1.

THRILLER PACING
Even if your book isnt a thriller, youre trying to achieve what would be
considered thriller pacing. A thriller isnt ponderous it moves like a
starving shark. It doesnt dally. It careens forth with a sense of barelycontrolled energy, like a car barreling down a ruined mountain road with
its brake line cut. It doesnt matter if the book isnt a thriller you can
still lend some of that energy to the fiction just the same. A sense of
breathlessness, of anticipation, of sheergotta-know-more. Thriller pacing
to me, at least means the story moves. No fucking about. A boot
mashed against the accelerator. (A good example of this in television
is: Orphan Black. Every episode ushers that story forward. No hesitation.
Nothing dragged out.)

2. A GUT PUNCH OF DANGER

Danger. Peril. Grim menace and unparalleled jeopardy. Many such page-turner
books are shot through with an unyielding dose of danger. This
isnt occasional this is persistent. We get the feeling that characters
arent ever really safe. We know that at any moment the Vatican-trained
orangutan assassin could appear and end another life. This doesnt just
need to be mortal peril, either. Emotional danger (the surety of a loved
one discovering betrayal). Spiritual jeopardy (ones soul as a
battleground for malevolent forces). Constant pitfalls. Many depths, dark
and deadly.

3. ESCALATION, ESCALATION, ESCALATION

The danger sprouts many heads. It feeds and it grows. It no longer
appears from just one angle, but now: another, and then another, until
the characters are beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and
the tyranny of evil men. And you will KNOW that I AM THE LORD
whoa, hey, sorry, I think Im channeling Jules from Pulp Fiction. Point is?
The danger needs a volume knob. You need to start it on 1, and then end
it by spinning it to its maximum, breaking it off its mooring, then using
the jagged plastic to stab the reader in the throat. (Metaphorically. Uhh,
please do not stab your readers with anything except the viciousness of
your fiction.) Put more succinctly: make things worse and worse for the
characters. Complicate the problem. Add layers.

4. BEHOLD: THE CLIFFHANGER

The cliffhanger which sounds like a weird sex move or a particularly
diligent dingleberry isnt just for use at the end of a book. The
cliffhanger is a sinister toy that you can use throughout the work. This is
how a cliffhanger works: you are, at periodic intervals, going to say to
your reader: I have a cat in this box and the cat could be dead or alive.
You can open the box now and see, or I can walk away, and the box will
remain closed and maybe the cat will simply die and remain dead and
then a gaggle of evil feline specters will haunt you from the cat-flavored
afterlife and thats on you, pal. Thats on you. And, ideally, the reader is
like, WELL FUCK I GOTTA KNOW ABOUT THIS CAT and then
proceeds to open the box. The mechanism for this is simple: you end a
chapter or a section of the book with a moment of intense what-the-fuckery.
It can be a character in a moment that would seem to intimate her death.
But it doesnt actually have to be about danger any shocking action or
nugget of information will do. The appearance of a character the reader
thought dead! Something everyone said shouldnt or couldnt be done
just happened! A marriage ending with a cruel declaration! The
revelation that everyone is a robot! Whatever! You want the readers eyes
to bug out like bulging Champagne corks, leaving her only one
choice: READ MORE BOOK NOW PLEASE.

5. AN UPPERCUT OF MYSTERY
Said it before: the question mark is shaped like a hook. The question (i.e.
mystery) is bait. The question mark at the end of a question is the hook
that sets in the cheek of the reader and drags them along. Populate the
work with mysteries big and small. Mysteries of all types, too
mysteries related to character, to big plot, to subplot, to worldbuilding
and metaplot, to backstory, to future happenings, and on and on. Every
chapter should contain some iota of mystery, for it is the question that
keeps them reading. And when you solve one mystery, more must arrive.
Each answer creates two more questions. Its like: finding the key to the
locked door just reveals a room with more locked doors or a room full
of keys. Or a room full of wombats wearing tiny top hats and solving
baroque-looking puzzle boxes. WE HAVE SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOW
YOU, one such sinister wombat says. Then the door to Hells sex
labyrinth opens.

