Writing Advice

Suspense vs. Surprise: A Hitchcockian Look at the Clip “When Adele Was Jenny”

~ jackewilson ~ 2 Comments

It’s a very familiar explanation and always worth repeating. Here’s Alfred Hitchcock:

There is a distinct difference between “suspense” and “surprise,” and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

Here he is adding another component:

Did you catch that? You need to give the audience information so that their experience is an emotional one. If you withhold the information, you will produce only the emotion of curiosity – which is a fine and upstanding emotion, I guess, but probably not even in the top ten of emotions we hope to gain as an audience. Our time is precious! Let’s get to love and hate and anger and joy and passion and all the other HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WOOOOOORRRLLLDDD emotions first… Curiosity? That’s on the undercard…

So file that away, you creative types: Even if you think the heart of your story is a Big Reveal, that doesn’t mean you have to keep that from your audience. Don’t be afraid to provide some information up front.

Now all this is really just a way of introducing this video, which is outstanding. Adele puts on a disguise so she can join a contest…. to impersonate Adele! She can’t look like herself, because that would be too easy. She has to look kind of like herself (like the other contestants who have dressed up to look like Adele) so that her voice alone will carry the day.

Big reveal, right? We know what’s coming: there will be a moment when she starts singing like Adele. And you could imagine the producers of the show thinking that the audience should wait for that moment. Isn’t that how Big Reveals work? They reveal things in a big way? Shouldn’t the clip show us nine imitation singers and then roll out the tenth one, who is actually Adele, and shock and surprise us all?

You could do it that way, but what would that do? That would give us five minutes of not knowing what’s going on, watching singer after singer sound kind of like Adele, and five seconds of surprise, when one is really good – and we, like all the people in the theater, would be amazed and then a little delighted to find out that it was Adele. The first five minutes would probably be a little boring. The last five seconds – where we hear Adele’s voice from someone we didn’t think was Adele – would be a little burst of energy, but then what? Adele with a fake nose singing is not going to be that different from Adele singing. Why wait through five minutes to get to that?

Instead, the clip gives us the news straight away. Adele walks in. The host of the show, who is in on the prank, admires her disguise. We know the Big Reveal: at some point, she’s going to sing, and it’s going to be clear to all the other impersonators.

That’s the genius of this clip: we care more about the reaction of the impersonators than we do about our own. We become invested in their reaction. Why? Because come on, just think about it! You’re just sitting there, watching a computer. You could watch Adele all day if you want (and you probably did when the Hello video came out, if you’re anything like me). Or you could not do that. Either way, your life goes on. Adele with a funny nose? Ho hum.

But what if you loved Adele so much you dressed up like her, went on stage to sing like her, did your best to win a contest for doing so? And then… you heard the real deal? Coming from someone you were just standing with, talking to, considering just another one of your competition.

That’s our experience watching this video. How will these fellow contestants treat her? Will any of them figure it out? Will they say things about her they’ll later regret?

And what will they do when they hear her? Feel cheated that they enter a rigged contest? Claim that she’s not very good? Storm the stage?

Watch this clip and find out. As you do, think about the emotional experience of watching – and how it’s all been enabled by the information you had right up front, at the beginning. It’s a Big Reveal, but not the Big Reveal you were expecting. Not the obvious one, anyway. Well done, BBC. Well done.

Then maybe go back and read our take on Buster Keaton and the Art of Showing (Not Telling).

And then have a great day, full of onwarding and upwarding!

Buster Keaton and The Art of Showing (Not Telling)

~ jackewilson ~ 9 Comments

Every aspiring creative writer hears it at some point:. It’s one of those great phrases that sound cryptic and meaningful and take a while to puzzle out.

Yes, yes, young grasshopper, I see you’ve written some words on the page here, and I see you’re trying to do something like write fiction, a craft I myself have mastered over many difficult years. Ah, well, you are cute, young grasshopper, I admire your young and precious energy, but you have so much to learn. So let me speak in my greatest guru voice and give you a secret that may take you years to unpack, you who thought you knew so much just from reading fiction. And here’s the advice, young grasshopper. “Show, don’t tell.”

Or as it’s usually phrased, in creative writing guidebooks:

SHOW DON’T TELL

And as it’s usually heard by the aspiring author:

SHOW DON’T TELL YOU IDIOT

I have my issues with this phrase, as everyone who cares about writing fiction should.

Let’s put it this way: used well, it’s a helpful little reminder of something important. When it’s misunderstood, it can produce barbarisms.

