I just want to muse out loud a little bit about a kind of trope (if I can be bold enough to call it that) I’ve been using to help me have more interesting story beats. This probably exists already, or may have another name, but I don't want to spend a bunch of time trying to accurately identify it, I just want to talk about it. In my mind it's a little technique called The Other Fish.
I’m going to be spoiling a scene from Season 1 of "The Man in the High Castle" (TV series) here, so be careful!
The Other Fish is something I use when I have an idea that needs more oomf. Usually, to give an idea oomf, you have a variety of tools. Specifically, I want to take an idea and imbue it with surprise and tension.
I call it The Other Fish because it’s sort of like a Red Herring, but real. Usually a Red Herring distracts from the solution or resolution of a mystery. The story builds a case for the Red Herring, and then dismisses it, showing it was something entirely different. The Other Fish, for me, gets to use all of the build-up from the Red Herring as if it were its own.
First, Assessing Needs
Before applying a process, I should have an idea that I feel isn't strong enough. Let's use this as an example:
I want a scene that ends with the Emperor being shot while giving a public speech.
If I just have the scene by itself, it won’t feel very interesting as a story beat. It will feel more like lore, or world building, or something shallow and random. The first approach I'll take is to imbue it with surprise.
Surprise Without Tension
What I could do is have someone in the audience of the Emperor’s speech who is listening to his words, absorbing them. The speech itself is somehow valuable to the listener, either because they love the Emperor or because maybe they don’t, and this speech is somehow making them agree with the Emperor for the first time. In any case, by showing this viewpoint, I can insinuate the importance of the Emperor as a figure. This will lead to a very sudden surprise when, without warning, he’s shot.
Good scene! This isn’t an uncommon structure, and might be good enough to solve the problem of being uninteresting. Lots of shock value here. But it has no real tension, right? The surprise is a surprise, for sure, but that’s because you didn’t expect it. It’s almost as if the surprise is only possible because there is no expectation, and without expectation there is no tension. Let’s try it again, but this time with tension instead of surprise.
Tension Without Surprise
We’re back in the audience, but this time, we’re with the shooter. This person doesn’t care about the Emperor’s speech, he’s only trying to get a good shot and not get caught by the security guards. This is also a pretty classic tension: the attempted murder. Will our shooter get caught? Will he manage to kill his target? For us, as the writer, we know that he must kill the Emperor, because that is what our original goal was (First, Assessing Needs). Adding this question of “will the shooter succeed?” gives tension to the scene that it didn’t have before. Same intended result, more tension.
But if he succeeds (or not) won’t be a real surprise. We can’t be surprised by an answer we expect, right? Like I said before, expectation makes it impossible to be surprised. Sure, maybe you don’t know whether a coin toss will be heads or tails, but I wouldn’t say you are surprised if it lands on either. Likewise, you don't know if the shooter succeeds or fails, but both are within your realm of expectation, and so neither can truly be a surprise.
Surprise and Tension, Together at Last
This is where my Other Fish idea comes in. You want to leverage all of the tension of expectation, but still have something happen that you didn’t expect. Here's what they do in "The Man in the High Castle."
Needs
A scene that ends with the Prince of Japan being shot while giving a public speech.
Tension
They have a man prepare to shoot the Prince of Japan during the speech. There’s a lot of tension as he pushes through the crowd, keeping his cool, concealing an antique gun he’s procured just for this moment. Will he be caught? Will he make the shot?
Red Herring
As he hears the Prince’s speech, and sees the people around him (devout supporters, a young boy hugging against his parents, etc.), he puts his gun away. He changes his mind. He’s not going to take the shot.
Surprise
But then... BAM!
Someone else shoots the Prince! Oh shit! What a surprise! There was another fish!
Summed Up
And this is it. This is a cool scene to inspect. They definitely wanted the Prince dead, but rather than just killing him, they managed to create tension with a would-be assassin, then show the would-be assassin as a Red Herring, and then have some Other Fish shoot the Prince instead.
Trying It Out Myself
I chose the scene from "The Man in the High Castle" as an accessible representation of the idea, but deconstructing that scene in those terms isn't the same as using the tool myself. However, this is something I've been toying with for a few years now.
In my short story, Peppercorn Diplomacy, I used this Other Fish. My goal was to have a story where a diplomatic mission failed because of a kitchen mistake. What I did was build up a lot of pressure around the titular peppercorns. The Picky Prince in this story refuses to eat them, but the head chef refuses to not use them. All this comes to a head when the Picky Prince and the head chef themselves undergo a diplomatic agreement, satisfying both parties. The tension of the peppercorn builds up to this moment, and then resolves. But, surprise motherfucker! The diplomatic mission fails disastrously because of a different kitchen mistake! I used all of the groundwork from the peppercorn first as tension building, then as the structure to support an out-of-left-field surprise.
The peppercorns were there both to build tension and to mislead (Red Herring) the reader from the surprise, which was The Other Fish.
Try It Out!
That’s The Other Fish. A neat little tool I’ve been thinking about and playing with. If you have a story beat that you want to happen, but find that it’s not super interesting in execution, try this out! Let me know if it helped!
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Sources:
"The Man in the High Castle" (TV series)
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