NOTE: The following is a revised version of an article originally published on Medium, where I’ve published a number of writing advice pieces.
In August 2020, I took voluntary redundancy from a staff job I’d had in television for over twenty years. It was a difficult decision, made in an exceptionally tough set of circumstances, complicated by a global pandemic. Nonetheless, it was the right time to leave for all sorts of reasons. Besides, it gave me the shove I needed to make the leap into pursuing a career as a full-time writer, something I’d wanted to do for many years.
However, I had worked on writing as a side project for over twenty years. I wrote film reviews, short stories, and novels, as well as blog articles on books, writing, television, and promotional pieces for my stories. Whilst holding down a demanding full-time job that involved running a department with staff in multiple timezones, I also managed to self-publish several novels, and had three traditionally published by a small US-based indie publisher.
The question I got asked again and again was: How did I find time for writing? People believed I had a secret that enabled me to live a smugly insufferable life of perfect productivity that also made time for everything and everyone. Not true. There is no magic formula to juggling the pressures of writing and a day job. I cannot manipulate the space-time continuum and create extra writing hours. My existence was a deliberate, calculated burning of the candle at both ends that may well not work for everyone. That said, here’s the honest truth of how I did it.
Make time for what is important to you
No matter how busy they claim to be, people always make time for what is important to them. Those who were surprised I had time to write commented from the perspective of their own lives, which were often full of social engagements. By contrast, I carefully stripped out everything non-essential that ate into writing time. I prioritised my wife and children, and any other spare time went into writing or visiting the cinema.
Speaking of cinemas, when my wife was pregnant with our first, a colleague taunted me, saying that I’d no longer be able to go. When I told my wife what he said, she laughed and said: “Of course you’ll still go to the cinema, because it’s important to you. It isn’t important to him, which is why he stopped going.” She was proved correct. My regular cinemagoing continued, although for a while I did go at more offbeat times. But I made time for what was important to me.
The same was true of my writing. That meant consistently getting up early at weekends to write, staying up late in the evenings, and obsessively grabbing whatever time I could to pen a few more sentences. Juggling the demands of the children often meant writing at unusual times, but the point is I did write in those times, rather than spend hours surfing the internet.
Lunch break writing
I am sure several writers on this platform juggle writing and day jobs. I’ve encountered many who write during their lunch breaks, and this is exactly what I did for the better part of two decades. The key is consistency. One hour per day may not seem like much, but knowing I had limited time gave me extraordinary focus. I would typically thunder through a thousand words per lunch break. Add to that at least two thousand words per day on weekends, and on a particularly productive streak, I could write a novel in two to three months (not counting the planning, research, character outlines, etc prior to starting the first draft).
Yes, I appreciate this might not be an option for those who have micromanaging middle management bosses breathing down their necks, or those unable to find a place to sit and write in their lunch breaks. However, I was fortunate in this respect. I could easily get up with my personal laptop, squirrel myself away, and spend a concerted hour writing my novels. Sometimes I may have gone a little over that time, but on the other hand, during busy periods it could prove necessary to work through lunch, so it all balanced out. Again, the important thing was consistency. Needless to say, I wasn’t known as a sociable person at work, which brings me to my next point.
Balance is overrated
I was often asked how I managed to write and maintain a healthy balance in life. I didn’t, because I consider balance overrated. Nothing great was ever achieved by balance. Besides, I didn’t feel as though I had a choice. The voices in my head clamoured for attention, and the only way to silence them was to get them on paper. To do that required significant sacrifices. For about the first fifteen years of my married life, I didn’t really have close friends, as I didn’t make time for them. That sounds harsh, but my writing came first.
Work colleagues and acquaintances often urged me to “broaden my horizons”, suggesting I take an interest in other hobbies and activities. I didn’t — not because I wasn’t interested or didn’t want to, but because I was more interested in writing consistently and effectively. Sometimes this sacrifice was painful. You could argue it was unwise or unhealthy, and from a logical perspective, I would agree. But ultimately, it yielded a large body of work alongside instructive and valuable learning experiences. If I had been “balanced”, I would have pursued other hobbies, joined church groups, gone to the pub with friends, and spent far more time watching television and surfing the internet.
Final thoughts
In conclusion, many factors came into play with my obsessive pursuit of writing whilst holding down a full-time job. Frankly, I’m amazed I managed to do so for as long as I did, as I imagine exhaustion would have set in sooner or later. It also helped that my obsessive and introverted personality had a side effect of allowing immense focus. Not everyone is like me, and my life is not a formula. I certainly don’t recommend following my example for the sake of lunatic productivity levels. What I will say is that some of my experience illuminates how writing and working full-time is possible, depending on how much one is prepared to sacrifice, and for how long.
NOTE: The following is a revised version of an article originally published on Medium, where I’ve published a number of writing advice pieces.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Born on the Fourth of July, Rain Man, Schindler’s List, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Treasure Island, Five on a Treasure Island, Moonfleet, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Breaking Bad, The Witch, The Wizard of Oz, Romeo and Juliet, The Catcher in the Rye, Macbeth, and The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Alanis Morissette famously complained that rain on a wedding day was ironic, when in fact that was just bad luck. However, she isn’t alone in her confusion regarding the nature of irony. Despite the standard definitions of verbal, situational, and dramatic irony, it’s a tricky concept to explain, and even trickier to consciously nail in fiction (some of the ironies in my own novels have been happy accidents). However, ironic stories are extremely satisfying to read or watch when the concept is properly understood.
One method of crafting an ironic story is to create a central protagonist with a convincingly ironic character arc. For the best results, I recommend first figuring out where you want your character to end up, and working backward from that point, weaving irony into the narrative. For example, a rich man systematically bankrupts himself to save lives. What ironic events would bring him to that point? I’ll come back to this question in a moment.
Ironic character arcs are best defined in two ways: Firstly, by what they aren’t, and secondly, because irony is by nature slippery and difficult to define, with examples. Irony isn’t sarcasm, bad luck, coincidence, or ambiguity, as some have claimed. A sarcastic character isn’t ironic for that reason. Simple bad luck or coincidence does not provide the deep rush of profound insight inherent in an ironic story. There is nothing ambiguous about irony either. Ironic character arcs communicate a crystal-clear truth to the reader or viewer, leaving them in no doubt. Furthermore, they typically come in two forms: redemptive and punitive.
Redemptive ironic character arcs
Redemptive ironic character arcs can be roughly defined this way: The protagonist pursues goals initially esteemed and greatly valued, perhaps obsessively. These goals can be financial, career, or love life-related. They can be politically, socially, or spiritually motivated. However, the compulsion to realise these goals drives the protagonist to the verge of despair and self-destruction.
Any intelligent audience is aware of the character flaws that drive the protagonist on their obsessive quest because they have the self-awareness and objectivity the protagonist lacks. However, in the redemptive ironic character arc, the protagonist eventually experiences an epiphany that brings about profound change, wherein they have a moment of clarity, look at themselves in the mirror, disregard their original goals, and achieve something far greater.
Films like Born on the Fourth of July, Rain Man, and Schindler’s List are good examples of this storytelling principle. Ron Kovic begins Born on the Fourth of July as a gung-ho Vietnam War recruit but is wounded in combat and paralysed from the mid-chest down. He returns home, still driven by patriotic fervour, but gradually changes his views as he degenerates into political disillusionment, self-pity, and rage. Eventually, after PTSD moves him to confess to a friendly fire incident, Kovic emerges as an anti-war activist; a role ironically requiring the same courage he displayed on the battlefield, as protestors clash with riot police.
