by Lisa Cron
The Importance of the Highway between Setup and Payoff: Three Rules of the Road
We know anticipation feels really good, and that what readers love to hunt for is the emerging path from setups to payoffs. After all, a big part of the pleasure of reading is recognizing, interpreting, and then connecting the dots so the pattern emerges. To make that possible, there are three basic rules it behooves writers to know.
RULE ONE: THERE MUST ACTUALLY BE A ROAD
This means the setup is not allowed to piggyback on the payoff. Piggybacking occurs when we learn about a problem at the moment it’s been solved. Talk about draining the tension, killing the conflict, deflating the suspense, and making sure the reader has nothing to anticipate! Thus, we hear that Amy’s front tooth has been successfully reattached at the very moment we learn both that Morris accidentally knocked it out last night during a rousing game of gin rummy, and that if the dentist hadn’t been able to schedule emergency surgery, Amy’s lifelong dream would have been dashed, because she would’ve had to try out for the Miss Perfect Smile Contest this morning sans her front tooth. Great for Amy, boring for us.
Now imagine the tension, conflict, and suspense had we been there the instant the tooth flew out of Amy’s mouth, knowing it’s only six short hours until the Miss Perfect Smile Contest, wondering how she’ll ever find a dentist at one a.m. in Peoria, not to mention what this will do to her relationship with Morris, which was pretty shaky to begin with.
RULE TWO: THE READER MUST BE ABLE TO SEE THE ROAD UNFOLD
This means it can’t take place off the page, shrouded in secrecy. There are three reasons writers tend to keep the road between setup and payoff veiled, if not totally obscured. One, as we already know, is because they’re saving it all up for the big reveal. Second, they simply don’t realize they’re doing it. Thus they set up a promising storyline and then leave it to the reader to imagine how, specifically, it plays out, until somewhere down the line it resurfaces just in time for the big payoff. Often these writers are under the mistaken assumption that by letting readers know what’s going on, they’re somehow talking down to them, and so the bulk of the story remains in the writer’s imagination.
Thus we learn that John needs to marry before his thirtieth birthday in order to get the inheritance he’s been counting on. Then, over the next several hundred pages, John goes on dates whose specifics we never hear—dates we wouldn’t be able to interpret anyway, because we have no idea what he’s looking for in a wife, or even whether he wants to marry at all. Then, at some point, John decides to marry someone for some reason, and he gets a whole lot of money. The End. Except chances are the reader will never know it, because it’s highly unlikely she’ll have stuck around that long. Point being, while we’re eager to connect the dots, we don’t want to have to invent them first.
And this brings us to the third reason writers sometimes inadvertently skimp on the “tells” necessary to establish a pattern. As the author, you know everything about your story—where it’s going, who’s really doing what to whom, and where the proverbial (and sometimes literal) bodies are buried. Because of this, you’re acutely aware of exactly what each “dot” really means and how it all fits together. But here’s the thing: your reader isn’t aware. What comes across to you as so utterly obvious that it will “give the whole thing away” is a tantalizing “tell” to the reader, who’s counting on such “tells” to be able to do what readers love best: figure out what is really going on.
RULE THREE: THE INTENDED PAYOFF MUST NOT BE PATENTLY IMPOSSIBLE
I don’t mean impossible in the “he’ll try it and when he fails, it will teach him something” sense. I mean, literally impossible, so that if the protagonist himself had given it a moment’s thought, he’d have realized how ridiculous such an endeavor would be.
So how did the writer miss it?
Because the writer knew that something was going to happen to prevent the protagonist from taking more than a step or two down that particular path, so she didn’t bother to think it all the way through. Why should she?
Because the reader will.
After all, the reader doesn’t know the protagonist isn’t going to trudge down that path to the bitter end. And if there’s one thing we know about readers, it’s that they love to anticipate what will happen next. But it doesn’t stop there; once they spot a pattern, they test its validity against their own knowledge. Thus they’re often way ahead of the protagonist. And when they figure out what the writer didn’t—that a particular payoff is not logically possible—they’re the ones who may bail.
For instance, let’s say that since kindergarten, Norbert has been secretly in love with Betsy, who’s completely blind. Unfortunately, Betsy has never thought of Norbert as anything but a good friend. Now, she’s away at Harvard, rooming with several hometown girlfriends, all of whom know Norbert and can see. Lonely, Norbert hatches a plan: he’ll apply to Harvard, get in, fake a British accent, and woo Betsy as if he were a complete stranger. The writer, however, already knows that Norbert will never get that far, because she’s seen to it that Harvard will reject him. Thus it never occurs to her that Betsy’s roommates would have instantly recognized Norbert, giving his identity away before he could utter a single pip pip cheerio. In short, you must make sure that what your characters intend to do is plausible, even if you already know that something unforeseen will thwart them before they can actually do it.
Case Study: Die Hard
Die Hard is a perfect story (the blood, gore, and impossible physical feats of derring-do notwithstanding). Why? Because every setup builds to a satisfying payoff. We saw how the barefoot setup-payoff worked, but there are more. Many more. In fact, every main character arcs, every subplot has a resolution. Nothing is wasted, everything is set up in advance, yet there are a million surprises along the way.
