by Lisa Cron
This, in turn, triggers that little voice in the back of her head that’s worried they might be right about Marco. But because she’s totally besotted with him, she ignores her suspicions. Aha! Now Rita is also battling herself, which will be evident in her internal response to Marco’s actions. That is, she’ll rationalize. This means that often what she says, and what she’s actually thinking, will be at odds. Talk about a great way to ratchet up the tension!
Which brings us to the question: why would Rita ignore something that’s abundantly clear to the rest of us? What we’re looking for is the reason Rita is so desperate to hook up with Marco, beyond the fact that he sends her pulse through the roof. Okay, let’s say Rita’s deeper motive is that she is afraid of being alone.
Fear? Could this be grounds for yet another source of conflict? Rita’s goal versus her fear, perhaps? Not quite. After all, rather than keeping her from her goal, her fear is part of what’s driving her into Marco’s arms, since if she lands him, she’ll never have to confront her dread of being alone. Not quite a versus, yet. But then, we haven’t explored Rita’s internal goal yet. As fate (that is, the author) would have it, Rita’s internal goal is to be loved for who she is by a man who is truehearted. Sound like Marco? Nope. Definitely a conflict there, and one that reveals a nifty rule of thumb:
One way to tell if what the protagonist wants in the beginning is her genuine goal is to ask yourself: will she have to face her biggest fear, and so resolve her inner issue, to achieve said goal? If the answer is no, then guess what—it’s a false goal.
And you know what that means? That Rita’s fear is, in fact, part of a very compelling versus: her fear versus her genuine goal, which is to be loved by a truehearted man. Thus, if she’s going to remain true to herself, she will shun Marco, even though it means being alone. Being aware of all these layers allows the writer to use Rita’s fear of being alone to shape her reaction to everything that happens to her. Thus her external decisions, internal monologues, and body language will in some way reflect her true motive, whether she is aware of it or not. We’re not talking something as obvious as Rita thinking this:
Gee, Marco sure is a big fat jerk, but since I’d rather die than be alone, I better do everything he wants me to, even if these damn stilettos kill my feet.
Instead it’s more like this:
As Marco and I walked into the courtyard, I saw my neighbor, Mabel, scurry into her apartment, quickly closing her door lest one of her cats slip out. How many does she have? Eight, nine? Yet she always looks so sad, as if she’s afraid even her cats don’t like her. There but for the grace of god, I thought, grateful for the weight of Marco’s arm around my shoulders, even if it means I have to walk faster to keep pace with him, which isn’t easy in stilettos.
The more the reader is aware of Rita’s true motivation, the more we’ll understand why a woman so otherwise smart and savvy would go after a Neanderthal like Marco, and the more we’ll be rooting for her to fall for one of Mabel’s fluffy little kittens instead.
Which brings us to the most obvious source of conflict: the antagonist—in this case, Marco. But let’s not flatter him with too much attention, narcissist that he is, because we are much more interested in Rita. She is the sun in our universe, and everything revolves around her. So when it comes to Marco, what we care about is how he will affect Rita.
Because Marco personifies the escalating obstacle that Rita needs to overcome, it’s important that he put up a really good fight. This is crucial, since the protagonist is only as strong as the antagonist forces her to be. Readers are sticklers when it comes to the “prove it” department; in this they’re a lot like the citizens of Missouri, the “Show Me” state. They have no intention of taking anyone’s word for how courageous the protagonist is. After all, anyone can say they’re brave. Or daring. Or worthy. Does that prove anything? Only that he’s a braggart, a bore, and, most likely, a coward. In fact, those who are truly brave tend to see themselves as not brave at all.
The point is, the antagonist must put the protagonist through her paces. This means Marco must do everything he can to rope Rita in, except, of course, actually become the man she hopes he is. Because what Rita needs far more than Marco is the ability to face her fear. Which means that by mercilessly leading her on, Marco is actually doing her a favor by forcing her to confront the thing that’s always held her back. And that is precisely what the reader will be rooting for.
Most of the time.
Because there’s that one last versus to contend with: The antagonist versus mercy (or the appearance thereof). No one is bad to the bone, psychopaths notwithstanding. And in the case of psychopaths, their defining trait is the ability to feign empathy without actually feeling a thing. Guys like serial killer Ted Bundy are utterly charming and appear capable of mercy, right up to the moment they break out the duct tape and the hacksaw. The key element in the “mercy” rule is the implied “maybe.” Maybe, against all odds, Marco will change. You want there to be a moment or two when the reader thinks, Hey, seems like Marco isn’t so bad after all. This moment will probably come just as Rita is in the midst of deciding never to see him again. So she relents. And for a minute it looks as if it’ll turn out okay after all. And then, when he thinks no one is looking, Marco kicks one of Mabel’s cats really hard and we think, Uh-oh.…
Why is this important? Because it’s difficult to maintain suspense in the face of a foregone conclusion. Even a smidgeon of “maybe” goes a very long way. If your force of opposition—whether a femme fatale, a cad, or a cyborg—is all bad, why bother having them show up? All they have to do is phone in the threat. And with caller ID, who’s going to answer, anyway? However, if the protagonist has a nasty case of the flu, and Ted Bundy shows up with a steaming bowl of homemade chicken soup, well, that’s another story. Maybe he’s had a change of heart. Or maybe the soup is laced with arsenic. The point is, we don’t know. Hello, suspense!
