9 SHOCKING Strategies That Keep Readers Awake Until 2 AM

hi I'm John Matthew Fox of buff Fox and today we are looking at places in your novel where you can shock the reader and I'm not talking about you know scare them I'm talking about like making their jaw drop where they're just flabbergasted at the story development honestly if you're not using at least two or three of these nine strategies in your book then you're missing out on an opportunity and make sure you stick around to watch the last four because those are the more Advanced Techniques lastly there are lots of spoilers ahead so if

I mention a book that you're planning on reading soon just skip ahead a little bit the first shock strategy is reversals a reversal is just significantly changing the direction your story was going in it's a little bit like making a U-turn in a car you were going in One Direction and suddenly you were flipped and going completely different direction now I'm going to offer you two ways to do this in your own story the first one is a POV reversal a point of view reversal is just where you write say half of the book from

one character's point of view and then you flip and write it from a completely different character's point of view in the second half and a great example of this would be gone Girl by Jillian Flynn the first half of the book is narrated by the husband Nick and then suddenly it switches and then the second half of the book is revealed by the wife Amy Dunn and anytime you switch point of view halfway through a book there's going to be delicious contradictions between the ways that these two characters tell the same story and in gong

girl there are huge huge differences between the way that the husband tries to explain the absence of the wife and the way that the wife talks about her own absence and why she did it a second example of a reversal that might be good for your book is a character reversal a strong example would be from souls and NS and's one day in the life of Ivan denisovich the main character shov is trying to survive in a Soviet prison camp a goog and so he's doing everything he can to win food and like just make

sure he keeps on living and that's why it's such a huge character reversal when by the end of that story he ends up giving food away to someone who really needs it now as far as the placement for a reversal if you're doing a POV reversal a great place is right in the middle and if you're doing a character reversal it can happen anywhere from The Middle towards the end a second gr strategy to shock your reader is a surprise a surprise is just a dramatic event that causes tension in one particular scene the scene

that's happening right now to continue with our car metaphor uh surprise is like driving a car and hitting a pothole it doesn't necessarily change where you're going but it's certainly a big bump in old man in the sea by Hemingway we have Santiago out in the waters after he's caught his huge Marlin and then surprise surprise surprise a shark attacks and yes this is very very surprising but it doesn't change the fundamental nature of the story like a reversal would now the advantage of using surprise in your book is that you can use a bunch

of surprises there's no limitation on the number of surprises that you can use while with something like a reversal or say the next one we're going to talk about which is a Twist you really can't get away with more than like one in a book I mean maybe two but usually one another advantage of using the technique of surprise is that you can put it anywhere in your book you can put it at at the beginning you can put it in the middle you can put it at the end and by the way if you

want to learn more about the technique of surprise check out the writing techniques course in book Fox Academy which you can buy on its own or you can get a subscription to all of the academy and now it's time for the third strategy of shocking the reader add a Twist now the essence of a Twist is fundamentally rejiggering what the reader thinks about everything that's happened so far in the novel a lot of people mix up surprise and twist so I want to be very clear a surprise impacts what you're thinking about this particular moment

in the novel while a twist impacts everything that's happened so far and asks you to re-evaluate all of the story so to continue with our driving metaphor a Twist is like realizing that the map has been upside down this whole time it changes your entire understanding of the journey and a great example of this would be Ender Game by Orson Scott Card at the very end of that book we realize that the battle simulations that Endor has been running this entire time are actually not simulations they are real and he has just committed genocide what

this does is it makes you look at the entire past of the novel and go oh they were not seeing if they were good enough they were actually having them do the Dirty Work of attacking this other alien race and I'd also like to point out two categories that might be helpful for you in figuring out how to add a Twist to your book one would be identity twists these are stories like Fight Club uh six sense or The Usual Suspects basically we don't know the true nature of one of the main characters but then

by by the end we realize it and a second category that you might find helpful would be story twists in books like life of pie or atonement by the end of the story we realize what we thought was happening what we thought was the true nature of the story ends up being not the true nature of the story at all now little word of caution you really really really want to make sure that you limit your book to one twist alone I find that often readers will get angry if you try to throw in two

