Welcome back, dear Philistines, to another highly literary edition of "Ask Mr. Writing Person," which is currently the hottest thing going down in the psych ward. Today we tackle role reversal with Nura Ratchet from Crackpot, England - or does she tackle us with a roll? We'll soon find out!

Q. It's an honour, sir.

A. Quite. What's itching you, grasshopper?

Q. I've got a plot that's not going anywhere, and I'm not sure how to spin it up. I would have turned my main characters into heroin addicts but I've already got a bunch of those. And they don't live anywhere near Sigourney Weaver, so they can't set fire to her car.

A. You're entitled to think for yourself, you know.

Q. Really?

A. Sure! You just have to be prepared to become an abject failure of a Philistine, which is why I'm glad you came to me. Now, you said you have more than one main character?

Q. Two. They're a husband-and-wife team, and usually the wife is the point-of-view character. They're doctors.

A. Excellent. I think what you need is a time-honored technique from wicked literature called an amplitudinous emesis.

Q. What's that?

A. It's Latin for "role reversal," which is what the illiterate call it. Ever read Steinbeck?

Q. The Grapes of Wrath guy?

A. Precisely him. Remember what happened at the very end of the book?

Q. You mean with that lady nursing a grown man? Is that role reversal?

A. Exactly! Steinbeck shows us a version of events in which two characters' roles are reversed. Any fool would know that he should have been nursing her!

Q. Wait. I don't--

A. The most effective role reversals are just like this. They make you feel as though the author has wrapped your book around a brick and beaten you over the head with it. Yet, sadly, Steinbeck is still an illiterate Philistine, for he knows not the wicked literate secrets about which I will now tell.

Q. Was that, like, word reversal?

A. Yes, but the literate call it an autoregressive emesis. Yoda was a master of it until Luke murdered him. Now, it's a little-known fact that reversals fall into four broad categories: character, idea, event, and milieu. Which is most appropriate depends on what you emphasize in your story.

Q. I'd say definitely character reversal for mine.

A. Excellent. We'll start with that. What are your characters' names?

Q. Samantha and Patrick.

A. How serendipitous. Now, the best place to pull off a really great emesis to totally trick out your readers is right after a major event that ties up a few plot threads, such as sleeping.

Q. Sleeping?

A. I solve most of my problems in my sleep, so my characters do the same. Anyway, it's a morning after a tough but fruitful night of problem-solving, and Samantha wakes up first and wanders over to the mirror:

Samantha ran her fingers over the stubble that had accumulated overnight on her steel-belted jaw. So this was how it was going to be, then. She turned her hip toward the mirror and sighed. Not even being a man could shrink them.

"Pat, honey?" she called to her husband, who was still in bed. "I think I'm changing to my name to Samuel."

There was a pause, and then the sound off mattress springs as her husband sat up. Then: "WOOOO HOOOO!"

Q. What have you done??

A. Gender reversal! Steinbeck would definitely have done the same if he'd had the chutzpah to pull it off!

Q. What's... what's, er, a "steel-belted jaw"?

A. It's how geniuses describe masculine facial features. You'll get used to it.

Q. Okay.

A. Of course, if your story doesn't center around character development, this is completely inappropriate. I'll demonstrate the others for the benefit of my readers, if you don't mind.

Q. What if I do mind?

A. You don't. Here's what you do when your story centers around an idea, the idea reversal:

Patrick turned in bed to face his wife, who was looking particularly sadistic this morning. "Dearest," he said. "I've been thinking. You've saved a lot of lives and earned a lot of karma. You could stand to spend some. Why don't you start putting the kidneys in backwards?"

Samantha giggled evilly. "And I've got one for you, hunny-bunny. You could visit the maternity ward and shove some of the babies back in."

Q. You're kidding.

A. Never. You see, they've gone from charitable to demonic overnight. This sort of thing is the most effective way to slap your readers around in an idea story.

Q. Supposing they don't want to be slapped?

A. Two words: uppity Philistine. The wicked literate like being slapped around, if you can manage to surprise them at all.

Q. Huh.

A. Second-to-lastly, we come to event reversal. This one is rather simple but is still quite effective.

Samantha climbed out of bed and unwrenched the covers forward, leaving them neatly tucked under the pillow. She unscratched her bottom, making it itch for a while.

Backwards mumbled Patrick, "Well, hurry up. I'm freezing."

Backwards said she, "Oh, I'm completely wasted! Move over, bacon!"

Q. I get it. Ha ha. Genius. Do they puke their food out at tea time, too?

A. I haven't the foggiest why you would think that.

Q. Just a hunch. Can't wait to see one of them on the toilet.

A. Why?

Q. Nothing. Never mind.

A. Anyway, we come to the last: milieu reversal. This one is even simpler:

Patrick and Samantha awoke on the ceiling.

Q. Ha ha! Of course they do! Now the story turns into their struggles to perform surgery upside-down!

A. Not to mention driving to work. You're getting it!

Q. And then... ha ha, get this. One of them starts going backwards all the time!

A. No, grasshopper, now you're conflating--

Q. The big mystery is, like, how do they coordinate surgeries? And if Sam ever helped Pat out at the maternity ward, they'd be pushing and pulling at the same time. Unless Sam suddenly went bad, of course. Then it'd work just fine. Ha! That's awesome!

A. Now you've got three--

Q. And then, the coup de grâce! They perform gender reassignment surgery on each other at the same time!

A. That's...

Q. Thanks Mr. Writing Person! I'm so glad I asked about this. See you later!

A. You're... welcome?

Um, to everyone else, thanks for coming. We had a blast, I think. Next time we'll tackle... something else.