Let’s look at one particular case in point, to see how setups spur character arcs, motivation, and subplots: Al Powell, the off-duty cop who first responds to McClane’s report of gunfire at Nakatomi Plaza, has been a desk jockey since he accidentally shot a kid he’d thought was armed. Powell hasn’t been able to draw his gun in the eight years since. When he admits this to McClane, we have the feeling it’s something he hasn’t told many people. But he offers it up because the two men have developed a bond, and at the moment, things aren’t looking good for McClane, survival-wise. So when he asks Powell what got him off the street and behind a desk, Powell tells him the truth rather than hedging.
His admission is a setup. It defines his character arc, by telling us both what his fear is (he’s afraid to draw his gun for fear he’ll hurt an innocent) and what his desire is (to get back to real police work instead of pushing papers). This is what underscores and drives his subplot, which in turn plays out in service of the main story question: Will McClane, in the course of saving the day, gain enough insight to win back his wife?
Back to Powell. Throughout the film, Powell stands up for McClane against the knuckleheaded powers that be and gives him encouragement when it really does seem that all is lost. And so at the end, when it looks like all the bad guys are dead, McClane comes out of the building and the first thing he does is find Powell, hug him, and swear he wouldn’t have survived without him. Powell humbly disagrees. And he means it. He did what he was supposed to do, nothing more. Nothing heroic.
And then it happens. Karl, the one bad guy not quite accounted for, comes blazing out of the building, machine gun in hand. Karl locks eyes with McClane and levels his gun. This time McClane’s a dead duck. Except when the resounding bang! echoes through the stunned crowd, it’s Karl who falls dead. A reverse angle reveals that this time Powell has, indeed, saved McClane. Now, here’s the interesting thing. In the script, Powell then says out loud what we’re all thinking. That McClane was right—he wouldn’t have survived without him, after all.
Except—script be damned—in the movie Powell doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything. His eyes, his expression,
register something far deeper, something that doesn’t have anything to do with McClane at all. They say that, at last, Powell is back in the game. We don’t need to be told; we empathize so keenly that we feel it in our bones.
What makes it such a satisfying payoff is that it’s so well earned—each dot along the way upped the ante for Powell. But until that moment, although Powell had indeed gone the extra mile for McClane, he hadn’t yet been put to the test. By the time Karl comes thundering into the doorway, we know how much McClane means to Powell, and we know what Powell must overcome to protect him. And protect him he does, in one of the most touching moments of deeply felt macho bonding in the pre-bromance era.
CHAPTER 10: CHECKPOINT
Are there any inadvertent setups lurking in your story? Are you sure nothing whispers, implies, or suggests “setup” without actually meaning it? Remember: a great tool for ferreting out unintended setups is our old friend, the “And so?” test.
Is there a clear series of events—a pattern—that begins with the setup and culminates in the payoff? Are you absolutely sure none of your payoffs is piggybacking onto its setup? Equally important, are you sure there is an actual pattern of “dots” or “tells” leading from each setup to its payoff?
Do the “dots” build? If you connect the dots between the setup and the payoff, do they add up? Does a pattern emerge? Will your reader see the escalating progression and be able to draw conclusions from it and so, anticipate what might happen next?
Is the payoff of each of your setups logistically possible? Be sure to think each setup all the way through to its logical conclusion, even those (especially those) you know your protagonist won’t take more than a step or two toward before circumstances (courtesy of you) force him to abandon it.
MEMORY EVOLVED FOR A VERY GOOD REASON: so you can find your car keys when, for the millionth time, they don’t seem to be exactly where you know you left them. Memory mines the information your brain has acquired in the past for anything that might help it solve the problem you’re facing in the present. So it instantly recalls the day the keys slid behind the couch cushion (damn, not there now), the time you left them dangling from the front doorknob (not there now, either), the way your teenage son tends to “borrow” your car while you’re sleeping (aha!). Thus, as with everything the brain is wired for, storing information is adaptive: it supports future decisions and judgments that cannot be known with certainty in advance.1 A category that sums up, well, pretty much everything except death and taxes.
In his book Self Comes to Mind, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio speculates that it’s thanks to the intersection of the self and memory that consciousness is able to bestow on us its ultimate gift: “the ability to navigate the future in the seas of our imagination, guiding the self craft into a safe and productive harbor.”2 We use the past as a yardstick against which we size up the present in order to make it to tomorrow. What’s more, when we do this, sometimes it’s our evaluation of the past that changes in light of what we’ve since learned.3 Memories are continually revised, along with the meaning we derive from them, so that in the future they’ll be of even more use.
In other words, memories aren’t just for reminiscing. They never were. Memories are for navigating the now. And not just personal memories. Recall what we’ve said about stories: they are the brain’s virtual reality, allowing us to benefit from the experience of hard-pressed protagonists.4 By the same token, we learn from watching and discussing how others—whether friends, family, or foe—struggled with the banana peels that life blithely tossed in their path. We get a kick out of this because it reveals what might happen if we took a similar course of action without having to actually suffer the pratfall. As Steven Pinker points out, “Gossip is a favorite pastime in all human societies because knowledge is power.”5 Sometimes this knowledge gives us power over others, and sometimes it gives us the power to make the right decision when our time comes.
