Surprise, Surprise

Thoughts on a basic storytelling move.

Let’s talk a bit more about the excerpt I offered you last Sunday, from The Book of Blam, by Aleksander Tisma.

Many of you mentioned (and I agree) that there are two moments when the piece perks the readers interest/draws the reader in:

1) The line, on 116: “All of them, prisoners and guards alike, had long known the Jews would be deported, so these three days, the Jews’ last on the soil that they had accepted as their own and that had accepted them, served both groups as a kind of breathing space, a space filled with thoughts of forboding for the prisoners and thoughts of relief for the guards, yet its temporariness united them and made them almost friendly in their shared respect for the rules and regulations involved.” That is, the surprising note of acceptance and peace, so unexpected in this time and place.

2) The swerve out to the bit about the dogs, on 116-177.

I’d like to use this as an opportunity to talk in a more general way about fiction and how (I think) it works.