Fun With Narrative Tangles

The Anticipation Trick

I like playing with narrative structures. It’s something that I’d like to explore as an author and really sink my teeth into. The few times I’ve messed with and created unusual narratives are among my personal favorite stories I’ve written. My favorite books are very much tangled narratives as well.

This deserves a ramble. Multiple rambles even. There are so many ways to tie a story in knots! Today, I’ll talk about the simple one I’m using and how I hope it’s working. But first, a few quick definitions of how I define certain story elements.

First, there’s the Chronology. The Chronology is the actual, one after the other, sequence of events in the story, as they happen. 1,2,3,4,5… etc… for all characters, in order, as if it were a history book.

1. Bob goes on a Himalayan mountain climbing excursion.

2. Bob encounters a Yeti trapped in a pit.

3. Bob decides not to exploit it, and helps it escape back into the wild.

4. Bob’s trip ends, and he goes home.

5. Bob wonders if he missed out on an opportunity.

6. Bob wakes up one morning, stubs his toe on his dresser and almost pees from the pain. He rushes to the bathroom.

7. Bob is surprised to find a Yeti already in there.

8. Yeti is actually grateful and doesn’t mind being discovered by humanity, as long as it’s by Bob.

The second element is the Narrative, and this is where you get to have a lot of fun. The Narrative can, and often does, simply follow the Chronology.

When it doesn’t, the most common, and simple, narrative tangling technique is, obviously, the flashback. The story above is easily improved by a simple rearranging. Start the story with 6 and 7, the absurd and ridiculous situation, then go back, explain it with 1 thru 5, then answer Bob’s question in 5 right away by ending with 8. Simple, clean, easy. We see this all the time in fiction. Like a backstory pause flashbacky thing.

It’s not much of a tangle, but depending on where you put it, the technique can be wildly effective. Just ask Stephen King. He’s the master of this. You can rest assured, if something important is about to happen, you won’t get it until the action has been paused, the stakes left hanging in the air, and you’ve been pulled elsewhere to hear something else while you frantically wait for the other outcome.

Really, that’s the biggest trick to the flashback. Making sure the delay comes on a cliffhanger, exactly when the reader doesn’t want it to. Right when there’s something they hope to see, are curious about, or have been waiting for.

This is why you’re not supposed to end chapters on resolutions. Even if you’re doing a chronological narrative, those anticipation moments should appear at the end of a chapter, so that the reader, who may have decided only to read a chapter, doesn’t want to stop reading. They’re left with anticipation, wanting to keep going.

I like to call this the Anticipation Trick. It’s a common animal, but a good one. Fido rolls and fetches and doesn’t chew up the couch pillows. He’s a good boy. He’ll never let you down.

I got to wondering if there were other ways of setting this Anticipation Trick up other than Flashbacks and Chapter Endings. I came up with a few.

• An exposition break. Yes yes, I know, some people think exposition is a dirty word and it shouldn’t exist. Those people never had to explain how the inner workings of an alien ecosystem, interacting with the social conflicts of multiple colonizing empires, can cause variations in magic. The more unusual your world, the more exposition becomes necessary. This trick can help it go down.

• Multiple Characters. This one was so obvious it felt like a no-brainer, but in retrospect, I think I forgot it because in some genres, it’s never used to set the trick up. Fantasy, in particular, where you have a cast of characters, all off doing their own thing in a grand tapestry, creates a sort of casual sense of this. Thrillers, on the other hand, rely on this heavily.

• SOMETHING ELSE. Okay, this is the fun one. Basically, it’s ‘a something/anything scene that appears intentionally to interrupt the narrative’. So, just stop the action and include a short scene with strangers, dealing with something relevant in the world setting, or something from the future, or anything really. Pohl broke up his narrative with random news articles and interviews with people in his world setting. Zelazny did the same, with some “normal lives” interludes to give a little taste of life beyond the god-like characters of the story. These seemingly unconnected things, can be used to make a setting feel bigger than the story you’re telling, while also triggering your Anticipation Trick to make the book engaging.

I’m sure these aren’t the only ways to setting up that particular trick. As I think more on this, I’ll ramble on about it.

I’m currently using it in my work-in-progress, SHUNT. The story has two protagonists, and the chapters leapfrog each other. I’ve decided not to include any flashbacks, and am exclusively using the trick at the end of the chapters. So, each character gets a bit of a cliffhanger, and I employ the Anticipation Trick, before switching to the other character. Upon starting the new chapter, the reader is having their last cliffhanger resolved, just after immediately having added a new one. The motivation engine is unceasing.

Another, separate narrative trick I’m trying out for this book, is that the two characters don’t really overlap at all, until the very end. It’s almost possible to read every other chapter of the book and, upon getting to the end, still have a complete story, from one person’s perspective. Of course, doing it this way, each one is a lesser tale, missing world elements provided in their counterparts sections. Each thread of the narrative is enhanced by the existence of the other. The goal is to come to a surprising and unexpected conclusion that only works when the two storylines connect. So far, it seems to be working.

There you have it. I have a lot of fun with this trick. If anybody’s got anything to add, or interesting ways they use it, chime in! There are few things I love more than talking shop when it comes to writing!

Oh, and if you’re getting this in your email, and you’re surprised to see more than my monthly update; welcome to 2025! This year I’ll be posting more articles on writing like this one and sharing free stories to subscribers in addition to my once-a-month Slogging the Mire posts. I hope you enjoy the additional stuff!