Creating a Page-turner when the Ending is Known

The stage musical, Come from Away shares a phenomenon with movies like Titanic, Apollo 11, and Argos. That is, from the start, you know how the story is going to turn out. The ship will sink, the astronauts will land safely, and the American diplomats will be rescued from the 1979-1981 Iranian revolution. In Come From Away, the airline passengers get safely home.

The problem is that a story often gets a lot of its uumph from the reader wanting to know how things turn out. Will the villain get her comeuppance? Will the lovers get together? Will Mary find her lamb? Who killed Cock Robin? (Sorry, got carried away a bit).

It’s tricky to write a plot with a known ending because you lack the element of surprise/satisfaction/ etc. at the climax. Readers can get impatient because they think they know where things are going.

This happened to me with Titanic. By the mid-movie, I was thinking, “Yeah, yeah. Sad story. Boo-hoo. When is the sucker gonna sink?” Also cut down on my empathy for Leonardo DiCaprio’s watery fate, as you can imagine.

So, it can be a difficult task to keep reader interest with one hand effectively tied behind your back.

Writing a page-turner with one hand tied behind your back

First off, you need all the regular story-telling skills I’ve been talking about in this blog. But now, you need to put in special effort to keep the reader entertained until she gets to the ending. Here are some ways to do it.

Tension in every scene.

You can focus on how difficult it was to achieve the end goal and/or how easily things could have gone off track. You can ratchet up the tension and rivet the reader by detailing these trials.

Fate of (fictional) main character unknown.

Often, even in a true story, the main character (let’s call him Tom) is fictional—inserted in the story as an anchor for the reader to identify with. This allows you to play with that Tom’s fate. He can be instrumental in achieving the end (rescue, safe landing, etc.) and still himself come to a sticky end. Thus, assuming the reader identifies with him—and if she doesn’t, we have a whole different issue—but assuming she does, she is going to want to know how things work out for him. And thus you have a more typical story with an unknown climax. ‘Course, doesn’t work as well for memoirs.

Surprise ending.

Quentin Tarentino did this in Inglorious Basterds. The commandoes plan to kill Hitler in a cinema by igniting the flammable nitrate film. Knowing that Hitler did not die this way, I was intrigued to see how Tarentino would pull off a satisfying ending given this reality. And then Hitler dies in the fire! Despite a niggle that millions of Tarentino fans will have a distorted view of history, changing the ending does perk up the reader/viewer.

Surprise interpretation.

In my novel, SCAM, four out-of-work Canadian actors pretend to be an intact British acting family to win roles on an American sitcom. It took on the feel of a heist movie—i.e. it isn’t one unless you have a heist. Similarly, there is no novel if they don’t get the parts. Since the reader knows this, I interpreted the events in what I think was a surprising way. Please read it to see if you agree! (ADV.)

So, writing a story where the ending is known by the reader before she starts the novel can be tricky. But it is possible to do so if you are aware of the special challenge you face.

Come From Away—Straight-forward Story-telling

Come From Away is a Canadian musical which played on Broadway and toured extensively. It tells the true story of a small community in Newfoundland which had to cope with the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the United States.

Because of the attack, many planes were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland. This is the amazing story of the town housing, feeding, clothing, and even entertaining the stranded passengers.

As a play/musical, Come from Away has two writing characteristics I want to highlight: one here and one in the next post.

Technique: Straight-through story-telling

This technique is interesting, if only because the pure form isn’t seen that often. That is, the story starts at the beginning (the townspeople’s bucolic existence before the planes landed) and goes to the end in a straight line (the stranded passengers returning home). I know this seems kind of ‘duh’, but most fiction has diversions off that straight path.

For example, a passenger is the mother of a New York firefighter but doesn’t know what is happening to him. The playwright makes the interesting choice in allowing her to speak of her anxiety, but with no flashbacks to show their love. A flashback is as easy to do in the theater as it is in fiction writing—the mother and her firefighter son are in a spotlight and the dialogue shows this is the mother’s memory of her son.

Advantages of the straight-through

Well, for one thing, it’s the way we typically tell stories. What happened, then what happened next, etc. It’s a form we’re familiar with and can take comfort from as we would well broken-in slippers.

It is also more efficient because there aren’t any interludes which might impede the forward action of the story. While I don’t typically advocate for efficiency as goal in writing, when a series of events has to be covered in a limited period of time, you might realistically pursue a little efficiency.

Disadvantages of this approach

In particular, the use of flashback may be the opportunity to connect emotionally with a particular character such as I discussed above with the mother and her firefighter son. A flashback takes you from guessing or assuming what her love is to seeing it for yourself.

Scene setting can also be done in flashback. What if the musical started when townspeople were in the midst of their herculean efforts to help the stranded passengers? It would focus immediately on the central point of the play. How the townspeople got to that point could be done in quick flashbacks which give the reader/watcher the information about the setting or past he needs at the moment needed. This is rather than knocking off the explanations at the top when their significance may not yet be clear.

Which is better?

It’s all a matter of choice—straight-through or a more convoluted structure. One way isn’t necessarily better than the other—but it does shape how the reader/watcher experiences the event.

So when you have a story to tell, take a moment to think whether the familiar straight-through, soup-to-nuts approach best serves or whether you might want the soup at the end and dessert somewhere in the middle.