Crack Writers Can Lay Easter Eggs

Do you like Easter egg hunts? No, not the kind with puzzled toddlers and woven baskets and brightly colored candy and hardboiled eggs. The type of Easter egg in question is a hidden message or other feature in any piece of content or even a computer or software program. A variation on this theme is naming or describing someone or something in a story to give readers a clue about a plot element.

Writers employ this device all the time, merely by giving a character an evocative name. The moniker of Ebenezer Scrooge, for example, thanks to its grating, discordant qualities, does not inspire a reader to visualize a kindly, generous figure (though names can be — or, in this case, can become — deceiving).

But authors can go a step further and foreshadow plot revelations or twists by assigning a name that, at least for some readers, will hint at later developments. Here are a few examples of this strategy (which, for all I know, may have another name):

The Egg of Columbus
Speaking of eggs, an anecdote about Christopher Columbus features him countering the claim that anyone else could have accomplished his feat of discovery by challenging others to stand an egg on end. When they fail to do so, he taps the egg on a table, breaking the end, and sets it upright on its now-flattened base. (A similar, possibly apocryphal story predates this incident, which itself may or may not be historical.) This analog to the Gordian knot — or a reference to the Gordian knot itself, part of the lore of Alexander the Great — could allude to an offbeat solution to a problem.

Kobayashi Maru
This is the name of a fictional spaceship in the Star Trek universe, the subject of a computer simulation that tests a prospective Starfleet officer’s character by presenting a scenario in which the vessel is disabled in forbidden territory. The exercise, similar in theme to the riddles of the Egg of Columbus and the Gordian knot, is ostensibly a no-win situation: The simulation program cheats so that the test subject always loses, thus guaranteeing that the focus will be not only on the person’s approach to solving the problem but also their reaction to the failure.

However, several Star Trek films, series episodes, and novels refer to efforts to subvert the test. In your story, a ship or person so labeled — perhaps with the names inverted — will tease knowing readers with the understanding that some similar stratagem is in the offing.

Arthur Conan Doyle
The creator of Sherlock Holmes can lend his name to any one of a number of intriguing ideas. A character named Doyle (using the full name would be overkill) might allude to sleuthing or presents a link to one of the following alternative notions:

• At least one researcher suspects that Doyle was a conspirator in the Piltdown Man hoax, in which a fossil skull found in England in the early twentieth century was believed to be the fabled missing link between apes and humans.
• Doyle became an ardent spiritualist after the deaths of his wife, a son, and other close family members, and argued for the existence of fairies.
• He was a friend of escape artist Harry Houdini until the latter’s antispiritualism crusade, during which Houdini debunked fraudulent psychics and mediums, led to an estrangement.
• Doyle also created another legendary character, Professor Edward Challenger, hero of The Lost World and other adventures.

This post does not suggest using these specific examples; my hope is that they will inspire you to cook up some of your own Easter eggs purchased in your store of knowledge and served in a story in the appropriate genre.

5 Tips About Writing with Rhythm

Think of all the things you do each day, including mundane tasks like getting dressed, cooking meals, and speaking to other people. They all involve patterns or random sequences of ebb and flow: rhythm. Writing is like that, too. Just as with any other activity, rhythm in writing can occur automatically, but it’s improved by conscious attention. Here are five tips for enhancing your writing by attending to rhythm.

1. Alternate Sentence Length
Vary the word count for your sentences — not mathematically, not analytically, but naturally, organically. Introduce a comical character with a statement that resembles a clumsy person stumbling down a stairway — then bring the headlong descent to a sudden stop with a concise comment. Describe a tortuous bureaucratic procedure with a run-on-and-on sentence, and then figuratively snap your fingers at it with a brusque reaction.

For inspiration, listen to a musical composition, noting the variety of measures. Do the same with recordings of speeches or comedy routines, and with scenes from films or television programs (fact and fiction alike) — and, of course, with fiction and nonfiction writing.

2. Relocate Words and Phrases
English is a flexible language. Exploit that fact. Though parts of speech have set interrelationships, the relative positions of words representing the categories are negotiable. Shift words and phrases around until the parts of a sentence seem to fall into their preordained places. How? Read your writing aloud, of course.

Note, too, that writers are inclined to introduce the most important element of a sentence at the beginning; the key component should be provided early on, right? Wrong. Where does the punchline go in a joke? Correction: When you tell a joke, where’s the punchline? (Doesn’t that revision read more smoothly?)

3. Embrace Sentence Fragments
The law against incomplete sentences was repealed a long time ago. A very long time ago. As a matter of fact, there never was such a regulation, except in the hidebound handbooks of grim grammarians. No kidding. People speak in sentence fragments and incomplete sentences all the time, and although writing, except for the most informal prose, should reflect a more carefully constructed communication, in all but the most formal writing, judiciously employ truncated statements. Over and out.

4. Match Rhythm to Mood
Let the length and rhythm of a sentence match the mood you wish to impart. A description of a beautiful landscape or an account of a rapturous experience should cascade like a rippling waterfall or undulate with the peaks of valleys of sensual imagery. Longer sentences punctuated with alliteration and assonance and laced with metaphors evoking physical sensations will help readers immerse themselves in the places and events you describe.

