It was great. Really -- I feel like it has focused me much more than ever before.
In no particular order:
1) If you are writing a story because it has a cool idea, it is almost always better not to let the cool idea be the big 'reveal' but rather state it at the very beginning, and then base the rest of your story on it.
2) Complete invention of your world and characters is almost always a prerequisite to actual writing, and just as important. (not everyone will agree, but I certainly do)
3) Tension or suspense is not created through keeping facts from your reader and then slowly bleeding them into the story -- but rather by complete clarity of story, and the situations that your characters face.
There you go. It really was a great experience. I learned loads, and in keeping with rule 2, I am currently inventing the worlds for two short stories that came to me.
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Ahhhh...another person who understands suspense now! I have tried, through critiques, to explain this to a number of people but I am not nearly sa eloquent as OSC> Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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The suspense issue I already knew from my reading of horror fiction. Unless you know a ghost haunts the basement, you certainly won't care too much when a character goes into the basement . . . alone, of course.
Christine -- the best way to explain this point, I think, is to have the person watch a Tom Clancy movie, and tell them to focus on how much we, the viewer, knows in comparision to the heros. If they still can't get it, well . . . .
But Rahl, I really want to thank you for insight #1. That makes a hell of a lot of sense, and it's something I never thought about before. It certianly explains why some of my stories have gone absolutely nowhere. I think I'm going to have pull at least one of them out now. Thanks.
Insight #2 I've also heard this before, and I tend to agree with it. But I think it has a lot to do with how a person approaches his first draft--this is the key. If your frist draft is more or less a very long, rambling, outline, then complete invention of one's world and characters probably isn't that important; you're developing as you go along, knowing and accepting you have a massive revision in front of you. (I think this is how Shawn writes.) But if you want your frist draft to be a real draft, then the point should be heeded. Personally, I'm somewhere in-between these two methods.
quote:1) If you are writing a story because it has a cool idea, it is almost always better not to let the cool idea be the big 'reveal' but rather state it at the very beginning, and then base the rest of your story on it.
Quite frankly, I'm glad OSC said "almost always better" (my italics), although I still don't care for such a platitudinous statement when it comes to writing. I'd rather see it as simply one way to do it. I don't imagine The Sixth Sense would have been as memorable had we known the "cool idea" from the start.
In fact, I had just the opposite experience, Balthasar. I originally had my WIP moving as OSC suggests, and an editor suggested going the opposite way (see our 'maguffin' thread somewhere.) Actually, I'll end up doing it both ways, since the sequel will be operating with the idea up front.
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What OSC is trying to do is to keep beginners from making one of their most common mistakes -- hiding information from the reader. And actually, one and three go together. True suspense comes from the reader knowing exactly what is going on and begin scared for the people involved. This thing that is going on is often the idea.
The neat idea should be saved until the end in an idea story, but in that case the POV character doesn't know what is going on and is trying to discover it right along with the reader. I would be very surprised if OSC had not mentioned this at the boot camp, but Balthasar did just ask for a few points.
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I would argue that nothing was hidden in 6th sense. That's why so many people have said that they knew the 'big secret' from the very beginning of the movie. How else could they know? Watch it a second time and you'll see what I mean. The ending only seemed like a surprise because we all saw what we wanted to see throughout.
quote:If your frist draft is more or less a very long, rambling, outline, then complete invention of one's world and characters probably isn't that important; you're developing as you go along, knowing and accepting you have a massive revision in front of you. (I think this is how Shawn writes.)
Yup, this is how Shawn writers. I later make up a character bible and a world bible after the "first draft" is done.
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The reason that the suprise ending of The Sixth Sense works so well is because all the information is given to you. If the director had held back anything, it would've been a phoney ending. We see him getting shot, we see that nobody but this kid can see him, we're told that ghosts don't know they're dead and that when they get upset it causes a chill, we see him wearing the same clothes as the night he was shot.
The entire "surprise" is revealed through flashbacks to various scenes in the movie, we've already seen everything. And having watched the movie several times, I can assure you that it is better (and more memorable) when you actually know the ending.
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I might have to watch it again, but to be honest, I knew the ending the first time...for some reason I seem to be one of the few who guessed, though. I still enjoyed the movie, even knowing the ending.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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I knew the ending before I saw it because some idiot reviewer thought he was being clever and gave it away to me through his word choice.
It was still very interesting to watch, and since I already knew, I thought some things made it very obvious. But I probably would not have guessed it if I hadn't known, because the ending of Unbreakable caught me by surprise.
The best twist endings are those which, with the benefit of hindsight, are obvious and inevitable.
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I think there's a difference between characters not knowing everything even though it's all there in the background if he and the reader only knew what they were looking at, and the premise being up front, known by the characters and the reader.
In the first case, the writer is hiding information from the reader, albeit hiding it in plain sight. I think what you meant to say, Christine, is that OSC wants to keep new writers from withholding information from the reader. Besides the suspense issue, springing a big 'reveal' out of the blue for which the reader hasn't been properly prepared would most likely be considered poor writing. (There's a name for that, I'm sure...???)
