OH WHAT A TANGLED WEB

by John M. Floyd

A few weeks ago JLW mentioned that one his stories and one of mine in AHMM last year were recently named by Otto Penzler as “Other Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2009” (an addendum to the Best American Mystery Stories 2010 anthology, edited by Lee Child). It’s the second time that’s happened to me — the first was in 2001, when another of my AHMM stories was chosen for that list. Those are the only times, by the way, that I’ve come close to actually being in one of those annual “Best Mysteries” books. (Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.)

Double your pleasure?

The other day I happened to notice something similar about those two “selected” stories of mine: Neither one had a traditional ending. The same thing is true of one I sold last year to The Strand Magazine. All three stories had a sort of “double-twist” near the end, where everything appeared to be resolved following a surprise ending but was then taken a step further, to yet another surprise and a different and (I hope) even more satisfying conclusion.

Did that technique help those two AHMM stories to be chosen for the “distinguished” list? I have no idea. I do remember that it was fun coming up with the extra twists, and trying to mislead the reader into thinking the stories would end one way while setting them up to later take a different direction. I also remember that even though I like to outline (at least mentally) my stories before I begin, I didn’t foresee either of those final reversals until I was well into the writing process. Believe me, I’m not so big on outlines that I’m not willing to change one of them during the heat of battle.

Asking for misdirections

So why is this even worth mentioning? Are those double-twists always a good thing? Probably not. But I can recall a number of them in novels and films that worked well. One was Die Hard. In that movie, several minutes after the final confrontation with the main villain, when hero John McLane and his wife were exhausted and bloody but supposedly safe, a terrorist who was thought to already be dead rudely showed up and tried to kill them both. Personally, I doubt that that final scene was in the writer’s plan from the beginning. I’d bet anything that he decided later to have that happen, and I further believe that he probably went back and changed an earlier phone conversation between McLane and a uniformed cop on the outside, to have the cop confess to McLane that he’d once mistakenly shot a kid and had since been unable to point his gun at anyone. The reappearance of the terrorist at the last moment caused the cop to draw his gun and shoot the guy dead and save the day (and save the McLanes), thus creating an even more pleasing, edge-of-your-seat ending.

The same kind of thing happened, to good effect, in the films Red Dragon, Body Heat, Goldfinger, The Terminator, and many others, and double-twist endings seem to be the norm in all Harlan Coben novels. Be aware, however, that this concept doesn’t always work. At its worst (I’m thinking here about horror/slasher movies, where the monster/killer miraculously keeps coming back to life after being dispatched) it can be a cheap “shock value” gimmick. At its best, though, a little additional twist, an added jolt just when the reader/viewer has relaxed and is thinking that the battle is over and all is well, can be an even stronger way to end an already strong story.

Going in for the (over)kill

What are your opinions on this? If you’re a writer, have you occasionally tacked on an extra twist ending? If you’re a reader — and all of you are readers — do you enjoy that kind of thing now and then?

It has certainly crossed my mind that I might be overanalyzing this whole issue. Endings — like golf swings — often work just because they work. Examining them too closely is not only boring but counterproductive.

Bonus features

A final point: I’m not saying double-twists are always better than traditional surprise endings like the ones in Presumed Innocent, Psycho, The Sixth Sense, etc. Those were wonderful just as they were. But I think a final “extra” reversal is at least worth considering, when you’re writing and rewriting your short fiction. AHMM editor Linda Landrigan once mentioned to me that that was one of the reasons she accepted my story “The Powder Room” for their July/August 2009 issue.

And believe me, when that lady speaks, I listen.