What this boils down to is that the memory of everything we’ve done, seen, and read affects, and is affected by, what we’re about to do right now. To quote Tony Soprano’s (rather colorful) lament in HBO’s seminal series The Sopranos—when his consigliere Sil presses him to whack his beloved but weak-willed cousin, Tony B.—“All due respect, you got no f*ckin’ idea what it’s like to be number one. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other f*ckin’ thing. It’s too much to deal with almost.”6
This is true of life; this is true of story. And just like Tony, the writer is required to deal with it, no matter how overwhelming it feels. The question is, given that all these memories and decisions are influencing your protagonist as she struggles with her issue, how do you, as a writer, weave it all together? How do you make manifest relevant bits from the protagonist’s past, the events she witnesses that sway her outlook, and the effect outside forces have on her, whether she’s aware of them or not? What’s more, how do you make it seamless and elegant—that is, without calling a big fat time-out to fill us in?
This is where flashbacks, subplots, and foreshadowing come in. And how they come in—both literally and figuratively—is exactly what we’ll be exploring in this chapter. We’ll learn how to weigh new information against the story question to make sure it’s relevant; examine the three main ways that subplots add critical depth; explore the role of pacing and timing when it comes to flashbacks, subplots, and foreshadowing; and discuss how a little judicious foreshadowing can swoop in to save your story from becoming a groan fest.
The Crow’s Secret
Here’s a delicious paradox: a story is the shortest distance between two points—the point where the story question shifts into play and the point where it’s resolved. However, the shortest distance between these two points is often a very circuitous route indeed. That is to say, the crow flies in spirals. Because it’s not just about getting from point A to point Z; it’s about being aware of everything—past, present, and future, internal and external—that affects the protagonist’s struggle, each step of the way.
How do you capture the multilayered experience of life on something as two-dimensional as a sheet of paper, in a medium as linear as words? The same way a painting does. By tricking us. Ironically, the only way to evoke the fullness of reality is by first zeroing in on the heart of the particular story you’re telling and parsing away all the real-life distractions that don’t affect it. The goal is to then weave in relevant elements of the past, ongoing auxiliary storylines, and hints of the future—whether via a subplot, flashback, or bit of foreshadowing—so the reader sees them for what they are (necessary information) rather than what they aren’t (dreaded and deadly digressions).
This can be tricky, since timing is everything. Give us an otherwise crucial piece of information too soon, and you neutralize it; it becomes a digression in spite of itself. Give it too late, and it’s a groaner. That’s why every subplot, every flashback, must in some way affect the story question—that is, the protagonist’s quest and the inner struggle it incites for her—in a way the reader can see in the moment. Because just as your protagonist always views the present through the filter of the past, so will readers view every subplot, flashback, and bit of foreshadowing in light of the story you’re telling.
Subplots: How the Plot Thickens
A story without subplots tends to be one-dimensional, reading more like a blueprint of your protagonist’s day than a revealing rendition of it. Subplots give stories depth, meaning, and resonance in myriad ways. They can give the protagonist a glimpse of how a particular course of action she’s considering might play out; they can complicate the main storyline; they can provide the “why” behind the protagonist’s actions. And in doing so, they can also neatly plug up any otherwise gaping plot holes, introduce characters who will soon play a pivotal role, and show us things that are happening concurrently. Subplots also help set the pace by giving readers a bit of necessary breathing room, allowing their cognitive subconscious to mull over just where the main
storyline might be heading.7
QUICK, QUICK, SLOOOOOWWWW—HOW TO MEASURE THE PACE
Stated simply and eloquently by literary blogger extraordinaire Nathan Bransford, pacing is the length of time between moments of conflict.8 While conflict is what drives a story forward, it’s often the mounting anticipation of it that has readers so engrossed they forget to breathe. Too much sustained conflict is like trying to live on a diet of nothing but ice cream sundaes. You’d get sick of them in a surprisingly short time (trust me on this), probably right before all that fat and sugar lulled you into a nice long nap. This is the flip side of what we were talking about in the last chapter. Once a pattern becomes utterly predictable, familiar, normal, our attention inherently wanders; it’s a biological universal.9 Readers can only take in so much continuous conflict before they switch from finding it riveting to wondering what’s on TV.
The more you stick to a constant heart-pounding tempo, the quicker the story loses its oomph. Look at it this way: Imagine it’s ninety degrees. That’s hot, right? Now imagine it’s been ninety degrees for your entire life, inside and out, everywhere. In that case, ninety degrees wouldn’t be hot, it would be normal. And normal, no matter how sweaty, is dull. I remember watching the second installment of the Indiana Jones franchise at the drive-in. Toward the end, when the story disintegrated into one long, monotonous multimillion-dollar chase scene, I was so bored that in order to stop losing brain cells, I spent a very satisfying half hour cleaning out my car. The most exciting moment of the evening wasn’t when Indy triumphed over the bad guys (they were already at work on the sequel, so no suspense there); it was finding my favorite pair of sunglasses buried deep in the glove box.