A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post making fun of Lost. I had watched the first season, but gave up fairly early into the second when it appeared the writers weren’t really going to answer anything. I know that Lost fans will disagree, so I offer the disclaimer: yes, I know that they kinda, sorta explained things throughout the show and kinda, sorta explained everything at the end. But that doesn’t mean much to me, because I had given up on it by then. My complaint was not that the writers couldn’t surprise us with an explanation, but that it didn’t seem like they were planning on it. It felt weird for the sake of weird. It didn’t feel like an intricate mystery; it felt random.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I’m revising Variant and one of my editor’s comments is that we need just a smidgen more explanation/foreshadowing/clues. Not too much–we don’t want to give all the mysteries away–but we need more than what’s there. It’s like my complaint with Lost: I don’t mind a difficult mystery, but I want to feel like it’s going somewhere. I want to be assured that there actually is an answer, and I just need another clue or two before I can figure it out.

I’ve always been fascinated by the questions that never get answered, and I think there’s a fine balance between not enough explanation and too much.

Back in high school I read The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux, but when I think back on it I rarely think about Raoul or Christine or even the Phantom. Instead, my favorite part is a tiny section of Chapter 20, where Raoul and The Persian are venturing down into the depths of the opera house:

Then the Persian took Raoul up the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture. Something moved in the darkness before them.

“Flat on your stomach!” whispered the Persian.

The two men lay flat on the floor.

They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch them.

They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat….

It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a kick into a corner.

“Whew!” said the Persian. “We’ve had a narrow escape; that shade knows me and has twice taken me to the managers’ office.”

“Is it some one belonging to the theater police?” asked Raoul.

“It’s some one much worse than that!” replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation.

And that’s it. That’s all we see of this “shade in the shade”. We’re left with the mystery: who could be “much worse” than the police, but somehow helpful to the opera? How is there a second mysterious figure lurking under the opera house, yet who is completely uninvolved in the current kidnapping and rescue?

I love this character–it works so well. First, it gives us an illusion of depth: there is much more going on below the opera than we previously thought–the phantom isn’t the only scary thing down there; he’s just part of a larger scary setting. And the unexplained mystery can be left unexplained: we’ll find out the phantom’s secrets in great detail, and our main plot will be resolved, but we’re not going to find out everything. Just like we talked about with Jaws, we’re not afraid of a big shark, we’re afraid of the unknown. So, even though the phantom eventually becomes known, there is still plenty of unknown to keep things creepy–and to keep us thinking and wondering.

On the other end of the Spectrum Of Unexplained Mysteries: Eric D. Snider wrote a great article about the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Anyone who’s seen the movie knows it’s cryptic and strange. The last time I saw it, I was about 14 and I don’t remember it making any sense at all. I’d be interested to watch it now and see how my perception of it has changed. In an interview, Stanley Kubrick, the director, stated that the mysteries should NEVER be explained:

How much would we appreciate La Gioconda [The Mona Lisa] today if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: “This lady is smiling slightly because she has rotten teeth” — or “because she’s hiding a secret from her lover.” It would shut off the viewer’s appreciation and shackle him to a “reality” other than his own. I don’t want that to happen to 2001.

So, we have all these differing degrees of mystery: Lost, where it doesn’t look like we’re ever going to get answers, but we (kinda, sorta) do; Phantom of the Opera, where the main mystery is completely and thoroughly explained, but other secrets lurk in the background; and “2001: A Space Odyssey”, where no answers are given and interpretation is left up to the viewer. (And, on the other end of the spectrum, we have stories like “The Sixth Sense”, where you learn The Big Secret, and say “OH! Well, that explains EVERYTHING!”)

And I bring all of this up to say: I’m still struggling with this stupid balance between Too Much Explanation and Not Enough Explanation. This revision is going very well except for this last issue. I think my editor and I are going to be discussing this in depth.

What are your thoughts? Do you like mysteries left hanging? Or do you like everything explained? What are your favorite examples?

Not too long ago I blogged about how authors can waste a lot of time speculating about the market. When we sit down to write a book we’re making such a big investment of our time that we want to make sure, from the very beginning, that the concept is as bulletproof as possible. There are few things so disheartening as to work on a story for months only to discover that someone else is writing something with a similar premise–and theirs was finished first! Now yours will never sell, or worse: you’ll look like a plagiarist!

We authors tend to be neurotic anyway, and things like this only make our mental problems worse.

I recently read two novels with a very similar concept. The first was Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer.  The story follows a teenage girl as the world around her is falling apart; a massive asteroid hits the moon, knocking it closer to earth. The change in the gravitational pull causes all sorts of problems: tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes. Civilization begins to crumble, and the main character and her family hole up in their house to ride out the devastation and try to survive.