6. THE TIMING OF MYSTERY MATTERS, TOO

Readers dont like to feel overwhelmed, and a good unputdownable book
knows to dole the mysteries out swiftly, but not all at once. Your first
chapter shouldnt be 2000 words of questions. A simple way to visualize
this is to see the overall story as a straight line, and then along that line
are little arches and loops like stitching. But there are also larger arcs
above that, like rainbows. So, youve got little mysteries introduced
chapter-by-chapter, and solved one or two chapters later, but youve also
got larger and more persistent mysteries that cover whole acts or even the
entire book or even the entire series. (Again I point you to: Orphan Black.
Every episode does a fine job of asking new questions but also answering
them. And yet, two seasons later, were still in the dark about the
creation of clones or their overall purpose.)

7. THE POWER OF THE PIVOT

The pivot. One of my favorite devices. The pivot works like this youre
going one direction. Say, north. The reader is going along with you
because thats how the reader rolls. And then, just as everyones
comfortable with the direction, you suddenly pivot and head northeast.
Or east. Or you spin around heel-to-toe and go back south. The act of the
pivot is one of surprise: youre sending a signal to the reader: You
thought I was doing one thing, but really, Im doing another. You want
them to gasp. In the Matrix, when you find out this isnt just a movie about
hackers and instead is about a war against robots based in a virtual
reality? Thats a pivot. In Die Hard, when we realize Hans Gruber isnt
really a terrorist but, in fact, is a thief who desires the trouble thats being
brought down upon his head because it serves him: yep, pivot. The pivot
is a good way to make the reader feel a sense of urgency,
uncertainty, excitement. And excrement. In their pants.

8. THE ROLE OF MISDIRECTION

The author is a magician. Not a sorcerer whose magic is cryptic and
unknowable, but rather, a proper stage magician whose tricks are wellpracticed to completely fuck with the audience. One of the critical
components to composing an illusion is the art of misdirection. The stage
magician holds up a honking duckling puppet and says, LOOK, I WILL

TRANSFORM THIS PUPPET INTO A HONEY-GLAZED HAM, and then

as the duckling flaps and quacks, ninjas sneak into the theater and stab
all the audience members. Or something. I dunno, Im not a magician.
What I do know is: readers love being tricked (when its fair, at least).
They love you setting up three characters who could be the killer, but
then revealing how really, it was the fourth character. The one they never
suspected. They think the bomb has been under one of these three tables
you keep moving around but really, its been up the characters ass all
along.

9. WHAT THE HELL IS THE AUTHOR GONNA DO NEXT?

What all this speaks to is the authors willingness to fuck with the story
they want to see what youre going to do next. As such, it is your job as
the storyteller to be bold and unpredictable (provided that it makes sense
within the rigors of the story). Kill the main character. Blow up the bomb
that they thought couldnt ever go off. They think the storys ending will
be X, so you have X happen at the midpoint of the book, leaving them in
completely unanticipated territory. It is the storytellers job to say, you
cannot trust me, and once that is firmly and irrevocably established, the
reader will read along just to see what youre going to do next.

10. WHAT THE HELL IS THE CHARACTER GONNA DO

NEXT?
We like characters who surprise. Just as we want an author we cant
trust, characters are interesting, too, when we cannot be sure what theyll
do next. The moment where a protagonist does something supremely
bad-ass or the villain performs some truly heinous fuckery, those are great
moments. Jaw-dropping, kick-ass, I-did-not-see-that-coming moments. When
readers are promised characters who Do Interesting Things, they want to
keep reading. Sounds simple in theory. Not always so easy in execution.