Conversely, the sentence structure describing a sequence of events in a thriller or a passage detailing an exciting incident is probably most effective in brief bursts of short, simple words.

5. Apply Tension and Release
Many musical compositions are paced on the principle of building up to peaks of stress or emotion and a counterpointing relief from that ascent. Writing benefits from the same approach to carrying the reader along on waves of tension and release.

Don’t Name Your Character Mary Sue

Are your lead characters a menagerie of Mary Sues? A Mary Sue is a walking cliché, unrealistically flawless and therefore flat and boring — a hero in your story, but a villain in your efforts to create well-rounded characters.

The label for this trope is from a character in a fan-fiction Star Trek parody featuring a winsome but tiresome teenage hero by that name. The story poked fun at the adolescent (or adolescent-minded) authors of fan fiction who create characters — often idealized self-representations — notably lacking in personality flaws and seemingly incapable of making mistakes. The result, invariably, is a dull Dudley (or Dolly) Do-Right.

But wait, you protest — some of the most memorable characters in storytelling traditions have been Mary Sues! What about all the heroes of folk tales and fairytales? What about the central figures in Horatio Alger Hiss rags-to-riches stories and the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries? What about icons of the small and big screens like Captain Kirk and Luke Skywalker?

There’s no law against coaxing a Mary Sue to life in any creative medium. But recognize that the presence of a gosh-and-golly go-getter is an element that marks the framing narrative as pulp fiction. If you want to produce pulp, have at it; the demand for it is insatiable. But if you wish to be taken seriously as a writer, understand that realistic characters — those with hopes and dreams and desires, yes, but also with doubts and faults and weaknesses — are full of depth and dimension. Characters who always know what to do and what to say, who always do the right thing, are less appealing, because we are less likely to see our own imperfect selves reflected in them.

A faultless character is, like a story free of conflict, a flimsy basis for a good story. Tales appeal to us because we empathize with people who fail but then get up, dust themselves off, and try again, because that’s what we do every day, and that’s what builds our character. If your name is Mary Sue, you never fall — and you (and the story that surrounds you) can therefore never truly be admired.

Types of Plots

How many plot types are there, and does it really matter? And if you write nonfiction, rather than fiction, why should you read this post? (I guess you’ll have to read the post to find out.)

Throughout the years, writers have posited various opinions about how many distinct types of stories exist. Several of the more prominent theories follow:

Three Types
William Foster Harris, in The Basic Patterns of Plot, suggests that the three plot types are the happy ending, the unhappy ending, and tragedy. What’s the difference between the second and third types? A tragedy is distinguished from an unhappy ending partly by the magnitude of the outcome but mostly in that the lead character attempts to do something marked by excessive pride, overweening ambition, or another character flaw and that the outcome seems preordained by fate.

Seven Types
Christopher Booker, in The Seven Basic Plot Points: Why We Tell Stories, lists the plot types as Overcoming the Monster, the Quest, the Voyage and Return, Rags to Riches, and the Rebirth, as well as Comedy and Tragedy. At first glance, the last two terms seem more like genres than plots, but a comedy, though it might also fit into one of the other five types, is often marked by a standard array of miscues and misadventures, and, as intimated in the previous paragraph, a tragedy has a narrow focus: The protagonist tempts fate, and fate responds.

Another septet, one that may seem slightly off topic, is a list of plot conflicts, but the items encapsulate basic storylines as well. In (somewhat arbitrary) order of increasing complexity, the duels are person versus fate (or God), person versus self, person versus person, person versus society, person versus nature, person versus the supernatural, and person versus technology.

Twenty Types
Ronald Tobias, in 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them, shares a score of story types. I won’t list them all (you can easily find them through an online search), but they range from the basic (the Quest) to the moderately complex (Revenge) to the more sophisticated (Metamorphosis) and beyond.

Thirty-Six Types
Georges Polti, in The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, eschews the basics in favor of specific concepts including Daring Enterprise, Fatal Imprudence, and Erroneous Judgment, as well as several varieties of tales of love and sacrifice. (Again, the full roster is available by searching online.)

Pigeonholing Plot Types
Is it necessary for writers to consider these distinctions? Does one need to know the plot type of one’s story? Can’t you just write your story?

You’re welcome to ignore categorization, but consider the benefits: By matching your story to one or more plot types, you can mine the traditions of that type (or those types). If you write a quest tale or a similar type — whether set in a fantasy realm or in the real world — without exploiting the rule of three, for example, it will lack the resonance of its forebears. You can, of course, defy expectations by avoiding clichés, but if you give a name to the type of story you are telling, you are more likely to recognize opportunities to do so.

But what does plot have to do with nonfiction? All stories — even factual ones — have a plot, and especially when you write narrative nonfiction, you should recognize the parameters you are following or exceeding. Is your profile of a person or a company or organization, or your account of an event or an incident, a tale of redemption, or one of hubris, or one of revolt against complacency or a predetermined path, or something else? Consider your story’s metaphorical and allegorical potential, and capitalize on its resemblance to other tales as you build it.