And…it’s probably been misunderstood as often as it’s been used well.

Here’s what it means: as you’re steaming along with your narrative, and a character turns up, you can say something like “X was very clever” and leave it at that, but a) that’s not much fun for the reader and b) might not be very persuasive. Let’s see some cleverness! Show us the clever!

That doesn’t mean you can never say “X was very clever.” That very well might be the best way to introduce that character. Or there may be times when your narrator is fully capable of telling rather than showing. Telling can often be the best way to get something across – the fastest or most efficient. You might be setting up some nice narrative irony with the telling. Maybe you are going to save the showing for something else.

Go find Jane Austen. Leo Tolstoy. Herman Melville. There will be plenty of telling in there, along with all the good showing.

Here’s Jacke’s variation:

Show when it makes sense to show, tell when it makes sense to tell. But make sure you’re thinking about the reader’s experience.

(Oh, and don’t name your character X. Unless that’s the best name for your character. See how this works?)

Now, everything I just said is really just a way of introducing a video I should have just shown. Buster Keaton and the art of the sight gag, a highly enjoyable video by the great Tony Zhou. Nota bene the part where Keaton discusses visual jokes vs. jokes conveyed through title cards. But really, just sit back and enjoy. We don’t spend enough time admiring artists like this one, but we’re the better for it when we do.

Onward and upward!

Your Brain in Action

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Larry Getlen at Splitsider just posted an excerpt of a never-before-released interview with the brilliant comedian George Carlin. Carlin describes something about the brain that I think most people have experienced and recognized in themselves. But his description of how it affects his creative process may be the best I’ve ever read:

[M]y mind has trained itself to have a very sensitive system of radar about certain words, expressions, topics, and areas of discussion that come up. There are things that interest me more than others, and then there are things that jump out. There’s one thing I learned about the mind as a young man, when I quit school. I read a book – half of it, anyway – called Psycho-Cybernetics. The author said that the brain is a goal-seeking and problem-solving machine, and if you put into it the parameters of what it is you need or want or expect, and you feed it, it will do a lot of work without you even noticing. Because the brain does that. It forms neural networks. There are areas in your brain that communicate with one another because of a need they perceive that they have – if you have trained yourself passively or actively, which I have – to look for certain kinds of things to say, and certain kinds of things to compare. Because a lot of comedy is comparing – the things that are cultural or social or language-oriented, or just plain silly. My brain got used to the fact that that made it feel good – that I liked finding those things. So the brain does networking on its own where those connections get made, and pretty soon there’s an automatic process going on all the time that leaves out a lot of unimportant or less interesting areas, and concentrates on areas it has trained itself to passively look for. Because it knows that when it finds one of them, you’re going to feel good! Oh, boy, I found another one! Let’s go back to work and find some more of these for him.

Fascinating! And not just for comedians looking for absurdities in life, but for writers too – whether it’s seeking metaphors to describe physical qualities of things, or bits of conversation that remind us of what we really talk about when we talk about x.

And for non-writers too. What do you need to spot? Business opportunities? Inefficiencies in the workplace? Ways to reduce clutter in your life? Places where you can compliment others and strengthen your relationships?

Don’t struggle in solitude. It may be too much to say that you should think of your brain as your friend, but it doesn’t have to be your enemy either. (Or, I guess, a stranger.)

Make it like Carlin’s description: a loyal servant, well-trained and eager to find things that make you feel good.

Image Credit: Splitsider.com

 

Writing Advice from Will Ferrell’s Dad

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Okay, the title is a bit of a stretch. Will Ferrell’s father, a professional musician for thirty or forty years, was actually talking about show business. But his advice is applicable to all creative endeavors and every writer should hear it.

Ferrell told the story about his dad on Marc Maron’s podcast (which I’ve recommended before). The whole interview is worth listening to – it was ninety minutes with the “real” Will Ferrell, not one of his characters. And he’s just what you would hope: thoughtful, genuine, and funny. Underneath that bring-the-house-down persona, there’s a lot of gentle wisdom in that man.

Unfortunately I don’t have the transcript so I’ll have to paraphrase. But first, a little scene setting.

Ferrell had come home from college and figured out that he wanted to try comedy. He started doing some anxious standup in Orange County, then eventually made his way to the Groundlings. He was doing well, although this was still light years away from SNL and comedy superstardom.

Ferrell had lunch with his dad and he told him he wanted to pursue comedy as a career. His dad, who had watched him on stage, gave him some practical advice: Continue reading →