Creating The Wow Moment

Hello everyone, Winnie Griggs here. As I’ve mentioned once before, many of these articles I pen come about because I want to research certain aspects of fiction writing to improve my own writing. And that’s most definitely true of this post. Lately I’ve wanted to dig into what I call the story’s Wow Moment.

The Wow Moment goes by a number of names – Plot Twist (though it’s more than that), the Big Reveal, the Unexpected Turn, the Reader Epiphany. But whatever you call it, it’s that moment in your story that makes the reader come bolt upright and go “Wow, I never saw that coming” yet they also totally buy into it. It also makes the reader reevaluate everything that came before this point in the story and resets their assumptions of what will come next.

Think of the moment when Darth Vader reveals he’s Luke’s father, or when it’s revealed that Malcolm Crowe, Bruce Willis’ character in The Sixth Sense, was himself a ghost. In literature,  great Wow Moments can be found in O’Henry’s gift of the Magi and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.

We can all agree that when done well, this is a very effective tool to ramp up the reader’s enjoyment of, and engagement with, your story. So how do we go about creating these in our own stories? That’s the question I set out to answer for myself. Here are some tips I’ve gleaned through observation and research.

Before I dig into the meat of this, though, there's one thing I want to make clear - not every story requires a big Wow Moment. There are lots of quieter stories that work just fine, that perfectly satisfy the reader without one.

Now, let’s dig in and discuss some various techniques and tips I've come up with.

Reader expectations.

In order to surprise your reader you must first understand what her expectations are. And as a reader yourself this should be fairly easy to do. So when it comes time to craft one of your story’s major turning points, make a list of at least 10 things that might happen. This should include everything that immediately jumps out at you, no matter how cliched, far fetched or predictable. Then set those aside. Somewhere in your next list of 10 things you will hopefully find an idea you can pull out and explore, tweak, twist and turn inside out to make for a more satisfying, much less predictable twist.

As for the ideas you didn’t use, any that are interesting or unique but just didn’t work for this scene, make note and file them away – they may come in handy later.

Characterization

Some of the best and most electrifying Wow Moments are plumbed from multi-dimensional characters with complex motivations rather than from outside circumstances. Provide enough detail about your character to set expectations in your readers' mind for how he will react to certain situations and personalities, then set up your Wow Moment scene in such a way that, in hindsight, it makes perfect sense for your character to act against type. But beware, you can’t make your character act against type simply for effect. Your character must have a believable reason and strong motivation to do so. Moreover, you must also have a story purpose for this scene, a purpose other than you just wanted to shock the reader.

Misdirection / Red Herrings

This is an especially useful technique in mystery stories. This involves more than simply sprinkling in multiple possibilities for the answer to the mystery or puzzle. To make for a strong Wow Moment, you need to bury the clues to your big revelation unobtrusively in the emotions or actions of several previous scenes, ideally in action or dialogue where some other major focal issue is happening. And the more offhand the reference is, the better.

Sub Plots

Sub plots can be used to create or enhance a Wow Moment.

The sub plot could start off as a low key, minor thread and then suddenly throw an unexpected spotlight onto the main thread. It could dovetail into the main plot in an unexpected way that lends new meaning to the entire storyline.

Alternately, the sub plot can be used to distract the reader from some key element in the main plot thread, allowing the twist, when it appears, to carry a bigger punch.

Work Backwards

If you know from the outset what sort of Wow Moment you want to create, then you can work backwards from that point and figure out just what sort of foreshadowing and clue planting you need to do.

Believability

Remember, we want to surprise the reader, but we also want them to buy into the twist. It needs to make sense in hindsight. If it comes from completely out of the blue or appears too gimmicky (such as the infamous “it was all just a dream”),  the reader will feel cheated and/or insulted. A good Wow Moment enhances and deepens the storyline, characterization or both.

You accomplish believability by using foreshadowing. It should be subtle, though, so it doesn’t broadcast your twist before you get there. As an author, you need to walk that fine line between planting enough clues to make it obvious in hindsight, but burying it in enough ‘clutter’ so that it becomes almost invisible.

Again, think of The Sixth Sense. Once you knew the twist, you were able to go back and view the movie and see that the clues were all there if you’d only known how to read them.

Story Purpose

Never include a plot twist just for the sake of having one or to up the drama. Those are never satisfying to the reader and you run the risk of tipping your story over into the realm of melodrama or purple prose. Instead, only include them in a way that flows naturally from your story and characters. The Wow Moment is not there just to amaze your reader, it should explain and enhance the underlying meaning of the story itself.

Uniqueness

If your plot twist relies on clichés, overused story elements or a famous twist employed in the past, then it won’t create the Wow Moment you are looking for. In fact it can actually lead to your reader setting the book aside as too predictable and mundane.

Choose Your POV

If your Wow Moment involves the reader learning that one of the characters has a big secret – he’s royalty, she has a twin, he escaped from an asylum, she’s secretly wealthy – then that issue can’t be touched on even peripherally while in that character’s POV, otherwise your reader will feel cheated.

In addition, selecting the right POV can allow for story questions and wrong assumptions when viewed from that focal point. Again, think of The Sixth Sense. If the story had been told from either the young boy’s or the wife’s POV the impact would have been lost – it could only work when told from Malcolm Crowe’s POV.

And here's an extra quote, just for fun :)

There you have it – my notes on how to craft a Wow Moment for your book.

Readers love to encounter these Wow Moments, but only when they are executed effectively. Those are the moments that stay with them long after the story ends, it’s what often makes them go back and re-read the story, savoring the recognition of the clues now that they know what it is all leading up to. It’s what can make your books “must reads” for your fans.

So now it's your turn.  Do you have any tips to add to the list?  Do you have any favorite Wow Moments from a book or movie?  Share and you'll get your name in the hat for winner's choice of any book from my backlist.