11. THE ROLE OF HUMOR

Humor might seem to have no place in a compulsively-readable book,
but Id disagree. Humor isnt a spice you want to overdo too much
sweet-and-sour will pucker the mouth but a little humor here and
there puts the reader at ease. You want them at ease for two reasons:

one, so that the entirety of your story isnt one unpleasant trachea-punch
after another; two, so that you can, just as they get comfortable, tracheapunch them. HA HA HA THEY THOUGHT YOU WERENT GONNA DO
THAT. The fools. The fools! *punches you in the trachea*

12. RHYTHM OF LANGUAGE

Vary your sentence length and structure. Short sentences and dialogue
press the accelerator; long paragraphs and description hit the brake
pedal. Language lubricates the fiction. Sometimes you want to speed
things up particularly in a work you want to be nearly addictive in its
consumption. Big giant blocks of text always run the risk of building a
wall that the reader will choose not to surmount. Leaner, meaner
sentences are the order of the day. (An excellent example of this was the
author Charles Grant. Lots of dialogue and short throat-punch
sentences. Sometimes his chapters were literally a single sentence in
length.) Every sentence neednt be short, and long paragraphs arent a
no-no but make sure that the language used is meant to create a sense
of urgency and excitement rather than a soggy swamp of pondering
ponderousness.

13. RHYTHM OF NARRATIVE

Narrative, too, is subject to rhythm. Action and conversation
something always happening, something always being said. But
everything doesnt need to be go go go every moment of the story, too
think, if you will, how a good hard-driving rock song will at times slow
shit down. Things go quiet. The drums fall away or maybe its the
guitar that fades back. But you know whats coming. The beats gonna
kick back up. The musics gonna start layering back in, louder,
louder, louder still, and then its gonna be like a wave crashing over a
seawall as the song roars back bigger and meaner than it was before. A
roller coaster isnt all downward momentum part of the power is the
slow rise, the calm before the storm.

14. FIRE NEEDS OXYGEN TO BURN

Put differently your story needs to slow down sometimes because
thats how the story breathes. The metaphor of fire needing oxygen is apt

we need time to think, to consider, to go deeper with characters and let

the story fill out a little. Your job is to tighten the noose, yes, but you still
need time to tie the damn thing. These oxygenated moments give us reason to
care about the story it is during these periods that we are allowed
context and reflection. (Just dont let them go on too long. Eventually
you have to throw the latch on the RABID METH-BADGERS box and
once more upend those nibbly motherfuckers so they can again run
rampant.)

15. TREAT EXPOSITION LIKE AN UGLY BAND-AID

Exposition isnt a bad thing, per se sometimes, details must be
conveyed for the situation and the world to be understood. You can only
get so far in a story utterly bewildering readers with little half-ass hints
and cheeky winks before somehow, in some fashion, expository data
sweeps into glue the broken parts together with the epoxy magic
of context. Just the same, exposition always runs the risk of being boggy.
Bad exposition is like clayey mud clinging to the bottom of ones already
heavy boot. And when youve got a fast-moving page-turner of a tale,
even good exposition might stall the momentum. How to handle this?
Treat it like a dirty, grim necessity. Its like an old, gummy Band-Aid: you
have to rip it off fast. This is combat landing time: get in, deliver
exposition, and get the hell out again in as short a time as you can
muster.

16. THE SUSPENSE OF BAD DECISIONS

Suspense is that feeling in your gut that something bad is gonna happen.
Bombs gonna go off. The beast will escape its cage. Old Homeless Dave
with his Butt Plug Bludgeon will once more menace Central Park. That
gut-feeling is tightened as you give hints that the Very Bad Thing is
getting closer to happening: the bomb ticks down, the hinges on the cage
are breaking, Old Homeless Daves potters grave has been torn open and
his body is missing. But there is, for me, a more refined version of
suspense and its one thats driven by characters: my favorite form of
suspense is that caused by characters we love making decisions / taking
actions that we hate. The teen in the slasher film goes out into the dark
garage. The cop compromises his ideals by taking a bribe. The
necromancer summons Old Homeless Dave to do his bidding. That kind

of suspense is the kind driven by people; it invests me deeper in the story

and makes me want to move more quickly through the narrative to see
how those bad decisions bear their poisonous fruit.