Tom Cruise is excellent as Kovic and equally excellent as Charlie Babbit in Rain Man, where he plays a ruthless, selfish car dealer. Following the death of his estranged father, Charlie is furious to discover his inheritance goes to his autistic brother Raymond; a brother he never knew he had. Charlie in effect kidnaps Raymond and takes him on a road trip, hoping to leverage a deal with the lawyers so he’ll get a chunk of the inheritance. But as time passes, Charlie bonds with his long-lost brother, and by the time the lawyers are ready to make a deal, he no longer wants to be parted from him. The money ceases to matter to him. He wants the relationship with his brother instead.
Schindler’s List features another redemptive ironic character arc, one alluded to in my introduction: A rich man systematically bankrupts himself to save lives. What ironic events would bring him to that point? Oscar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party and a profiteer of slave labor, yet a crisis of conscience at the treatment of the Jews in wartime Poland caused him to systematically bankrupt himself to save as many lives as he could. His original goals are sacrificed in favor of a greater moral imperative, giving him a redemptive ironic character arc.
Treasure hunt narratives
Another good example of the redemptive ironic character arc is often found in treasure hunt stories. The protagonist obsessively searches for treasure, yet ultimately the greatest treasure is not the object of the quest, but something else more important gained along the way. The treasure turns out to be a side benefit to a greater reward ultimately received by the protagonist, or in some cases, the protagonist does not retain the treasure at all.
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Henry Jones Sr spends his life in an obsessive pursuit of the Holy Grail. For forty years he meticulously chronicles endless clues, to the exclusion of all else, including his son. As a result, Indy is estranged from his father for years. But when the Nazis attempt to uncover the Grail and Henry is kidnapped, Indy rescues him. They try to find the Grail before the Nazis, and in the process, both gain something far greater: The restoration of their relationship.
Other famous treasure hunt stories follow this pattern, including Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, probably the most famous treasure hunt story of all time. Jim is excited by his quest, but his relationships with the other colourful characters, especially Long John Silver, are what drives his character arc. Yes, the heroes ultimately keep the pirate treasure, but Jim’s rite of passage to manhood is the more interesting aspect of the tale, and his experiences are his greatest gain.
Another example is Enid Blyton’s Five on a Treasure Island. It features a treasure discovering narrative that rescues George’s parents from pseudo-middle-class poverty, so they can send George to a posh private school. This rather laughable call on reader sympathy and its subsequent resolution is not the most satisfying upshot for George and the other children. Instead, George’s character arc from an angry, distrustful loner to someone with close friends is the ultimate reward for her endeavours.
Punitive ironic character arcs
By contrast, punitive ironic character arcs often involve falls from grace. For example, sticking with treasure hunt narratives, an inverted principle comes into play when such tales have a darker, more tragic side, especially when characters become unduly obsessed with the treasure they seek. Fred Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or Elzevir in Moonfleet are good examples. It can be equally satisfying to see these characters obtain the treasure (often temporarily) whilst losing everything that actually matters.
The punitive ironic character arc can be roughly defined this way: The protagonist pursues what they believe is a noble goal through dubious means, unaware of their own flaws and hypocrisy. They increasingly believe their self-justification and lies, and this lack of self-awareness makes them vulnerable to the very kinds of behaviour and action they condemn.
Again, these stories can centre around financial gain, career, love life, politics, criminality, religion, and so forth. At a critical point, the protagonist reaches a similar crisis that mirrors that in the redemptive ironic arc, only this time rather than pull back from the abyss, they tip over the edge, committing acts that directly contradict the very values they profess.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth is an obvious example. Macbeth’s actions are set in motion as a result of his consultation with the witches. Had he disregarded their prophecies, his ambitions and desires would have been fulfilled in any case, since King Duncan already favoured him, naming him Thane of Cawdor and heir to the throne. Instead, the famous bloody tragedy ensues.
Television series Breaking Bad is another excellent case in point. Walter White’s descent into evil is bone-chilling and darkly funny. A law-abiding citizen fatally flawed by pride, Walter starts secretly manufacturing crystal meth to pay medical bills and provide for his family after a cancer diagnosis. However, the audience recognizes something Walter takes five series to admit: he’s doing this for his own gratification. Walter gradually deteriorates into full-blown megalomania, allowing for a rich vein of irony in his character arc as hospital bills become irrelevant, and he loses the family he originally wanted to support.
Horror film The Witch provides another fascinating example of punitive irony. A family of Puritan settlers too uptight for regular Puritans believes they are being targeted by a witch in the forest. The father is completely obsessed with the idea of sin, and forces strict religious ideology on his charges, especially his teenage daughter, who he comes to believe is a witch. As the hysteria escalates, the daughter, who had no intention of becoming a witch, ends up becoming a witch, demonstrating the ironic truth that the more religious people are obsessed with their ideas of sinfulness, the more likely they are to manifest it. One only has to look at the various scandals in the church for evidence.
Conclusion: Irony adds value
In conclusion, embracing irony in fiction is difficult but worthwhile, especially when writing a protagonist with an ironic character arc. You will probably find multiple methods to organically evolve ironic themes as you plan the narrative, and even more, in the writing process itself. For example irony in the plotting, will make any story sparkle. The fearsome wizard in The Wizard of Oz turning out to be a fraud is a superb ironic plot turn. The tragic irony at the end of Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo commits suicide thinking Juliet is already dead, is another powerful example.
At the very least, irony can add humour. Just look at Holden Caufield’s flippant attitude to the tumour in his brain in The Catcher in the Rye. Or the ridiculous intergalactic bureaucracy in The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, wherein Arthur Dent protests that his house is due to be destroyed to make way for a bypass. He is greeted with bureaucratic indifference by the construction foreman: “The plans have been on display in the council for over a year. It’s not my fault you don’t take an interest in civic affairs.” Shortly afterward, Earth discovers it is to be destroyed by the Vogons to make way from an intergalactic bypass. The Vogon Commander states the plans have been on display at Alpha Centauri for over a year, and it isn’t his fault if humans don’t take an interest in civic affairs.
On that amusing note, as you write, may the irony be ever in your favour.
NOTE: The following is a revised version of an article originally published on Medium, where I’ve published a number of writing advice pieces.
Warning: Contains spoilers for The Witches.
One of my as-yet-unpublished children’s novels is a very dark fairy tale. A horror story for children. The scariness envelope is deliberately pushed to the absolute limit.
I was intrigued to note the reaction from adult beta readers versus child beta readers. The adult readers were horrified, greatly disturbed by some of the imagery and events in my story, and insisted it was far too scary. By contrast, the child readers loved it, but also made some merciless criticisms, including that it wasn’t scary enough!
Writing children’s fiction is exceptionally tricky. My children’s novels are pitched at the Harry Potter/Alex Rider demographic, so they aren’t aimed at the very young. However, it becomes even trickier when generating a gripping, satisfying narrative around darker subject matter. When done well, it will engage child readers, and hopefully grown-up readers too — even if they find it more alarming.
Here are four important principles I follow in crafting dark children’s tales.
Don’t condescend
The worst thing to do to children is to talk down to them. Don’t be afraid of strategically including more advanced vocabulary. To quote JRR Tolkien:
“A good vocabulary is not acquired by readingbooks written according to some notion of the vocabularyof one’s age group. It comes from reading books above one.” — JRR Tolkien, The Letters of JRR Tolkien.
This is a principle that many modern schoolteachers seem unable to grasp, to my immense frustration. They have often refused permission for my children to read certain books considered above their reading level. When my children returned home and informed me of this, I would present them with my own copies. If they find words they don’t understand, they ask or look them up. Children should never be discouraged from reading above their ability level.
