When does ambiguity work in a story? Well, the answer to that question can be interpreted a number of different ways…

Joking aside, there are some who really cannot stand ambiguity in any story. Everything must be tied up in a neat bundle with all questions answered. Of course, some stories need this. It would be foolish, for instance, if a genre whodunnit mystery did not identify the killer.

In other stories ambiguity becomes desirable. Interpreting events in a variety of ways can in itself be hugely satisfying. This is true of everything from EM Forster’s A Passage to India to Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. The latter introduces ambiguity in the finale, which is what seems to particularly irk those who like clear cut resolutions. But you’d have to be particularly obtuse to think Life of Pi would be a better novel without that final act casting doubt on what we’ve read up to that point.

Unreliable first person narrators are often a great device for introducing ambiguity into a story. Two first rate examples are Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Both narrators are secondary characters who share certain things in common. Within the context of their respective plots, both at first seem more clear-headed than the passionate, impetuous main protagonists, but their emotional timidity also causes them to arrive at conclusions that the reader realises are one-sided or inaccurate. Incidentally, this framing device makes it abundantly clear that neither is really a love story (a mistaken interpretation often applied to adaptations of both books).

When novels or short stories are adapted for cinema, sometimes the writer and director will differ on the correct interpretation where there is ambiguity in the plot. For example, events in 2001: A Space Odyssey can be attributed to that of a Supreme Being – an interpretation Stanley Kubrick was quite happy to make available to viewers – whereas Arthur C Clarke who wrote the original short story had very strong views on the non existence of God.

Another recent example is Swedish horror film Let the Right One In. Apparently the director Tomas Alfredson and the novel’s author John Ajvide Lindqvist completely disagreed on how the ending should be interpreted. I have had a number of intense discussions with people who have seen that film, and we have come up with at least another two possible readings of the story.

My point is these books and films are all the better for provoking such a wide range of differing interpretations. Sometimes different possibilities are better than a clear cut explanation, and on rare occasions questions are better than answers. For example what on earth the monumentally eerie Picnic at Hanging Rock is really about (both the book and the film) is beyond me. But boy is it fun proposing theories.

From my own work, two novels particularly stand out as examples of stories where I have deliberately introduced ambiguity in the finales: Uncle Flynn, which I have self-published, and Children of the Folded Valley, which will either be self-published soon or… well, watch this space.

The finale of Uncle Flynn can be taken three separate ways, and people often ask me which is the correct interpretation. I always refuse to answer. I have a clear notion in my own mind of what the truth is, but I wanted to allow the reader to bring their own experience and beliefs to the final act as I think the story is more satisfying that way.

So far people who have read it always agree. Well, almost always.

Last week I wrote in this blog about sticking to genre formulas in stories, and how that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I explored the principle of giving readers what they want, but not necessarily the way they expect it; of unpredictability within a formula.

However in this blog I’m going to examine when it is a good idea to break from formulas and honoured genre conventions. When should a writer do this?

A good general principle is that a genre rule or convention should only be broken for one reason: to replace it with something better. It’s no good writing a genre novel that deliberately breaks rules for no particular reason, just for the sake of being unpredictable. A plot turn or twist that makes no narrative sense will stop a good story in its tracks.

On the other hand, there may occasionally be good reasons to break with tradition. Here are two examples from the world of film where formula conventions have been broken with good reason. SPOILERS AHEAD for Chinatown and The Pledge.

Chinatown. In Roman Polanski’s noir masterpiece, the villain Noah Cross gets away with his crimes due to the sheer level of corruption amongst local police, businessmen and politicians. The film was made in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal (wherein President Nixon was not prosecuted for his crimes). Because the American population was still reeling from that scandal they could well believe that a character like Cross would be able to commit incest and murder and get away with it. Thus, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne decided to break the noir formula that normally saw the villain punished to reflect the culture they were living in. Their gamble paid off, and the film still stands up brilliantly today.

The Pledge. This underrated drama, which like Chinatown also stars Jack Nicholson, sees him play a soon to retire policeman who swears “on his salvation” to find the killer of a young girl. Act one plays out like any number of thrillers, but ends in Nicolson retiring. The rest of the film details his increasing obsession with finding the killer, to the detriment of others whose lives he endangers. It gradually becomes clear that this isn’t a thriller at all, but a study in obsession. Thus, in the end, the identity of the killer is an irrelevancy and never revealed – again breaking a convention with good reason.

