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For leahazel, for the January posting meme.
One answer to this used to be "complicated but self consistent time travel plots" but I finally got one of those to work, so now all that's really left is mysteries and other stories with unexpected yet retrospectively inevitable twists. I am ok with twists as a background element where if the reader figures it out early it's no big deal, but have no idea how to successfully write stories with a central mystery which the reader is supposed to be confused about until the end at which point it all makes sense.
One of my flaws as a writer is that I tend to keep too much of the story in my head, not on the page. I've gotten better at making sure to tell readers everything they need to know but only by explicitely telling them in blunt prose, I'm still not very good at judging if my subtle implications are coming across. This is ok for nuances of character, if some of the implications go over people's heads they'll still get the general gist, and if my characterisation is a bit heavy handed it's not the end of the world. But if the implications of a Vital Clue are literally imposible to parse from the text that takes the fun out of the mystery and any Final Twists will seem entirely arbitrary, and if I make it too obvious readers will just roll their eyes. The double think of "having the story seem to say X when what's actually happening is Y" is largely beyond me (except for "seeming to be Trope X then SURPRISE SUBVERSION", but those don't actually rely on the surprise, and I don't know if mine are actually surprising)
Which is a pity, because I love surprises in stories that make sense in retrospect. I like to think some of my plots have this effect, even if they don't revolve around a central Mystery or Big Twist, but I don't know if they do.
The self restraint required to not start posting these meme posts early was INTENSE :) I've only got one more draft written, better keep going!
One answer to this used to be "complicated but self consistent time travel plots" but I finally got one of those to work, so now all that's really left is mysteries and other stories with unexpected yet retrospectively inevitable twists. I am ok with twists as a background element where if the reader figures it out early it's no big deal, but have no idea how to successfully write stories with a central mystery which the reader is supposed to be confused about until the end at which point it all makes sense.
One of my flaws as a writer is that I tend to keep too much of the story in my head, not on the page. I've gotten better at making sure to tell readers everything they need to know but only by explicitely telling them in blunt prose, I'm still not very good at judging if my subtle implications are coming across. This is ok for nuances of character, if some of the implications go over people's heads they'll still get the general gist, and if my characterisation is a bit heavy handed it's not the end of the world. But if the implications of a Vital Clue are literally imposible to parse from the text that takes the fun out of the mystery and any Final Twists will seem entirely arbitrary, and if I make it too obvious readers will just roll their eyes. The double think of "having the story seem to say X when what's actually happening is Y" is largely beyond me (except for "seeming to be Trope X then SURPRISE SUBVERSION", but those don't actually rely on the surprise, and I don't know if mine are actually surprising)
Which is a pity, because I love surprises in stories that make sense in retrospect. I like to think some of my plots have this effect, even if they don't revolve around a central Mystery or Big Twist, but I don't know if they do.
The self restraint required to not start posting these meme posts early was INTENSE :) I've only got one more draft written, better keep going!
