Subverting Expectations and Other Tricks I Learned from Games of Thrones
“Who kills Prince Humperdinck? At the end, somebody’s got to do it! Is it Inigo? Who?”
“Nobody. Nobody kills him. He lives.”
“You mean he wins? Jesus, grand-pa, what did you read me this thing for?”
- The Princess Bride
One thing Game of Thrones (GoT) does better than any other story today is subvert your expectations. This is the secret sauce that keeps people coming back week after week. So, let’s take a closer look at why this matters so much.
You can learn almost everything you need to learn about storytelling by watching and reading Game of Thrones. You’re lucky if most stories teach you one or two things about masterful storytelling. Most stories have one plot. A great story has multiple plots. True epics, like Game of Thrones, contain every single plot we have ever come up with, whether you think that there are only 7 basic plots, 20 master plots, or some other number. It does all that while including almost every major personality on the planet, from psychopath to noble hero and everything in between, enough to cover the entire range of personality disorders in the massive professional psychologists’ manual the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV). More than that, it does all in a rated R format, with a layered and nuanced view of reality. The fact is, most R Rated type stories have a more limited reach. The other great fantasy epics of our time, Star Wars and Harry Potter, are both very much PG stories, with more childlike morality. Christ, GoT’s even delivers dialogue that’s movie quality. I can tell you that most dialogue that works on the page doesn’t translate well to the screen and gets re-written by screenwriters. 85% of what you see on the show is lifted straight from the books verbatim. That’s incredible.
So what is subverting expectations and why is it essential? It’s the key to “adding the twist” that all the writing books tell you about but never explain. What does “add a twist” really mean anyway? How would you recognize it? How do you deploy it in your own fiction? How do you write something, “fresh?” All the books tell you to write something fresh, but again, what the hell does that really mean? I never really found an answer that satisfied me so I figured it out myself. There comes a time when writers have to put down writing books and study stories with their own eyes. I’ve come to believe that “fresh” writing comes from subverting expectations. An audience believes something will happen, like the good guy will dangle by his fingers from a rooftop, all while fending off kicks from the bad guy, but still finding a way to pull himself up. But, what if the good guy falls instead? Now perhaps we have a crippled detective. That’s a new one right there. Well, it was when “Read Window” was made. That’s the surprise the audience craves. That’s a new take on the old story patterns that we love to hear over and over, as long as they have that twist.
This concept is a part of all aspects of story telling, from plot, to character development to basic story telling devices. Let’s take a look at some examples so you understand what I’m talking about here.
We’ll start with some story devices or tropes. One of the most amazing sites for studying stories is tvtropes.org. What are tropes? These are techniques that writers use to make stories go. The devices might make you feel a certain way, or quickly convey something essential about someone’s personality. One warning, learning about tropes is a little like learning how a magician does his tricks. Most people don’t want to see what goes on behind the curtain. Sometimes seeing these tricks can really ruin a story for readers but if you’re a writer, learning about tropes is addicting. These are the mechanics of story telling. They are the engines that make stories run. Game of Thrones is such a massive story that it has several hundred tropes threaded through it, when most great stories might have ten. You actually have to click “expand all folders” to see them all. So let’s take one trope that this story plays with extremely well “beauty equals goodness.”
SPOILERS ahead.
“Beauty equals goodness” is one of the oldest story mechanics in history. It’s safe to say that most of the heroes you’ve ever loved have been pretty damn good looking. They probably met a girl who is stunning as well, who is their love interest, or vice versa if the hero is female. Often times they battle someone ugly, aka the antagonist. Turn on WB for five minutes and pick any show. You’ll find all the people on it are attractive. Some movies take this idea to absurdity, like the film Braveheart. For me, this film has not aged well. It’s hard to believe it won Best Picture. Then again, I remember first seeing it and being totally pumped up emotionally. In Braveheart we have a good-looking hero, who meets a fantastically beautiful French queen, who battle ugly British lords and a conniving man whose face is literally decaying. Or think of any James Bond flick, even the good ones like the wonderful Skyfall. Bond is daring, handsome, always gets the girl and he fights a man whose face is literally deformed, so much so that his teeth have rotted and he can take them out. In other words, stories use the very convenient psychological effect of physical beauty to make you feel good about one character and recoil at another.
