High Tops

[Senor_Biggles]

Hi,

I wrote a Halloween story a little while ago and I’ve since bundled it up with some other shorts. It’s available through Amazon for free for the next five days (after December it will be free permanently)
http://www.amazon.com/High-Tops-collection-Peter-White-ebook/dp/B006UK4O88/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1446193072&sr=8-8&keywords=high+tops+peter+white
If by some miracle you have both the time and the inclination to take a look then I should warn you that the story ‘High Tops’ contains absolutely no violence, gore, profanity or nudity. Apologies if that offends anybody, I’m really not sure what came over me when I was writing it, but you what it’s like when the beige mist descends. Some of the others kick it up a notch though.

 

[SHEEMIEE]

High tops (tick)

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[SHEEMIEE]

Nice read , do you reckon twists are becoming increasing difficult to write without the reader being ten pages ahead of the writer ...

 

[Senor_Biggles]

Sheemiee, that is a really good question. I don't think there's a lot of point setting out to write a twist, people are jusy too attuned to them now, especially in genre fiction. The problem is, for me at least, something has to happen in a story. So you can't just have man wakes up.Man has breakfast. Man goes to buy newspaper. Man buys newspaper without incident. The end. It has to be man wakes up. Man has breakfast. Man goes to buy newspaper. Newspaper vendor mutates into ten foot tall alien and tears man's head off. The end. Often for the story to progress (again, for me at least) the protagonist needs to be in the dark about certain events or plot points, and that means the reader has to be in the dark about certain events or plot points also. When those events or plot points are revealed to the protagonost they are also revelaed to the reader who may or may not decide that they represent a 'twist in the tale' and may or may not react favourably.

Effectively, anything that happens in a story cannot be reasonably predicted from preceding events could represent a twist, but I think a twist should mean a rug pull, a sucker punch, getting somebody looking in one direction and then spinning them round so fast to show then the truth that they're left reeling. I wouldn't even know where to start with something like that.

When I wrote High Tops, my assumption was that readers would figure out what was happening pretty early on, it's not a sophisticated story, it's vey simple. But still it would not work if an explicit declaration was made early on, it plays out how it has to, and you can't really control reader reaction to that. Hit it and hope I guess.

 

[SHEEMIEE]

Yeh, when I read hot tops it seemed pretty thick and well filled in. It was all described for me to make all the assumptions by the time the story was halfway through. When the sherif was busy at the crash scene I thought 'here we go' and it was pretty much signed sealed and delivered by then . It was just a matter of reading the outcome. Great tale though, the whole idea of some kid joining the gang was pretty cool though- never thought of that before .