Message Board Topic 7/20

[Comsie]

In a day and age where people have read every kind of book, seen every movie and TV show, and have been exposed to practically every life story out there...it can be hard to really hit your audience with any kind of 'surprise' anymore. A lot of readers are already spinning their wheels to figure out what comes next long before you get to drag them along...and that makes big secrets hard to keep when letting your plot play out one chapter at a time.

 

This week's question is...how can a writer go about actually catching his readers off guard with something that wasn't meant to be revealed until later? If you've got a big climax coming that's based solely on a deep dark secret...it's gonna be ruined if folks figure it out early? How do you hide it? And have you guys ever read something where the ending was too easy to predict way ahead of time? Did it spoil the rest of the story for you? Let us know what you think!

[Graeme]

I'm pretty bad when in comes to writing mysteries, but I believe the key to keeping a secret is to lead the readers into making an incorrect assumption. If you can lead them to believe, for example, that a particular character hates the protagonist, then they won't suspect that that character is only doing what he is doing to help the protagonist, but has personal (or other) reasons why they just can't come out and say so.

 

I can't really give concrete examples, because that would spoil those stories for anyone who hasn't read them yet, but hopefully that's clear enough. The trick is to hide from the reader the fact that they are making that incorrect assumption....

[Johnathan Colourfield]

Graeme , JK Rowling sort of does this with the character of Snape in her novels.

[Comicality]

 

I've come to find that 'deflection' is really the only way to do it sometimes. Keeping secret things secret can be difficult when you deal with readers that are used to plot twists and big revelations, but it can be done.

 

The hardest thing, I think, is leaving those foreshadowing clues behind without giving it away. I love building up to the big secret, but it can't just come out of the blue, you know? I always want people to be able to go through and read the story a second time...and then go, 'oohhhhhh....how could I have not seen that coming? There it is right there!" Everything should have some kind of cohesive 'center' to it, but I'd never want to ruin the surprise. Not if I can help it. Hehehe!

 

So yeah, throwing readers off the scent, or setting events into motion early enough where they tend to 'forget'...seems to be the way to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JamesSavik]

Hide in plain sight.

 

Sometimes readers are so used to convoluted plots and complex conspiracies that the really blazingly obvious is a complete surprise.

 

Sometimes the butler really did do it.

[Rilbur]

In my case, with Guardians, I'm being very up-front about the fact of the surprise, but hiding the actual details. By now every single one of my readers knows that 'something' is majorly wrong about his past, but they have no clue what it is. Some of the most intelligent and perceptive readers may have made a few connections, but those connections are actually deliberately deceptive on my part.

You see, Jason will fall in love with a 'murderer most foul', to be sure, but Marge's comments are always skewed by viewpoint, so the question becomes... who views him as murderer most foul?