Misdirection

(I swear this isn't a post about my book by the same name... but my thoughts on this are exactly why I wrote that book).

I HATE reading a book where you know what's going to happen before you get to the end. Hate it. I don't mean know the ending like knowing that in a romance novel the characters will end up together. I mean when you see the big surprise coming from a mile away. The sudden twist at the end.

Not all books have twists, and that's fine. But you shouldn't be able to predict the whole plot of a book from the first few pages. I want to be surprised and amazed and confused.

I mean, obviously, my overwhelming intelligence (and oh so impressive modesty) makes this difficult. *snerk* But there are so many books out there where I have been surprised, or at least not seen the entire plot coming. So it's clearly possible.

It doesn't have to be a major twist, like revealing that the narrator is the murderer, a la Agatha Christie (um, spoiler?). I just feel like sometimes when teachers cover foreshadowing in grade school that future authors grab it and run with it and then fill their books with it to the point that it completely ruins any possible surprise that may be coming.

This is where misdirection comes into play. I mean, if you're going to drop hints about what's coming, drop some wrong hints too. Make the author think you're headed one way and then careen in a different direction. Shake things up a bit. Lay the groundwork for many possibilities and then let the reader scramble to try and figure out which way you're actually going.

Of course, like anything, this too can be overdone. If you try too hard to misdirect, your reader winds up never really know what's going on, with too many possibilities and dangling plot points. Tie things up neatly, people.

So, in short, please try to make your book interesting to me. That is all.

Curve Balls

Well, I'd meant to continue posting about critiques this week. Primarily, how to take a hit and keep going. Then I took a hit and had to, you know, keep going...

Sometimes life works like that. I like to think of the random chaos that springs from nowhere as plot. I just got a plot twist. Or to quote my favorite of all movies (okay I can't pick favorites but it's way up toward the top) "You just got hit. The getting up is up to you."

Once upon a time I had a lot of anxiety and depression. I did a lot of therapy, but in the end I think it was moving to somewhere that has SUN that really helped. Okay, maybe the therapy gets some credit too. I also had half my thyroid removed way back in my youngun' days, and though it was scary as hell, it wasn't really a big deal.

Fast forward a few scenes to my oldun' days. All of a sudden I'm having whispers of the old anxiety again. I think WTF? I thought I killed you years ago. I walk out in the sun a little more (which requires surgically removing my fingers from the keyboard) I exercise, and I breathe... I manage. Plot twist handled.

Except the lumpy thyroid shit is back too. My kiddo goes in for a sore throat and her doctor pins me to the wall about the state of my throat. Yeah, okay, I've been ignoring it. So I get to start all this again and I think, a little more weakly...plot twist?

I think, maybe they're related? What if there's a connection between the mood disorder and the weird growth in my throat? Maybe it's an alien parasite.... okay, maybe that last one is a bit out there. BUT...I'm not a doctor, I'm a writer.  This is what I do.

I make connections. I fictionalize. I write. It's a kind of therapy in its own right. You get hit, you translate it into plot, you use it to go on. Get back up. And you write as fast as you can in case the plot twist kills you before you finish the next book!

Next week, I'll get back to critique. And the movie, if you're the sort that's still trying to figure it out, was The Ghost and the Darkness.

:)
Frances