"Bolt out of the Blue": How to get the audience to accept the improbable?

For me, the fundamentals are clarity of rules (best if "shown" rather than "told," or revealed through dialogue), consistent application of multiple rules, exploration of multiple rules throughout the story, and unanticipated but fully acceptable application of one or a few rules near the end of the story.

The question becomes one of what you consider as being the "rules" of your story. They don't have to only be environmental or magical. You could have the behavioral patterns of a character as a set of rules. This is why Heliotrope can claim that all good stories do this.

 

I think it is natural for readers to think ahead. Given a set of events, reactions, physical limits, and so forth, the world and characters are "built" for the reader, and the reader can begin to anticipate events and reactions when new conditions occur. This of course doesn't mean that a reader will (or must be allowed) to anticipate correctly.

I've been watching the anime Naruto lately, and in the first two seasons the creators do something rather great with that character. He learns new abilities, tries new things out, and we begin to anticipate how he'll put together this knowledge and succeed in defeating a foe in combat. But Naruto so often whips up some new use of previous abilities that seems both surprising at the time and entirely plausible given what we've already seen from him. The overall effect is to show how incredibly clever he is. (Even when he copies what he has seen others do, he does so with a twist, combining what they have done with his own peculiar style of fighting.)

I would say that the way to use environment/setup in a surprising way revolves around establishing potentials but without making those potentials narrow. This might involve being rather vague, merely suggestive, of potentials; i.e., don't spell it all out. Also, complexity would help, or suggesting a wide variety of potentials. So often, creativity and surprise involve new combinations of familiar things. A reader might be able to anticipate some events but not all events if the set of potential combinations of factors is .... limitless.

 

Even experts in a field learn new things all the time. I can write a story with a competent, educated, knowledgeable protagonist and still have that character not know how to deal with every situation. It's easier to create tension in a story when the protagonist has a lot to learn, which may be why so many authors like writing stories with protagonists who are still learning the basics. If you have two experts going at each other, the kinds of problems they must deal with for the story to be dramatic may be more difficult for the author to devise, but as a reader I find these kinds of stories more enjoyable when done well.

Watch some of the Dr. Who shows. He's no one's idiot, but he often lacks some key piece of information that he must deduce or discover or make an educated guess about to save the day. Sometimes he even guesses wrong, but the wrong guess helps guide him to the right path later.

Description doesn't have to reveal everything, even when it's from an omniscient perspective. If you demonstrate some of your rules, you don't have to explicitly state them all. The POV doesn't really matter. If the story flows, the style shouldn't matter either.

 

I personally enjoy the novice type of character. It's a very useful type of character; readers can discover the world even as the character discovers it and learn with that character.

But extremely competent and knowledgeable characters can work great as well. Michael is absolutely right: no one knows everything. So being careful to decide context–exploit the savant's weakness and blind spots–is one method for creating surprises, tension, and so forth when using a knowledgeable character. Take as an example Sherlock Holmes, who has a vast reservoir of knowledge and yet in every story he still has a mystery to solve. The fact that mystery can still happen for such a character is a great metaphor for the blind spots that the extremely competent have. A person who is an expert in one field, or several, may be completely stumped when faced with elements outside that field or even with aspects of their own field that are just beyond the very edge of current understanding in that field.

Omniscient third provides more opportunities for keying into a character's thoughts, feelings, and subjective perspectives than objective third or cinematic approaches, but even with omniscient third you can choose what to describe and what not to describe. Additionally, when keying in to these subjective perspectives, you can exploit the common tendency for people to become narrowly focused. I.e., people tend to think from inside a box that is limited by their own biases, histories, experiences, and to overlook anything (or incorrectly interpret anything) that doesn't fall entirely into that box.

With objective third/cinematic, you basically have only three ways to clue a reader in to what a character thinks and feels:

1. through dialogue,
2. through description of that character's physical actions and reactions, and
3. the less common approach of some sort of third-party access and reporting

#1 and #2 will usually be indicative, suggestive, but not a direct report of thoughts and feelings. For instance, in Captain America: Winter Soldier, Cap is standing in an elevator and notices sweat running down the side of another occupant's face, along with other signs that the other occupants are tense. These signs do not report an exact set of thoughts and feelings; they can sometimes be interpreted incorrectly. Dialogue may indicate thoughts and feelings in the way it always does; just think back to any conversation you've had with another person when you were trying to read their thoughts and emotions from what they've said.

#3 is something like what happens when Mantis touches Star-Lord in the new Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 trailer and says aloud what he is feeling. Or it could be something like one of those excerpts from, say, an autobiographical work heading a chapter, written long after the events in that chapter, that reveals what the character will be feeling or thinking in the scenes about to follow.

Objective third seems to fit what you say you are wanting to do, the impressions you are wanting to give readers, although you could use an omniscient third but simply limit omniscient description and storyteller interpretation of settings, contexts, and other elements.

I've always thought that movies are a great way for getting a feel for objective third/cinematic because that is their fundamental style of information delivery or portrayal of a story. (Although, some omniscient perspectives and devices sometimes add to the objective delivery.) So looking at ways movies can surprise, and the ways that movies fail when trying to surprise, would be helpful.

