The Elements of Surprise
by Randy Ingermanson
Advanced Fiction Writing
Picture this scene from the movie STAR WARS:
Luke Skywalker is approaching the thermal exhaust port of the Death Star. He's got a proton torpedo ready to go, and the only problem is that Darth Vader is right behind him in a Tie Fighter, locked on his tail and almost close enough to take a shot.
Luke can't fire yet. He's not close enough. Darth Vader is gaining on him rapidly. Luke is going to lose this race. Darth Vader is ready to fire. He's closer. Closer ...
Wham! Darth Vader's ship is hit by a blast from Harry Potter's wand. Vader spins away crazily out of control. Luke is free to launch his proton torpedo. And the Death Star goes up in smoke.
Does that sound about right? Great surprise, wasn't it?
No and no.
Sure, this plot twist is a surprise, but it's a stupid one. Harry Potter came out of nowhere. He's not part of the movie. We've got no foundation for Harry entering this movie.
In a word, Harry's appearance at the crucial moment is IMPLAUSIBLE.
Injecting him into the story to save Luke is a terrible, ridiculous surprise.
Okay, fine, so let's backtrack a bit and try that again.
We still see Luke zooming toward his target, armed with the proton torpedo. And we still see Vader on his tail, ready to knock him out. And this time we also see Han Solo on Vader's tail, closing in on Vader even faster than Vader is converging on Luke.
We watch as Solo closes in and fires his laser cannons.
Wham! Darth Vader's ship is hit by a blast. Vader spins away crazily out of control. Luke is free to launch his proton torpedo. And the Death Star goes up in smoke.
Better this time? A somewhat more plausible surprise, right?
No and no.
Sure, this plot twist is more plausible. But there's no surprise at all. We saw it coming. We watched Han Solo all the way in. When the WHAM came, we were expecting it.
Surprises are good in your fiction, but a surprise needs to be two things to be a true surprise:
- Plausible
- Unforeseen
When you fail to provide any sort of foundation in your story for a surprise, then it's implausible.
When you telegraph what's going to happen, then when it actually does happen, it's foreseen.
Here's how the surprise actually plays out in the movie:
Before the final battle, Han Solo and his trusty Wookiee friend Chewbacca leave with enough money to pay off Jabba the Hutt. Han has a price on his head, and he won't rest easy until his debt is paid. Luke calls him a coward, but Han just laughs him off and leaves. Because he values his life, and he knows he won't live long if he doesn't pay off Jabba.
But we also know that Han Solo is no coward. He thinks of himself as a cowboy. He does crazy things for his friends. We've seen him do so the whole movie. So if he were to come back and join Luke for the battle, that would be plausible.
We just don't expect him to do that, because we saw the man leave. Then we saw a long, brutal battle, in which several of Luke's comrades are blown to bits. We've seen Darth Vader arm for battle. We've seen Luke make his first attempt with the proton torpedo and fail. We've seen Vader close in on him.
It's a long battle scene, an exciting one. It's long enough that we've forgotten about Han Solo.
And the story focus now zooms in tightly on Luke and Vader. It's a race to the death. One of them will win and one will lose. These two fill our entire attention. Nobody else exists.
So when the WHAM! hits Vader's ship, we've forgotten
about Han Solo. But an instant later, we realize that we should have
seen it coming.
Solo's reentry into the fight is plausible, AND it's unforeseen.
It's a surprise.
Surprise is good in fiction, but it's like perfume. A little goes a long way. A few great surprises in your story are probably better than a thousand small ones that become so regular that your reader starts expecting them.
Now let's look at the current story you're working on right now. Is there a major surprise somewhere in your novel? How well is it working for you? Is it both plausible and unforeseen?
If it's not plausible or if it’s too foreseeable, then you have a problem.
How do you fix it?
You make your plot twists more plausible by putting in all the key facts earlier in the story. Preferably, a LOT earlier.
J.K. Rowling is a master at seeding in the key facts for her big surprises very early in her stories. In her novel HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, she gives you all the crucial facts about Sirius Black, Severus Snape, and Peter Pettigrew early in the story. Yet at the end, she gives you a massive surprise by combining all those facts in a way you don't foresee.
That's quite a trick, because readers are smart and if you highlight those facts too much, some readers are going to put things together and see exactly where you're going.
So you make your surprise unforeseen by using misdirection. You throw in a ton of other facts. You focus your reader's attention on those. You don't lie to your reader, but you give her facts that she will put together to make a wrong prediction about what's going to happen next.
If you cheat here, then your reader gets angry. Cheating means that you hide crucial information. Or you give wrong information.
When you put all the information in plain sight but misdirect the reader's attention and then hit her with your surprise, she likes that. Because you fooled her. And when you do that in a way the reader can respect, she thinks you're a genius.
And maybe you are.
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