twists three twists I mean they they start to feel taken advantage of and as far as where to put a Twist I feel like 95% of the time a Twist happens at the end oh also if you like this video please like it because then that helps me figure out what content to make in the future and also please subscribe because that helps me not feel like I'm wasting my whole life giving advice on YouTube now it is time for the fourth way to shock the reader make a sacrifice so having a main character die

is an extremely powerful event in your story I actually spent an entire chapter about it in the Lynch pin writer talking about how to do it well and I'll put a link to that in the description if you haven't picked up your copy but what we're talking about right here is just a little bit more specific than this sort of General umbrella category of character deaths we're talking about when characters sacrifice themselves when they deliberately kill themselves in order to achieve a greater good I think these are even more shocking to the reader because they

realize that this is a choice that the character is making it's not something that's being done to them and I just like i' like to point out two different ways you can do this one is with an honorable sacrifice for an example of this let's look at Interstellar when humanity is dying off and they're trying to reach a new planet to preserve the human race now when they're trying to reach that planet at one point Cooper has to sacrifice himself and fall into a black hole so Amelia can use the spaceship to actually get to

the new planet and continue the human race but I'd like to point out a second option that you can do in your book a Redemptive sacrifice instead of having the protagonist sacrifice make your antagonist sacrifice in season three of stranger things we have Billy who's been an absolutely horrible human being I mean abusing his sister and uh hitting on married women who are twice his age oh oh and don't let me forget you know killing people but but at the end he has a change of heart he sacrifices himself in order to resist the mindf

flare and to save his sister and why a Redemptive sacrifice can really work maybe for your book is that changes of Heart character changes are really powerful and we like to see villains suddenly redeem themselves in a little way by changing at the very end of the story now the fifth strategy to shock your reader is Secrets Revealed and I think there are two types of secrets that you can use to shock the reader the first type of secret is characters keeping secrets from other characters but but the reader already knows about them what this

does is it creates a lot of tension because the reader is just waiting for the other characters to find out about it and a good example of this might be the reader by Bernard schlink Hannah has this huge secret that she is illiterate and it keeps her from defending herself at this war crimes trial she would rather admit that she was guilty in the crimes of burning hundreds of people alive rather than admit she can't read or write and in fact she even joined the SS in the first place to cover up the fact that

she was illiterate and a second good way that you can use secrets well in your book is to have characters keeping secrets from the reader there's a great novel called we have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson The narrator Marat tells us all about this event where a good portion of her family was poisoned and died but she neglects to tell the reader of her own involvement in this affair until almost the end of the book and a sixth way that you can shock your reader is to offer backstory trauma I want you

to take a moment and just think of the absolutely most traumatizing backstory that you've ever read in a novel and you know maybe leave it in the comments I think these backstories can be especially shocking when we see how they explain who the character is in the present story so let's look at a little Life by hania yagara this is not a book that I would recommend to anyone I think it is honestly one of the most dnfed books of all time like world record why because a large part of this book feels like torture

to read we are wondering why the main character Jude engages in so much self harm but then when we see his backstory and we see the full picture of what sort of abuse he suffered as a child then we're like oh and trust me if you haven't read this book whatever you're thinking right now it's not even close like why don't you times it by like a thousand and that's how bad it is it is brutally brutally brutally shocking now does backstory have to be traumatic in order to be shocking no no sometimes just backstory

information about how someone previously met someone could just as easily be very shocking to the reader and like make their jaw drop I think the point of this section is just to convince you that if you are writing backstory look for a way to surprise the reader with that backstory information otherwise there's not really a purpose to that section of backstory a seventh way to shock the reader is to include a betrayal now I just want to say that the closer the friend that betrays your character the more shocking it will be betrayals from a

