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| Monk's book is a hoot, by the way |
I’ve written previously about marketing and writers who engage in bait-and-switch tactics. More commonly referred to (by writers) as subverting expectations, (marketers just call it “marketing”) the term means to lead an audience to expect/anticipate one outcome for a story only to end it in a different fashion.
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| A "hoot" at parties, I'm sure. |
Mostly, I”m apposed to paying for a steak and getting a PB&J, or sitting down to a movie about boxing for it to turn into a movie about assisted suicide, but I digress. There is a time when a well-executed subversion of expectations can elevate a story from entertainment to sublime delight. We’ll look at the good, the ~meh~, and the ugly.
Here’s a classic literary example
The three bears catch Goldilocks after she busted into their home, ate their food, and then crashed in their beds, possibly wrecking one. The expectation is for them to call the Po-Po, have Goldy face a judge for B&E, and make restitution. At least.
Instead, she wakes up, jumps out a window, and “flees home, never to return.” I just hope Goldy’s people got some help for her.
Clearly, this is NOT the ending that the story sets us up for. The subverted expectation works because it is written for children who don’t need to know about police action, the judicial process, or the tragedy of certain chemical behaviors. It also works because, jokes aside, Goldy intended no malice.
A tale of two happy endings
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| Not the one with Tom Hanks |
Winston Groom wrote Forrest Gump as a big fat mash note to Eisenhower Republicans after seeing stories of intellectually deficient people who achieve great things—based on positivity and ‘cause, gosh-darnit, America is just that kind of place. And so, after a 200-ish-page odyssey, (if Odyssius took the express bus home) Forrest retires to New Orleans after a failed senate bid.
It’s fine. It works. All the pieces are there.
Except…
A WHITE, millionaire-football-hero-war-veteran does not fail at a senate bid in the south and most certainly NOT in 1980's Georgia. Gump’s logical conclusion is entering the senate on a neo-con slate of candidates. From there, he wages a “common sense” war on the social safety net. But is ultimately played for a stooge by party leadership who then sacrifices him at an Iran-Contra style altar. After 18mos in club-fed, Gump then “retires” to talk radio.
Please note: subverting doesn’t mean “sad ending”
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| "Pulitzer" pretty-much says it all |
Like Forrest Gump, death hounds Quoyle’s heels, in Annie Proulx’ The Shipping News. In the first pages, Quoyle ex-wife (who he still pines for) dies in a car crash and his ailing parents commit suicide. At the parents’ funeral, Quoyle’s distant aunt (like, “never met before” distant) convinces him to relocate his family to their ancestral home of New Foundland.
With few prospects beyond annual layoffs at the independent newspaper he works for, Quoyle takes Aunt Agnis’ advice and the family schleps off for NF. However, what he finds is not the new start he hoped for.
The family house is dead and foreboding. The family land, Quoyle’s Point, is desolate, depressing, and probably dangerous. If that weren’t bad enough, he soon finds that “Quoyle,” (the family name) is a name of deadly repute.
But amid the death around him—Quoyle nearly drowns, his boss does—Quoyle finds the voice that eluded him for years. He begins to speak up for himself. With a mentor in the local newspaper owner, Quoyle blooms as a writer. Likewise, he grows as a father and builds a loving, nurturing relationship with a woman whose life is just as hardscrubbed as his own.
Unlike Gump, Quoyle ends up neither rich nor famous. This isn't the story of pius Job or a fable of American exceptionalism, Quoyle is a man unsure of his purpose or future but committed to doing what he thinks is right. His happy ending—a place in a community that becomes home to him—is hard-earned, honest, and entirely fitting of the hard journey Quoyle took to get there.
The boy doesn’t always get the girl; a tale of two rogues…
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| Wasn't on the original poster for a reason |
Across five movies, Han Solo, (Harrison Ford in four) lies, blunders, and blasts his way out of (and into) scrape after scrape. In the original New Hope, he is the FUN—unpredictable, and perfect sorta hero—life of the party. In The Empire Strikes Back, the party’s over, you want to go to bed, and you really wish the guy would leave already. By Return of the Jedi, you realize you only ever invite the guy because he’s got a cool dog.
“He’s got no Momma, he’s got no Pappa, he’s got no past so he has no future,” Harrison Ford on his rationale to kill off Han in Jedi.
Worse, from a writer’s perspective, Han has no growth. He’s the same shallow, self-serving nerf herder in Jedi that he was in New Hope. He is immature, treats his friends like crap, and leads with his ego. Great pilot, iffy-friend, disastrous boyfriend.
