TRICKS AND CHEATS

by Beth Bernobich
(c) May 2000, revised July 2001

Fiction depends on vivid lies and clever tricks. Good fiction uses these devices to create a seamless waking dream — the classic "suspension of disbelief." However, all too easily, tricks can turn into cheats — quick, easy, and superficial plot devices that damage a story. As a reader, I've encountered far too many of these cheats, which have frustrated me to the point of hurling the book across the room. As a writer, my goal is to employ the tricks well, and to avoid the cheats. I would like my books read and enjoyed, not lying bruised and tattered on the floor.

(An aside: I wrote this essay in the nature of a rant. As such, I'm covering the cheats that annoy me the most as a reader. But if I do my job right, you'll recognize others as well.)

Red Herrings

A red herring is a misleading clue that serves to point the reader's attention in the wrong direction. Mystery novels use them throughout, guiding the reader in a winding path all around the genuine clues, deliberately misdirecting her attention. Other types of fiction also use them, including mainstream and literary fiction, if not so abundantly, or so obviously, and it's easy to see why. With a few well-placed red herrings, you can heighten the tension, add complexity to the plot, and generally make the lives of your characters more complicated — all worthy goals.

But...

The misdirection should do more than just mislead the reader. A good red herring will lead the story to some crucial plot point. In a mystery, the red herrings might indirectly lead the detective to uncover more clues. In other genres, it might confuse the protagonist long enough that some other, genuine crisis takes place, without allowing him to prepare for it. In JANE EYRE, Jane believes that Grace Poole is a madwoman and blackmailer. That red herring serves to explain Rochester's odd behavior long enough for Jane overcomes her suspicions and falls in love with him. (We could argue that Jane works hard to deceive herself, but after a certain point, she wants to.)

The deception must grow naturally from the story and its characters. How could your protagonist come to the wrong conclusion? More important, why should she? Going back to JANE EYRE, Grace Poole is a servant in the household, hired for a specific purpose and not just a fantastic addition to the story. She is also the one outsider of the household, giving Jane the much-wanted explanation for all the bizarre events in Thornfield. That Grace Poole is the keeper of a madwoman gives this red herring a delicious twist of irony.

So what can go wrong?

Wrong emphasis. If you expend too much story time on one red herring without enough counterbalance for the genuine clues, you risk confusing the reader completely. And in the end, when you abruptly reveal that Professor Y stole the diamond and not Professor Z, the resolution will feel hurried and incomplete — and therefore unconvincing.

Excess. Gratuitous red herrings, scattered like marbles over the floor, will eventually break the reader's trust. After a dozen false clues, the reader might start skimming until she finds the "revelation" that overturns the red herring. She might ignore the real clues and get frustrated.

Or she might simply stop reading.

Cliffhangers

The cliffhanger is another good device with the potential to wreck a story. Your reader is charging through the book, unable to stop turning pages. She reaches the end of a chapter, the tension is rising toward some unbearable peak, and then...

Disaster strikes, the chapter ends, and the reader finds she must keep reading.

However, the cliffhanger, like everything else, should do more than yank up the tension line. At the very least, it should serve to advance the story, and if you can add in character development and world building, you have a good one. One important point to remember: the next chapter for that story thread must directly handle the cliffhanger. That is, if the reader follows your protagonist into the dragon's lair, she wants to see how that character defeats the monster. If you skip the battle, turning it into a summary in past tense, you will kill the tension and you will undoubtedly irritate the reader.

Sometimes your point of view character won't allow a complete retelling of every event. Bilbo was knocked unconscious during the final battle in THE HOBBIT — but we had already seen the battle joined, and Bilbo himself had announced the arrival of the eagles who turned the battle. His fate was the cliffhanger, and not the battle itself. That's a delicate balance, however, and in most cases, you might need to reconsider who tells the story, so that the reader sees the resolution, along with your characters.

As I mentioned, you should handle the cliffhanger's resolution as directly as possible. If your story has alternating threads (parallel events in different parts of the world, for example), you might choose to interrupt the current story thread and switch to another. That will definitely keep the reader on edge, and serves to show the concurrent events. The danger exists that, if you delay the cliffhanger's resolution long enough, the tension can die out completely. By the time the story returns to your hero, face to face with the dragon, the reader might have lost that necessary emotional attachment.

But these are minor faults, in my opinion, compared to the gratuitous cliffhanger. Here, the protagonist is walking through the dank and unlit dungeon. He hears a door creak behind him, his hand clenches his sword hilt, he turns to see a hideous, distorted face — and the chapter ends. But in the very next chapter, the hero immediately discovers that the face belongs to his best friend, distorted by bad lighting or something equally weak. They have a good laugh and continue on together. For me, a sequence like that doesn't build tension, it annihilates it. And given enough false alarms, the reader will react as she did with too many red herrings — with boredom and disbelief.