stranger are like eh I mean I don't know you the whatever so your goal is to look for the people who are closest to to your character who might betray them I'm talking about stuff like family members like Mentor characters or like a best friend and I want to go over a couple of different types of betrayals that you can have in your story first example would be an inaction betrayal let's look at the Kite Runner by khed hos Amir is good friends with Hassan but when Amir sees Hassan being assaulted in this Alleyway he

does absolutely nothing to stop it which is sad because H is like the nicest guy ever the nicest friend ever and amir's inaction is such such a horrible betrayal of his friend another good betrayal that you might use is simply a physical betrayal in Tarantino's Kill Bill we have Bill who is a former lover of the Bride come into a wedding rehearsal kill absolutely everyone and then shoot his pregnant former lover in the head uh yeah that's just a little bit of a betrayal or if you want to go to something a little less extreme

but nonetheless very emotionally painful you can have a verbal betrayal so in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Edmund ends up being befriended by the White Witch and she offers him candy specifically Turkish delight for Edmond to betray his brothers and sisters I mean it was a stupid decision mainly because Turkish delight just isn't that good I don't know whether you've had it but it's like on the whole hierarchy of candy like it's at the very bottom but remember this was wartime and Edmond probably hadn't had any candy or like a ton of food

for quite a while so probably any candy was like yes candy but later on uh when Lucy and Edmund come out of the Wardrobe and Lucy tries to tell everyone where they've been and the siblings are like no you're making this up Edmond has a chance to back her up but instead he says oh you're right we were just playing make believe oh knife twist and Lucy is absolutely devastated by this betrayal now an eighth way to shock the reader is through hidden relationships it's usually a good idea in your story to make characters be

related in a way that we totally didn't expect and I will say that the more time that they spend together before the big reveal the more shocking it is an obvious example would be in Star Wars between Luke and Leo right and surprise they're actually siblings they're actually Twins and then and then they discover who their father is so there's a bunch of family relationships that are hidden and then come to light in that series uh more recent example is in pval Everett's book James which is a retelling of the story of huckin in James

there's a big departure from The Mark Twain version of the story where it's revealed that Jim is actually Huck's father it's truly a shocking moment particularly because everyone who knows the source material knows that this wasn't part of the story at all previously but this reveal of a hidden blood relationship makes sense for a few reasons one it explains why Jim is out there looking after Huck like paying attention to him and trying to make sure he's safe it's also really good because it makes Huck to totally re-evaluate his whole identity like he thought of

himself as a white person now he's like huh I guess I'm mixed race and third I think it's a great way to comment on the social Moors of that time and how they were thinking in binary as black and white but I think what ever's pointing out is that there are a lot more complex racial categories than that and for mixed race people it's not so easy to put them in one camp or the other the ninth and final way to shock the reader is desecration what is the most valuable thing in your novel it

could be a very sacred object it could be a very sacred place it could be a very sacred person and now I want you to think of what is the absolute worst thing that can happen to this object place or person because if you spent the whole novel building up how important this object or place or person is and then something absolutely terrible happens to it woo your reader going to be shocked in Umberto ekko's wonderful novel the name of the Rose we have a bunch of monks working in a monastery and a large part

of their job is copying all of these ancient manuscripts to make sure copies Survive books occupy such a sacred spot in their lives and in their work and then the library Burns and it's even worse than that because someone deliberately set the library on fire all of their life's work actually hundreds of years of work of monks is completely destroyed I think when I was reading this I actually said like oh crap out loud it physically pained me to read I'm not joking here there was a visceral reaction in my body and it's probably because

you know I like books I mean see I mean these are like that's half of my books I like physical books but you have to determine for your novel what is the most sacred thing that might be harmed that would shock the reader one last example is Star Wars episode 3 Revenge of the Sith this is when Anakin Skywalker kills all the Younglings at the Jedi Temple this hits a couple of sacred cows one it's a temple which means it's a sacred place two it's children who are often considered sacred and then three these are

not just children but also members of a sacred sect the Jedi which is an additional level of being sacred so because of those three levels of sacredness it's just truly a shocking event okay go forth please add a shocking event to your novel in some way I think your readers will be pleasantly surprised or horrified by it but in the end I think it'll make your book better