17. MAKE THEM WANT IT, AND THEN DENY THEM HA HA

HA YOURE EVIL
The protagonist is the readers proxy. What the protagonist wants is what
we, the reader, also want. You, the storyteller, are the chiefmost
antagonist in any tale, and so your job is to rob the protagonist and thus,
the reader of satisfaction. Its cruel. Its dangling candy in front of a
baby and when the baby reaches for it, you yank the candy away and
then also punch the baby. Readers want the satisfaction you do not easily
grant them. Theyre like drug addicts. (And sometimes this necessitates
giving them a little taste now and again: a hint of sweet satisfaction
before once more plunging the protagonist into your narrative piranha
tank.) Its like telling someone they cant itch their nose. That person
didnt even have to scratch her nose, and now shes like, AHHH MY
NOSE ITCHES LET ME ITCH IT I WANT IT I NEED THIS
SONOFAGODDAMN GGGNNNH *claws at face*

18. POINT TO THE SHOE: THATS GONNA DROP, YOU

SAY
Sometimes its not about surprise. Sometimes its about spoiler alerting
your own story. Heather dies in seven days. Youre giving away the end
of the magic trick. Youre saying: Im going to turn this donkey into a
bushel of mangosteens. You just gave away the ending or, at least,
gave away something thats going to happen. Youre pointing to the
Sword of Damocles dangling over our heads and saying: This shit right
here? Its totally going to fall. Heads up. Like, literally. And then you get
to spend the story showing us how. Its a tease, a hook, a taste and if it
pleases, the desire to want more will power them to turn pages oh-soquickly.

19. THE CREATION OF DOUBT

As has been said, the storyteller cannot be trusted. A trustworthy
storyteller is a boring storyteller. And so, you must create doubt in the

readers mind that you, the storyteller, will eventually do the right thing.
They must be uncertain as to the health of the future in the story youre
telling victory cannot be clearly predicted, the protagonists hopes and
dreams are held in increasing danger, the power of good over evil cannot
be assured. You create doubt by, well, being an asshole. That character
everyone knows you wont kill? *stabs them in the neck* Just as hope
gets within sight? *pushes red button, hope explodes* Think of yourself
as a bank robber one who has to shoot a hostage now and again to
prove how serious you are. Doubt brings them back. Because they want
to see how youre going to convince them otherwise. They want to be
tricked.

20. TAP INTO COMMON FEARS

Simple fears and threats, elegantly executed, can make for a helluva
page-turner. Sharks. Terrorism. Serial killers. Vampires. Bees. Toddlers.
Lindsey Lohan. Mangosteens.

21. TANTRIC INFORMATION DELIVERY

Show the reader only as much as they need to continue reading. This is a
trail of breadcrumbs left for a hungry little bird make them hop for it.
Tease it out slowly.

22. THE BOOK AND THE HOOK

Describe the storys hook the core premise, the narrative throughline
in a paragraph. Then, revise it so that its only a sentence. You might
be saying: What does this pitch have to do with writing a page-turner?
HOLD STILL ILL TELL YOU. Youre so wriggly! Anyway. The point is: if
you cannot succinctly describe something cleanly, clearly, and with
muchenticement, you probably cant translate that to the page. Distill the
pitch. Clarify the hook. Find out what matters whats catchy about it?
What is the most delectable part of the character, the conflict, the plot?
Sharpen the hook to catch the readers.
23. WILL THEY, WONT THEY?
A page-turner of a book has a kind of manic energy and while a story
like that can have a lot of complex things going on in the background,

often the story itself has a very simple crux to it. And that crux is, almost
literally, a crossroads. It is the question WILL THEY, or WONT THEY?
Will she cure her disease? Will the couple get together? Will he save his
son, or blow up the moon, or avenge his chihuahua, or whatever. This is
it: the binary question. Yes or no. Let this question infect every page. Let
it grant the tale the energy it needs to compel readers. Practically
speaking, it means never letting this question drift far from the story
youre telling. Always circle back to it.

24. GET EXCITED, GODDAMNIT

If youre excited by whats on the page, we will be, too. If you write with a
kind of gotta-catch-em-all lip-biting nail-scratching lunacy well feel it,
too. Write with vigor and intensity. Get excited. Infect us. Take us for a ride.
Youre the one driving: press the pedal down, take all the hard curves,
turn right when you said you were going to turn left. Love the journey.
Addict yourself to the tale and well find ourselves addicted, too.