The Incomplete Revelation

This technique is far more a cheat than ever a trick. Here, the current POV character learns a crucial piece of information, but deliberately withholds that clue from the reader. Now, a writer withholds information from the reader all the time — she selects the details, emphasizes one character over another, and chooses where to show a full scene and where to summarize the events. That's how she controls pacing and tension. However, the incomplete or hidden revelation breaks the POV bond and the story flow. The writer means to heighten the tension with mystery, but ends up confusing the reader and sending him out of the story.

Here's an example: Lady Constance and her array of friends are seeking the Ancient MacGuffin in order to save the world. The MacGuffin, alas, has been snatched by the Evil Lord Vishnish and placed in his Impenetrable Dungeon. After many adventures and heartbreaking setbacks, the companions meet to plan their next attack. Time is short; they must seize the MacGuffin tonight or all is lost. Lady Constance is our viewpoint character and we listen with her to the various arguments and we hear her internal reactions. We should know everything she does.

But what's this? Lady Constance stands up, all excited. "My friends," she exclaims, "I know the answer."

The chapter ends. The reader is left behind in the empty conference room, scratching his head and thinking, "I surely missed something important." Pause while he drops out of the story and skims through the chapter again looking for clues.

In the best case, the next chapter will show Lady Constance and her friends outside the Impenetrable Dungeon, where she explains their next move and how she reached that conclusion. The reader will learn that clues were present throughout the previous chapters and the solution will end up being surprising but satisfying. Personally, I still have a problem with the technique, since it yanks the reader out of the character's POV, but it can be done without too much damage to the story.

Usually, however, the worst happens. We never hear the explanation until after the company had gained its goal, Lord Vishnish is overthrown, and Lady Constance is celebrating her victory.

This fault is not unique to genre fiction. The crucial revelation for a literary work might be the character's quiet epiphany. We follow Sarah Simple throughout her life, tragedy after quiet tragedy, as she attempts to assign meaning to what happens. Then, near the end, as she contemplates a literary rose, her eyes widen, her pulse quickens. Yes, she breathes, I understands at last.

End of chapter and sometimes end of book.

Again, with the right foreshadowing and the right details throughout, such an ending might indeed be the right one. And it might satisfy the reader, who can then contemplate along with Sarah and hopefully reach the same conclusion. And that is the deciding factor on whether we've been pleasantly tricked or rudely cheated by the writer. If we reach the story's goal blindfolded, we've been cheated, and the climax loses its impact.

The Misunderstanding

If two characters misunderstand each other's motives, the plot can take some wonderful twists while the characters fight, argue, and generally work hard to defeat their perceived adversary. At the same time, the real villain is happily working on his own plans. (If he's a smart villain, he's also taking advantage of their misunderstanding.)

You can find a perfect example of a well-done misunderstanding in Sherwood Smith's CROWN DUEL/COURT DUEL books. Meliara Astiar and her brother are working to overthrow the evil king, who sends the Marquis of Shevraeth to quash their rebellion. Meliara, of course, believes that Shevraeth is the king's man, and it takes several rescues and outright declarations before she realizes that Shevraeth has been working in secret to achieve the same ends, but without civil war. The misunderstanding continues a long time, in part because Shevraeth cannot publicly declare his goals. The other essential reason for the misunderstanding lies in Meliara's childhood — one filled with stories about lying courtiers. Their misunderstanding eventually drives Shevraeth to openly declare his position, and at last, Meliara overcomes her own prejudices to believe in Shevraeth's good intentions.

So, the elements of a good misunderstanding: the characters should have good reasons for believing ill of one another, the misunderstanding should further the plot, not just pad it with extra scenes, and finally, the characters should not be too pig-headed about the matter. If they are, the plot and characters themselves must provide a good reason. Most important, the bigger the misunderstanding, the more care and time the author must spend on the resolution.

The difficulty, I think, is that a misunderstanding can so easily become a plot device, and nothing more. Let's call our two characters Vince and Harry. Vince saw Harry accept money from the villain, so he naturally believes that Harry is a traitor. Since they are friends, Harry could clear up the misunderstanding with one short explanation — Vince would trust him at this point. But then the book would end too soon, so the author introduces all sorts of false interruptions to prevent that explanation. Servants rush in to disturb a private conversation. Fires break out. God (the author) throws a few lightning bolts into the plot. Sometimes the obstacle isn't that obvious. Sometimes the author makes Harry unnaturally reluctant to clear his name — but without providing a reason for that reluctance. Or she makes Harry so oblivious to the problem, that he appears to be an idiot. Meanwhile, Vince's distrust becomes so entrenched that when that short explanation does finally come, it's insufficient to overcome the past twenty chapters.

In Other Words...

Tricks are good, when properly used. The goal, I think, is to ask yourself these questions: Is this red herring essential to the plot, or is it a gratuitous addition? Why am I ending this chapter with a cliffhanger, and what does it add to my plot line? Have I shared all the necessary clues before making a cut-transition, or have I broken off the revelation, making it incomplete? How does this misunderstanding between protagonists strengthen the plot? Am I creating it for my convenience, or because the characters would really act that way?

In short, the same questions you ask for any element of your story. §