Stories With Sudden, Drastic Twists

[slyc_willie]

I think that if you've lived at all, you've had enough "what the fuck?" moments where someone (and the more someones the farther you go in life) you thought you knew did something totally unexpected that it makes it easy to accept it in fiction. Mr. CarliePlum worked with a guy who murdered someone and chopped them to bits (seemingly a really nice guy), my cousin's wife (the "perfect wife and mother") was fucking not one, not two, but three guys on her street (not with her husband's knowledge or consent), regular 9-to-5 Joe come-to-work-in-a-suit-every-day guy I worked with who seemingly had his shit together was dealing LSD to college kids to supplement his income. Cops came into the office and carted him away in handcuffs.

Everybody's got secrets. Some people's are bigger than others.

I worked with a guy who rented a spare room out to a guy down on his luck. He was working in his garage with the guy smacked him with a baseball bat set fire to the garage and locked the doors. He woke up in time to jump through a window and saved himself.

While he was in the hospital, the cops arrested the wife and the boarder on their way to Nevada. Seems she had said it was their Christan duty to look after the less fortunate when she convinced him to take the boarder in.

Excellent points and examples. But there is a distinction between the "what the fuck" moments of real life and what readers are willing to suspend disbelief for in a story. Sometimes, the actuality of an event is too fantastic for the unlearned reader.

Case in point: in the movie "Public Enemy," John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) carves out a fake wooden gun and convinces five armed uniformed guards to not only let him out of his jail cell, but to lock themselves within the cell once Dillinger was out. It's a terrifically funny scene, but seems a little unrealistic.

Or is it?

In reality, when Dillinger actually pulled this stunt, he didn't get five guards, but seventeen to walk into the cell. The director and producers of the movie felt that most viewers would think such a thing waaaay too unlikely, so they trimmed down the numbers.

If I were to write a story about my cousin's wife fucking Jimmy Joe down the street, and eventually getting caught, it would make for a good story. If she's also doing Frank and Tom, readers might throw up their hands at the ridiculousness of the scenario. Even if I included a note in the beginning saying the story was based on truth, I would have a dozen comments calling bullshit.

Just because it happens in reality doesn't mean it will be accepted in fiction. As writers, we have to be careful about how we introduce drastic twists. If everyone understood just how strange reality is, I doubt there'd be much need for fiction in the first place.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Excellent points and examples. But there is a distinction between the "what the fuck" moments of real life and what readers are willing to suspend disbelief for in a story. Sometimes, the actuality of an event is too fantastic for the unlearned reader.

Case in point: in the movie "Public Enemy," John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) carves out a fake wooden gun and convinces five armed uniformed guards to not only let him out of his jail cell, but to lock themselves within the cell once Dillinger was out. It's a terrifically funny scene, but seems a little unrealistic.

Or is it?

In reality, when Dillinger actually pulled this stunt, he didn't get five guards, but seventeen to walk into the cell. The director and producers of the movie felt that most viewers would think such a thing waaaay too unlikely, so they trimmed down the numbers.

If I were to write a story about my cousin's wife fucking Jimmy Joe down the street, and eventually getting caught, it would make for a good story. If she's also doing Frank and Tom, readers might throw up their hands at the ridiculousness of the scenario. Even if I included a note in the beginning saying the story was based on truth, I would have a dozen comments calling bullshit.

Just because it happens in reality doesn't mean it will be accepted in fiction. As writers, we have to be careful about how we introduce drastic twists. If everyone understood just how strange reality is, I doubt there'd be much need for fiction in the first place.

Very true. Most people refuse to buy the truth, and the truth often seems wild and crazy to naifs.

 

[lovecraft68]

On the subject of all of us knowing someone disturbing, this is something that happened when we were kids, but didn't find out about until a few years ago because back when I was a kid there was no internet and people knew when to keep their mouths shut.

When I was 11 I was in a foster home and had a couple of friends on the street. There was a guy who lived on the corner who had a huge pool in his back yard. It was hot as hell and a couple of times one of the older kids had opened the fire hydrant so we could run around in it, but of course he got in trouble.

