Expectations in writing, it’s about how you tell the story. You’re at the store and you fumble a jar. The lid flies off. You gasp in horror, unable to move as the lid comes down on the hard floor and bounces once, twice… and guess what happens next?

In writing, your reader comes to you with a history and they’re going to have opinions. So what do they expect to happen? How do you subvert those expectations? Bait and Switch? Reverse Uno? Trickery?

One cliche you see in books is an opening scene where the protagonist wakes up. It’s overused all the time. 

So, it’s always shocking when an author is allowed to use it. Consider Holly Black’s The Coldest Girl in ColdTown, the main character Tana, wakes up in a bathtub. This is stated right in the summary of the novel. Or look at how the noir genre is saturated with this notion that the story begins in a PI office, where the detective is behind a desk waiting. Knowing the cliche is the first step, because once you establish something, then you can use it to your advantage in telling your story. Change the details; personalize it. (Maybe the PI office is in a treehouse and maybe there’s a chimpanzee making the coffee. Tarzan and Jane Jungle PI?) Make the cliche your own. But I digress…

Defying expectations

First, let’s examine a masterful piece that defies our expectations. When writing expectations, you need a setup.

This scene comes from Terry Pratchett, from one of his earlier novels called MORT, which is basically about Death’s apprentice. In the scene, Mort is currently out on a job to collect a soul from a very isolated empire with Death’s daughter, Ysabelle.

Quote:

“Who runs this place?” said Ysabelle, as they passed over the harbor.

“There’s some kind of boy emperor,” said Mort. “But the top man is really the Grand Vizier, I think.”

“Never trust a Grand Vizier,” said Ysabelle wisely.

In fact, the Sun Emperor didn’t. The Vizier, whose name was Nine Turning Mirrors, had some very clear views about who should run the country, e.g., that should be him, and now the boy was getting big enough to ask questions like ‘Don’t you think the wall would look better with a few gates in it? and ‘Yes, but what is it like on the other side?’ He had decided that in the Emperor’s own best interests he should be painfully poisoned and buried in quicklime.”

End Quote.

That’s the set-up. What are you expecting to happen in the scene between the Emperor and the Vizier? Who is going to die?

Take a moment. Think about it. You’re very interested to know. At least I was. I couldn’t put the book down. Something big is about to happen. Life and death.

Spoilers incoming. (This is your only warning.)

We get our answer within the next three pages. The young Emperor is eating a meal and the Vizier offers him a strange delicacy that supposedly is very tasty but looks like a “blue-green lump with rubbery tubes dangling from it.” Rather than eat it himself, the boy offers the treat to his Vizier.

It is a very brief scene but it plays out in a completely unexpected way. Pratchett has set up an expectation — that the Vizier will poison the Emperor — but he leaves the reader with questions. How will he do it? Will the Emperor die? Where is the poison? Is it in the gross fishy squid thing? We are never specifically told, but we figure it out from context. We also know (because death’s apprentice is here) that someone *is* going to die very soon. But who?

Questions and Unexpected Answers

As the scene continues we have questions. This is a good thing.

We also feel sympathetic toward the young Emperor. He is in danger. The Vizier is clearly a terrible person, pretending to be modest and generous. Luckily, the young Emperor doesn’t eat the poisoned squid-eel thing right away. And now the Vizier is in trouble. His plan isn’t working. What happens next? You begin to root for the Emperor. You’re eager to see what’s coming. Will the Vizier get what he deserves, or will the young Emperor die after all? Who is going to eat the poison?

There is wonderful descriptive humor as they volley with the squid-eel.

“The thing followed another brief arc through the air and flopped apologetically into the Vizier’s bowl.” Soon we readers, and the court, are riveted by this back-and-forth exchange. The stakes are huge during this scene, an entire empire.

Finally, the climax arrives … dadadan!!! 

The Emperor summons his guards, who “convince” the Vizier to eat the poison. The Vizier dies, (good riddance) Mort collects his soul, and the book moves on. Phew.

All your questions have been answered — contrary to expectations. He makes it look easy. But here’s the key point: what if Pratchett never set those expectations in the beginning? You never would have wondered about the Vizier’s death. Or cared if the young Emperor was going to live. The interactions between these two characters would have been a long drawn-out diversion with nothing to do with the main story. It wouldn’t matter who ate a piece of weird seafood. But Pratchett makes it matter.

It’s a short scene but packed full of cleverness. It gives us a mystery. We ask questions. We want to know the answers so we keep reading. As writers, we can use expectations when writing to keep the reader hooked.

Where else can we inspect expectations? In Part 2, let’s take a look at a comedy skit about the dentist by comedian Michael McIntyre.