The other book was In a Perfect World, by Laura Kasischke. This one was adult fiction, not YA, but the premise was similar: the main character (a flight attendant) has to hole up in her house as civilization collapses around her. The catastrophe this time was a worldwide epidemic–the Phoenix Flu–rather than earthquakes and volcanoes, but the results are the same: massive depopulation, disintegration of government and infrastructure, and the resulting survival scenario.

Both books have a similar setting: they both take place almost entirely in their homes, and we very seldom see the outside world or hear the news (since the power is out and the radios run out of batteries quickly). So they’re both very insular and claustrophobic, dealing with day-to-day survival rather than the typical flashy Hollywood disaster scenarios.

But here’s the cool part: the books are completely different. The writing styles are wildly unique. In Life as We Knew it, the book is written in first person as a diary, in simple teenspeak. In A Perfect World is third person and beautiful and literary (the author is a poet). The former is straightforward and stark, while the latter is non-linear and intricate.  The conflicts are different, one being all about character issues while the other being mostly plot.  And both books are good.

Several months ago, when I finished reading James Dashner’s The Maze Runner, I emailed him to assure him that I hadn’t plagiarized him in my upcoming novel, Variant. On the face of it, the premise of mine is very similar to his: both are Lord-of-the-Flies situations where the characters are captured but don’t know why (though they know they’re being observed).  Sure, reading that synopsis makes the two books sound extremely similar. However, the stories, characters, setting, writing styles and themes are completely different.  As James pointed out in his reply: “Neither one of us came up with the premise; we were just smart enough to create really awesome versions of it.”

There’s a great line in the musical Sunday In The Park With George (about the painter George Seurat). George is discouraged about his accomplishments as an artist:

-Dot-
Are you working on something new?

-George-
No.

-Dot-
That is not like you, George.

-George-
I’ve nothing to say.

-Dot-
You have many things.

-George-
Well, nothing that’s not been said.

-Dot-
Said by you, though, George?

I think that a lot of us writers can get so discouraged or worried about whether we’re truly original and new that we limit our opportunities to create.   In the two books I mentioned above, the premises are basically the same, but the authors each created a unique, enjoyable book.

Dot’s advice later in her song applies just as well to writers as it does to painters:

-Dot-
Stop worrying if your vision is new.
Let others make that decision–
They usually do.
You keep moving on.

I admit it: I’m a sucker for reality TV. My favorite reality shows tend to be those where the contestants have to demonstrate some amount of skill–American Idol, The Next Food Network Star, Project Runway. Most recently, my wife and I have become big fans of the History Channel’s Top Shot.

The show is a shooting competition, where sixteen marksmen from different backgrounds (former marine snipers, ex-police, Olympians, semi-pro competition shooters) have to shoot many different kinds of ranged weapons: rifles, pistols, long bows, cross bows, etc. Sometimes they’re timed, sometimes they’re shooting moving targets, sometimes it’s all about accuracy. The show has been great fun to watch, partially because of the addictive reality drama, but more because, well, it’s fun to watch people shoot stuff.

But this week’s episode has soured the show for me a bit, and it’s got me thinking about writing.

The episode was titled “Wild, Wild West”, and the selected weapon was the Colt Peacemaker–the gun used by Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. The team challenge was set up like an amusement park shooting gallery (only with real bullets). It was all very fun and old-westy.

But then came the elimination challenge, and the two people fighting for survival had to compete head-to-head. The gun was the same, but the challenge was new: a large target displayed all 52 playing cards in a deck, and the competitors had to play poker. By shooting a card, they put it in their hand, and the best hand won.

And here’s the problem: neither competitor had ever played poker before. They had no idea what strategies to use, and they fumbled around awkwardly trying to create good hands and block the other guys’ hand. The winning competitor had three-of-a-kind with fives, if that tells you anything about how little they knew about this game.

And here’s the kicker: the guy who won the poker game missed two shots, while the guy who lost never missed. So the result of the episode was that the better shooter had to go because he didn’t know the rules of poker. He thought the competition was testing his skills with a weapon but he now discovered he needed to know a card game, too.

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to writing, and I think it’s a trap that writers can fall into: changing the rules.

The obvious example of this is the Deus Ex Machina, where characters are in a situation where all seems lost and there’s no hope, and then a previously unknown force appears to save the day. Yes, the characters are saved and we have a happy ending, but that ending is ultimately unsatisfying because the author changed the rules.

