Subvert Expectations
This is one aspect of good and is a lot like telling a good joke. People like to be surprised (usually, but not while carrying a bowl of soup).
Jokes work because the reader is given a situation and their brain jumps ahead then the punchline happens and they get the joy of being wrong. That surprise triggers a hormone spike because we are wired to react with alertness to subverted expectations. We react most strongly to the unexpected. Just watch a horror movie and see how the unexpected, using time, not action, works.
So one of the very best things a writer can do is subvert the reader’s expectations. That great plot twist that no one saw coming, but to which all the clues were there and are obvious but only in hindsight. Bruce Willis in ‘The Sixth Sense’. “I can see dead people.” The end of the movie sets a new context for us that reinvents our understanding of everything we’d watched up to that point. Excellent example of subverted expectations.
A fine example is in Steven Knight’s screen play for Peaky Blinders (Season 6).
Spoiler Alert if you haven’t watched Season 6, but it has been out for a long time now.
In the Seasons One through Four, Thomas Shelby defeats his antagonists through guile, villainy, a bit of luck, and a rock-steady belief in himself and his own ambition. It is said ‘the only man that can kill Tommy Shelby, is Tommy Shelby.’
By Seasons Five and Six, the Shelby’s face the combined threats of a traitor in their midst, a vicious faction of the IRA, a vengeful Michael with the Boston Mob, and the rise of 1930s UK fascism. In the final episode, Arthur defeats the IRA killers and revenges the family for the death of beloved Polly Gray. Meanwhile, the Duke, who is the new boy on the block and Tommy’s bastard son, makes his familial chops by dealing with the traitor. Tommy and Johnny Dogs escape the Mob’s bomb-plot, sending a 1930’s sedan and half a dozen mobsters to oblivion. Michael is out for revenge, blaming Polly’s death on Tommy’s unbridled ambition. In their final confrontation, will Tommy forgive Michael, will he let him live for the sake of family ties? A beautiful scene of tension and drama, then Tommy shoots him in eyeball with his Colt 1911.
But what of the Nazi’s? Everyone knows that if there are ever literary villains that deserve a good kicking, it’s fascists in general and the Nazis in particular. Just ask Indiana Jones or Jack Reacher. But Tommy seems to have met ‘the man he cannot defeat’ and is out of time as he is diagnosed with tuberculoma after the tragic death of his daughter Ruby from TB. Tommy has just months before he will become an incapacitated, drooling mess, and he is determined to close out his affairs and take himself away to the hills to die on his own terms. The fascists are ahead of him at every turn, too strong, too well connected and just too evil.
Is the show going to go full Game of Thrones Season 8, and just write out the main character so the writer can get on with their next exciting project? Is the writer subverting our expectation in giving a final twist of the knife that the indomitable Thomas Shelby is going down with a whimper? Oh the horror!
Tommy has a disease for which there is no cure and enemies he cannot touch. He is literally at the decision point in his gypsy caravan in the hills with his gun to his temple. There is no possible way back from this. Then he has a vision of his daughter Ruby, nicely foreshadowed and not over done. (Don’t you hate the lazy exposition of most dream sequences? Not so here thankfully.) Ruby just tells him ‘to light the fire’, ‘why have you let the fire go out?’ Tommy picks up the old news print to set the kindling, and there it is. The doctor that gave him the diagnosis, and the surgeon recommended for a second opinion, both in the wedding party of his nazi enemies. The bastards had played the long game and sold Tommy a lie he had been prepared to believe. We leave Season 6 with Tommy back to his iconic head-down-don’t-dare-step-in-my-way-and-I’ve-nothing-to-lose stride. As he says to the traitorous Dr Holborn, only sparing him because it is the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, ‘I’m back.’
Oh yeah, Tommy’s back baby, and clearly the Nazis will have to watch out.
Hats off to you Steven Knight, CBE.
Write for the love of it, always write foremost for yourself, and enjoy the thrill of subverting your readers expectations.
It will take time to craft that writing skill, but fortunately we control time in our stories. We are the gods of our world. So when you come up with a great ending, seed the earlier part of your book with the clues. The trick will be inserting clues that may mean something else. Ambiguity will be your friend.
Good luck.
Kindest regards,
Frank Leonard