Manual For Fiction Writers, Block, Lawrence [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

surprise ending is one in which the author, having deliberately concealed a central fact from the reader simply to make the story work, concludes by revealing that fact with a flourish. The narrator, say, whom we've made the silly mistake of assuming to be a human being, turns out at the end to have been all along an ear of Golden Bantam corn. Or the really odd planet that our space-traveling heroes have landed on turns out to be Good Ol' Terra Firma. Or?oh, never mind.

The reader's usual response to this sort of trickery is not awe at the author's imaginative powers and verbal legerdemain but cold fury at his unadulterated gall. The reader feels he's been unfairly gulled, and most of the time he's right. Most of the time this kind of story falls so flat it might have been a soufflŽ and the ending the slamming of the oven door.

On the other hand, once in a while someone makes this kind of story work, and the result can be a masterpiece. The example that leaps to mind was a teleplay on an anthology show called Danger. I don't know when I saw it but it must have been twenty-five years ago. (I seem to recall peering at the set through the bars of my play pen.)

Here's the plot: A band of brave men are living under a dictatorship. Their own country's been crushed by a neighboring country which has annexed them. We're with these guys as they risk everything on a plot to kill the dictator. In fact we're standing right beside him, cheering all the way, as their leader, a charismatic type named Johnny, sneaks up on the archfiend and shoots him dead.

And then Johnny leaps down from the balcony and shouts. Sic semper tyrannis, and we catch our first glimpse of the slain dictator, and it's Abraham Lincoln.

I'll tell you. It's a quarter of a century since I saw that show, and just telling you about it leaves a chill at the bone.

That was withheld information, but it was artfully withheld, and there were clues all along the way, and there was, ultimately, a reason for the subterfuge. One did not feel cheated by the ending. One felt thunderstruck.

Here's another example. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine published an impressive tour de force in June of 1977, a first story by Kenneth Watts called The Sounds of Summer. The viewpoint character is held hostage by a fugitive; we find out at the end, after the fugitive has been captured as a result of the lead's action, that the lead is a deaf man?he never even knew the fugitive was there! This is withheld information, all right, but it works brilliantly, and all in the space of perhaps a thousand words. I would urge you to find a copy of that issue and see for yourselves how and why the story works; I've ruined the ending for you because there was no other way to discuss the story, but I don't think that will altogether nullify your enjoyment of the story.

One writer who makes a habit of tricking the reader with withheld information is William Goldman; he likes to pull off surprises this way not just at the ending but throughout the course of a work. In Father's Day, for example, we keep getting emotionally involved in a line of action, thinking it's really happening and caring how it turns out, only to learn that it's the protagonist's fantasy. Marathon Man is one cute trick after another. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Goldman's a master at this sort of thing, but sometimes reading him for me is like watching card tricks with a hangover.

2. TOO MUCH DOG, NOT ENOUGH TAIL. One of the reasons The Sounds of Summer works as well as it does is that it's short. When revelation constitutes the ending of a story, all that has preceded it has been build-up, important only as a means of achieving that ending. We wouldn't object to reading a thousand words to get to Mr. Watts's surprise, but the same story wouldn't be nearly so effective at triple the length, and it's hard to believe anyone would write a whole novel, say, leading up to that sort of surprise.

But it wouldn't be the first time. Consider this plot, for example. Guy wakes up in Central Park. His wallet's gone and so's his memory. Doesn't know who he is or how he got where he is. There's a scrap of paper in his pocket with the word Buddwing on it. This means nothing to him but he figures maybe it's his name. So he spends the day trying to work out the facts of his existence, and he has some adventures and meets some interesting people and engages in sprightly conversation, and finally he finds his way back to his actual apartment and opens the door and there by George is his wife's dead body hanging from the chandelier, and this sight sends him reeling in shock, so much so that he stumbles back to Central Park and right back into amnesia, and we're left with the impression that this cycle has been repeating on him like a bad cucumber for days now.

Not a bad notion at three or four thousand words tops, right? Evan Hunter's novel Buddwing runs about a hundred thousand words, and the ending positively ruins it. It's a short-short ending on a