The other side of this is changing the rules to restrict the characters and limit their abilities. My brother, Dan (a marvelous author), likes to complain about how Superman has been abused by various writers and screenwriters over the years: we all can list Superman’s superpowers, but the writers seem to forget about some of them when it’s convenient for the story. Why does he punch when he can shoot lasers from his eyes? Why can he fly up into space and listen for crimes down below, but still manage to be surprised by hidden traps and bad guys? And, most egregious, after the first Superman movie, where he can make the earth spin backwards to reverse time and bring someone back to life, does he ever allow bad things to happen ever again? He has an automatic do-over, a superpowered Mulligan, and we all know he can do it–so WHY DOESN’T HE DO IT ALL THE TIME?

There’s a maxim about writing endings that they must be surprising, yet inevitable. In other words, readers want the thrill of the twist, but we have to say “Oh, I totally should have seen that coming!” When we change the rules late in the game, there’s no way anything can be inevitable, because it has no foundation. We haven’t laid the groundwork, so it’s all new, and it’s unsatisfying.

So, what do you think? Have there ever been moments, in books or TV or movies, where you feel the writers changed the rules at the last second? Did it ruin it for you, or were you able to still enjoy the ending?

In his Great Movies column series, Roger Ebert said the following about the shark in Jaws:

In keeping the Great White offscreen, Spielberg was employing a strategy used by Alfred Hitchcock throughout his career. “A bomb is under the table, and it explodes: That is surprise,” said Hitchcock. “The bomb is under the table but it does not explode: That is suspense.” Spielberg leaves the shark under the table for most of the movie. And many of its manifestations in the later part of the film are at second hand: We don’t see the shark but the results of his actions. The payoff is one of the most effective thrillers ever made.

The shark, somewhere underwater, is pulling those yellow barrels.

A critic with The New York Times wrote:

It speaks well of this director’s gifts that some of the most frightening sequences in Jaws are those where we don’t even see the shark.

I’ve heard about the hidden shark a thousand times: in film classes, in writing workshops, in critique groups. Heck, I think I remember my high school English teacher talking about it.  The fact that you couldn’t see the shark made it all the more frightening; you’re not just afraid of a really big fish, you’re afraid of the unknown.

But here’s the the crazy part: contrary to popular thought–even Ebert quotes it wrong in his review–Steven Spielberg really really wanted to show the shark. A lot.

I watched a documentary last night (Jaws: The Inside Story), and an interview with Spielberg (and much of the rest of the crew) reveals how the shark was supposed to be in the very first scene. The shark was supposed to be everywhere.  They made five of them, each with different motorized capabilities–the movie was going to be Sharks On Parade.

And then the motorized sharks broke. They broke every single day, several times a day. And, with the myriad challenges of filming at sea, an hour waiting to fix a malfunctioning shark often meant the entire day was a waste.  The movie was getting increasingly over-budget and past its deadlines.  So this is when Spielberg turned to other options. According to his interview, it was mid-shoot, with his job on the line and Hollywood rumor mills talking about how he’d never make another movie ever again, that Spielberg thought: “What would Hitchcock do?”

The answer, of course, was to hide the shark. If you rarely saw it, then you rarely needed the animatronics to work properly.  In other words, the directorial genius of Spielberg was the result of an accident. It wasn’t what he planned, but he was able to take the accident and turn it into something amazing.

It made me think about my upcoming novel, Variant. I use both outlining and discovery writing when I draft a new novel: I outline the major events, usually with a sentence per chapter, and then freewrite the chapter. And, about one third of the way through the book one of my characters–a minor character–did something fascinating.  It wasn’t much, just a couple sentences, but it changed the nature of the character.

When my brother read the draft for the first time, he declared this character to be “by far the most interesting person in the story”, but the character was still minor.

When my book was rejected over and over, two editors mentioned that character specifically. One said, as he rejected the manuscript, that my plot-driven finale “just couldn’t compete with the likes of [this character].”  In other words, I had a really fascinating character in the book–the most fascinating character–who I was completely ignoring in favor of less interesting stuff.

So, after the second round of rejections, I rewrote the second half of the book, and I gave this character their due. They became one of the very biggest characters in the entire book, and, in my opinion, one of the best.  And the book is infinitely stronger because of it.  (And it ultimately sold because of that revision.)

The great Bob Ross (who I hope to one day look like) referred to errors as Happy Little Accidents, and insisted that they just made his paintings better.  I think that’s definitely true of writing, too. While there definitely is a point where we have to restrain ourselves and finalize the story and the characters, great things can happen when we follow unplanned “accidents”.

What about you? Have you ever had something unexpected happen in your writing and it turned out for the better?