Is Your Story Fit For the Internet Age?

Hello, my lovelies!

Let’s be honest: we all want to be famous.

As we plan, and outline, and write, and edit, we picture our book on the bestseller list. We picture book signings in huge fancy stores, packed, with lines longer than any book signing has had before.

We’ve got a dream cast picked out for when they make our book into a movie (not if, when), ignoring the little voice in our heads that reminds us by the time we get famous none of these people will be the right age to play our characters.

We’ve practiced interviews in our heads, have posts planned, have dreams of what kind of author we plan to be (the kind who hangs with their fans, the mysterious and elusive writer, etc.).

We all want to be famous, all picture our book going big.

So, I’m going to indulge you in that fantasy. You want your book to go big. If it does, is it suited to the internet age?

See, everything’s on the internet these days. People don’t mean to do it, but they go see a movie or they read a book and they posts spoilers without meaning to. They write a review and mention the ending. They screenshot scenes with the dialogue on screen and it gives just a little too much information. They post a Facebook status, they post to Tumblr, they post on a “book confessions” thing, and then it gets posted around, shared and reshared.

Then I see it on Pinterest and know how it ends.

Before I even started reading the Divergent series, I knew how it ended. I hadn’t read one single word in the book and I knew the most major spoiler at the end. I also knew every major character and most of their backstories in the Heroes of Olympus series before I finished reading the series that comes before it (Percy Jackson).

I finished the entire Divergent series in the space of a week. I never finished the first Heroes of Olympus book, Son of Neptune. So, why did I finish one but not the other?

I couldn’t get through Son of Neptune for a number of reasons, but I think I could have overlooked every other reason if the author hadn’t hit me in the face with the idea of suspense every five seconds.

There’s this huge mystery surrounding one of the main characters in the book. Major, major mystery with so much suspense. The entire book rides on it. Now, years ago, you could make your book ride on one thing. You could center your plot around one key point. But not today. Not in the YA world.

See, I knew the answer to the question the author was dangling over my head. So every time he dangled it, every time he made the engaging part of his story ride on the fact that I didn’t, it fell flat. I didn’t care, because I knew. And, that was the only thing his plot seemed to ride on. The burning question, the big things that needed an answer, I knew what was going to happen.

So I didn’t care.

On the other hand, knowing how the Divergent series ended didn’t change anything for me, because there was so much else going on. The books have so many layers, so many facets, that if one or two of them are spoiled, there’s still so much there, so much that is unknown and so much else going on, that the series is still engaging to read.

And yes, the story’s working toward the major spoiler, but the author never dangles it over your head. It’s not a huge mystery, not some huge thing that the entire series hinges on.

Now, I’m not saying your story can’t hinge on a plot twist. I’m saying you have to give your story more of a draw than that.

A good example of this is the original Star Wars trilogy. We live in an age where almost everyone knows Darth Vader is Luke’s father. “Luke, I am your father” is one of most quoted movie lines of all time (even though that’s not actually a direct quote from the movie).

But people don’t hate Star Wars because they know that, even if they know it before they watch the movies. Because there is so much more to the story. The entire plot doesn’t ride on whether or not we know Vader is Luke’s father. There’s more to it and that’s why people are able to enjoy the movies even knowing what is going to happen.

Your story can have plot twists. Major plot twists. It can have the biggest plot twist in the history of plot twists. But your story can’t hinge on that.

Basically, books that are only good the first time through don’t work anymore. Those worked in an age where people didn’t have spoilers, people didn’t know what was coming. Now that we have stories being spoiled left and right, you need something better.

The internet has presented us with a challenge; one that the great writers will rise above and see as a push to make their book even better. It needs to stand the test of time, needs to be able to be read and reread and still be just as magical to read as it was the first time through.

It might take a little more time, might be a little more work. But then, writing is work. It’s so much work.

And, I would like to specify that I think this mostly applies to the YA genre. Spoilers don’t seem to get out as much in books written for the adult world. Like, Agatha Christie’s books have been out for ages and I haunt a lot of literary sites, read a ton of literature related blogs, but I have yet to see a single spoiler for any of her books. So, I’m not sure it applies as much with other genres as it does the YA. I think it’s because young adults are more active online and they especially seem to interact through stories. But that might only seem to be the case because I’m in more contact with young adults and read more young adult books than adult.

Anyway!

What are some of your favorite stories that include plot twists? What are some that fall short for you?

I hope to see you all on Friday for a new book review! Until the next time we meet, don’t forget to live happily ever after <3

~Jennifer Sauer, the Ivory Palace Princess