The reason the various versus are so good at engendering suspense is that pitting two opposing desires, facts, or truths against each other inherently incites ongoing conflict. It gives the reader something to root for, another yardstick by which to measure the protagonist’s progress, and a clear view of where the conflict lies. And so it might come as a surprise that writers often work overtime, devising ingenious plot twists to keep that very suspense under wraps. Which means it’s time to “reveal” how one of the most popular methods writers employ to add suspense often produces the exact opposite effect.
MYTH: Withholding Information for the Big Reveal Is What Keeps Readers Hooked
REALITY: Withholding Information Very Often Robs the Story of What Really Hooks Readers
First, what is a reveal? A reveal is a fact that, when it finally comes to light, changes (and in so doing, explains) something—often, that something is “everything.”
A major reveal is the surprise near the end that twists the meaning of everything that came before it. It’s Darth Vader booming, “I am your father, Luke”; it’s Evelyn Cross Mulwray admitting to Jake Gittes, “She’s my sister and my daughter”; it’s Norman Bates in his dead mother’s dress.
These reveals are shocking, yet they are completely believable the second we hear them. Why? Because up to that moment, although the story made sense, we couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was more going on than met the eye—which we actively tried to make sense of throughout. This is something we were able to do because the writers gave us a specific pattern of hints all the way along. And so, although each story made sense up to that moment, in light of the reveal it makes even more sense.
But make no mistake, it is only because of the pattern of hints that the reveal, when it comes, is instantly accepted as truth. Otherwise, it’s one of the three dreaded Cs: a convenience, a contrivance, or a coincidence. It’s like reading a murder mystery in which we find out on the last page that the hero, about to go to the gallows for a murder he didn’t commit, has a guilty evil twin who no one
(including, one suspects, the writer) knew existed up to that moment.
The problem with such books is that because the author has kept so much crucial information secret, we have no idea what is really going on, nor do we have a way of figuring it out. Or worse, we don’t even know that there is anything going on beyond what’s on the page. For instance, I once read a five-hundred-page manuscript about Fred, an unscrupulous automotive executive who staked his company’s fortune on a car that, on the eve of its unveiling, he discovered had a potentially fatal design defect. Squelching the information, Fred put it on the market anyway, with the expected tragic results. The novel was about how Fred was then brought to justice. The manuscript contained no surprises until page four hundred and fifty. That’s when it was revealed that Fred had been the subject of an ongoing undercover FBI investigation from the start. In fact, several of his close personal associates, including Sally, his mistress, had been spying on him from the get-go. There wasn’t a whiff of this in the manuscript, mind you, not even the slightest teeny tiny hint. When I asked the author about it, he smiled and said he’d done it on purpose, because he was saving it for a big reveal at the end.
The trouble was, no one would ever have read that far. Why? Because by working mightily to keep the reader in the dark, he had robbed the story of what would have been its primary source of tension and suspense. Talk about irony! The truth, which is completely obvious in hindsight, is simply this:
If we don’t know there’s intrigue afoot, then there is no intrigue afoot.
Because while readers relish looking back and reinterpreting specific events in light of new information that now twists their meaning, there are two ironclad conditions that must be met first:
1. There must have been a pattern of specific “hints” or “tells” along the way, alerting us that all was not as it seems, which the new twist now illuminates and explains.
2. These “hints” and “tells” need to stand out (and make sense) in their own right before the reveal.
What readers won’t do is go back and insert entire subplots. It’s like saying, “Hey, I know watching Fred for four hundred and fifty pages was dull, but now go back and reimagine the whole thing knowing that the FBI was always just outside his door, listening. And all those people who claimed to be his friends? They were secretly wired. And Sally, his mistress? She never even liked him.”
To make matters worse, in light of this reveal, everything Fred’s friends did back then no longer rings true. Because had they been wired, they would have been nervous and it would have shown, if only in their body language. There would have been something in Sally’s behavior that intimated she was up to more than an afternoon’s delight. Sure, the kindest among us might think, Well, I guess since Sally was actually working for the feds, she’s a pro, so there’s no way she’d have done anything that would tip Fred off. Trouble is, that still won’t make the scene in which she was hiding her true feelings any more compelling or believable, given what we know about the infallibility of body language and our propensity for making inadvertent mistakes.
Not that we have to know (or even suspect) what Sally is really up to. But we do have to know that something about Sally’s behavior is “off,” thus alerting us to the fact that there’s more going on than meets the eye. You want us to try to figure out what that might be. To that end, you can mislead (as opposed to lie to) us along the way. Take Hitchcock’s Vertigo, in which retired police detective “Scottie” Ferguson is led to believe that a beautiful young woman named Madeleine is the troubled wife of his old friend Gavin Elster, who has hired Scottie to make sure she doesn’t kill herself. As Scottie then falls in love with the enigmatic Madeleine, we sense both her attraction to him and her reluctance to surrender to it—giving these scenes tension and suspense. We chalk this up to the very believable fact that since she’s not only married, but to a good friend of his, she feels doubly guilty—still, she doesn’t quite seem as crazy as Elster intimated. So when we find out what was really going on—she is in love with Scottie, but isn’t married to Elster, who hired her to set Scottie up—on reflection her behavior makes even more sense, totally validating the reveal.