No subject matter off-limits
On a related note, I don’t believe any subject matter is inappropriate for children. It is the treatment of the subject, not the subject itself, that is important. Children’s fiction can be every bit as incisive, incendiary, challenging, and thought-provoking as grown-up fiction. Often more so.
Difficult subjects covered in children’s fiction include terminal illness and repressed guilt (A Monster Calls), racism and prejudice (Ghost Boys, To Kill a Mockingbird), the Holocaust (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Maus), autism (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), wrongful imprisonment (Holes), corrupt religious authority, abuse of power, and sexual awakening (His Dark Materials). Countless great children’s novels deal with death (Charlotte’s Web, Watership Down, the Harry Potter novels). The novels of Jacqueline Wilson cover everything from mental illness to adoption and divorce.
In the case of my own aforementioned novel, the plot concerns a thirteen-year-old girl in denial over her parent’s marital crisis, after she overhears a phone call between her father and what could be his mistress. Within the framework of the horror/dark fairy tale genre, the scary, supernatural events that ensue provide the protagonist a cathartic character arc that (I hope) resonates with any child of divorced parents, helping them come to terms with their situation.
Include material that isn’t necessarily PG-rated
When the subject matter calls for it, don’t be afraid to step outside the “PG-rated” envelope. Edgier content can be fully justified depending on the genre and context. For example, you might think the f-word has no place in a children’s story, but The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time proves otherwise. The placement of those words is hugely important regarding the consistent voice and character of Mark Haddon’s protagonist, Christopher Boone (and also the adults in that story who try not to swear, but are driven to out of frustration due to Christopher’s actions).
Some of the greatest children’s stories, from the Grimm fairy tales to the Goosebumps series, are scary and gruesome. In my experience, children are morbidly curious about gore, love to be scared, and should be allowed to explore frightening stories, rather than have their curiosity squashed. Yes, temperament, personality, and upbringing are complicating factors, but on the whole, I believe scary stories are good for children’s mental health. They are important childhood rites of passage.
Sometimes endings that are dark and cruel to adults make complete sense to children. As a child, I remember thinking the ending of Roald Dahl’s The Witches was perfect. After being turned into a mouse, the unnamed boy protagonist wonders how long mice live. After discovering it’s about as long as his beloved grandmother will live, he is quite content, as she is his only surviving family member after his parents died in a car crash, and he doesn’t want to outlive her in any case. This downbeat, melancholy conclusion only became more upsetting to me with age.
Sometimes a children’s story needs to be not merely scary but flat-out terrifying. Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is a case in point. The nightmarish buttons-for-eyes parallel universe is a vital crucible through which Coraline must journey, as she gradually learns to appreciate her own dull but decent parents. This is a moral lesson implied, rather than stated outright, which brings me to my final point.
Don’t preach
Editorialising, preaching, or consciously grinding the message axe is to be avoided in any work of fiction. In a children’s novel, multiply that factor by ten. The moment children detect a sanctimonious, finger-wagging authority figure telling them what they must do or think, for their own good, they switch off.
That isn’t to say moral messages can’t be included in children’s fiction. Indeed, certain children’s stories are practically hellfire sermons (Pinocchio for instance). But these messages must be inherent in the story, as in the example of Coraline.
There are rare exceptions. Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a good example, as it features spoiled children getting their just desserts, accompanied by amusing Oompa Loompa rhymes. But unless you have Dahl’s outrageous wit, inserting a po-faced moral message into a children’s novel is a guaranteed way to kill a potentially good story.
Conclusion: Remember the delirious thrill of being scared as a child
As a child, after reading The BFG, I had nightmares about giants snatching me from my bed and eating me alive. Yet I read it again and again and absolutely loved it. I was also thrilled by many other scary novels and movies (PG-rated films in those days could be a far more frightening experience, as anyone who saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at the cinema as a child will tell you).
Whilst writing scary stories for children, it is important to return to that mindset, when being scared was so much fun, even if it meant nightmares. It is also important to approach such writing with a smidgen of subversive glee, knowing you may incur the wrath of disapproving parents. But write them anyway. To quote Marty McFly in Back to the Future: “Your kids are gonna love it.”
NOTE: The following is a revised version of an article originally published on Medium, where I’ve published a number of writing advice pieces.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Legends of the Fall, The Godfather Part II, Oedipus Rex, The Remains of the Day, The Illusionist, The Empire Strikes Back, and Blackadder Goes Forth.
Several years ago, I went to see Legends of the Fall. The film featured fine direction from Edward Zwick, an A-list cast that included Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Julia Ormond, and Henry Thomas, and gorgeous, Oscar-winning cinematography courtesy of John Toll. I hoped for a sweeping, epic tear-jerker, but it turned out to be one of the most unsuccessful attempts at tragedy I have ever seen on film. The screenplay features poorly motivated, unconvincing characters, who then have tragedy upon tragedy piled upon them. The ludicrous escalation of misfortune becomes numbing, and eventually even funny.
Throughout the film, I was acutely aware of the audience’s emotional response. The first great tragedy occurs with the death of Henry Thomas’s character in World War I. Audience reaction: Sombre silence, but no-one was particularly upset, as we didn’t have a handle on who he was enough to miss him.
This was merely the first act. Another tragedy occurred shortly afterward. Then another, and another, until I heard disgruntled snorts from fellow patrons. Towards the end, when the character played by Anthony Hopkins has a debilitating stroke, the audience finally erupted with derisive laughter. Why? Because we’d been bludgeoned over the head with an unrelenting stream of big tragic events, to the point where it was absurd to expect us to be upset any longer.
Legends of the Fall contained none of the counterpoint vital to generating a satisfying tragic tale, comedic or otherwise. Before explaining how and why such counterpoint works, I am going to explore two different tragedies, and why counterpoint is essential to the success of all tragic writing. This applies whether they are based on irony, fatal character flaws, circumstantial disaster, or other traditional English literature definitions.
The Tragedy Spectrum
“I used to be partial to tragedy in my youth, until experience taught me life was tragic enough without my having to write about it.” — Amon, Clash of the Titans.
I cite the above quotation not because I agree with it (although I share the sentiment to a degree), but because it hints at the two kinds of tragedy, we invariably encounter in stories. If it is your ambition to write impactful, meaningful, convincing tragic drama, whether for stage, television, film or in prose, you must first decide what kind of tragedy you wish to write. I have devised what I term the Tragedy Spectrum.
Melodramatic Tragedy
At one end of the spectrum, we have what I loosely term “melodramatic tragedy”. This deals with the accidentally killing-one’s-father, marrying-one’s-mother, and gouging-one’s-eyes-out kind of tragedy. It is big, melodramatic, and often overheated. Not that it can’t be interesting, convincing, and moving. Sometimes a blunt instrument is the most effective tool, but it has to be well deployed. With Legends of the Fall, it was not.
However, with Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex (flippantly alluded to above), it works. It also works in everything from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, to great novels including Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Many films also feature successful uses of melodramatic tragedy, including Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge.
These narratives feature large-scale tragedies that wear their hearts on their sleeves, attempting to make the biggest potential impact on the audience. Whether Hamlet’s bloody vengeance, resulting in the deaths of most of the key characters, or King Arthur’s tragic fall at the hands of his bastard son Mordred, or Michael Corleone deciding to murder his own brother, these stories exist squarely at the melodramatic end of the scale.