If the fellow in Sixth Sense had known his situation from the beginning, it would have been a different story. The truth of it, though, was hidden from him and from us.
quote:And having watched the movie several times, I can assure you that it is better (and more memorable) when you actually know the ending.
I'm not sure that's a fair statement, Survivor. Once you've seen the movie one way, you can't watch it again with a fresh mind. And, just knowing what you missed the first time still isn't the same as the character being written knowing what was going on and reacting to it.
quote:Besides the suspense issue, springing a big 'reveal' out of the blue for which the reader hasn't been properly prepared would most likely be considered poor writing. (There's a name for that, I'm sure...???)
George Scithers, editor of WEIRD TALES and former editor of ASIMOV'S SF, calls it a "tomato surprise" though I'm not exactly sure why, exactly.
Not only is it bad writing, but it smacks of coyness (at best) and arrogance (at worst) on the part of the author. When writers don't play fair with their readers, their readers may decide not to play at all.
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I have this vision of a really bad comedian on stage in a ill-fitting polyester suit drawing out a really long joke in suspense of the punch line. Rim shot. The comes the flying rotten tomato, hurled by an unamused critic (who just happens to have one on hand).
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'Tomato Surprise.' I love it. I think Thieftess is on the right track with the etymology. But there's another word, or maybe a phrase, that covers the situation. I thought it would come to me by now. Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jun 2002
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True, but we need to make a distinction between withholding information from the reader in a lame attempt to create suspense and/or a surprise ending, and a legitmate surprise ending . . . such as the endings we of almost every story by O. Henry and more than a few stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
Posts: 130 | Registered: Apr 2007
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Deus ex machina! That's it! Reid, you get a gold star.
quote:True, but we need to make a distinction between withholding information from the reader in a lame attempt to create suspense and/or a surprise ending, and a legitmate surprise ending . . . such as the endings we of almost every story by O. Henry and more than a few stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
Good point, Balthasar. According to Writer's Encyclopedia by Polking, "A surprise ending differs from a trick ending in that information making the surprise ending logical and satisfying to the reader is planted early in the story." They mention that editors don't like surprise endings, and also cite O. Henry as a master of them.
The above definition, though, isn't really a surprise that's the result of a writer withholding info, since, like in The Sixth Sense, the info is present throughout. Their definition of 'deus ex machina' works better: "used to refer to any unlikely, contrived, or trick resolution of a plot....Critics -- and readers -- generally object to this technique, which is commonly used by beginning writers."
Would you say O. Henry and Poe wrote wholly surprise endings -- no way to determine where their stories are going? If so, what makes them work? And what is the distinction between a cheap trick and a legitimate surprise?
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited June 16, 2004).]
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A great source for all kinds of terms that are useful in giving feedback on stories is the Turkey City Lexicon.
You can find it by doing a search on those three words on Google, but here's a link to a version that has been updated by Bruce Sterling from the original compiled by Lewis Shiner:
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That’s a great list, Kathleen. I discovered I’m a little 'dischismatic.' Although they don’t drown in it, my characters do drink coffee on more than one occasion. Ah, well.
Speaking of drinks (great segue, yes? ), the “Jar of Tang” concept may be relevant here:
quote: “A story contrived so that the author can spring a silly surprise about its setting. Mainstay of the old Twilight Zone TV show. An entire pointless story contrived so the author can cry "Fooled you!" For instance, the story takes place in a desert of coarse orange sand surrounded by an impenetrable vitrine barrier; surprise! our heroes are microbes in a jar of Tang powdered orange drink. This is a classic case of the difference between a conceit and an idea. "What if we all lived in a jar of Tang?" is an example of the former; "What if the revolutionaries from the sixties had been allowed to set up their own society?" is an example of the latter. Good SF requires ideas, not conceits. (Attr. Stephen P. Brown) When done with serious intent rather than as a passing conceit, this type of story can be dignified by the term "Concealed Environment." (Attr. Christopher Priest)”
However, the Turkey City portrayal of a ‘conceit’ seems at odds with what I read in Writer’s Encyclopedia: “A particularly striking or imaginative extended image or metaphor found most often in poetry, especially in Elizabethan verse and the work of seventeenth-centrury metaphysical poets. Robert Frost’s poem ‘Departmental,’ in which a community of ants is treated as a bureaucracy, is a modern conceit.”
In the Turkey City list, a ‘conceit’ seems laughable and completely undesirable. I’m not sure ‘Concealed Environment’ improves the term; sounds like it should signify the badly done version of a ‘conceit.’ The WE implies a ‘conceit’ that’s poetic and wholly acceptable with the mention of Elizabethan verse and Frost.
Even my dictionary gives conflicting definitions: “fanciful idea…quaint or humorous fancy…clever thought or expression…extended, flowery, strained metaphor…ingenious design.”
All that to ask, are we dealing with conceit vs. idea in our present discussion of legitimate surprise vs. cheap trick?
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The problem with using Deus Ex Machina is that the term is reserved for cases where something with too much power is introduced to resolve the story.
I think that "conceit" is an acceptable thing in poetry, far less acceptable in narrative prose. The conceit/idea distinction doesn't seem to have anything to do with the difference between a "legitimate surprise" and a "cheap trick" ending.
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