Story Writing 08: The *SPOILERS*

[SPOILER - A piece of information that divulges a surprise, such as a plot twist in a movie]

Defined at dictionary.com.

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This next step is focusing your attention to the biggest, juiciest cut of your story.  Now if you are like me, then you can’t make up a good story as you go, you must have some kind of plan going along.  There are some authors who can insert openings into the story for them to exploit much later on in the story and make it seem that they knew what would happen all along.  For me though, this has proven a difficult and complicated task.

The biggest impact of a story is the underlying, “wow, I did not see that coming” factor.  For instance, in a story about a man who escaped prison because he was falsely accused of mass murder, there might be moments when, while asleep or unconscious that we, the readers, are given subtle hints at his mental state while he’s tracking down the real mass murderer, when it comes to that point when it’s revealed that he is indeed the mass murderer, only under a different personality.

Mind you, its more fun reading that over a longer course because then it can almost become a “how did this happen?” moment where you’re thinking about several moments in the story that seem to obviously refer to him being the killer without directly stating it.  This is pretty much an absolute must for mystery stories, but it can still carry out a meaningful objective in stories with a greater plot that leaves the reader wanting to know what happened.

Now for me, the best way to have this plot on hand to dispense in tiny hints throughout the story (mind you I write science fiction and fantasy stories) is to essentially think of it in a way to make it seem more like a long-lived, pass along by ear generation after generation fable or legend.  Here, I essentially write the “underlying” story where the juiciest pieces are in the beginning and progress my way down from there to the bare hints.  What I can do then is keep it nearby to know what is going on while this “surface” story is going on and just insert it in backwards.  Given, this method might not be 100% usable to all underlying stories, I’ve found it particularly effective myself, since when I read what I’ve written for it, I can often think of it as a spoiler to everything in the story i plan to tell.