This kind of tragedy we are mercifully unlikely to experience. Most of us aren’t destined to unknowingly murder our fathers, sleep with our mothers, and gouge our eyes out. Nor are we likely to discover our uncle has murdered our father, undertaking procrastinating vengeance that winds up with the deaths of our entire family, whilst others around us go insane and commit suicide for good measure. Nor are we likely to become the head of a mafia organisation and commit fratricide to consolidate our power. These kinds of tragedies, when well-written, make for a gripping, dramatic story we can enjoy from a safe distance, knowing it is exceptionally unlikely we will one day find ourselves in the protagonist’s shoes.
Private Tragedy
At the other end of the spectrum, we have what I call “private tragedy”. This deals with more intimate, everyday, small-scale heartbreak and loss. As Henry David Thoreau famously put it: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation”. These tragedies rarely involve lurid sexual sins, gruesome revenge, and Grand Guignol body counts. But they are quietly devastating to those concerned. This kind of tragedy we are likelier to or inevitably will experience; the tragedy of small, mundane, seemingly insignificant events that only spell despair for the person or people directly involved.
Quiet desperation narratives include Susan Hill’s sublime collection of short stories A Bit of Singing and Dancing. Or novels such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, David Nicholl’s One Day, and films including Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist, Yojiro Takita’s Departures, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, and Marc Foster’s Finding Neverland.
The Remains of the Day is about the tragedy of wasted lives. Butler Stevens misses his opportunity for happiness with housekeeper Miss Kenton, out of misguided loyalty to an equally misguided Nazi appeasing master. The gradual realisation of the appalling personal cost to himself unfolds throughout the narrative, which is told in flashback.
The Illusionist is interesting because it taps into tragedy all inevitably experience: Wistful nostalgia at the passing of an era. The music hall magician in that film finds himself increasingly upstaged by the rise of rock bands in the late 1950s. Along with other music hall acts, he gradually becomes obsolete. An achingly sad tale.
Counterpoint and Humour
One of the most important narrative techniques when writing any fiction is to use counterpoint. The best writing emphasises conflict, contrast, differing views, and opposing ideas. To write tragedy convincingly, there must be something tugging against it. Some optimism. A note of hope. Regardless of how relentless and miserable real life may be, it often contains moments of absurd humour. To deny humour a place in a tragedy is to deny reality, which is why a story like Legends of the Fall rings hollow.
The Illusionist works because the magician is accompanied by a naïve assistant girl who believes his magic is real. Her innocent beliefs are destined to be shattered, but her own coming-of-age, culminating in her attracting the attention of a young man, shows a happy future. This subplot provides an undercurrent of optimism amid the melancholia of the main plot.
The devastating heartbreak at the core of The Remains of the Day would be too much to bear if it weren’t for the gentle humour in the story, regarding Stevens’s hilarious fastidious, uptight character. One moment where he is instructed to convey the facts of life to his master’s godson is hilarious. Yet throughout the narrative, audience response to the absurd repression of Stevens’s character gradually moves from laughter to tears.
Hamlet has several amusing and witty subplots; for instance, the bumbling pompousness of Polonius, who seems unable to take his own advice (“Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice”). Wuthering Heights gains much tragic power because it is told through the eyes of the unreliable narrator Mr. Lockwood, whose slightly comical emotional timidity stands in stark contrast to the raging passions of the main protagonists. F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby pulls off a similar trick.
Baz Luhrmann drenches Moulin Rouge in surreal, outrageous humour, making the final tragic loss even more potent. The Godfather Part II is a sombre, brooding film, but it finds time for upbeat and comedic moments, particularly in the flashback sections to the young Vito Corleone in early 20th Century New York (the carpet theft, for instance).
The Empire Strikes Back is generally regarded as the finest Star Wars film, yet it is also one of the darkest and most downbeat. Luke Skywalker struggles not just against external evil, but the evil in himself, as revealed in the terrible secret of the Skywalker family line. Han Solo ends up frozen in carbonite, with possibilities of unfreezing parole looking increasingly unlikely as he’s spirited off to Jabba the Hutt. Our heroes don’t win. They merely survive, by the skin of their teeth, to fight another day. All of which is leavened by the hilarious, screwball comedy of the Han/Leia romance (“Would it help if I got out and pushed?”).
Even something as serious as Schindler’s List has funny moments peppered amid the horrific events. Scenes such as Schindler’s secretary montage, to his darkly comic asides with Nazi bureaucrats (“I think I can guarantee you’ll both be in Southern Russia before the end of the week”), makes the appalling tragedy even more believable and powerful. No one would be foolish enough to describe Schindler’s List as funny, but these tiny moments provide important glimmers of humanity amid one of the darkest chapters in humanity’s history.
A superb example of comedy as a counterpoint to tragedy occurs in the TV series Blackadder Goes Forth. After six hilarious episodes satirising the absurdity of the trenches of World War I, the principal characters meet their deaths in a hail of machine-gun bullets after they are ordered to advance. Their slow-motion, doomed attempt to cross no-man’s-land dissolves into a quiet field of poppies; one of the most shattering television finales I have ever seen. As a testament to the horrifying tragedy of the First World War, it leaves Legends of the Fall in the dust.
Conclusion
I expect some of you are thinking tragedy in life isn’t funny. I don’t wish to argue with anyone’s personal experience, but rendering tragedy in a satisfying narrative is a different matter. Besides, my experience is that even the most tragic real-life situations can contain moments of dark comedy. For example, at my father’s funeral, I experienced a farcical “shoe malfunction” that would have had my father in stitches. Such real-life experiences have only underlined my belief in the storytelling counterpoint principle.
Deliberately omitting humour from tragedy makes for a one-note tale that is depressing for all the wrong reasons, especially if said tale comprises little more than the repetition of endless tragedy. Such stories actually end up becoming unintentionally comic because they are so absurd, as the audience reaction I witnessed to Legends of the Fall shows. A tragic story that uses counterpoint judiciously and wisely, especially comedic counterpoint, will win over even the most tragedy-averse viewer or reader. My point boils down to this simple takeaway: If you make an audience laugh at your character, they will like them. Therefore, they will feel for them when you place them in tragic situations.
NOTE: The following is a revised version of an article originally published on Medium, where I’ve published a number of writing advice pieces.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Planet of the Apes, One Day, Dead Poets Society, Rebecca, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 24 series 2, Death on the Nile, and The Sixth Sense.
Big story twists can be brilliant or dreadful, depending on the skill of the writer. Many a budding screenwriter or novelist would love to pull off a gasp-inducing twist of The Sixth Sense proportions, but doing so in a manner that feels organic, plausible, and above all inevitable is extremely difficult. However, it is not impossible.
Successful big twists can be intellectually thrilling and emotionally exhilarating; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Usual Suspects, and Memento are examples of the former, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, and The Empire Strikes Back the latter. Some are a combination: Snape’s true allegiance in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for instance. The big reveals at the end of Les Diaboliques, Planet of the Apes, and The Sixth Sense generate tremendous cerebral and emotional pleasure, whilst the latter even operates on a spiritual level.
Conversely, a bad plot twist feels bolted on, gratuitous, and irritating. How many times have you encountered a film or novel with a promising plot, only to be sideswiped by a random, contrived plot twist that seems to have gate-crashed from another story? Ambushing an audience with ill-conceived, implausible, shock tactic twists only serve to undermine intellectual or emotional engagement. The big twist ending cannot seem tacked-on as an afterthought. It must be an essential final component.
Twist versus Unexpected Plot Turn
To avoid confusion, it is important to define a plot twist. I do not mean an unexpected plot turn, which is slightly different. In an unexpected plot turn, the story may veer off in a new and unforeseen direction, but it does not mean earlier events are viewed in a different light. A plot twist is a reversal; a revelation that turns the entire story on its head, provoking a rush of insight and causing the audience to see the entire narrative from a completely new angle. The tragic death near the end of One Day, the suicide at the climax of act two in Dead Poets Society, or the aftermath of the sucker-punch received by Hilary Swank’s character in Million Dollar Baby are examples of unexpected plot turns rather than twists.