The best possible outcome for this character is a valiant, (if entirely avoidable) death redeeming his less-than endearing qualities.
Sadly, the worst possible outcome is the sour marriage hinted at in The Force Awakens. So, no. This guy does not get the girl. The girl is afflicted with him, like a life-long foot fungus. He makes his wife miserable and completely abdicates his responsibilities as a father.
Knows his lane...
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| ...always shoots first |
Like Han Solo, Rick Blaine, (Humphery Bogart) is a soldier of fortune. Rick is just better at it. His hinted past is that of a gangster who hit his big score and then fled his country of origin.
We meet Rick at his club, Cafe Americain, in Casablanca. With the money he’s made on his booze and gambling, Rick is comfortable and well-connected, with friends—Vichy French and resistance, refugees and mobsters—in all corners. He’s also aloof, self-serving, and unconcerned with the increasing desperation of a city in full siege mentality.
Then Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) walks in and wrecks his sh…show. Rick has never gotten over Elsa or how she ditched him. He meets her with icewater in his veins. But pain shows through the cracked ice.
At the same time, Ugarte, (Peter Lore) a petty thief who idolizes Rick is killed by corrupt police when all he had to do was give Rick up. The Nazis know that Rick is Ilsa’s—and more importantly, her husband, Victor’s—only line to get out of Casablanca. They close his club to lean on him. Sensing an opportunity, the local mob boss begins to apply pressure as well.
However, Rick isn't one to be pushed and, in fact, blooms under pressure. He developes a grudging respect for Victor who also refuses to be pushed without pushing back. That fledgling respect and his love for Ilsa, is what compels Rick to do the right thing; get the husband and wife out before the Nazis shut the city down. But he also lets go of Ilsa, even after she professes that she still loves him.
Now, the logical (business) ending is for Rick and Ilsa to get away together. Happily-ever-after, the end.
But Rick knows that home and family isn’t in the cards for guys like him. His home is action. His family are fellow people of action. Rick doesn’t get the girl because that’s not what Rick is built for.
The “conciliatory” ending
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| Don't judge a movie by its poster |
This is the completely expected ending. A, B, C—simple. It is the 90% ending as in most books and movies. They deliver on the set-up. Unfortunately, the set-up doesn’t always deliver on the outcome.
Ed Burns’ 2002 film, Ash Wednesday, follows all the numbers. Fran Sullivan, (Burns) is a Hell’s Kitchen bar-owner trying to keep his sister-in-law, Grace, (Rosario Dawson) safe as rumors swirl that Fran’s younger brother, Sean, (Elijah Wood) has “returned from the dead.” Fran’s conflict is in his love for his brother pitted against his love for his brother’s wife.
Anyone who’s seen a crime film knows how this goes. Still, the ending lands flat and not just due to the lack of chemistry between Dawson and Wood or the fact that Wood looks all of 14. No, the biggest part of the problem is balance. We don’t see Sean until the final third of the movie. All we know of Sean’s reason for “playing dead” is he stood up to the Irish Mob in the Kitchen, whatever that means. We don’t see enough of him in action to give RJS about him.
Fran on the other hand is running and gunning all over the Kitchen to save the two people most dear to him in the world. In the course of his efforts, we learn that Fan wasn’t always a bar owner and probably not the guy you want to be cross with on a dark street. But more than anything else, the audience sees a man who loves his brother dearly. Enough to give up the woman he loves just as dearly.
When we see Fran, after Sean and Grace are safely away. He has met his obligations, spiritual (denoted by the ash cross on his forehead) and familial. When he wipes the ash from his brow, we know he is at peace with his fate.
Yet, Sean and Grace, happy and safe, do nothing to balance Fran’s body, felled by a mobster’s bullet. It is an ending the story did not lay adequate groundwork for. As a result the sacrifice feels empty.
The subverted expectation is often the ending we need, not the ending we deserve
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| Upside, the dog lives |
Also made in 2002, Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, is a study in subverting expectations. Note: I am discussing Lee’s movie and not David Benioff’s book because I really didn’t care about book Monty, book Monty’s friends, or book Monty’s stakes. I rooted for prison instead of book Monty.
Lee’s Monty, (Ed Norton) is a white drug dealer in NYC who’s been busted. He’s been convicted and sentenced to seven years. We meet Monty the day before he is to report to prison. Casting about for who ratted him out, for anyone else responsible, Monty gags on the “banquet of consequences” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of.