When writing novels, sometimes formulas and conventions include a particular prose style, which can on occasion be broken with good reason. Writing in the present tense seems a hot topic at present, particularly with first person narratives. Sometimes writing in a mixture of past and present tense is appropriate, as I do in Children of the Folded Valley – a novel I am hoping will emerge soon. The reason is that the story is told as a first person narrative, with the flashbacks in the past tense, and the stuff in the present in, well, the present tense.

At other times content boundaries are crossed in interesting, sometimes shocking ways. For example children’s books don’t generally contain strong language, but Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time contains a number of very strong expletives that are entirely appropriate in the context of the novel, whose protagonist is a fifteen year old with Asperger’s Syndrome. He has an obsessive interest in mathematics and a compulsion to report the truth one hundred percent accurately, hence his transcription of the afore-mentioned swear words verbatim.

To reiterate, whatever the reason for breaking formula and convention in writing, it should always be done to replace the existing rule with something better.

It’s a criticism leveled all the time at writers of genre fiction: the story was formulaic. But is it so bad to know what to expect from a certain kind of story?

People sometimes confuse “formulaic” with “predictable”. Predictability is bad, but having genre expectations met is another matter entirely.

For example, in an Agatha Christie murder mystery one expects a murder with a fiendishly clever solution. However, if you can predict the murderer before the dénouement much of the fun is lost. The formula isn’t what’s wrong with the story, predictability is the problem.

I have long held the view that it is important, especially in genre fiction, to give the reader what they want but not the way they expect it. Genre writers understand this and write accordingly. Agatha Christie’s novels and much of crime fiction is hugely formulaic, but it is also very difficult to write well and like most genre fiction becomes an easy target for literary snobs.

To take an example from another genre, consider JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The first six books follow a very set formula. Darkly comical incidents at the Dursleys followed by a trip to Diagon Alley, the Hogwarts Express, magical classes, a new Defence Against the Dark Arts Teacher, Quidditch and so on with a big central mystery forming the main plot. Yet each novel felt fresh, unpredictable and fun. It was only when Rowling diverted from the formula in book seven with all that moping about in the tent looking for Horcruxes that I began to get somewhat fed up. Thankfully they did get back to Hogwarts eventually, but my goodness me did I miss the formula in that book.

Whilst I was at University, one of our lecturers asked our writing group what we thought of Mills and Boon. We all answered somewhat predictably and snobbishly that we thought they were rubbish, so he gave us a challenge: write a Mills and Boon story. None of us could do it. His point? Writing formulaic genre fiction – especially in areas traditionally considered lowbrow – is very, very difficult.

I am not at all ashamed to admit that George goes to Titan, my sequel to George goes to Mars, follows a similar formula to that first book. And why shouldn’t it? As long as I can maintain unpredictability whilst meeting reader expectations, it is a formula worth sticking to – or so those who have read the books tell me.

Because I stuck to formula, George goes to Titan did not need a great deal of rewriting from first to final draft as far as the basic plot was concerned. By contrast, I am presently engaged in a page one rewrite of the second book in a trilogy of novels I wrote some years ago. The reason? In my initial draft I foolishly decided to completely abandon the formula of the first installment. I was determined to do something new and different, but that isn’t always a good idea with a sequel. One has to remember what readers liked about the original and try to build on that. By writing something so utterly different to the first part of the trilogy I effectively took out everything that readers liked about the story in the first place.

One lives and learns, and that is why I am rewriting the entire second and a good chunk of the third books in this particular series. The lesson is clear: whilst predictability is to be avoided, formulas are there for a reason. The only reason to break a good set of rules is to replace them with something better (a point I will expound on in a later post). If you can’t do that, stick with what you have, but present the new material in a fresh, interesting and unexpected way within the confines of the formula.

UPDATE: Here’s another good example: Never Let Me Go. This intriguing, “light” science fiction novel by Kazuo Ishiguro has a fascinating premise which I won’t spoil. It belongs to a particular future shock subgenre with a long history dating back to Orwell’s seminal 1984. But for a story of this nature to be truly satisfying, it really needs to culminate in some act of rebellion (which can either succeed or fail). The protagonists in Never Let Me Go simply accept their fate, which may be realistic and believable, but it isn’t satisfying.