Most great, narrative-defining twists occur towards or at the end because that’s the natural place for them. Withholding the most essential facts from the audience for as long as possible creates the immensely satisfying thrill of delayed gratification. However, there are rare occasions when revealing the major twist earlier adds depth to the work. The Crying Game and Reservoir Dogs are both good examples.
The major bombshell central to the mystery in Hitchcock’s Vertigo occurs at one hour and fifteen minutes in. This surprised me the first time I saw it, but every subsequent viewing has underlined why screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor made this unconventional choice. Audience knowledge regarding Kim Novak’s character creates a sense of impending dread and despair, as we watch James Stewart’s character spiral into ever increasing obsession over the remaining forty-five minutes. How will he react when he finds out the truth?
Know your ending
I know this won’t appeal to “pantser” writers, but if your ambition is to craft a story with a major twist ending, simply seeing where a character takes you will almost certainly lead to far more agonised rewriting than if you work from a well-planned outline. I always prefer to start with an ending that completely blows me away, then work backwards, discovering how the characters ended up at that point. As I’ve already noted, twists of plot-defining magnitude typically occur in the latter stages, so with this kind of story, it really pays to plan.
It is also worth asking, does my story need a big twist ending? It might not. However, as an aside, every story should at least feature crisis in the climax. If the final act of a heist thriller features everything going precisely to plan during the heist, how boring would that be?
The most obvious skill in writing a major plot twist is the ability to conceal it from the audience. In some genres, such as the murder mystery, the author must summon an arsenal of misdirection weaponry, because the reader is already on the alert to expect the unexpected. Here are some examples of tactics that can be deployed in whodunit type narratives.
Red Herrings
The use of red herrings — seemingly important plot points that prove irrelevant — is an obvious genre trope, but they should be deployed sparingly. Too many will lead to frustration and confusion in the reader. However, slipping one in now and again can work wonders for plot misdirection.
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories provide a masterclass in red herrings. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes himself turns out to be one, as he is latterly identified as the mysterious figure Watson observed on the moors. That same novel includes many other false trails, including a subplot involving an escaped convict.
In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, JK Rowling deploys multiple red herrings concerning the identity of the heir of Slytherin. Everyone from Hagrid to Draco Malfoy is suspected. At one point, Rowling even cast a suspicious eye at Percy Weasley (when he is seen reading about “Prefects that gained power”). There is also a monstrous red herring in the form of giant spider Aragog.
Incidentally, red herrings aren’t necessarily confined to detective fiction. Romantic stories can contain emotional red herrings. These take the form of misunderstandings, or secondary characters attempting to win the affections of our protagonist in their quest for true love. There are often plenty of red herring dalliances before the reveal of who the protagonist ends up with. Jane Austen’s novels, such as Pride & Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, indulge in such romantic red herrings, as do latter romantic comedies following the Austen template, like Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Multiple Suspects
When writing any story featuring a mysterious, perhaps murderous unidentified figure manipulating events behind the scenes, I incorporate at least three suspect characters into the narrative. The first is the individual to whom all evidence points, and they are suspected by characters or investigators in the story. Since the audience invariably considers themselves smarter than the protagonist, it is vital to feed them a second character, not suspected by anyone in the plot, over whom clouds of suspicions can gradually form. There can be more than one of these second suspects, as required. The final suspect is the genuine culprit or manipulator, who is considered by both reader and protagonist to be above suspicion. Yet when unmasked, the solution must appear obvious and make complete narrative sense.
Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile features a particularly clever example of this technique, with multiple suspects, all of whom have means, motive, and opportunity for the murder. Yet the two characters with cast-iron alibies, who are emphatically above suspicion, prove to be the killers. What’s more, their scheme is convincing, plausible, and fiendishly clever.
In TV series 24, agent Jack Bauer suspects young Muslim Reza of being involved in a terrorist plot. Reza protests, and we believe him. But we’re not so sure about his shifty father-in-law to be, who has secretly worked for the CIA and clearly has some dark secrets. Yet the real snake in the grass turns out to be Reza’s seemingly sweet and innocent wife-to-be, Marie. She was completely above suspicion, yet she has been brainwashed into murderous fundamentalism.
Hiding in plain sight
The final misdirection device, and one of the most effective, is the hiding-in-plain-sight technique. The Sixth Sense is a case in point. Everything you need to figure out the big twist is contained within the opening scene, which in retrospect ought to be obvious. Yet the audience doesn’t see it coming. Why? Clever screenwriting sleight of hand, from M Night Shyamalan. The subsequent scenes with Bruce Willis’s character Malcolm interacting with his estranged wife Anna, and with his young patient Cole, appear to be straightforward. Yet the final reveal points to the elephant in the room, so to speak, in every one of those sequences. It was there, the entire time, yet we failed to spot it.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is another example of hiding in plain sight. It features a phenomenally cunning twist that works best on the page rather than in onscreen adaptations, for reasons that will be clear to anyone that has read it. Whenever I encounter snobby dismissals of Agatha Christie, I point to that novel as one of the finest examples of hiding in plain sight misdirection ever written.
Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic mystery Rebecca features my all-time favorite hiding in plain sight twist. The young, nameless protagonist marries widower Maxim de Winter in a whirlwind romance, but once back at ancestral family home Manderley, finds herself endlessly and unfavorably compared to Maxim’s first wife Rebecca. She is torn apart over the belief that Maxim adored Rebecca, whose wit, intelligence, sophistication, and beauty is remarked upon by all around her. Sinister housekeeper Danvers seems particularly determined to torment the new Mrs de Winter, and she does so with devilish cruelty.
Yet eventually, a dramatic turn of events forces Maxim to confess his true feelings regarding Rebecca to his new bride: “I hated her.” Those three words reverberate in the reader’s mind, as a shocking rush of insight. Maxim’s subsequent explanation, concerning how their marriage had been a sham, forces the reader to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about Maxim up to that point. Every time a memory of Rebecca was triggered, he wasn’t upset because he had loved her. He was upset because he had hated her. More importantly, he had been indirectly responsible for her death, and had made it look like an accident.
Inevitability
There is one other major factor in creating a twist ending that genuinely wrong-foots the audience: It must seem inevitable. If the audience instantly imagines an alternative scenario, or a better plot twist, the writer has failed. The reader or viewer needs to experience the big twist in such a way that it not only makes complete sense, but that the plot could not have unfolded any other way.
In the original 1968 Planet of the Apes film, Charlton Heston’s character Taylor is an astronaut on a mission to explore the far reaches of the universe. After years in suspended animation, his spaceship crashes on a strange world where apes seemingly evolved from men. With ape the master and mankind their mute slaves, Taylor spends the entire film trying to validate his existence as intelligent being rather than savage. In the process he upsets the religious, theocratic apes, who don’t believe in evolution, but stubbornly cling to their religious texts which warn man is dangerous and must be suppressed. They also want to suppress recent archaeological evidence of a society of intelligent men predating apes.
Taylor exposes this conspiracy, and leaves the apes feeling rather pleased with himself. But then he has to confront the appalling truth when he discovers the ruins of the Statue of Liberty, revealing the planet to have been Earth all along. Taylor pounds the sand in despair, cursing the men who pushed the button of (presumably) nuclear annihilation that turned evolution upside down. It’s an astonishingly dramatic, powerful reveal, which answers all the questions of the film in a rush of insight, through a single devastating image. Impossible to see coming, but also, in retrospect, inevitable.
