Dad's wood-working tool sets.  Inside were tools and some cigarettes.  "Want one?"

              "Nah," I said.  I tried to sound like I might have said yes, but he laughed anyway.

               He flipped the lid on his Zippo lighter and lit it up.  "Keeps the mosquitoes away."

              "Yeah," I said.  "So, these moccasins.  How do you catch 'em?"

            "Different ways."  He followed a gravel trail behind the bridge abutment guardrail, past the concrete footings and down under the steel span that held up the pavement.  On the broken concrete below the bridge, he picked his way down to the water's edge and walked right into the river up to his knees. 

              "Come on," he said.

               I picked my way across the rubble.  "I'm coming." At the water, I hesitated. 

              "Afraid of leeches?" he asked.  "Smoke in the blood keeps 'em off."  He grinned around the edges of his Marlboro. 

              "Bull----."

              "So, what's keeping you?  It's easiest to walk in the water."

               It was my moment of truth.  I was about to put my brand new Converse tennis shoes into the water of the Mud Fork, water I shouldn't have been anywhere near, shoes that were supposed to keep me through the coming school year, with a guy who was smoking, and we'd got there on a moped, and I didn't have permission for any of this, and if the leeches did get me or if I drowned or if I even fell and got cut, I'd be grounded for freaking ever!

               Gordon didn't care.  He didn't have to ask.  He could smoke.  He had keys to the storage and a moped.  He turned and waded away in the brown water.

               I stepped in, and the water was up to my waist.  My feet sank into the muck on the bottom.  Pockets of iridescent oil rose to the surface of the water and trailed away from my legs.

In the same article (from a different story), Witchey gives us an example of another missed opportunity to create emotion, tension, and reader anticipation:

                        Marletta walked down the street looking for a place to hail Vincent's cab.

Here the character is involved in a goal-oriented action.  We know what she wants, but as readers, we are not engaged. There is no tension in that single sentence, no emotion. In the revised scene below, the author allows his POV character to interpret the setting based on attitude--Marletta's current emotional state--as she pursues her goal. Notice how the author creates tension and reader anticipation by implying or explicitly revealing future dramatic events:

      The pay-me pumps were a given in her business, but three-day old slush wasn't.  Slipping and bouncing buns on the concrete would total her fox vest and the silk-slink dress she used to display her goods.  Vincent's cab would be along in a few.  He was a clock-work kinda guy, but the slush under her bucking spikes didn't care.  She hobbled along under shop awnings, one foot in the melt by the building and the other slipping in icy slime.  She tried to sway with the slip from knees and hips in case Vincent drove up behind her.  A patch of salted sidewalk under an awning invited her, but it was Gustav's Deli.  She'd only have a minute there before Gussie came out with his broom.  Her faux Rolex said four-twenty.  About right.  Grabbing the awning crank mounted on the brick building, she stepped out of icy slime and stood in front of Gustav's window.  She opened her fox vest to the Canadian cold front and hoped her charms could convince Vincent to help her feed the kids.

Eric M. Witchey's fiction has appeared nationally and internationally in magazines and anthologies. He has published in multiple genres under several names. His how-to articles have appeared in The Writer Magazine, Writer's Digest Magazine, Writer's Northwest Magazine, Northwest Ink, and in a number of on-line publications. His fiction has won recognition from Writers of The Future, New Century Writers, Writer's Digest, and www.ralan.com. Click here for a short, mini lesson from Eric on the ABC's of how to get emotion into your fiction (from the series "Five Minutes on Fiction").

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