I\u2019m thinking about what the difference is between an amazing major revelation late in a story (I\u2019ll call this a Big Reveal) and an annoying Surprise Twist Ending. Here are some of my thoughts.<\/p>\r\n
Some examples of good Big Reveals of the sort that I\u2019m thinking of (no specific spoilers here, but I suppose that even mentioning that there are BRs in these works is a sort of meta-spoiler):<\/p>\r\n
And yet, most of my above descriptions of the effects of Big Reveals seem to me like they could apply just as well to Surprise Twist Endings of the sort that I find annoying. For example, the \u201cit was all a dream\u201d STE is a major revelation that puts everything before it in a new light; and yet it\u2019s annoying. Likewise with STEs like \u201cit turns out that the people you\u2019ve been reading about aren\u2019t humans\u2014they\u2019re ants!\u201d And so on.<\/p>\r\n
So I\u2019m thinking about why I love Big Reveals but hate Surprise Twist Endings. Is there really a difference between them, or am I just applying different labels depending on whether I like the twist or not?<\/p>\r\n
I think I have at least part of an answer, but I\u2019m still working it out. But here\u2019s what I\u2019m thinking so far:<\/p>\r\n
The Turkey City Lexicon refers to an STE of the sort I dislike as a \u201cJar of Tang\u201d story. I don\u2019t like that term, but I agree with their description: \u201cAn entire pointless story contrived so the author can cry \u2018Fooled you!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n
And so my first approximation of the difference between a BR and a STE is whether fooling the reader is the point of the story or not.<\/p>\r\n
That is, if the story only exists as a way to fool the reader into thinking something different is going on than is really going on, that\u2019s generally a STE. But if there\u2019s something else going on in the story and the reveal furthers the story\u2019s other goals, that\u2019s generally a BR.<\/p>\r\n
But after some further thought, I came up with what I think is a better framing of a similar general idea:<\/p>\r\n
Does the revelation makes what came before more<\/em> interesting and compelling, or does it make what came before less<\/em> interesting and compelling? Or to put that another way: does the reveal deepen the story, or cheapen it? The former situation is generally a BR; the latter is generally a STE.<\/p>\r\n There are, of course, other factors. The skill with which the reveal is handled makes a difference, for example. And I would say that a lot of my reaction depends on whether I find the reveal dramatically satisfying or not, and whether or not the reveal is one that I\u2019ve seen many times before, and whether I saw it coming or not, and so on.<\/p>\r\n And the distinction isn\u2019t necessarily clear-cut; for example, I\u2019ve seen twists that in my opinion both deepen the preceding story and cheapen it.<\/p>\r\n And I\u2019m not sure how to categorize stories like O. Henry\u2019s \u201cThe Gift of the Magi<\/a>\u201d (thanks for bringing this up, Mary Anne) and Saki\u2019s \u201cThe Open Window<\/a>\u201d\u2014I would say that those stories\u2019 twists deepen the stories, but that may just be because I like those particular stories. I feel like both authors wrote other stories with STEs that I\u2019ve rolled my eyes at.<\/p>\r\n (I was going to suggest a distinction here between twists that come as surprises only to the protagonists (which I think are usually BRs) and twists that are surprises only to the audience (some of which are BRs and some of which are STEs); but some of my examples don\u2019t neatly fit into those categories, so I think this idea needs further polishing.)<\/p>\r\n \u2026And of course a lot of this is subjective. Some people might find the \u201cit turns out the characters are all ants!\u201d ending to be very dramatically satisfying, and might feel that it makes the preceding story more interesting. So one person\u2019s BR might be another\u2019s STE, and some people might not make that distinction at all.<\/p>\r\n I welcome further thoughts on these topics, but please try to avoid spoilers for any works you mention if possible; or if you need to include spoilers, then put spoiler warnings before them and make it easy for readers to avoid seeing the spoilers.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,44,28,31,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-movies","category-short-stories","category-television","category-writing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19195,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19194\/revisions\/19195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}