No
We talked last week about publishers, and whether they wanted Same-As-Yesterday-But-Different, or whether they wanted startlingly new. I said they wanted both, and I’m sure that’s right.
But how to create that shimmer of the new, the unexpected?
And, OK, there are lots of ways and I don’t propose to list them all, not least because I’d have no hope of giving you a complete list. That said, there is one superbly reliable technique that is a sheer joy both to read or write. Here’s what I mean – an example of dialogue from the delightful Alan Ritchson-led Jack Reacher series. Reacher has been arrested by the police and he’s sitting with his wrists tied with cable ties. Here’s what happens:
Oscar Finlay: Reacher, come with me.
Reacher: No.
Oscar Finlay: Excuse me?
Reacher: Not until you let these zip ties come off. We both know I didn't kill anybody, and they are uncomfortable.
Oscar Finlay: [turns to officer Roscoe] Get the box cutter.
Reacher: That's okay. I got it.
[tears off the zip ties that cuffs his wrist, then picks them up from the ground]
Reacher: You guys recycle?
The last line of that dialogue – the thing about recycling – feels to me, although perfectly fine, the weakest bit. It’s standard-issue tough guys being tough. It’s not far off Roger Moore’s James Bond dropping somebody into a vat of boiling glue and quipping, “he came to a sticky end.” And it’s all good. Remarks of this sort make for good solid genre fare, and we love them for that reason.
But the best bit of dialogue? The bit that makes you sit up and suddenly pay extra attention to what’s happening in front of you? It’s that ‘No’.
There’s no apology there. No insult. Nothing unruly. Just a simple, absolute refusal to play by the expected rules.
Reacher could have skipped the ‘No’ and gone straight to the ‘Not until you let these zip ties come off.’ That would still have communicated refusal, but it would have offered a negotiated settlement along with that refusal. And that negotiated settlement – that search for conflict resolution – is what nearly of us do, nearly all the time. If we don’t want a particular outcome, we try to dangle a better alternative in front of our counterpart’s eyes.
Indeed, this email has many tens of thousands of readers and not one of us, if tied up in a police cell, would simply say ‘No’ to Finlay’s request.
And yes, OK. Reacher is immensely strong and was never all that bothered by the ties: he knew he could remove them at will. But that act of strength is just mechanical. Big guy vs plastic: big guy wins. The more interesting part is the social part. I know what the norms are, but I’m going to act outside them.
Encountering those rejections of the socially expected is always interesting.
We’re social monkeys. Exceptions are potentially dangerous to us. If people refuse to play by the rules, our own security is suddenly in question. So – in fiction, as in life – we become hyper-attuned to non-standard behaviour.
Reacher offers, of course, a very traditional masculine toughness (combined with a very traditionally masculine lack of emotional fluidity.) But that outsider quality can come from anywhere.
It could be neurodivergence. It could be shopping addiction. It could be manipulation and lying. Or extreme shyness. In my own Fiona’s case, it’s a combination of brains and weirdness and a surprising capacity for violence. You can create your mixture as you wish.
As I say, if you get that character right, the approach always works. The thrill of that norm-breaking is so great that we never weary of it. Reacher is always Reacher. Fiona is always Fiona. You’d think that our monkey brains would say, “OK, I’ve figured this person out now, and I don’t need to get all hyper-alert when I’m round them.” But they never do. Reacher being Reacher is always thrilling. Maybe the thrill declines a little, but not much.
And –
Well, I just want to be clear that nothing about this is compulsory. You can certainly work with everyman-type characters: you just have to make sure that they encounter things that will offer a different kind of startlement, a different type of grip.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Reacher-y
Go on then.
Show us one of your characters being Reacher-y – acting outside the expected norms. We want to feel that sudden bit of sit-up-and-take-notice: we weren’t expecting that.
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Til soon.
Harry