I'd tie all of the above back into my previous comment by considering Chekhov's gun:

"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

For me, movies often fail to surprise when they conspicuously place an element into the first few scenes because that element is going to be key for resolving the conflict later in the movie. A lot of movies that involve some special ability (magical, physical, intellectual, technological), will show its quirky use early and then latter....wham! it comes in handy. This usually annoys me, although I can overlook it because I've grown used to this happening; it's almost a convention of some styles of movie making.

Other approaches can place elements early in order to build tension and suspense. Horror movies will often open with a quick flash of evil at work before skipping to the ignorant and unaware characters who just happen to be moving into the house, arriving at the campground, getting ready for Halloween parties, etc. This, basically, is a type of foreshadowing.

So if you want to surprise without using foreshadowing, you don't want to display Chekhov's gun so conspicuously. You can mix it into a lot of other miscellaneous detail so that it doesn't stand out (complexity, ambiguity). Or you can hang a fake Chekhov's gun on the wall–a type of false flag. You can hang 15 of those guns on the wall, but the key element later will be the nails or contraptions holding them to the wall, not the guns themselves. (I'm using Chekhov's gun metaphorically to stand for any elements in the story. Items, characters, forces, cultural traits....whatever.)

 

omniscient works good for that imo

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This reminds me of The Chronicles of Riddick, a guilty pleasure of mine I've watched multiple times. Riddick does face down "godlings," but at the end of the movie he's just sitting on a throne he never expected nor wanted looking out over the crowd of former enemies who are now his followers with a "WTF do I do now?" kind of expression on his face. We know from spending time with his character that he is definitely not the right person for the job, heh. One of the reasons I love that scene so much is that it had a strong Conan the Barbarian feel; I'm sure I've seen a cover of some comic with almost exactly the same pose for Conan as the Barbarian becomes the King.

Basically, I approach my settings similarly. I like to plan out a novel in some detail before I start writing it, and this includes an understanding of other areas of the world, various customs and worldviews of the people of that world, etc., that might or might not appear in the novel as the need arises–in minor ways.

For instance, I find it helpful to know whether a character might naturally "think" a metaphor when he encounters something new by using some beast, holiday, or whatever that will otherwise never make an appearance in the novel. He might experience a small scratch from a poisoned dagger, not enough to die from the poison (perhaps it's not fatal), and think that the pain shooting up his arm is exactly like the pain he felt once as a boy when a Vendarlic scorpion once stung him. Vendarlic scorpions might never be mentioned anywhere else, and indeed I might never again reference that specific trip he made in childhood to Vendar, but I like having an awareness of the fact that those scorpions exist somewhere in the world and/or an awareness of the fact that my MC once traveled to Vendar when he was a boy. (In actual practice, I'd probably just make up the Vendarlic scorpion on the spot; but I'm more likely to already know the background info on my character's childhood.)

Having those ready-made references handy while writing is a major help to me. So I like always having a greater awareness of the milieu, the larger context, while I'm writing. These "out of the blue" references (heh) also help to give the impression of an authentic world, a richness to the world.

Now, of course, if Vendarlic scorpions are going to play a major role in the plot fifteen chapters later, then this early off-hand reference will become foreshadowing. But if the scorpions are never mentioned or used again in the novel, then it's just flavoring for the world. The secret, then, is to build a rich, detailed world, with enough such references made off-hand, so the reader begins to experience them as flavoring and won't expect whatever significant reappearance you utilize later, if any.

 

To add to this, neither of these things is particularly new. There are plenty of books with arrogant MCs that never get humbled or deal with humility. Neither is there a dearth of books of "adult" people that are highly competent going through life nor is there a dearth of books where the character isn't coming of age. The Alloy of law for example is a book that isn't a coming of age story. Nor are the sequels. The story line for Logen Ninefingers in the First Law books, dude is grizzled and competent no coming of age. And in other media you have Rogue One. No coming of age growing up story there either.

 

Just popping in with a note: I discovered last night that season one of The Magicians has officially appeared on Netflix. I'd watched the first episode on Amazon when it was free, but wasn't very impressed so I never bought the others. Now that S1 is free, I'm going to have a look. (I never read the books.)

 

Well, I mean yes otherwise the story would be boring without some kind of growth, unless that story is a tragedy. But I disagree with the writer who said that cowardice or pride are signs of immaturity but that's a minor quibble. The writer is correct stories are about growth of some kind. Or, perhaps more accurately, change. Macbeth has change, if not necessarily growth but that is a tragedy. Same with Hamlet not a whole lot of growth but there is a whole lot of change. But in almost every story with a happy ending there is growth, which is a positive change. It is, in my estimation, inescapable.

But a story about growth is not a hero's journey per se. Like I said, every story is about change and growth. A Hero's Journey is just a specific type of story that deals with change. Take for example The Alloy of Law, that is not a Hero's Journey. Whatever similarities it has to the hero's journey is coincidental. So, is there a post hero's journey, I would say there can be stories post hero's journey. That could be a "sports story" where the hero gets a gang of misfits to work together to overcome some evil. However, the problem with these stories is that you will need to have the hero of the original hero's journey story become a less important character and be part of the ensemble and that often comes across as unsatisfying.