Questioning his girlfriend’s loyalty, his friends’ loyalty, Monty weighs his own loyalty as the finality of seven years in prison and multiple vicious threats take their toll. And then, when he has exhausted every juvenile idea to counter his anxiety-fueled fear, Monty stands up to take his ride.
However Monty’s father offers to drive him out of the city and away from prison. Monty envisions his life. He can start over. Do honest work. He sees a future with his girlfriend.
But Monty remains silent and takes his ride to prison.
Lee's ending chides the audience for hoping and rooting for Monty’s privilege as a white male in America to prevail. He shows a possibility beyond the nightmare reality of prison and ruin that is completely out of reach for black, brown, and poor men. Monty, who is no longer who he was when his check came due, must still pay the price, just like everyone else.
This is a study in redemption and mercy and limited both are. This is the logical-conclusion ending, based on the opening scene and every moment of Monty’s growth beyond it.
Lee laid all the groundwork, the emotional basis, and the coffin-nails-hard reality of an ending where a privileged prick dodges prison. Then he executes a perfect fait accompli for Monty—who has grown and changed from the petulant, hand-in-the-cookie-jar dealer at the beginning—to stand up and do his sentence like a man, in atonement for what he has done to the people who care about him and for the audience that has become invested in Monty, his redemption and desperately wants his deliverance from hell.
Again, masterclass in story telling. If you haven’t seen it, do. Go-go-go, now-now-now.
Sometimes the girl gets the boy, or, the happy-for-who ending…
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| Seriously, though, what was that noise? |
If you haven’t read it, Jane Eyre is a classic of English literature for a reason. Dealing with class, religion, and sexuality, JE is a caustic critique of social mores that hobbled women to domestic indenture or marriage, (same/same?) and permitted men to violate major parts of the current criminal code with impunity.
So, it ends with Jane busting her boss, Rochester, in the mouth and running off with an age-appropriate Mr. Darcy stand-in, right?
Um, no. After a nightmare wedding day, Jane flees Rochester, Adèle (Rochester’s child), and his musty old house. Only to then return to Rochester—after hitting the family lotto. Finding that Rochester is now a widower, (seriously, read the book) she professes her love and intent to never leave his side.
This is not romance. It is horror. It works because Jane, (like most women of the day) was conditioned to suffering and abuse. It also works because it leaves the reader with the barest sense of how bleak a 19th century woman’s life was.
For how it revolutionized prose writing, JE is probably the most important work here. Seriously, read it. It will improve you as a writer if not as a human being.
If Karma were a person…
In Gillian Flynn’s crime masterpiece, Gone Girl, Amy Dunne has had it. She’s pregnant, dead, and her husband is not taking HALF the heat she expected. And, she maybemaybemaybe might be falling back in lo—oh, right, that second thing.
Amy, (after discovering that her husband cheated on her with one of his college students) faked her death to frame him up. Hilarity does not ensue.
If this reads trite, it is. Read the book. It’s not trite. It’s scary AF.
However, after watching Nick flail, confess, and attone in repeated news interviews, Amy becomes convinced that Nick does love her, realizes she’s the only one that can get him out of this mess that she he got him himself into.
So, as happens, somebody gotta die.
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| Believe that if you want to... |
In this case it’s Amy’s high school crush, Desi. Ever the perfectionist, she redirects evidence toward Desi, seduces him, and then kills him. Easy, breezy, covergirl, style.
Returning home in a hail of media gasps, Amy saves Nick’s as—sets, professes her undying love for him, and determination to never leave his side.
~Yikes~
Like JE, GG’s ending sings because of the groundwork put in by the author. Through conflicting accounts and an unfolding investigation, the reader finds, (right along with the cops) that neither Nick nor Amy are good people. While I hesitate to say they deserve each other, I will not argue with anyone who does.
Further, GG did for crime fiction what JE did for prose fiction and the Gothic Novel form. GG is a genre-breaking work that changed perspectives for a lot of readers and writers. And, after the film adaptation, a lot of men became a lot nicer to their wives. Or, you know, so I’ve been told…
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| What was that noise? |
So, endings. You want a paint-by-numbers—happy, sad, ambiguous—ending? Fine, just make sure your numbers line up. But if you want to subvert expectations, you will have to earn it. Your groundwork has to be meticulous and your protagonist MUST grow from where the reader meets them. The writer will have to guide the protagonist and reader through treacherous, shifting tides to that ending.
The biggest question for any ending (and whether that ending works) comes down to one question. Has the protagonist earned this ending?
I own none of the photos above. All are used for instructional/educational purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.
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