Reverses and Twists

Two ways to surprise us

Thrills and Sameness

A bit of a tale pleases us or not. We can only hope the talesman pleases us with the first words from his mouth (or pen). But if he then gives us those same words over again, they please us less. He gives us the same words again. They thrill us less. He gives us the same words again. They thrill us less. He gives us the same words and we leave the tale behind.

We crave variation. We demand progress in the tale, a move to the middle then a march on to the end.

But a steady march turns into a pattern that bears its own sameness, and we can see that too. And then we find it bores us, this left-right, left-right, left-right steady march on to the end. We can see the end come near. We know when it will come and we know what it will look like.

We want some surprises along the way.

Here are two kinds.

Surprise One: the Reverse

The first kind of surprise is the ‘reversal of fortune.’ Here we simply go back on our tracks. Say things have gone well for the hero, and he moves closer to his goal. Then things should turn against him and push him back from the goal. Now all goes ill for him, so next things turn out well for him.

This simple alternation, step ahead then step back, comes out of the main delight that tales hold for us. A tale enchants us mainly through suspense, which is our balance between hope for one end and fear lest another end come to pass. The step ahead lifts our hope, then the step back feeds our fear, then a step ahead lifts our hope once more.

This pattern also rests upon one of the most basic laws of sensation: that nothing we sense is absolute but all is relative, and that one is raised when it comes near to its opposite. A light thing seems whiter next to a dark thing, and something sour seems more sour right after we taste something sweet. So our hope seems to us higher because it follows the fear we just felt, and the fear that comes on hope’s heels then feels deeper.

But this pattern is simple, and once we know the trick, we can look for these reverses. When things look bleak for the hero, we know things will now turn better. We know it without even knowing just how they will turn better. And when all looks good for the hero, we know bad news is right ahead.

Surprise Two: the Twist

Because the reversal of fortune is too easy to see in advance, the smart talesman will toss in some spicy twists into the stew of his tale as well.

Think of a reversal as part of a walk down a straight line. You never step off the line, but you take two steps forward then one back. Then three steps forward and two back. You may not know whether any one step will take you forward or back. But you know the odds rise that you will step back after a few steps forward, and the more steps back you take, the more you can count on the next step going forward. And you know that whether your foot falls forward or back, it will always land on the line.

Then it lands off the line. That’s the twist.

A twist by its nature is unforeseen. This is the secret to its surprise for us.

A boy likes a girl and woos her. She seems to like him, too — then she doesn’t — then she does. The couple come closer together, then fall farther apart. Back and forth. Then the boy meets another girl and he likes her too. He thinks he likes her better than the first girl. He wonders why he thought he ever liked the first girl.

So we see the reverses followed by a twist. But let’s tell that another way:

A boy likes a girl and woos her. She seems to like him, too — then she doesn’t — then she does. The couple come closer together, then fall farther apart. Back and forth. Then the boy eats a pickle and ketchup sandwich. He thinks it’s the tastiest sandwich he ever ate. He begins to search for the recipe to the perfect pickle-and-ketchup sandwich.

Here we see a pitfall in twists. A non-sequitur is a twist, too: a twist we don’t always like. A twist that breaks the ‘rules’ that govern our contract with the talesman.

A twist must be unforeseen but not unforeseeable. And as far as the twist might take our foot off the line, in the end we must find our way back to the line in time for the end. Because the end of the line is where the talesman promised he would take us. These two traits hold the art of a good twist, along with knowing how many twists a tale will bear.

Too many twists will spoil a tale.

A tale that is all twists will be a jumble of non-sequiturs, and not a tale at all.

I don’t know how many twists any one tale can bear. This is something the talesman must sense as he feels his way through the hearts of his audience. Some out there will like twists more than others. They tolerate more twists and more outlandish twists. Some kinds of tales are made for audiences that like twists better, and some kinds of tales suit audiences that can little bear twists.

In general, the longer a kind of tale has been in vogue, the more twists it can bear. Put in terms of the audience, the better an audience knows any one kind of tale, and the more such tales they hear, the more they like the twists.

This is indeed a hallmark in the evolution of a genre. It begins with simple, straightforward tales. As more such tales are told, and heard by the same audience, the talesmen must add more twists, and more, until the whole tale is a twist on the genre from start to end. At this point the audience has spent all their delight in this kind of tale; the last such tales are so far from satisfying the original needs that made the genre popular in the first place, that they have come to look like the final stages in Picasso’s famous series of etchings from representational to wholly abstract. At some point along the way, a member of the audience can no longer see the two pretty girls in the abstracted composition. From then on he can only take pleasure in the abstraction and not in the rearranged reference to the girls. In the end no girls remain.

When a genre spends itself in this way, we stop reading it. Then it dies. Later, if we still feel the need that this genre filled, it may return. But only after our memories have faded, and the genre can start once more with plain, straightforward tales. An age will have in the mean time lapsed, though, and the reborn genre won’t go back to the same shape as its former start.

(Composed with pen on paper Tuesday, February 26, 2008)