Graceful ways to write the 'big reveals'?

lisamarie84x said:

So I'm currently writing the big climax of my UF, and of course everything I've foreshadowed is going to come to light, all the big secrets, the 'baddie' revealing her...

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really thought you were going to say 'penis' there.

lisamarie84x said:

Would make a fab twist in the novel.

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you can have that one for free.

Big reveal

Didn't Mickey Spillane do that with..."I, the Jury," I think? He wrote the entire book making you think Juno was a man, then on the last page said..."Juno was a woman."

Carlene

Ah shit, are you spoiling something for me?!??!?!

lisamarie84x said:

So I'm currently writing the big climax of my UF, and of course everything I've foreshadowed is going to come to light, all the big secrets, the 'baddie' revealing her... not exactly 'motives', because they've been explained throughout, but I can't just have her show up, do the evil deed, then vanish/be defeated. She needs to speak and show her anger/hostility/reasons for being so evil, etc. She's three-dimensional.

So my question is, how do you manage to deal with the big climax scenes in a graceful, non-infodump manner? I don't want to have the cheesy, age-old Evil Overlord Monologue. The big secrets don't even come from the 'baddie'. But there are revelations and betrayals and I'm just worried it's all going to come out a cliched mess.

How did you deal with it in your own works? Any advice? I imagine when I write it, it won't be half as bad as I'm scared it's going to be. A lot of different things happen in the climax -- they're not just standing around, talking. But I'm still worried I won't be able to pull it off. The whole novel's been building up to this big scene. It's kind of the most important part of the book (of any book). So I'm just a bit scared, lol.

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Ace Ventura did the penis reveal thing. (Yeah, I'm all about the fine art...)

I really don't see why the character in question needs to stand there shaking her fist and emoting over why she is evil. That is melodramatic balderdash, and I think, out of style since the days of Connan-Doyle. In modern storys you DO have the character simply ACT, and in many cases, without explaination. You don't reveal it all. That's hand-holding. I feel there always SHOULD be some ambiguity in certain areas.

In my first ms, I revealed that a key character was actually behind all the mess when she recruited someone for the other team. You get a hint of this when she helps one of the baddies by giving him water and a little medical aid.

In my current, we have a person not infected. Then we have two people not infected. They don't go on spouting dialog about not being infected, they just aren't.

I dealt with this issue in my first novel too. I was mostly worried that once I wrote the ending I wouldn't like it and it would be, well...too predictably cliched. I wrote it anyway--heck! I knew what was going to happen all along, so it wasn't a surprise to me! I think if you've written the story well, the ending will not be a surprise to many intelligent readers who can figure out what should happen in the end.

If you do something other than what should happen, sometimes justice isn't rightly served and the readers will be disappointed. On the other hand, if you want to add in a twist at the end that is totally unexpected, that's okay too, as long as it makes sense and doesn't seem like deus ex machina or something totally out of the blue.

I get really annoyed reading a good mystery novel that builds up with tons of misleading clues, only to throw in something totally unexpected at the end--a motive or detail that was never revealed throughout the entire tale--that explains it all or "saves the day" or somehow creates a motive that no one expected. I feel cheated.

I don't recommend throwing in something too wacky at the end--just write it as you see it coming. If you've written it well, the readers won't be totally clueless as to what's coming in the big show-down anyway, but the details should be fun, exciting and somewhat unpredictable as they happen.

In my opinion, everything's been done before that can be done in good guys win--bad guys lose, but the details are what make it a unique story.

And by the way, when I wrote my ending I let it sit and then went back over it later and changed it quite a bit, but it was like a blacksmith working over a weapon on the anvil--once I had the raw elements in place, I just worked them over under the heat and the hammer and they got stronger until I was satisfied with the final product.

lisamarie84x said:

So my question is, how do you manage to deal with the big climax scenes in a graceful, non-infodump manner?

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NOTE: posted while Manix's post was being entered.

L., I don't know how your story is structured, but the worst endings are the Perry Mason ones where the bad guy just blurts out a confession with all of the details about actions and motivations. Almost as bad is the detailed explanation ending where one of the characters (or the narrator) adopts a "dear reader" type of exposition.

Here is the kind of ending I like best--where I slap myself on the forehead and say, "I should have seen that coming." (meaning there were hints dropped that suddently came together in MY mind at the end).

Another good kind of ending (for me) is where the author let me (encouraged me?) to make educated guesses about the ending, so I have a chance of being right (and feeling all pumped about my insight).

These two are related. In one, I was wrong about the ending and in the other I (maybe) was right. But they are related because of the way the author fed the reader little important bits (usually subtle) and encouraged the reader to think and speculate WAY before that grand finale--the way the reader was encouraged to take little puzzle pieces that were planted throughout the story and come to some conclusion about the final reveal. Right or wrong, the reader should immediately be able to see why the ending played out like it did. This is why an "out-of-left-field" ending is unsatisfying to me. In my mind, the goal is not to trick the reader with the ending. If there is a twist, it may surprise the reader, but the surprise should then turn to recognition (this is part of the "play fair with the reader" thing). Surprising the reader and tricking the reader are two very different things, and can trigger very different emotional responses.

It also means a really good mystery should be carefully crafted throughout the entire story, so the reader understands why the ending turned out as it did rather than just being told why it turned out that way.

Trick the reader, good luck selling another book to him/her.

I write it out and then, in subsequent revisions, fiddle with it until I'm satisfied.

