So Predictable

predictable--a narrative condition in which the reader correctly guess the intent of a character and the outcome of that intent; dramatic circumstances in which there is little or no nuance, where the reader is neither surprised nor challenged.

If a reader is truly caught up in a story, he will have taken sides, begun to root for the success of some and the failure or worse (humiliation) for others, indulged in the trope of reader as matchmaker, seeing potential romantic entanglements. Additionally, the reader will be able to take cues from the text much as a dog about to be taken for a walk will take cues from the master putting on a jacket, clanking house keys, or reaching for a leash. Certain situations in story provoke the speculation that something--a disaster, a reversal, a surprise--is forthcoming. The shrewd writer, which is to say the writer who understands the dynamics of story, will be aware of these anticipations, then prepare for them in a way that will provoke surprise and keep the reader off guard and guessing to the point of not being able to take time away from the reading.

Never take the reader where the reader wants to go. Readers do not wish to be left standing still, which they may easily feel themselves to be if they are presented with laundry lists of details, forced to listen to long, philosophical discussions, subjected to weather reports or travel-writing descriptions of scenery. At the extreme least, readers want to feel as though they were eavesdropping on some form of intimacy; better still they wish to feel compellingly caught up with the execution of a particular character's agenda.

It is the task of the writer to make the reader feel the intensity of the characters and their involvements with the issues of the story. Anything else is predictable.

Even if you are not a fan or fancier of the suspense-based thriller, it is worth critically reading at least one novel by Harlan Coben, comparing it will one by Lee Child and Nelson Demille. Couldn't hurt to read Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, which presents yet other variations on the theme of surprise and unpredictability, then consider Louise Erdrich's A Plague of Doves.

Dealing with predictability in story provides another set of reasons to consider and absorb acting techniques from the likes of such actor coaches as Stella Adler, Sanford Meizner, and Uta Hagen, wherein actors learn where to find within themselves the emotions, gestures, and visions of surprise. In this sense, surprise is the discovery the character makes about himself/herself in times of weal and woe--discovery that before our eyes transforms the predictable into the truly remarkable.

The Writer as Actor, Part I of an Ongoing Investigation

A major moment arrives early in Uta Hagen's transformative Respect for Acting. She cites the example of the nineteenth-century French actor Coquelin. "One night," Hagen writes, "after having received accolades for his performance from the audience...Coquelin called his fellow actors together backstage and said: 'I cried real tears on stage tonight. I apologize. It will never happen again.' His approach to acting was obviously Representational. For him, a genuine experience on stage was rejected in the belief that it would muddy or blur the acting."

Hagen describes the two types of acting as Representational, wherein the actor finds a form based on objective result for the character, which he then carefully watches as he executes it. The Presentational actor trusts that a form will result from the identification with the character and the discovery of his character's actions. Said Presentational actor works on stage for a moment-to-moment subjective experience, which is presented as it were from the interior.

What grand advice for the writer, who after all is creating characters from the depth of his or her own experiences. Anything else seems mannered, perhaps even over-the-top, indeed nineteenth-century because of the remoteness of the creator from the character.

One way to digest and use this in-the-moment approach is to recall that the writer's task is made more original and genuine by using the movements and words of character to evoke rather than describe. Think of it this way: the best outer description has already been done in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Time now for the inner description that comes when the writer puts the character through each relevant moment in the story, allowing the character's gestures or lack, words or lack to stand as the response to the moment. This is not merely to remove adjectives or adverbs, which are, after all, valuable tools of the language. This approach is to remove the author's stage directions, the author's judgement, allowing all to come forth from the character.

Put another way, the shout, the loud voice, even the exclamation point are the tracer bullets of defensiveness, they light the way to the target which needs no lighting in the first place.