Game of Thrones subverts this trope to great effect. There are obvious examples, like the Imp, a character who is a dwarf, yet he is also probably the most intelligent and crafty character in the universe. The books go further than the series, making him deformed. The townspeople in King’s Landing think the Imp is responsible for various atrocities because of how he looks, while giving the good looking King Joffery a pass. Speaking of Joffery, Sansa is prone to seeing the world with the filter of “beauty equals good.” In the early days, she refuses to believe that Joffery can’t possibly be the bastard he is because he is attractive. When the mad boy king cuts off her father’s head, she is disabused of this childish notion. Other characters that are good looking like the boy king, Rob Stark, and his father get killed. Yet we find characters, like the Hound, who is physically deformed, his face burnt badly by his brother, but who also have heroic traits like a protectiveness of certain people close to them. At the same time, Thrones uses this same trope in its traditional manner. For instance, Daenerys, the “Mother of Dragons” and the story’s most essential hero is incredibly beautiful, to the point that many of her enemies are disarmed by it and come to her side. For instance, Ser Jorah was sent to kill her, as were the marauders at the gate of the second slave city she raids. One of the leaders is so taken by her beauty that he kills the two other leaders and presents their heads to her, rather than assassinate her. This shows that it is not necessary or even desirable to subvert expectations across the board. Many less complicated stories than Game of Thrones only need to subvert a few expectations to be a hit with audiences and make them feel like they’re seeing something they’ve never seen before.
Other great films and stories play with “beauty equals goodness” brilliantly. Shrek made a franchise out of subverting this one trope. It’s the single most important twist in the story, which just goes to show you that subverting one major expectation can go a long way to making something “fresh” and exciting for viewers.
So how do you know when and when not to subvert something in a story? I can tell you that many amateur and novice writers pick the wrong story elements. They think they’re adding a twist, when they’re just breaking their story. Certain story elements are so essential that they just can’t be changed. For example, stories at their most basic level have to have conflict. The hero and protagonist have to battle it out in the end, whether that is physically, like in an action movie, or mentally, like in a court- room drama. Having someone else defeat that bad guy is not a twist, it’s just bad writing. I’m looking at you “The Fan“, to this day DeNiro’s worst flick. In it, the hero is fighting the bad guy and some random cop comes out of the crowd and kills the bad guy. Horrible. In other words, don’t try to change the crucial storytelling bits unless you’re an absolute master and you happen to recognize an essential truth about life that everyone else missed. (HINT: Not likely)
Let’s take a look at a trope that you probably don’t want to break, unless you’re telling a comedic story, “underestimating badassery” or as I like to call it “you picked the wrong guy to fuck with.” You know this one well. The hero is a badass motherfucker but maybe he doesn’t look it, so some other tuff guys come up to him and get in his face. Uh oh, you think, these punks are gonna fucking get it. And they do. Awesome. So why isn’t this one a good idea to screw with? It’s because this delivers such an audience satisfying punch that it’s not worth it, unless you’re trying to make people laugh. What’s the opposite of this? The hero isn’t a badass and he gets a beat down from the bullies? This won’t make your story fresh it will just make audiences hate you. I bet you can think of a hundred examples of this story device. Think of every kung-fu movie you’ve ever seen where the humble monk is just walking along, minding his own business and some thugs threaten him. They get their fucking ass kicked. We love for the bully to get their ass kicked, because we all remember getting our own asses kicked at least once as a kid. Just admit it. It happened, whether it was mental or physical. Somewhere, someone made fun of you and everyone laughed, no matter where you were on the popularity chain. Nobody wants to relive that. Here’s the plot of every kung-fu movie ever made: the hero gets their ass kicked early in the movie. They go off and study kung-fu, perhaps a secret version or style. They come back and they are still underestimated but beat the bad guy with their newfound skills. In other words, don’t fuck with this one if you want people to actually like your story.
One example of a story that almost changes one of those crucial aspects of storytelling is “The Princess Bride”. The movie is self-reverential, in that a grandpa is telling the movie’s main story to his grandson. This is called a framing narrative. That allows writers to comment openly on the story and pull some other neat tricks. The bad guy does not die in this story. Look at how the kid in the framing narrative reacts to that? That’s an audience and their expectations just smashed on the rocks. It makes people want to come back. The kid relents shortly after the grandpa threatens to wrap up the story early and head home. The movie cleverly does what we are all trying to do when we play with expectations: tell a truth about life. By leaving the character alive in a plausible way, while the hero still manages to rescue the princess, he leaves the baddie with his consciousness and the point that sometimes living with yourself is worse than death.
Voice over is another great opportunity for subverting expectations. There are certain expectations an audience has about the voiceover, such as the narrator is reliable, or that they’re alive. Several famous serial killer stories, such as American Psycho, start off in the head of someone seemingly normal, only to begin to show they’re anything but. The movie Sunset Boulevard has a dead narrator. Right away you want to know what happened to him. That’s exciting.
Speaking of framing narratives, take the Usual Suspects. This movie subverts the expectation that the people in the framing narrative are reliable. We expect them to be telling the truth, even if they’re criminals. It’s like when Batman breaks the bad guy and the baddie spills his whole tale. We expect the truth. But Kevin Spacey’s character makes up the whole story from story prompts he sees in the cop’s office. None of it is true, or all of it is true. We’ll never know.
So those are just a few examples of how great stories subvert expectations. Now go out and watch for how other great storytellers pull this fantastic trick. Just start with the stories that you like and take a closer look at them. What did they do differently that you might not have understood before now?
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