Current WIP has several Big Reveals, but only one (and a slightly smaller one) come at the climax of the novel. The rest are let out of the bag during the course of the story. And, of course, there are hints that something bigger may be at play before anything is revealed.

I kind of feel that Big Reveals don't always require grace. Sure you don't want an info-dump, but some things can be just blurted out. "Luke, I am your father." No beating around the bush there.

But, I'm rambling. I would just write it out as best you can and then worry about fixing things in revisions. (If they need fixing. They may not.)

If all the threads are there and the story has fully developed to its inevitable climax the threads should weave together without too much difficulty.

If the antagonist has something to contribute to the climax, there's nothing wrong with that. Dialogue isn't a no-no in any denouement.

I believe in a relatively short opening chapter, and an even shorter final one, hopefully satisfying the reader without boring him with unnecessary revelations at either end.

Depending on what you have written throughout your work, there is no reason why evil should not prevail at the end, it often does in real life too.

I also believe that flowery writing, even if well done, should be absent from the final paragraphs.

megan_d said:

Ace Ventura did the penis reveal thing. (Yeah, I'm all about the fine art...)

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So did Jeffrey Eugenides... he did it so well that he got the Pulitzer Prize for it!

Aggy B. said:

I write it out and then, in subsequent revisions, fiddle with it until I'm satisfied.

Current WIP has several Big Reveals, but only one (and a slightly smaller one) come at the climax of the novel. The rest are let out of the bag during the course of the story. And, of course, there are hints that something bigger may be at play before anything is revealed.

I kind of feel that Big Reveals don't always require grace. Sure you don't want an info-dump, but some things can be just blurted out. "Luke, I am your father." No beating around the bush there.

But, I'm rambling. I would just write it out as best you can and then worry about fixing things in revisions. (If they need fixing. They may not.)

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I second this. You'll never know until you just sit down and write it. Once you get the skeleton of it down, you can go back and fill it in and fiddle with it to flesh it out until it's something you're happy with.

Just get out of your own way and start typing and let it come. You may even surprise yourself with the results.

lisamarie84x said:

I know. I said I don't want to do the Overlord Monologue thing. But the antagonist in the story is three-dimensional and I don't want to have her just breeze in, try to carry out her plan, and get defeated. She's vital to revealing some information that turns my MC's life upside down (again), and another big twist must also happen in this scene -- linked to someone's past. I was just wondering how other's handled doing this sort of thing, because I don't want it to be a scattered infodump or cheesy.

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Shouldn't your antagonist be already featured? Shouldn't she appear throughout the book? If she's such a 3D character, you really can't just bring her in the last minute (for the climax) and be done with her.

She needs to be an important character just like your protagonists. Otherwise, you'll be "dumping" which is exactly the thing you said you didn't want to do.

It's called "setting your chess pieces." To do it elegantly, you will need to set it/the character up throughout the entire novel.

To be serious in response. I'm not sure how I feel about big reveals. I try to not make them major plot points.

in fact, since my stories and the reveals are scripted before I ever write the first word of the novel, i feel more like I reveal them slowly and the reader can go, "Oh, well that makes sense."

I don't pivot anything around a reveal. And if you re-read the book, I want everything to fit.

> big climax scenes

Also called a 'set piece' (or 'setpiece' in one word). Just google for it.

> how do you manage to deal with the big climax scenes in a graceful, non-infodump manner?

I have various set pieces in WIP1 & 2, each of which reveal large chunks of the story's curse, besides the various bread crumbs left here and there. I try and avoid putting everything into one big final climax-reveals-it-all thingy; I find those very difficult to pull off without sounding like I weaseled my way out.

If you need to string all your threads into a final conflict, why don't you run a chapter or two from your antagonist's point of view, which would naturally lead her into the final conflict? The reader knows more than the MC does and you can play on the tension this creates (i.e. will the MC notice the bear trap under the carpet?); besides, final conflict don't have to go as planned -from the antag's pov - which makes your MC shine a bit more for having defeated such a villain.

-cb

Well, there are plenty of ways to reveal secrets or information without info dumps or monologuing:

- discovery by the protagonists
- confession/dialogue
- thoughts (if you switched to the antagonist's POV)
etc.

What you need to do is the integrate all that into the plot and make them organic instead of stopping the movement. You need to develop and expand on the plot elements that would create situations for any of that... say, if you want to reveal the secret by discovery, then you need to create situations and plot elements for the protagonist to come across the information...

How?

There's no such thing as "paint by numbers." I guess that's why writing is an art.

Kat Richardson is a master at this. What I did to try to emulate her brilliance is this: I took her novel, Greywalker, and I outlined it and then I color-coded the action by each character/followed each of 4-5 plot threads. Then I tried to make sure I had an equal balance of threads/characters in my own work. Especially in the big climax scene, which tied together all of the threads and yet still revealed some surprise endings. Sometimes you only need a few words to resolve a plot thread...

Anyhow, I highly recommend Richardson's work as an example of how to handle the big reveal scene.

I think the classiest way to do it is to do it very close to the POV of the person who will be most affected and then reveal the absolute minimum that would let the character and the viewer figure it out.

A good example of this is when the girl in Z for Zachariah realizes that she almost got raped.

Another is in Fight Club (movie not book. I don't remember the exact specifics of what happened in the book.) (spoilers) when he starts traveling to bars and people start calling him "Sir" and then one guy says "Welcome back, sir." And then you're like "OMG." The guy keeps asking for information, as is realistic, but the point of that is more his being in denial than you still figuring it out.

Did that make any sense?