Conclusion
With good planning, and by factoring in some or all of the above disciplines, in my experience it is possible to write a convincing, thrilling, unexpected twist ending. I have crafted a few in some of my own novels, which I believe fulfill the criteria of being organic, plausible, and inevitable. I hope the above advice is useful to anyone with similar ambition.
My latest short story, Trigger Warning, is now being serialised in Fictions on Medium, and also on Substack, if you are subscriber. Here’s a “friend link” to the first part on Medium, so you can get past the paywall and enjoy a free sample of this four part satirical tale.
Trigger Warning concerns a future where a small but growing minority of people are being offended to death when reading contentious novels. The protagonist, a novelist who unrepentantly writes controversial material, finds their persective challenged when they become romantically involved with someone whose close relative died reading one of the author’s books.
If you enjoy what you read so far, why not subscribe to me on Substack? In addition to full access to my film review archive, you also get access to all the other articles I syndicate from Medium (film analysis, top tens, classic cinema retrospectives, etc) plus many short stories. It’s well worth the $5 per month, I think, so why not at least give it a free trial? Subsequent instalments of Trigger Warning will appear each Friday over the coming weeks.
Alternatively, for Medium subscribers, the story will also be revealed in full over the next three weeks. I hope you enjoy Trigger Warning, wherever you read it.
NOTE: The following is a revised version of an article originally published on Medium, where I’ve published a number of writing advice pieces.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Time Bandits, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Doubt, The Pledge, Life of Pi, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Handmaid’s Tale, Great Expectations, and Let the Right One In.
Writing ambiguity into the finale of a novel, play, or film is fiendishly tricky. The task is difficult and daunting. It has defeated many a writer, and frustrated many a reader. Yet when done well, it can add tremendous depth and audience pleasure. How should it be approached?
My wife does not care for what she terms “doubt” in stories. She coined this term after watching the 2008 film of John Patrick Shanley’s celebrated play Doubt, about a mother superior exploring whether a priest is guilty of sexual abuse. In that story, “doubt” is the entire point of the narrative, and the ambiguous resolution forces the audience to think through the moral issues raised by the drama.
However, when my wife gives offending examples of stories with “doubt”, it is often the case that the story promised one thing and delivered another. The writer set up particular genre expectations, and instead broke the “rules” to deliver an ambiguous resolution, when the narrative called for clarity. Such instances are typically found when inexperienced, posturing, pretentious authors think themselves “radical” by breaking honored conventions.
Understanding and bending genre convention
In his seminal screenwriting book Story Robert McKee states:
“You are free to break or bend convention, but for one reason only: To put something more important in its place.”
As such, it pays to understand genre expectations, before adding ambiguity that will prove frustrating to the audience. Some stories do not call for ambiguity. For example, denying readers a clear-cut resolution to a Sherlock Holmes mystery or Hercule Poirot whodunit — not revealing the guilty party, how they did it, and why — would obviously be a foolish choice.
But in some murder stories, the identity of the killer can prove irrelevant. The Pledge, a 2001 film starring Jack Nicholson, is a case in point. It opens with the murder of a young girl. Her distraught mother urges Nicholson’s character Jerry Black, a soon-to-retire cop, to “swear on his salvation” that he’ll find the killer. Black is moved, and agrees. He retires from the police, but continues to dig into the case. He works tirelessly, but makes no progress. Clues lead to dead ends. Eventually, Black becomes romantically involved with an abused woman and her child, but uses them as bait in what he hopes will be a trap for the killer. As his quest continues, the film no longer focuses on the identity of the killer, but the depths of Black’s obsession. The ironies of the finale, in which the killer dies and burns in a car crash, renders his identity moot. However, Black has now gone insane, and continues to search, still believing the killer is out there.
In the case of The Pledge, the filmmakers, adapting Friedrich Durrenmatt’s 1958 novella The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel, followed McKee’s advice. They broke the genre convention of identifying the killer, and replaced it with something more important: An ambiguous finale leaving the viewer unsettled as to what lies ahead for the now unhinged Jerry Black.
Sometimes the question is better than the answer
In some stories, allowing mysterious events different interpretations can be more satisfying than giving a definite explanation. Joan Lindsey’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock was deliberately published with the final chapter missing. A variety of interpretations regarding the fate of the schoolgirls ensued, involving everything from murder to pagan deities and alien abduction. Peter Weir’s celebrated film of the novel accentuated themes of repression and sexual awakening, but wisely avoided coming to any definite conclusion. Even after the final chapter of the novel was published posthumously, the surreal events described do not fully satisfy in and of themselves, and are open to wider speculation.
Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey has one of the most famous ambiguous endings in cinema history. Using Arthur C Clarke’s short story The Sentinel as a basis, Kubrick’s classic has baffled and intrigued cinemagoers for decades. What on earth does it all mean? Some have derived meaning from explanations in Clarke’s text, but in the film, many questions are thrillingly unanswered.
For example, why does the HAL 9000 computer go mad and murder the crew of the Discovery spacecraft? The non-Kubrick film sequel 2010 posits that HAL had contradictory programming which he interpreted as best he could. An incredibly unsatisfactory answer. My own theory is that when HAL came into contact with the enigmatic, evolution triggering alien monolith orbiting Jupiter, HAL himself began to develop feelings, evolve, and turn on his human creators, believing his survival was at stake. Kubrick’s calculated ambiguity allows for my interpretation, and the story is richer for it.
Drawing different conclusions
Not all stories need to end as enigmatically as 2001, but inviting differing readings of apparently clear-cut events can delight the audience. At first glance, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four appears to end in the bleakest way imaginable. However, the coda discusses Newspeak in the past tense, and in normal English. This insinuates the oppressive regime of the novel ultimately fell.
In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, the conclusion casts doubt on Pi’s version of events. Did his survival at sea adventure really involve dangerous animals in a lifeboat? Or were those animals really people who turned on one another, causing Pi to invent a different narrative to repress his traumatic experience? The novel is all the richer for opening it up to interpretation. I find it hard to imagine even the most linear minded of readers would prefer it had that final section been excised.
Terry Gilliam’s much underrated children’s fantasy film Time Bandits has, on the surface, an extraordinarily bleak and cruel conclusion. Young Kevin is drawn into a series of bizarre time-traveling burglaries, with a group of dwarfs who stole a map of time portals from the Supreme Being. Each time portal leads to an important historical figure. In the final scene, after awakening from what is assumed to be a dream, Kevin finds himself being rescued amid a house fire. The firemen discover a burnt roasting joint started the blaze, but Kevin recognizes it as a piece of leftover “evil” from the last of his adventures (when he and the dwarfs confront what is essentially Satan). He yells a warning to his parents not to touch it. His parents ignore the warning, and are instantly obliterated.
Pretty dark for a children’s film? Perhaps. However, Kevin’s parents are established as materialistic, unimaginative bores. Kevin himself essentially renounces them during one of his adventures, when he gets himself adopted by King Agamemnon. played by Sean Connery. One of the firemen, also played by Connery, winks at Kevin as everyone depart the scene, completely ignoring what just happened to Kevin’s parents. A hint that “Agamemnon” will keep an eye on Kevin as he grows up? Given that every time portal led to someone significant, what about the portal that led the dwarfs to Kevin in the first place? Could Kevin be destined for greatness?
Bearing the above in mind, would Time Bandits really be a better film if Kevin woke up, was reunited with his dull parents, and his adventures were all a dream?
What happens next?
