I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!
Originally published February 17, 2011 for the Samhellion
Come
with me on a dangerous trek, a journey through my writer’s brain.
Ever
do those maze puzzles? Your job is to get from point A to point B through
a series of baffling twists. There are a zillion ways to go from point A,
each turn multiplying the possibilities. They’re frustrating and fun and before
I finish I inevitably want to scream at the guy who drew all those *&@!!
twists.
That’s
a writer’s job in a nutshell: to write those screaming twists.
Last
month I talked about verbing. Today I’m contorting the average storyline into
something more--interesting. I’m taking my example from Biting Me Softly, because it’s
handy and I know how I changed it. Oh, and because it just released in
paperback this month (wink-wink, nudge-nudge say no more). “I” in this case is
Liese, a girl-next-door computer geek. Logan is six-three of golden graceful
vampire. Liese has followed Logan into a dark sewer, lured by odd howling. She
has tripped and fallen.
Here’s
the original.
I
breathed deep, put my hand out to push up and encountered boot leather. Was
this what tripped me?
This
goes from A to B to C. Breathe, hand out, boot leather. No surprises.
Here’s
the updated version. Note the expectation set explicitly, A, expecting B,
getting C:
I
put my hand out to push myself up. Instead of cold concrete my palm hit leather. I froze.
Was this what tripped me?
And
from there:
I
brushed tentative fingers along the leather, identified a work boot attached to
something. Stiff fabric, like jeans. Moving farther I encountered what felt
like a leatherette coat.
A
man? If so, he wasn’t moving, like…a
dead body. I panicked, scrambled on hands and knees to find the
neck, to find the pulse.
Where
there should have been a neck, there was nothing.
This
is pretty good, especially the part where she searches for a pulse and not only
doesn’t find one--she doesn’t even find a neck.
My secret
for solving those *&@!! maze puzzles is to start at the end and work my way
backwards. And that's the secret to writing those lovely twists too! Decide
what you want to have happen, and
set a different expectation first. Simple, but not easy. 😁 Easiest is to set
the opposite expectation, like expecting concrete and getting a boot. Harder
but sometimes more satisfying is veering slightly off, like a car chase where
you're expecting a car to chase Our Hero and a monster truck screams onto the
road instead. Or if you're going for humor, a unicycle.
What
about you? If you write, how do you create twists? If you read, what are your
favorite twists?
