Twisting & Turning

One unfortunate (?) side effect of writing a great deal is you invariably understand how the "magic" if writing works. It's like being a practicing magician watching another one perform -- you know the tricks of the trade, you might even know how the trick is done.

As a result, it's very hard to be surprised as a writer when you confront a story. If/When it happens, it's a nice surprise, if a rare one.

All too often, I've got a story's twists mapped out from the first few minutes, because I can see the narrative structure. How it precisely pans out may vary, but the overall roadmap is there.

I'm sort of ambivalent about twists. I understand the sense of satisfaction they can bring, but there's an artistry to the well-turned twist that's hard to replicate. And, at least philosophically, I always feel like if there's always a twist in a story, doesn't that diminish the twist? Maybe that's just me, but I do feel it.

Not that I'm twist-averse to my stories -- some of them do have twists, but I don't build around them necessarily. There's at least a high risk of gimmickry in a twist, and maybe for me, it's why I don't swim purely in genre waters, but wade into a semi-literary space.

For me, sometimes a story simply is what it is, and part of the entertainment of it is seeing how it plays out within the confines of the narrative, versus everything in the narrative being simply a setup for the twist.

That could be a reflection of my own directness, and a desire not to jerk readers around. Plus, in the spoiler-triggered world we face, there's perhaps a limited utility to a twist as a key feature of a story. Again, maybe just me.

My goal as a writer is to simply make the journey of a story an interesting one, and hoping the reader can trust me to take them someplace interesting.