how to write chickens 101 · 5:51am Sep 4th, 2018

Watch the vanishing chicken trick.

The trick is simple enough you can probably figure it out, but that's not the point of magic. After all, this is P&T's schtick: revealing and explaining magic tricks while still making them feel magical. To them it doesn't matter how fancy and clever the trick is; it's worthless if it's not entertaining.

If you can't watch it, the gist is that misdirection is not about sneaky distractions. It's really more like letting the audience tell themselves a story, about what they think is happening. And then using that.

A beautifully simple lesson on human psychology. As well as writing, perhaps.

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
-- Kurt Vonnegut's Writing 101

He's not arguing in favor of formulaic and predictable stories that are all identical. Don't take him 100% literally here about the suspense thing... unless you really hate suspense stories, in which case fair enough. There's a lot of bad suspense stories, but some really good ones exist too. I think.

There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.
We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"
In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.
-- Alfred Hitchcock

Sounds like common sense to make everything clear, but I think our instincts try to sabotage that. Vonnegut is onto something: suspense is a newbie trap. A lot of bad stories don't show you the proverbial bomb under the table.... but coyly expect you to know it's there!! They hold their cards so close to their chest and assume that's "suspense". Well, it is, only to them, since they're the writer and already know everything.

I think the important idea here is that you should let the audience have that complete understanding, so that they can finish the story themselves... even if it's the wrong ending.

That's when you get misdirection, and can pull off magic tricks. Give them something, never nothing. If they have no idea where the story is supposed to go, that's when they become too aware of the author, that you're trying to pull off some twist.

Or, even worse, they get bored and stop caring.

One of my favorite blogposts ever is SirTruffle's essay on writing character death. The gist there is that killing off a character doesn't impress anyone, unless the audience is absolutely certain that the character is supposed to live.

Not that you have to twist everything. If the audience correctly understands where the rest of the story can go, that's okay. It frees you up from having to subvert those expectations. Along that path, you must surprise and delight them in ways other than plot. Those techniques are for you to figure out. This probably best applies to genre fiction, or straightforward fairy tales meant for children.

'Westley dies,' my father said.
I said, 'What do you mean, "Westley dies"? You mean dies?'
My father nodded. 'Prince Humperdinck kills him.'
'He's only faking though, right?'
My father shook his head, closed the book all the way.
'Aw shit,' I said and I started to cry.
'I'm sorry,' my father said. 'I'll leave you alone,' and he left me.
'Who gets Humperdinck?' I screamed after him.
He stopped in the hall. 'I don't understand.'
'Who kills Prince Humperdinck? At the end, somebody's got to get him. Is it Fezzik? Who?'
'Nobody kills him. He lives.'
'You mean he wins, Daddy? Jesus, what did you read me this thing for?' and I buried my head in my pillow and I never cried like that again, not once to this day.
-- The Princess Bride