Contrast that with the ballad of auto exec Fred and undercover agent Sally. Because the author steadfastly kept any hint of conflict out of their trysts, we had no idea there was more to it than what was on the page, so it was pretty dull. But not to the author, who knew Sally was hiding the truth from Fred, which no doubt made it very exciting indeed—to him. Why deny the reader that same pleasure?
An Irony: Reveals Often Obscure
When done properly, reveals can be extremely effective. But they’re woefully overused and almost always to ill effect—perhaps because writers rarely seem to ask themselves this crucial question:
What does holding back this information gain me, story-wise? How does it make the story better?
I believe the misuse of reveals often stems from a fundamental misunderstanding, so let’s begin there. Some writers, knowing it’s crucial that the reader feel an instant sense of urgency that makes her want to know what happens next, believe that keeping something “secret” will do the trick. Then surely she’ll read on to find out what the secret is, right? These writers tend to forget that first we have to want to know the secret (not to mention know that there is one). Therefore, the way to lure the reader in is definitely not by either
• Keeping the real reason the characters are doing what they’re doing so secret that we don’t even know there is a real reason
Or, even more common
• Letting us know there is a secret, but then keeping it so vague that we can’t even guess what the particulars are
The trouble with both methods is they presuppose that we’re already engaged enough to care what happens to the characters. Ironically, more often than not it’s the very information the writer’s withholding that would make us care. That’s because the reveal usually requires couching the most interesting information in vague generalities, and as we saw in chapter 5, little good ever comes of that. So while we know the protagonist, Bob, has a “problem” that got him fired, the writer decides to withhold both what that problem is and what kind of work Bob does, the better to wow us later with the fact that Bob is actually a toy poodle who lost his job at Sea World because he found hopping across the stage on his hind legs demeaning, so he chased a squirrel instead. Now, that’s sort of interesting. But because there are so many details the writer has to keep hidden or risk spoiling the reveal, for the first hundred pages or so we are allowed to think Bob is just an unusually hairy guy who’s down on his luck, which is why he lives in a crate under the freeway. Thus the only thing we are clear about is that we don’t really know what’s going on.
The trouble with keeping both the situation and the characters generic—since anything else would “give it away”—is that it not only straitjackets the story but also tends to strip the characters of their credibility as well. Why? Because once the writer decides to keep the protagonist’s big secret under wraps, the protagonist can’t so much as think about it—even though, of course, it’s exactly what he would be thinking about. Even more damaging, he can’t react to anything the way he would, given what really happened, because that, too, would give it away. So when the reveal finally comes, nothing he’s done up to that point is in any way consistent with what a person in that situation would have done. Thus the reveal becomes a groaner.
The good news is, there is another way.
The Beauty in Showing Your Hand
What if you lay your cards on the table face up? What difference does it make in terms of suspense? Let’s try a little test.
First, a description of a scene with the cards held close to the vest: Val is looking for her roommate Enid, who’s hours late. After canvassing the neighborhood, she reluctantly knocks on the door of her new neighbor, Homer, shows him a photo of Enid, and asks if he’s seen her. He says no, but seeing how worried Val is, he invites h
er in for a soothing cup of herbal tea. Realizing she probably is blowing the whole thing out of proportion, and that Homer’s really cute, she accepts. Over two steaming mugs, Homer reassures Val, suggesting that Enid probably just decided to visit a friend, nothing to worry about. Half an hour later Val leaves, feeling relieved and wondering whether Homer is single.
Now, imagine the exact same scene, except we’ve known the whole time that Homer has Enid locked in the basement, where she can hear the conversation upstairs and is trying desperately to get out. This time, we’re riveted, rooting for Enid, and praying Homer hasn’t slipped a roofie into Val’s Sleepytime Tea.
But does that mean that you have to lay all your cards on the table? Can’t you keep a few of them up your sleeve, for use later? Absolutely; there’s nothing readers love more than to be fooled—as long as, once the truth is revealed, everything still makes complete sense, both in the moment it happens and in hindsight after the “real truth” is revealed.
So let’s return to the saga of Val and Homer, with Enid handily duct-taped to a chair in the basement. This time, let’s imagine that as Homer and Val talk upstairs, Enid manages to free herself, climb out the basement window, and run home. Now we’re just dying for Val to get the hell out before Homer ties her up too. So when she finally leaves, we breathe a huge sigh of relief.
But as Homer’s closing the door, his phone rings. It’s his boss at the FBI. Reinforcements are on their way; she can’t believe he captured the notorious hacksaw killer Enid Dinsmore a mere week after going undercover, especially given that they just received intelligence that Enid plans to kill again, tonight. Something about a roommate named Val.