One day me and my buddies are walking down the street and the guy told us we could feel free to use his pool, he even told us to ask our parents and that they could call him and make sure it was okay. Now this guy was a not a minister, but a deacon in a local church and his wife had passed and everyone thought he was just a nice older guy. So every day for the next week we went swimming

Then he starts talking to us and asks me and my friend "Don't you guys have sisters? you can tell them they can come to. At the time my foster sister was 13 and my friends sister 12. so they start coming over an dhe then tells them to bring their friends. This goes on for a few weeks then one day our foster parents tell us we can't go anymore. MR so and so was taken to the hospital in the middle of the night and was very sick. He never came back.

About 4 years ago at a high school reunion my sister was talking to a guy who's father was a cop. What happened was the guy brought one of the girls into his house and gave her a bathing suit as a "gift" he told her she was very pretty and that yellow would look good on her and would she wear it? he told her not to say where she got it because then all the other girsl would get jealous.

The girl ended up showing it to her older sister who took it straight to her parents. I guess the father lost it and went down there and broke the door in and was beating on the guy when the cops showed up. The cops searched his house and found literally thousands of polaroids of all the girls playing by the pool, many of the picks were of them bending over and laying out in the sun and....

So you never know, but as I said initially what I find amazing compared to these days is how the entire neighborhood kept it from us kids. These days the parents would be posting it all over damn facebook and someone would have filmed a you tube video of the guy.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

On the subject of all of us knowing someone disturbing, this is something that happened when we were kids, but didn't find out about until a few years ago because back when I was a kid there was no internet and people knew when to keep their mouths shut.

When I was 11 I was in a foster home and had a couple of friends on the street. There was a guy who lived on the corner who had a huge pool in his back yard. It was hot as hell and a couple of times one of the older kids had opened the fire hydrant so we could run around in it, but of course he got in trouble.

One day me and my buddies are walking down the street and the guy told us we could feel free to use his pool, he even told us to ask our parents and that they could call him and make sure it was okay. Now this guy was a not a minister, but a deacon in a local church and his wife had passed and everyone thought he was just a nice older guy. So every day for the next week we went swimming

Then he starts talking to us and asks me and my friend "Don't you guys have sisters? you can tell them they can come to. At the time my foster sister was 13 and my friends sister 12. so they start coming over an dhe then tells them to bring their friends. This goes on for a few weeks then one day our foster parents tell us we can't go anymore. MR so and so was taken to the hospital in the middle of the night and was very sick. He never came back.

About 4 years ago at a high school reunion my sister was talking to a guy who's father was a cop. What happened was the guy brought one of the girls into his house and gave her a bathing suit as a "gift" he told her she was very pretty and that yellow would look good on her and would she wear it? he told her not to say where she got it because then all the other girsl would get jealous.

The girl ended up showing it to her older sister who took it straight to her parents. I guess the father lost it and went down there and broke the door in and was beating on the guy when the cops showed up. The cops searched his house and found literally thousands of polaroids of all the girls playing by the pool, many of the picks were of them bending over and laying out in the sun and....

So you never know, but as I said initially what I find amazing compared to these days is how the entire neighborhood kept it from us kids. These days the parents would be posting it all over damn facebook and someone would have filmed a you tube video of the guy.

I was behind one at the flea market yesterday, I reckon she was 20 or so. Lovely girl. I checked her out and she acted like she liked it. So I don't get craze when guys check out the girlies, 99% of them like it.

 

[lovecraft68]

I was behind one at the flea market yesterday, I reckon she was 20 or so. Lovely girl. I checked her out and she acted like she liked it. So I don't get craze when guys check out the girlies, 99% of them like it.

Yeash, but we're talking 11-13 year olds here, not 18 and over.

 

[MatthewVett]

I think Maurice LeBlanc does a great job of stretching the reader's suspension of disbelief without breaking it in some of his Arsene Lupin stories. I might borrow that convention for an upcoming story...

 

[slyc_willie]

So I have my twin brothers setting up a girl for an unexpected tag-team in a hotel room. She thinks she's only having sex with one guy, and they trade off when one goes to the bathroom. Eventually, she finds out what's going on, gets upset, and the boys ending up killing her accidentally.

Not so sure I like this, though. This makes their first murder an accident. I'm not sure if that is drastic enough.

 

[carlieplum]

With Leopold and Loeb twern't no accident.

 

[slyc_willie]

With Leopold and Loeb twern't no accident.

Well, I don't see my characters as wanting to commit a perfect crime. Rather, it just sort of "falls in their lap." However, like L&L, they could use their first experience as inspiration to do something more deliberate. Hmm . . . .