Writers are always known to follow strict patterns while crafting stories and readers have learnt to predict such conventions. While they go through your story, they are often certain about the next turn of events to expect from the characters, storyline, or writing style. However, a sudden break in the established writing or story pattern creates a feeling of surprise, excitement, and enthusiasm.
In this article, we’ll explore ways to surprise readers by breaking the rules.
Effective Strategies for Breaking the Rules
If you wish to create stories that captivate your readers, below are some tips to help you change familiar story patterns.
Subvert Character Expectation
Character twist is a powerful way to catch readers off guard. This involves creating an initial impression about a character and eventually switching it to defy the readers’ expectations. However, such character development must appear real and believable.
For instance, imagine a story where a hardworking and bright student suddenly becomes dull and performs poorly in academics. If the story ends without an explanation for the character’s sudden change, the story becomes fake and unrelatable. However, a helpless and impoverished citizen might challenge an oppressive leader for obvious reasons or a kid possesses superpowers to save his people. Such surprises impact the audience since they are relatable and probably have some traces from the onset.
Disregard Conventional Pacing
Deviating from the traditional timing or rhythm pattern can help to create a unique storytelling experience. Writers can achieve this by creating varying lengths of chapters or scenes, or by going back in time or fast forward events of the story. Switching scenes abruptly, beginning a story and then restarting it in the actual sense, or using the epistolary form to tell a story. All these and more are strategies for breaking conventional pacing rules and they often come as a surprise to readers.
Break Style Pattern
Another way to surprise your audience is by disrupting existing writing styles. Readers find it innovative when writers make use of colloquial language or narrate the story in an unusual way such as using animals or objects. Also, creating a disparity between what the narrator knows or reports and the actual truth can come as a shock to readers.
Employ Irony
Irony is a very powerful tool in any literary piece that creates surprise in an audience. It aims at forming a contrast between reality and expectation. Writers can employ any of the three types of irony which can leave readers shocked by defying their expectations.
- Verbal Irony: This is when a character says a thing but means another.
- Situational Irony: This is when the outcome of an event is in contrast with what was expected.
- Dramatic Irony: Here, the reader knows something that the character does not know.
Flipping Genre Conventions
Some literary genres can be reinvented, reimagined, and updated to not just break familiar story patterns but enhance the storyline entirely. Such subversions challenge the reader’s thoughts and change his/her perspective on certain things. For instance, a romance story where two love birds are expected to come together and live happily ever after ends with the two becoming rivals.
Flipping Story Scripts
Flipping the script can also surprise your readers as they are unaware of the outcome of the event. This can be achieved by misdirecting them into focusing on a narrative while the real and entirely different surprise springs up elsewhere. Also, writers may choose to come up with a less anticipated ending or even end a story without resolving a certain conflict. This rule-breaking pattern can throw a reader off-balance as they have carefully followed the plot and expected a different result.
Conclusion
To successfully change familiar story patterns, ensure that the purpose of the story is achieved. Breaking the rules must not create an unrealistic story and a confused audience. It should not only leave the readers in surprise but also enhance the overall story.
Written by Emily Cyril