Show #5: Twist Endings

NEWS

Recommended reading for lovers of flash fiction: the magazine, Flash from Chester University. Available from:

www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine

Open for submissions of up to 360 words so definitely worth a look.

A recommendation for all lovers of the short story. To celebrate its 50th year as an imprint, Penguin Modern Classics has released a series of fifty slim volumes of short stories and novellas, each devoted to a single author. They are a great way to discover writers you haven’t looked at before. They cost £3 each and Totnes bookshop has got a three for two deal going on them. Get them while you can.

COURSES

As promised in the last show, I also want to publicise courses that might interest any writers in the area. Chris Waters, one of our readers and a great tutor is putting together a six week short fiction course – Telling Tales – which starts at the WEA in Exeter at the end of May. If you are interested please email the show at submissions@soundartradio.org.uk and I will forward your details on to Chris.

The show had two chilling and evocative stories, from Laurence Green and Carolyn Eddy.

One of the many things I really admire in the stories is the way they avoid the temptation to put all the effects into a surprise ending, to deliberately mislead the reader during the bulk of the narrative just to go for some cheap twist on the end to provide the punch.

There is something about writing short stories that seems to invite some sort of twist ending, the big reveal in the final line that turns the story on its head.
There is nothing wrong with twist endings. Writers from Maupassant to Roald Dahl made an art form out of them. But they are difficult to do well. And, even if they are expertly crafted and entertaining, these stories often feel a bit two-dimensional if the whole thing relies on the effect of the punchline.

One of the problems with the weaker twist stories is that they often keep back crucial information from the reader. Information that the main character must know, but we don’t, or information that would be obvious to us if we were in the same setting as the characters. Of course, stories create suspense by the judicious withholding of information, just parceling out enough to keep us turning the page, but, as in life, timing is everything. If the reader feels they are discovering in a natural way the story, the characters, the motivations, the bigger picture, they will take it on board, suspend their disbelief. If, however, they have to battle through to the end of the piece just to find out that it was all a dream, or the whole thing took place in another dimension, or that the narrator was, in fact, a zebra, without any prior warning, the reader will feel cheated.

The opposite is also true. If there are so many clues given out that the twist is predictable, and the story has nothing else going for it, then the reader is simply bored and disappointed. Not good.

The one thing that will make one story like this stand head and shoulders above other stories with similar payoffs, is simply that they do not rely on the twist for their power. They rely instead on engaging the reader on a much deeper level, through characters and their relationships and our empathy with them, through observations of human society and human nature.

One of the authors featured in the Penguin series I mentioned in the news section is Shirley Jackson. I had not read any of her stuff before but just couldn’t resist. Anyway, this is the opening of her story, The Lottery.

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.

The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke out into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones and the other boys soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix – the villagers pronounced this name ‘Dellacroy’ – eventually made a great pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys and the very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.

Soon the men began to gather, surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes. They stood together, away form the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times.
Bobby Martin ducked under his mother’s grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his father and his oldest brother.

I can't give away the ending to the story, because everything you need to know about the ending is there in the opening. There is a lottery that someone must win, and there is a big pile of smooth, round stones, as we are told repeatedly. We may resist it, we may prefer to ignore it, hope that it can’t be true. But we can’t accuse the author of hiding anything from us. What makes this story so chilling is not the ending, the twist, but the way the characters behave in such an appalling yet totally believable fashion, applying a mirror to ourselves and asking some pretty uncomfortable questions.

And perhaps this is the secret of the best twist endings, It’s not the surprise that shocks us, but the inevitability.

Looking forward to the next show on April 5.

(And feel free to add your comments and opinions to the blog, especially if you want to disagree with something!)