Some classic novels end in ways that leave the reader wondering what happened next. In expert hands, with the right story, this can be a hugely effective tool to lodge the narrative in the mind of the reader. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a case in point. The reader wants to know what happens after Offred is bundled into the van, but in fact the narrative is played out. I always liked to extrapolate that Offred escaped, and Atwood’s belated sequel The Testaments proved me right. Nonetheless, I didn’t need to be proved right. The Handmaid’s Tale’s abrupt end is perfect, and as with Nineteen Eighty-Four, we are offered hope for the future in a coda.
Great Expectations is another novel with a famously ambiguous conclusion. Did Pip and Estella ever get together, or were past traumas in their relationship too great to overcome? Conversely, whilst the novel lets the reader decide, I’ve always loved David Lean’s 1946 film adaptation, which settles the matter with an unambiguous happy ending. Because Lean chose to portray Pip in a more sympathetic light, the ending in the film felt earned. The screenplay silently urged viewers to expect it. Dickens, by contrast, was a lot more critical of his protagonist; a protagonist many commentators interpret as something of a self-portrait.
Occasionally, storytelling collaborators disagree on how their tale should be interpreted. For example, what happens next after the seemingly upbeat conclusion of Swedish horror film Let the Right One In? Director Tomas Alfredson, and the novel’s author John Ajvide Lindqvist completely disagreed. Blade Runner is another famous example, with Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott differing on whether Ford’s character Deckard is a replicant. Audiences have argued about it for decades, and really that is half the fun. At any rate, what happens to the lead characters in the aftermath of both the above examples is very much a question in the minds of the audience. The stories are all the better for it.
Conclusion
Having studied which kinds of stories lend themselves to ambiguous finales, I’ve tried to apply what I’ve learned in my own writing. Some of my novels feature endings with events that can be interpreted a number of different ways. When asked the correct interpretation, I refuse to answer, because no interpretation is wrong. Although I have my own interpretation, I don’t desire to inflict it on the reader and cheapen their experience. They are the last piece of the puzzle that completes the story.
NOTE: The following is a revised version of an article originally published on Medium, where I’ve published a number of writing advice pieces.
How many times have you been drawn into a gripping plot with engaging characters, only to experience a nagging suspicion that the author is wagging their finger at you?
Fiction readers have a sixth sense that detects when they are being preached at. I’ve grown increasingly wary and intolerant of this, even if I agree with the message. Whether an author’s axe-grinding is social, political, or religious in nature, I still react with a weary eye-roll. Perhaps I’m jaded, but even the youngest of readers can’t stand being condescended to, being told what they ought to think, for their own good, on a particular issue.
Littering a novel with characters that act as author mouthpieces, delivering calls to action or “come to Jesus” moments, is a recipe for provoking the opposite reaction in the reader. For example, an earnest anti-war message delivered with consciously po-faced seriousness can become so numbing that the most committed of pacifists will get the urge to start fighting, just to spite the author. Again, it doesn’t matter if you agree with the author’s sentiment. You will feel cheated out of a good story, as though you’ve listened to a long sermon instead.
Before the inevitable cries of protest, rest assured I am not wilfully ignoring the many great novels with powerful, convincing messages. However, the real classics strive first and foremost to be a damn good story, well told. Yes, there are social issues and concerns highlighted in classics like Oliver Twist (Victorian poverty) and To Kill a Mockingbird (racism), but at no point does the reader feel as though they are being preached at. So how did Charles Dickens and Harper Lee achieve their goal?
I believe the answer is simple: they wanted to tell a good story and set aside any conscious agenda. Charles Dickens didn’t write a novel about poverty, he wrote an adventure story about an orphan against a backdrop of poverty. Harper Lee didn’t write a cry against racial prejudice, she wrote a coming-of-age drama about loss of innocence, and a courtroom drama set inside a racist culture. Therefore, what was important to them became inherent in the material.
Disregard your agenda
It might sound counter-intuitive, but attempting to insert a message into your story leads to a novel that is, at best, unconvincing. Designing a narrative around a message results in something even worse: propaganda. As someone who grew up surrounded by evangelical Christian culture, I read many laughably insincere Christian novels, with unconvincing plots about ludicrously sinful protagonists who go on to get saved at evangelistic rallies.
If writing a story about political tyranny, racial injustice, or sexual inequality, whether in a contemporary or historic setting, the temptation is to deliver your strongly held beliefs in an on-the-nose fashion. Resist this temptation. Instead of seeing a cause you care about fighting for, see a story you care about telling well. One of the worst pieces of advice I see doing the rounds in literary circles is to only write when you have something to say. Utter nonsense. Instead of writing to deliver a message to the masses, write to entertain the masses. Simply tell a good story with no conscious agenda whatsoever.
Write in a genre you love
Having decided to write a story with no agenda, the next thing to decide is genre. Choose a genre you love, not a genre that is currently popular, or by self-consciously striving to write ‘literary fiction’. I’ve always considered that an absurd term, because all fiction is literary. Rather than denoting a genre, it instead fences off a section of literature as somehow more elite or important. Snobbery about genre fiction persists, but don’t let that put you off. Choose your genre, and write the compelling, page-turning tale that you would love to read.
Build convincing forces of antagonism
Eschewing a consciously inserted message frees you up to properly explore the antagonist’s perspective, rather than paying it mere lip service. A convincing narrative must contain opposing views to those you are no longer trying to preach, whether social, political, or religious. All good writing emphasises conflict, and as such it pays to build up genuine, convincing arguments for those characters, organisations, political groups, or other forces opposing the protagonist in your novel. However, because you are the author, the interests of your worldview will be inherent in the text, without needing to be stated in dialogue or inner monologue that read like unconvincing, clumsy, patronising editorial asides.
Finally… add humour
An underrated but hugely effective way of ensuring your novel doesn’t sound like a sermon is to add humour wherever possible, regardless of how dark the subject matter might be. Laughter is a part of life and makes everything feel more natural. Even the bleakest of situations contain moments of gallows humour.
Conclusion
If approached this way, when reading back through your novel, you’ll be surprised just how your deeply held beliefs shine, but without any cringe factor. When others read it, you’ll also be surprised at the strongly held beliefs and ideas that worked their way in, without you even realising. I’ve had readers discern many of my strong views — about oppressive religious groups and abuse of power, for example — when reading novels I had intended purely as good entertainment.
The most powerful and important message will reach a receptive audience if it is entertainingly presented. That is why novelists should first and foremost determine not to preach their views, but to write a great story.
If you click “Short Stories” on the menu, you’ll now find a handy directory of all my published short stories and novellas to date, and where you can read them. These are mostly on Medium, with some syndicated to Substack (more will gradually follow), and a few are exclusives to anthologies available on ebook or in paperback. I plan to add to this list as and when new short stories are published. In the future, I may revise the order or categorise them better, but at this point I rather like how they’re presented.
I enjoy writing short stories and novellas, because they provide a chance to let rip with some of my narrative ideas that don’t warrant fleshing out to novel length. Typically, the short stories are between 10,000 and 15,000 words each, and the novellas are between 15,000 and 25,000 words. I hope you dip in and enjoy what’s there, either on Medium, Substack, or by picking up one of my anthologies, which are themed by genre.
There are a lot of stories (plus others waiting in the wings that I’ve yet to publish), so where to start? Well, here are half a dozen I’m particularly pleased with: For a spine-chilling horror tale involving a ghost ship, check out Vindicta. Or perhaps you fancy a bit of romantic fantasy, in which case try Papercut. For something with a bit of satirical bite, Call the Number on Your Screen involves a televangelist being blackmailed. For sci-fi dystopia, Sweet Dreams concerns a conspiracy involving nanotech nightmare suppressing technology for children. And if you want something outside of traditional genre fiction, why not read Aftermath, about a young woman returning to her estranged mother after leaving a cult. One story quite personal to me is In-Between, a supernatural satire about a recently deceased man harassed by ghostly political campaigners whilst attempting to haunt his family.
