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So this week’s comic revealed that yes, Mrs. McCarty and her posse are responsible for the current smoky state of the Z Ranch. It’s entirely possible that this surprised no one.
But you know, that’s okay. I find there’s entirely too much emphasis these days on twist endings and endings in general, where the destination eclipses all thought of enjoying the ride to get there. There are a lot of people out there who have come to a point where, if someone reveals the ending of a book/movie/etc., they feel as if their whole experience is irrevocably ruined. In extreme cases they now refuse to read/watch/listen, because why bother? They know how it turns out.
I’ve never been able to understand it. Is there really nothing to be said for the journey? Have our narratives become that fragile, that the moment Point B becomes clear, we lose all motivation to reach it?
Keep in mind that for thousands of years, the exact opposite was the case. If you’ve ever been to a production of Ancient Greek or Shakespearean drama, they employ Prologues as a matter of course, such as the famous one that begins Romeo & Juliet:
Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage—
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
If the language is giving you trouble, let me just put it this way: Romeo & Juliet commit suicide, and that tragedy will finally convince their two warring families to make peace. The play is telling you that straight up at the very beginning; yet if you posted a summary like this for a modern movie, to a modern internet forum, you’d be raked over the coals for ruining the plot. Shakespeare and Sophocles weren’t afraid of telling you “Dumbledore dies”, they used it as a hook to keep your interest as they brought you on the journey. Like the Columbo mysteries where the culprit and crime was always revealed at the beginning, making them not so much “whodunit?” as “howdhecatchem?”
I had someone get legitimately mad at me for “spoiling” the end of the movie 300 for them, which for me makes as much sense as someone claiming you spoiled Titanic because you tell them the ship sinks. But I’m sure someone has done just that. This obsessive need to avoid spoilers at all costs has gotten way out of hand, and feeds back into creators who feel a need to throw in more and more ludicrous twists to keep their audience guessing. An infamous example comes from the DC Universe crossover event Armageddon 2001, where the identity of the mystery villain was leaked before the end, and rather than soldier on with the carefully constructed foreshadowing of the series so far, DC decided to chuck everything and insert a nonsensical last minute change to preserve the “surprise”.
And that was back in 1991, before the Internet existed in its current form. Nowadays entire messageboards exist to comb over the latest clues in an ongoing series in near instantaneous fashion. If you have enough fans, then guess what? Some of them are going to pick up on the trail of breadcrumbs, and it’s only human at that point to want to show the path to others. Should you derail your narrative because they’ve figured out where it’s headed?
I say no. I say, focus on the journey and let the destination stand. For one thing, there will always be things some consider blindingly obvious that others will completely miss. Never assume that “Everyone could see this coming” is any kind of true statement… usually it just means those who didn’t either remain quiet out of fear of being thought stupid, or aren’t really paying attention to forums and comments anyhow. For another thing, if the journey is good enough, then it shouldn’t matter, and those who figured it out ahead of time are going to just feel gratified rather than disappointed. Or maybe they’ll be disappointed… you can’t control every last opinion. But it’s better than chucking everything, isn’t it?
But let’s all take a breath and calm down about the spoilers. Yes, we love to be surprised and taken in unexpected directions, but that shouldn’t be the only thing, or fiction eventually just dissolves into a senseless mass of WHAM! moments. They’re great, but as a writer don’t make them the end-all-be-all or you’ll end up with an unsustainable case of Shyamalan Syndrome. And as an audience member, take the fact you know the truth about Keyser Soze or Malcolm Crowe before you watch those movies as a liberation rather than a disaster. It’s a lot less stressful on both sides.
Plus, even if you knew it was the McCarty gang, maybe you didn’t figure out it was their own bulldozer on fire…
10 thoughts on “OMG Spoilers!”
Andrew
One of my favorite novels, The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer, is written almost entirely as a flashback. By the end of the first act, you know the answers to all the key questions with the other two thirds of the book are spent resolving the consequences, and it’s a beautiful book.
Katawa
This comic ends with a zombie powered mecha-godzilla.
Clint
I’m not gonna say no…
Mooglet
I totally agree that surprise endings can be over rated. I once worked my way through a large murder mystery only for the ‘killer reveal’ to prompt a ‘who???’ – it was a minor character who had only been twice mentioned in passing.
And for the record although I had guessed who was causing the fuss, the reason for the smoke was a lovely surprise and has me smiling!
Great work! X
Andrew
I once read a James Rollins novel, Deep Fathom, where the surprise ending is that the protagonist inexplicably goes back in time and alters the future so that all the negative events in the story, including a rapidly escalating nuclear exchange, are reversed…except for the death of the bad guy. It was hideous.
Clint
That sounds right up there with “It was all a dream!” endings, which are a hard sell for me not to feel like I just wasted my time. It can be done, but a lot of times comes off as a straight up cop out.
@Mooglet, you’ll occasionally find that phenomenon unkindly referred to as being “Agatha Christied”. But I gave up a long time ago on trying to figure out detective novels before the end, because that only led to one of two things for me:
a) The solution was so obvious I felt stupid for missing it.
b) The solution was such an ass pull I felt angry at the author for pretending I ever had a chance to solve it.
So mostly, if I’ve enjoying detective fiction it’s because I’m enjoying the character of the detective and how he goes about things, not playing a cat-and-mouse competition with the creator which I know in my heart is going to end badly.
Gillsing
I really don’t like spoilers. It’s about possibilities. I like stories to have possibilities, and if I already know that certain things will happen, that will reduce the possibilities, since some variables will be set. The more I know about the story, the less possibilities there are, until I’ve experienced the story and the possibilities are reduced to zero. That’s why I usually don’t watch movies or read books a second time. (Though it’s quite nice to watch a movie which I remember liking, but where I forgot most of what actually happened.)
Knowing the ending doesn’t ruin the entire story, but it can certainly ruin a rather important part of it. It’s as if you asked me how much saliva I’d want in my drink. I’d have to say “none”, even if you might have to spit quite a lot for me to actually notice anything different.
I don’t consider speculations to be spoilers though, no matter how well founded they are. Sure, they’ll certainly ruin the surprise if they’ve pointed out something that hadn’t occurred to me, but until something is actually revealed in a story there’s always the possibility that a given speculation may turn out to be wrong.
Possibilities are also a major reason why I read a lot of webcomics. Because webcomics don’t have to pass through the ‘can we sell this to a lot of people’-filter, and a stories that don’t have to appeal to the mainstream can offer more possibilities. They might not do this as often as I’d like, but the possibility is always there.
Violet Black
I’m ambivalent on this topic, but I like your perspective. 🙂
I’ve got a bit of conflict about the subject myself: I’ve personally never minded spoilers, to the point where I would like little more than to live my real life with 100% accurate precognition. But other people seem to like surprises; “predictable” is usually meant as a major insult. It’s a challenge for me when I try to write my own stories–especially of the choose-your-own-adventure variety where a reader might go through only one branch innocent of the world’s secrets and subsequently have to deal with a narrator who knows a lot less than they do. I’d have to put together a darn spectacular journey to justify that, wouldn’t I? I hope I can pull it off…
Clint
I’m not above having a little thrill at surprises, but for me Bioware’s game writers are a great example with their games of having both interesting twists and a strong journey to keep you moseying along.
You could also probably do a lot worse as inspiration for your “choose-your-own” efforts, seeing as the games do have their share of branching options.
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