I didn’t notice until after we had selected our three winning fiction stories that they were all in some fashion about death. I did notice, however, that an alarming number of submissions we got were about murder. When Rebecca and I talked about it, she reminded me of all the popular TV shows about murder and crime. It’s definitely a compelling topic. What it is not is a plot.
In this, our first story fundamentals post, we are going to address what I call the “aha” moment. We had so many submissions that relied on an “aha” moment that we created a line for it on our feedback sheets: Your story would have benefitted from not using a device or “aha” moment as the core of the story. A large number of those aha moments were murder. So what is an aha moment and why isn’t it a plot.
One of the most well-known aha moments people my age experienced was the reveal in the movie Sixth Sense that the main character is a ghost (Sorry if I just ruined this movie for you. Twenty-five years out I felt like it didn’t need a spoiler alert.) Without careful observation one might appear to hold a secret from the reader/viewer, suddenly reveal it and have a story but that’s not what actually happens. Aha moments are common in stories but they are not plot.
Sixth Sense is about a kid haunted by his ability to see the dead and a man wanting to reconnect with his wife. The aha works because when it happens, the viewer realizes there were signs throughout the film that this was what was going on. Some people figured it out before the reveal (my brother claimed to but I never believed him). But think about the aha (discovering he’s dead) in terms of the man who is disconnected from his wife. It helps resolves that problem. The idea doesn’t work because it is an aha; it works because it connects to a character desire that was driving the story forward. It works not because it is a surprise but because it should have been obvious.
The writer doesn’t experience a story in the same way a reader does. The biggest mistake writers make with aha moments is holding so much back that the reader doesn’t really understand and/or care about what’s going on. The writer thinks they are building to this exciting reveal but the reader is confused and frustrated (not what anyone wants their reader to be). The reveal leaves the reader annoyed not pleasantly wowed. At its worst, the reveal leaves the reader feeling they were lied to, deliberately mislead by a writer trying to trick them.
This is one reason feedback from others is so important. Readers see things that the writer may not. I don’t remember what story or book I was working on but a reader in my feedback group read a scene and said, “Wouldn’t they have just called each other?” It was totally logical. Exactly what real people in the same situation would do but I hadn’t seen it.
If you got feedback on your story that said something about a device or aha moment, look back at your story and consider what you as the writer thinks is driving the story forward (something needs to be). Is that driving force apparent to the reader in the first few lines of the story (it should be)? Does your aha moment connect back to the driving force?
In these fundamental posts, we will be relying heavily on two books I highly recommend: Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story and Jennie Nash’s Blueprint for a Book. They are both geared towards novel writing (If you know a great book geared toward short story writing, let me know; I haven’t found one) but the same key principles apply to short story writing (just in a lot shorter space).
Thanks, READ. Love the title, Aha! You're Dead. :) For flash fiction specifically, check out Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. It's excellent.