Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "shocking-swerves"
Big reveals
I've got a couple revelations coming in the next story. One of the two is I think a genuine twist, one I've hopefully managed some subtle foreshadowing for... while the other's a smaller and more personal issue that may not have any impact to the plot at all, but it's also been heavily telegraphed and I feel like anyone could see it coming by now.
And I've read a few rather poor reveals lately that combine the worst of both worlds: foreshadowed like all hell, yet also a big twist. I've never seen that work. When it finally drops, you just kind of groan: finally we get the obvious out of the way!
Yet it can still have the exact same enormous impact in the world itself - the characters rarely have all the pieces of the puzzle, after all, like the reader does. To them it's still big news.
I guess there's three ways to still pull it off.
You could first reveal it to the reader without letting the characters themselves know: have it told to a smaller audience without making a big deal out of it, show a flashback, or something. This'll drop the pretense of it being any kind of a big deal from an audience standpoint, while still keeping the tension up in the world itself. Now we can all stop wondering about how bloody obvious it is, and begin dreading just what kind of an impact it has when the penny finally drops.
Could make it a red herring, of course. Heavily foreshadow one particular reveal, only to suddenly dunk the reader with a whole other one.out of bloody nowhere. Just need to be careful to have it still make sense in context, and perhaps to give a bit of subtler foreshadowing about it beforehand - don't just suddenly go off the rails because you realize we can see your big reveal coming, or else you'll make it even worse.
Finally, if it's actually not that crucial from the storytelling standpoint, you could just... not make the final reveal at all. Give the reader all the pieces of the puzzle, let them put it together themselves and draw their own conclusions, but otherwise leave it at that - bit of an extra background fluff to buff up the world and the characters and make it feel all the more alive. Or just have them discuss it at some point all casually, like it was obvious from the start (as it kind of was). Not everything has to be a big deal.
I think I'll do the last one with one of mine.
And I've read a few rather poor reveals lately that combine the worst of both worlds: foreshadowed like all hell, yet also a big twist. I've never seen that work. When it finally drops, you just kind of groan: finally we get the obvious out of the way!
Yet it can still have the exact same enormous impact in the world itself - the characters rarely have all the pieces of the puzzle, after all, like the reader does. To them it's still big news.
I guess there's three ways to still pull it off.
You could first reveal it to the reader without letting the characters themselves know: have it told to a smaller audience without making a big deal out of it, show a flashback, or something. This'll drop the pretense of it being any kind of a big deal from an audience standpoint, while still keeping the tension up in the world itself. Now we can all stop wondering about how bloody obvious it is, and begin dreading just what kind of an impact it has when the penny finally drops.
Could make it a red herring, of course. Heavily foreshadow one particular reveal, only to suddenly dunk the reader with a whole other one.out of bloody nowhere. Just need to be careful to have it still make sense in context, and perhaps to give a bit of subtler foreshadowing about it beforehand - don't just suddenly go off the rails because you realize we can see your big reveal coming, or else you'll make it even worse.
Finally, if it's actually not that crucial from the storytelling standpoint, you could just... not make the final reveal at all. Give the reader all the pieces of the puzzle, let them put it together themselves and draw their own conclusions, but otherwise leave it at that - bit of an extra background fluff to buff up the world and the characters and make it feel all the more alive. Or just have them discuss it at some point all casually, like it was obvious from the start (as it kind of was). Not everything has to be a big deal.
I think I'll do the last one with one of mine.
Pankarp
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