Promises and Payoffs

I don't consciously think about these things when I'm writing. Maybe that makes me a bad writer. *shrug*

This is always my main mission - to inspire a pleasurable anticipation in the reader so they're thinking: oh I can see where this is going...this is gonna be good.

The trick though is not only to fulfil on your promise but to give the reader far more than they thought they were going to get as the scope of the story builds.

Of course, it's not for me to say how successful I am at this.

I’ve been thinking a lot about promises lately, and one theory I have is that good stories have a variety of promises: novel level, act level, chapter level, scene level—maybe even paragraph level. Not that every scene needs to have a promise and payoff, but sprinkle them around. This makes the reader feel like promises are being fulfilled, even if the big ones don’t get payed off until the end.

I just recently read The Woman in the Window by A J Finn. He does a great job with this. I always felt like questions were getting answered almost every scene, yet the big ones waited until the end. For every promise he fulfills, he would promise two more things (that’s what it felt like at least).

Brandon Sanderson has been preaching this in his online videos. Make promises and make good on them, or you will disappoint readers. I think there are some readers who can imagine things that were never intended by the author, and if this is the case, the reader may feel jilted if the author never addresses it.

I watched a book review of Goblet of Fire on YouTube last night. In it, the reviewer noted that a spell used in earlier books was finally shown what it can do for evil purposes. The reviewer thought strange things (e.g. a man getting pregnant if transformed into a woman's body) if the spell was used in such a way. Moral of the dilemma, one needs to be careful with things like magic systems.

I believe in symmetry for series. If something major happens in book 1, it should conclude (or have a mirror effect) in the end book.

Promises (cause) and resolution (effect). These are important for character arcs, building tension/conflict, good vs. evil, and so forth. I believe in Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions (Google search) as it pertains to the 8 basic emotions and the various stages of each (more extreme moving toward the center of the wheel). I built an elaborate system of 28 sliders to develop traits of good and bad characters. I use these tools to evolve the character arcs, and conflict with others, in my story. I note this, because major promises must have some kind of structure/evolution before reaching resolution. Without such structure, a reader can become irritated.

Read good mystery writers. No other genre has so much invested in the promise-payoff thing. And the best writers know this in their bone marrow, and do it very very well.

caw

One of the best selling fantasy novels of recent years has no payoff, yet loads of rabid fans.

The lack of payoff is a huge part of why I dislike the novels, though, so it matters to me at least.

I don't necessarily think of it as "promises and payoffs". I think of it as story questions and story answers.

I try to start with the story questions in the first sentence, if possible, definitely in the first paragraph. It might not be big, but if the reader isn't curious about something, they get bored and stop reading. Which is why I think of it as story questions. Some story questions will lead to expectations/hopes for the answer, and I endeavor to give them the answer they want in a way they weren't expecting. But it's not really the same thing as a promise in my mind.

Whatever terms you think of it as doesn't really matter. What matters is keeping the reader's interest and giving them a satisfactory, pleasing ending, IMO.

I'm still perfecting this technique, but I absolutely believe in it. As a reader, I love to be teased until I start to develop my own theories and then have the rug pulled out from under me at the end by a slight of hand that I missed. I laced several mysterious elements into my manuscript, strewn throughout the book. My first edit caught several promises that I didn't payoff, so I've addressed those. Slowly but surely...

Also, don't forget about implied promises that come from the genre. If your book is classified as mystery, there had better be a mystery. Also, a reader of mystery will expect for the mystery to get solved at the end. But also, you can take those implied promises and learn how to subvert them in cool ways.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is always found in the general fiction section and his fans probably expect a literary English novel. I won't spoil it, but it turns out to not be those things. The book never makes promises about what it is, but those promises are implied by which shelf it sits on in the book store and his own earlier work. That's probably risky/undoable for new writers, but I think smaller subversions of genre could be used to great effect.

I found it very literary >.> and could only enjoy it by setting aside my sff expectations!

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a literary English novel, having elements from another genre doesn't stop it from being literary fiction.

About promise and pay-off, I just use the terms questions and answers but pretty much same difference. One thing that doesn't annoy me as a reader is when there is a "promise" or quote on a book jacket saying, "this is the next X" then you read the book and it's obviously not.

Yeah.

If a book cover blurb says "A tour de force!" I can absolutely guarantee you that it's not.

"Blows Tolkien off the shelf!" Not my shelf, mate.

"This is the book that makes fantasy sexy/cool" is another blurb that promises only disappointment.

Elle. said:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a literary English novel, having elements from another genre doesn't stop it from being literary fiction.

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I agree, (I was wrong for implying it wasn't) but if you were a fan of The Remains of the Day and you picked up Never Let Me Go thinking it would be similar, you would be floored by the twist that is gradually revealed (the book was ruined for me before I read it, so I can't judge my own reaction). Take that book and put it on a genre shelf (which would be totally defensible considering the story) and I think you have a negative reaction initially because that shelf promises a different type of story. Also, you would be expecting a plot twist at some point that turned it towards that genre.

I guess my major point is that a writer should understand the inherent promises of the aisle the novel will be shelved on and make sure they either fulfill them or subvert them in a deliberate way.

tharris said:

I agree, (I was wrong for implying it wasn't) but if you were a fan of The Remains of the Day and you picked up Never Let Me Go thinking it would be similar, you would be floored by the twist that is gradually revealed (the book was ruined for me before I read it, so I can't judge my own reaction). Take that book and put it on a genre shelf (which would be totally defensible considering the story) and I think you have a negative reaction initially because that shelf promises a different type of story. Also, you would be expecting a plot twist at some point that turned it towards that genre.

I guess my major point is that a writer should understand the inherent promises of the aisle the novel will be shelved on and make sure they either fulfill them or subvert them in a deliberate way.

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I understand what you mean but for me that's not a promise that's just an assumption made by the reader because it's the same author it will be a similar book. Again the only promise I see is another book written with the same evocative prose but not automatically the same type of story.

I guess we just have different expectations when it comes to author and their body of work.

Very interesting post and it made me notice only just now that I've been writing by that code. The code of promises and deliveries. In fact my novel begins with a character promising to my mc that one day the world will wake up in the shadow and flame. ^^