note to self

Somewhere in the last fortnight or so I read a piece on writing thrillers which said that all too often twists in fiction were twists designed to catch the readers, whereas a better twist is one that catches the characters. I've been thinking about this. (I have, however, completely forgotten where I read it).

I've read two thrillers recently (Lee Child's Make Me and Jeffrey Deaver's Solitude Creek, both of which feature a number of twists (both, also, make a particular aspect of the dark web a key part of their story), and didn't think either particularly good. The Deaver is very much about fooling the reader, and while that's always been part of his writing, The Bone Collector plays just as many games with the characters and worked much better for me. The Child, less so; but one of my main problems with Make Me was the apparent disproportionate reaction of the good guys; a reaction that becomes justified retrospectively when the reader is finally made aware of what's actually going on. The same problem from another angle. In my own writing I try to put twist reveals in early and I've usually framed that as equal parts desire to keep the reader off-balance and belief that dealing with the consequences of a known twist often makes for a more interesting story than finishing with the twist.

This is also a note to say that I've just finished The Traitor, by Seth Dickinson, and while I did end up liking it more by the ending than I thought I was going to half way through, this issue is kind of key to my response to the book. One of Dickinson's themes is that Baru makes mistakes when she assumes she is the only actor on the board, and everyone else just responds. I'd like this book a whole lot more if it trusted the readers to act as well.