25. TO REITERATE: STOP FUCKING AROUND

The books that sink their teeth into me and hold my gaze steady do so
because they dont fuck around. They move quickly. Theyre brave, bold,
sometimes batshit bizarropants. It feels like somewhere early on the
author said, You know what? Fuck it, and then stripped naked and ran
into traffic. Thats an author you want to watch. Thats a story you need
to see unfold. Kick off the kiddie wheels. Thumb the safety off. Fling
rocks at hornets nests. (Okay, dont really do this I literally did this
today and, uhhh, it didnt end well for me.) One of the most compelling
things a reader will experience is a writer who is operating at a blistering,
almost careless level an author who will blow it all up just to keep you
entertained is an author worth reading.

25 TURNS, PIVOTS, AND TWISTS TO

COMPLICATE YOUR STORY
1. THE HEINOUS FUCKERY IS REVEALED
This is the first turn of the story: something happens that disrupts the status quo and this
event pushes the protagonist (and perhaps the world around him) into the tale. The king dies!
Terrorists attack! My beloved pony has been pony-napped! A vampire just joined your Little
League team! This turn, unlike all the others in this list, isnt optional: storytelling is an act of
taking the straight line that is the status quo and kinking it like a garden hose. This first turn
known sometimes as the inciting incident is why the story exists in the first place.

2. THE ACTUAL HEINOUS FUCKERY IS ACTUALLY

REALLY REVEALED
In some stories we chug along thinking we know what the problem is (My boyfriend broke up
with me!) but at some point during the tale, perhaps around the midpoint of the narrative, we
learn of the real problem lurks behind the scenes (My boyfriend broke up with me because hes
actually a robot hell-bent on invading our high school and turning us all to robots and now I
have to save us all!) The initial problem, the one presented by the inciting incident, is
something of a stalking horse its a bit of magical misdirection that the protagonist and the
readers fall for while the real problem waits in the shadows to be exposed.

3. THE TRULY VILLAINOUS FUCKER IS REVEALED

Similar, but different: the problem is connected to a particular antagonist, and we think we
know who the true antagonist is, but oops, theres a meaner scarier malevolenter (not a word)
motherfucker in the wings: Darth Vader steps aside and its The Emperor! We think its George
Bush but its really Dick Cheney! Agent Smith is the bad guy but really its a bunch of, uhh,
squidbots and spider-borgs and whatever it doesnt matter because it turns again and actually
its really Agent Smith anyway haw haw haw you just got played, audience!

4. OH, SHIT
This turn is also fairly essential: Oh, Shit, means, We just escalated the problem. One tiger
got loose? Now its ten. The protagonists love interest is getting married? His fiancee is also
pregnant. The hero is being hunted by terrorists? Now the terrorists can psychically control
bees. This turn is a very simple one to understand: you have a pot of water on the stove, now its
time to turn the knob click by click until it gets hotter and hotter and eventually boils over.

5. HOLY TITS, IT LOOKS LIKE WERE GONNA LOSE

In many stories youll have that moment where it looks like everything is basically fucked. In the
original Star Wars trilogy, this is perhaps best embodied by the end of Empire Strikes Back.
You reach the end of that film youre like, Oh, okay, so, thats it. Obi-Wans long dead, Luke lost
his hand, the Rebellion is against the ropes, Vaders way too powerful and also Lukes uncle or
whatever, Han Solo got turned into a coffee table for a slimy turd-skinned space gangster. Okay,
everybody. Time to pack it up and go home. This is the dark pit, the bleak moment, the part in
the aerial acrobatics show where the plane dives right toward the ground and you think its
impossible to pull up in time but then vvvooooooom there it goes.

