I’m watching a Briish television series and thinking part of the joy of British television is the different perspective on life compared to American television. The actors aren’t as beautiful or handsome, there’s a sense of the absurd, and I don’t see the twists coming.
The Law & Order franchise does the same thing: the usual scenes move in unexpected directions and you can count on repeated misdirection before you reach a final ending.
Donald Maass says readers instinctively try to guess where a story is going. I think they do, even though I’m the person who tries not to see where the mystery is going. I want to see it explained and unfolded through the detective’s eyes.
We’ve read a lot of stories and seen how they play out, and we expect the current story to follow patterns we are familiar with. Adding elements of the unusual makes stories more compelling. Whether it’s a differnt place, a different kind of magic, a different character with motives you haven’t seen before, a different anything draws us deeper into the story and keeps us reading faster and faster.
When you find a book that’s really pulling you along to see what happens, look for the unusual elements–and really enjoy!