Being a Better Writer: Good Subversions · 12:01am Mar 6th, 2018
Welcome back, readers, to another Being a Better Writer post!
Okay, so it's not that surprising. After all, these things have been dropping like clockwork each Monday for almost five years now, so any surprise at this point either means you're new or really poor at picking up on patterns. But in any case, it's Unusual Things' ... well, thing!
Anyway, I got all relevant news out of the way last week with the last news post, and there's nothing new that's worth bringing up at this time, so let's just dive in to today's topic shall we? And, oh yes, this is a request topic (clearing out the last of Topic List Ten, so get ready to suggest new topics), one that's been a long time coming!
So, today we're going to talk about writing good subversions. Which, almost immediately, means that our first question is going to be "What is a subversion?"
Well, it's both simple and more complicated than it seems at the same time. But a subversion is when the story sets up an expected path, event, trope, etc, and then when the moment arrives to bring that same event/trope/story element to its expected conclusion ... something happens to turn everything the reader expected about said element on its head. It's called a subversion because when you subvert something, you undermine the established "traditional" narrative, or disrupt it. In other words, you—the author—have become a subversive element to an established trope, event, etc.
Let's talk examples, and pick one of the more famous ones: The classic fantasy damsel in distress. We'll start with an even more common story-arc in this formula, that of the princess being kidnapped by a dragon, and a heroic knight sent out to rescue her in return for her hand in marriage. That's the classic setup echoed across fairy-tale and folklore for the longest time.
Now? Let's subvert it! Sat we follow this story, it's novella length, from the knight's perspective as he travels across the land, in pursuit of this dragon and hunting for its lair. Then, after a time and some arduous travels, he arrives to find ... That the princess doesn't want to be rescued, thank you very much. She's best friends with the dragon, been pen pals for years, and her dragon friend wasn't kidnapping her but saving her from ... Oh, an abusive parentage, or an arranged marriage of political convenience that the knight was specifically not told about (so that the king can conveniently backstab him later). The princess isn't being poorly treated, but in fact is living well and finding her true calling as a baker ...
It is strange how often subverting expectations can actually be playing it straight. But it does make a lot of sense. Anyway, great post as always!
I have one thing I want to point out here. In the vein of being aware of common subversions, it's also worth noting that sometimes something that seems like an obvious subversion is almost universally ignored for being so obvious. The example that comes to mind is subverting the old sealed evil in a can trope by having the thing that comes out be unambiguously nice, and while I've seen a huge number of cases where that trope gets subverted a million different ways (including from you in Beyond the Borderlands), I have seen the "obvious" subversion exactly once in my entire life. This means you will actually deliver a more effective surprise by following that obvious rout and derailing the story into adorable shenanigans than you will by being clever because an experienced reader like myself can usually spot a subversion coming and will thus not be particularly surprised by what you think is a clever twist, but would be surprised if you took the more obvious rout simply because it never actually happens.
TFW the bourgeois frames what will lead to their own profit as rebellion in order to subvert your glorious revolution...
You've developed a bit of a a stutter.