6. SWEET JEEBUS, WE TOTALLY FUCKING LOST

Were conditioned to believe that the heroes are going to win. Even when we reach that all is
lost moment, we still have a tiny ember glowing bright in the ash-pile of our expectations: we
still suspect that things are going to turn out okay, we just dont know how. Ah, but, again,
storytelling is an act that refutes the status quo and in this case audience expectations are that
status quo. Which means we must defy the audience. Which means in this case actually letting
the characters lose. Not a fake defeat. Not a temporary one. But that thing they were hoping to
achieve (save the victim, rescue the hostages, defeat the Satanic Unicorn Lord in his lair of
bedazzled bones and elf-flesh), mmmnope, too bad, sorry, too late. The victim cannot be saved.
The hostages are fucking dead. The Unicorn Lord is triumphant. Take them past the point of
utter loss and there may lie the end of the story or a new story may exist in the dread and
unexpected space after. The goals shift. The emotional frequency changes. The plot turns.

7. THE FAKE-ASS VICTORY

This is a real fuck-you-flavored move for the storyteller to make, but hey, sorry, thats life in the
Big Story, pal. In this one, you lend the protagonists a victory: Oh, ha ha ha, I did something
good! Were gonna win! and then you kick the chair out from under them and watch them hang
for it. John McClane calls the cops and goes through hell to keep them there, but his only ally
turns out to be a donut-chugging desk jockey and the entire police force not only doesnt help
him but instead accuses him of being one of the terrorists.

8. A GODDAMN KNIFE IN THE BACK

Betrayal is powerful story-fu. A character close to the protagonist suddenly turns and sticks a
dagger in the heros back either out of new opportunity for the traitorous character or because
he was planning on doing some cold-as-ice backstabbing all along. The girlfriend is really a
demon! The boyfriend is actually a doom-bot! The jealous best friend has been planning the
downfall of his buddy for the whole book! This works only when we believe the original
relationship to be rock-solid but at the same time engineer into the narrative reasons that the
betrayal makes sense. (Thats the weird trick of storytelling: on the one hand, you have to tell the
story with all the elements in place to uphold logic, but at the same time youre trying to direct
attention away from many of those elements so that the audience isnt stunned into disbelief.)

9. HA HA HA THIS IS ALL PART OF MY SECRET PLAN,

DICKHEAD

Here the oil-slick story squirms away from the all is lost or the false victory moment and tears
off its mask and says, HAR HAR HAR, I ENGINEERED IT THIS WAY FROM THE VERY
BEGINNING. The hero appears defeated but then she pulls a machete out of her ass-crack and
starts cutting fools to pieces. Or the antagonist is thrown in jail but suddenly we realize that was
his intention all along and now hes closer to the Queens Jewels he wants to steal or the
orphanage he wants to blow up or the Whole Foods where he buys his sinister quinoa.

10. VARIATION: THE VILLAIN KNOWS EVERYTHING,

DUMBASS
This is a variation on the above except here, its not so much that the villain has engineered
the whole thing from the beginning but rather that the hero hasnt been as sneaky or clever as he
thought. The hero performs some elaborate scheme and sneaks into the monsters lair only to
have the monster slow-clap while emerging out of the darkness while wearing a smoking jacket.
The monster says, I knew you were coming because you butt-dialed me two days ago and
havent hung up since. Or maybe this ties into the earlier Knife in the Back and the villains
surprising knowledge comes from a betrayal within. (Mix and match for maximum fun!)

11. THAT ONE ASSHOLE IS REALLY SOME OTHER

ASSHOLE
Darth Vader is really Lukes father! Verbal Kint is really the serial killer in Se7en! The kid
from The Sixth Sense is actually Casper the Friendly Ghost! The Gilmore Girls are
actually The Fabulous Baker Boys! All along we expect that Character A is, as told, Character
A. But then he rips his face off (probably metaphorically) and reveals the true face beneath: hes
really Character Z. And also, a woman. And a werewolf. And the Prime Minister of Canada.

