TELLING THE FUTURE

‘For me, the metrics [of an engaging read] are readability (is my attention drifting off as I read?); a feeling of rising intensity; a sense that the story’s focus is narrowing; and a sense of delight.’

George Saunders

In any story we are told or read, there is a balance of anticipation and retrospection, of looking forward to the future (known or anticipated) and looking back on the past. The receiver of the story has placed themselves in the world of the storyteller, and they are continually monitoring this world’s evolution, imagining possible developments at the same time they are also witnessing the shutting of doors on some of these possibilities.

But throughout, the reader’s primary interest remains focused on the final outcome.

Because of this focus, the point at which Story engagement can often start to flag – both for the teller and the receiver – is when this balance between anticipation and retrospection tilts too much in the direction of the latter, and the current that has been carrying us along turns into an eddy, circling beautifully perhaps, but no longer progressing. I think we can all recognise this feeling in our own writing when it comes. A feeling you have been circling for days, weeks, around the same emotional considerations but are stuck here – as the reader will be too when they reach this point.

Peter Brooks, the theatre director, summarises this tension neatly when he observes: ‘If the past [in a story] is to be read as present, it is a curious present that we know to be past in relation to a future we know to be already in place, already in wait for us to reach it. Perhaps we would do best to speak of the anticipation of retrospection as our chief tool in making sense of narrative, the master trope of its strange logic.’

 So how do we build anticipation in our stories, and keep it alive?

•   One way is to be aware, yourself, of what your characters are anticipating. And don’t let them go too long without thinking or talking about a future they are trying to create, or one they are trying to head off. This might include hints to possible effects of the actions they are taking, hoped outcomes, or an indication/belief of what might happen if these actions are not taken.

•   Another method is to keep readers aware of a ticking clock, or a calendar’s pages turning. A time or occasion by which the main character must succeed at her tasks in order to save whatever needs saving. This will ramp up the tension in your story. And if this countdown is not present in the character’s mind, it should definitely be made clear for the reader by the narrator, or other characters in the story.

•   Show us the negative (or positive) outcomes for smaller versions of final climactic actions. For smaller infractions of the rules, let’s say, so that the character and readers can anticipate even worse (or better) outcomes for the larger versions of these actions. If readers have already witnessed A causing B, they will anticipate these same causal connections between events in the future, only more so, if the same action is on a larger scale, with higher stakes.

•   Set into motion a chain of events that once begun, cannot be stopped or slowed. A plunge down a whitewater river, a plane lifting off to a challenging destination, a rocket to a planet. A live performance, a wedding, the first day in a new job, or a term in office.

•   Introduce inevitability - if the character does this, it is obvious the effect will be this. Then show the characters fighting with everything they have to fix or derail the inevitable. Show the cost characters pay for fighting against a certain happening or event. Show the toll it takes. Make the anticipated outcome – wrong or right – have an effect on the story’s current events even as they are unfolding.

•   Awaken new resolve in characters —give them reasons to keep going and equip them with new tools to use in the fight.

•   Keep characters planning for a future, even after they have succeeded in their initial plans. Keep them imagining celebrations of success as well as future tactics in case they should fail. Keep characters aware of their future—through dialogue or actions or thoughts—so that readers are also aware and anticipating. Keep characters emotionally involved in anticipated outcomes, so that readers will likewise be emotionally invested.

 The Anticipation Line.

This is a sentence that lifts a reader’s head in anticipation. Example: ‘Suzie was my best friend all through primary school. She lived next door to us and was always round at our house, from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. My dad loved Suzie, her piercing voice and loud opinions, her slogan T-shirts, the way she liked to give him advice on his job as a data analyst. My mother hated Suzie.’

An anticipation line is one that stops a reader in their tracks, that leads the reader to believe that something else is true, and that something else is going to happen, than what they had first believed. Often these lines contains phrases like: supposed to, about to, until, but, however, eventually, suddenly…

Prolepsis.

Prolepsis is the representation or assumption of a future act or development, as if it is presently exists or has been accomplished. In narrative, this is sometimes called a flash forward, as opposed to a flashback (analepsis). I like to use the term ‘future casting’, as though you are casting a fishing line forward in your story to give people a brief glimpse of the future.

Example: Suzie would die, at the age of twenty-five in a motorway pile-up, before she managed to have any a family of her own.

It’s that moment in a narrative in which the chronological order of story events is disturbed and the writer takes us on a brief excursion into the future to reveal later events, sometimes events in a character’s life long after the end of this story in which we are currently residing, before returning to the present time to proceed with the sequence.

These are all fun things to try, and can help turn the readers’ gaze to the future, and beyond.

Which will hopefully make them want to keep reading, so they can fill in the gaps between.