The gothic mystery is a much-underrated genre. At their best, they are riveting tales of nail-biting suspense, heart-rending romance, and spine-tingling terror. They are stories that deal in the deepest, darkest areas of human consciousness, presenting complex protagonists with conflicting conscious and subconscious desires. They delve into the uncanny, the psychological, metaphysical, and spiritual, exploring at a primal level what most haunts us, and how love and horror can be two sides of the same coin.
I’m a big fan of gothic mystery novels, both reading and writing them. I’ve had three traditionally published by a small indie publisher, and I’ve self-published a few others. This article is primarily for those who aspire to write in this genre, but I hope it will be inspirational and interesting for everyone. Here then are some of my insights into what makes a great gothic mystery.
Traumatised protagonists
Gothic mysteries almost always feature protagonists with significant past trauma or dark secrets. This baggage has a direct bearing on the narrative, dealing with everything from repressed sexual passions to physical or mental abuse, religious delusions, madness, and supernatural curses (which may or may not be all in the mind). Consider the traumatised Arthur Kipps in Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, the famously nameless heroine of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, the similarly nameless governess in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, the passionate Cathy in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, or the eponymous Jane Eyre in Charlotte Bronte’s classic.
Most of my gothic mystery novels feature imperilled heroines. They are brave and tenacious, but often flawed by an insatiable curiosity. All have trauma and dark secrets in their pasts, that have a direct bearing on the main plot. Their character arcs are often a metaphorical descent into the underworld, entering a labyrinthine mystery culminating in cathartic confrontation of their darkest fears. Depending on the nature and choices of the protagonist, this can lead to triumphant rebirth, or an irreversible spiral into madness and worse.
The outer labyrinth
The protagonist explores the mystery, which invariably involves sinister settings. These can often be gothic locations that hide dark secrets — the mansions in Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger and Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions, Thornfield in Jane Eyre, Eel Marsh House in The Woman in Black — but can just as easily be modern. For instance, think of the brutalist architecture used for the Jefferson Institute in Michael Crichton’s superb 1978 film version of Robin Cook’s Coma. In one of my novels, the haunting takes place not in a spooky old house, but a modern office block in central London.
Here it is important to embrace the iconography and formula of the genre. I’ve written elsewhere about being formulaic versus being unpredictable, and with gothic mysteries, it is possible to remix ideas and still keep readers hooked and surprised. My own frequently used tropes include dark broody skies, remote haunted locations, hidden rooms, secret passages, cults or secret societies, witchcraft, ghosts, demons, and a lot of scenes involving my protagonist creeping through dark, maze-like corridors. In gothic mysteries, such imagery is as vital to the genre as hats, horses, and frontier towns in the western.
It is worth adding that when it comes to settings for gothic mysteries, a thorough, dirt-under-the-fingernails knowledge of real locations is often invaluable. I live in southwest England and have been hugely inspired by everything from rugged coastlines to sinister mansions. Having the bleak but beautiful Dartmoor on my doorstep has ensured it turns up in many of my stories, as have local histories I’ve discovered or researched in south and north Devon. One of my novels (The Thistlewood Curse) was even set on Lundy Island, in the Bristol Channel; an island with a fascinating history that informed the narrative.
The inner labyrinth
The inward labyrinth is what makes the gothic mystery even more compelling. As we journey deeper into the darkness of the central mystery, we also journey deeper inside the protagonist. In The Little Stranger, when Dr Faraday looks into the haunted house with which he is obsessed, we are also looking into him. The governess in The Turn of the Screw is another excellent example. Is she really seeing ghosts, or are the apparitions all in her head? Are they the result of religious mania and sexual repression?
The outcome of this inner journey depends on the choices made by the protagonist. Sometimes a protagonist is simply too traumatised by their experience to emerge with anything that can be termed a happy ending. The finale of The Woman in Black is a case in point. In the beginning, Kipps writes as though he has come to terms with what happened to him, but as he recounts his chilling tale, it becomes increasingly apparent that the act of doing so has simply brought all the horror back to the surface, hence this superbly terse prose at the very end:
“They asked for my story. I have told it. Enough.” — Susan Hill,The Woman in Black.
Similarly, my protagonists never emerge from their journeys unscathed, nor do they necessarily live happily ever after. Sometimes they deliberately choose evil. Such endings I refer to as DEA (Doomed Ever After), in flippant allusion to the publishing industry HEA (Happily Ever After) or HFN (Happy For Now) acronyms, frequently used in the romance genre.
Gothic horror versus gothic thriller
The descent into the inner labyrinth is a vital component of the gothic mystery and one that separates it from other kinds of thriller or horror stories. However, sometimes it is difficult to say whether a gothic mystery belongs in the horror or thriller genre. The lines can be blurred.
In the gothic genre, horror and thriller are a sliding scale, and romance can be present in both. For instance, Rebecca is a romantic gothic thriller, whereas Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a romantic gothic horror (or at least, it certainly is in Francis Ford Coppola’s film version). My novels feature examples at both extremes of the scale, with some my notoriously scare-averse mother has been happy to read, and others she wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.
The supernatural spectrum
Similarly, the presence of the supernatural in the gothic can be merely hinted at or accepted outright. The superb ghost stories of MR James deliver malevolent spectral entities at face value, though the great strength of those tales is they are never properly explained, thus leaving the reader to do the spiritual heavy lifting. The Woman in Black is another example where the reader is left in no doubt that a ghost is responsible for the torment and misery in the narrative.
At the other end of the scale, Rebecca isn’t really about a ghost at all in the metaphysical sense, though the influence of the dead character is felt on every page. In that respect, Rebecca is one of the greatest ghost stories ever written, even though it doesn’t actually feature a ghost, per se. Something like The Turn of the Screw falls in the middle of the spectrum, andagain, my novels feature stories at both ends.
The terrible secret
Gothic mysteries often conceal a terrible secret. What lies hidden in the attic of Thornfield in Jane Eyre. The tragic truth behind the haunting of Eel Marsh house in The Woman in Black. The real reason Maxim De Winter is so haunted by his first wife in Rebecca. All these big mysteries involve dramatic reveals in their respective narratives.
Rug-pulling twists are a key part of the genre, and they are also present in my novels. Here I want to stress something that goes against advice often given to novelists. Don’t necessarily dial down melodrama in the big reveals. It is all about context, and sometimes the blunt instrument of melodrama is extremely effective when properly earned. Ask yourself honestly: Would Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre benefit from being less melodramatic?
Conclusion: How to make it personal
Often dismissed as overblown, the gothic mystery is in fact a tremendous canvas for exploring personal stories through metaphor and allegory. The best gothic fiction uses supernatural elements such as curses, ghosts, and demons to cathartically explore genuine psychological trauma. Regardless of how ambiguous or otherwise these elements might be in any given narrative, they are important symbols.
Recurrent themes of my fiction — particularly oppressive religious trauma and abuse of power — finds a natural home in the gothic mystery genre. However, I would advise against consciously inserting these with any kind of preachy agenda. It is better to simply tell a good story with these themes, rather than use your protagonist as a social or political mouthpiece. Your views will be inherent in the material in any case.
(NOTE: This article is a revised version of a piece that originally appeared on Medium.)
Simon Dillon Books 
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