12. VARIATION: THAT POOR ASSHOLE HAD NO IDEA

WHO HE WAS
This variant assumes the same as before (one character is actually another character), except in
this case that information is kept from the actual character in question imagine, if you will,
Darth Vader not realizing hes Lukes father or that he ever had kids at all (That damn princess
ran off and had a litter of Jedi piglets on some dirt planet. I tell you, Tarkin, its a cold, cold
Galaxy out there.). Here you have the power of dramatic irony at your command: the audience
may end up knowing something well before the characters themselves realize it.

13. THAT POOR ASSHOLE ALSO HAD NO IDEA WHAT HE

HAD
Picture it: King Arthur thinks he needs the magical sword given to him by Lady of the Lake in
order to fight off a I dunno, a phalanx of randy leprechauns or a buncha grizzly bears or some
shit (what am I, an Arthurian scholar?) And then at the end the sword is destroyed in battle (oh,
shit!) but then the Lady of the Lake appears like a Force ghost and is all, Excalibur was within
you all along, Artie-boy, then light shines out of his mouth and butt and King Arthur becomes

Excalibur. (Somebody throw some money at my face so I can write this up, proper.) Point is, a
character goes through the tale not realizing he had what he needed all along: the secret weapon,
the launch codes, the love of his life, a delicious Snickers bar, whatever.

14. MOTHERFUCKING PERIPETEIA, BRO

Peripeteia is a fancy Greek word for Is it worth it, let me work it, I put my thing down, flip it
and reverse it, as made famous by Missy Artemisdemeanor Elliot. Or, put differently, it
suggests a reversal of circumstances. The Shakespearean tragedy known as Trading
Places(starring Dame Daniel Akroyd and Knave Edwardth Murray) is a good example of this.
Someone rich becomes poor. Someone with no power gains all the power. Man becomes God,
God becomes man, dogs and cats switch places, you know the drill.

15. THAT SUBPLOT IS A REAL SONOFABITCH

Subplots help interrupt the standard narrative storyline the main story is about a cosmic
battle between good and evil while theres this subplot about an emperors daughter and how
shes trying to find her lost moon-horse. Thing is, a subplot has to eventually collide with a main
plot, and sometimes when that happens, it causes a kind of pivot. The subplot may become the
main plot (imagine that the emperors daughter and her moon-horse, Mister Buckets, suddenly
become the catalyst for the conflict at hand), or it may simply flip the main plot and change the
circumstances by introducing new conflicts, characters, or settings.

16. BESIEGED BY BASTARDS ON ALL SIDES

John McClanes got it bad in Die Hard. Not only is he dealing with international bank thieves,
hes also gotta contend with an incompetent police force, a psychopathically aggressive pair of
FBI agents, and whoever it was that decided Nakatomi Plaza needed so much goddamn glass. In
your story, just as your protagonist (and the protags proxy, the audience) thinks shes seen the
face of her enemies, give her new enemies to fight on top of her existing enemies.

17. TURNS OUT YOU CANT TRUST THAT JERKOFF, THE

NARRATOR
The unreliable narrator is a classic move (Verbal Kint! Tyler Durden! Huck Finn!) but its not
one that needs to be telegraphed so early on in the story. We begin every story, I think, assuming
that whats on the page is as honest as Abe Lincolns yearning need to behead vampires. Thats
good. You can use that. Let the audience settle into that sense of comfort, then start seedings
hints throughout that the narrator might not be on the up-and-up.

18. WHAT THE SHIT, IM PRETTY SURE THAT MAJOR

CHARACTER JUST DIED
(AKA, The George R.R. Martin Honorary Authorial Serial Killer Hugo Award.) Take one of your
main characters and kill them. Do so as a part of the narrative, of course I mean, spoiler
alert, I guess, but its not like Ned Stark gets hit by a VW Bug crossing a dirt road in Westeros.

His death is an explicit part of the story its just a death nobody ever expects. Think of this as a
character-specific version of the aforementioned Sweet Jeebus We Totally Fucking Lost
the audience really doesnt expect you to drop the axe on a beloved major character. Which is
exactly why you sometimes need to do just that.

19. PISS ON THE GRAVE

In both religion and comic books, death is not so much a permanent condition as it is
a troublesome speedbump Jesus was, of course, one of the earliest superheroes, and that guy
was pretty much unkillable. Point is, once again its time to mess with audience
expectations. Outside religion and comic books, generally speaking when a character dies, we
assume its a permanent pipe-sucking daisy-pushing state of affairs. So, to resurrect a character
whether literally bringing them back to life or simply making it clear they never really died
you turn the tale and surprise the audience. And that is part of what we do, isnt it?

20. ACCELERATE THE NARRATIVE ON GODDAMN GOGO-PILLS

A show like Homeland, you think its going to be this one thing, right? Theyre going to drag
out this War on Terror vibe and because its television the entire Who is Brody? and Get Abu
Nazir! plotlines are going to streeeeeetch out like what Bruce Banner does to his man-panties
when he becomes The Incredible Hulk, but thats not what happens. Without spoiling
anything, the show is on some kind of trucker meth there is no laggy middle. Its all rocketboosters and caffeine enemas and so you can give your story the same kind of energy by just
pushing, pushing, pushing. Shove the narrative forward. Accelerate the timetable. Let the
audience think your tale is about one mans struggle to dethrone a king but then, fuck it, he
dethrones the king in the first 100 pages. The audience is like, blink blink, WHUUUUT.

21. AH, CRAP, ITS THE PYRRHIC VICTORY

A Pyrrhic Victory is a victory that only comes with great cost and sacrifice something lost,
something given, a hard choice made. Victory in one hand is a pile of steaming monkey shit in
the other. Its a good turn because our expectation is that victory is absolute you cant win
while losing, right? DOES NOT COMPUTE BEEP BOOP BEEP. Except, fuck that. It works.

22. JERKOFFS GUN

Chekovs Gun is pretty straightforward: reveal a gun in the first act, that gun better get fired by
the third act. Put differently, something that shows up earlier may seem important or it may
seem insignificant, but if youre mentioning it, it probably matters. The trick is that the audience
doesnt know how or why and so this makes for a powerful turn: any detail you reveal in an
earlier portion of the story can come back in a big way. A stray footprint, an odd comment made
by passersby, a funny-looking pubic hair stuck to someones creme brulee.

23. THE SHIT JUST GOT FIXED NOW WHAT?!

The opposite of everything is lost is yay everything just got solved, except the trick here is that
the end of the conflict doesnt come at the end of the story like everyone figures but rather, far
earlier. (Beware: spoiler incoming.) Look no further than Breaking Bad, where Walter
White effectively solves the problem put forth in the pilot: cancers gone and the treatments are
paid for, so whats the problem? It would seem as if a vacuum is created by the loss of conflict
but instead it demands a deeper, more meaningful conflict as a troubling truth is revealed as he
continues on his path: Walter White wanted to be the drug lord Heisenberg all along.

24. STORY WITHIN A STORY WITHIN A MY HEAD JUST

FUCKING MELTED
For a good portion of the story, the audience thinks the story is one thing but then we realize
that the main story is nested in a larger (or smaller) story: one minute its a girl on a space
station who wants to explore the stars but then later we realize that the space station story is the
delusion of a girl abused by her mother and who just wants to escape her house. Or, maybe a
more abstract version of this: we think the story is one about redemption but it ends up being
about one of vengeance. We think its porn but it turns into something about love. We think its
love but it turns into something about hate. We think its a Western but its really Elfpunk
BDSM. Once in a rare while a story deserves big changes: dramatic thematic shifts and setting
flips. (The Princess Bride and The Matrix are examples of this.)

25. THE NATURE OF BOREDOM IS A STRAIGHT LINE

These techniques all add up to one thing: the audience grows bored when the story marches
forward in too-straight a line. Even the standard escalation toward climax is a straight line
that needs to be kinked up and broken apart from time to time. Which means all of these
techniques boil down to: change shit up. Envision what the audience will be thinking as they
read it. What do they expect? What is the predictive course they have in their head? Then tweak
that. Maybe a subtle shift. Maybe a really violent one. But dont be afraid to change things up.
Go risky. Get crazy. In life, we adore comfort. In fiction, comfort is our greatest enemy.