Knives Out and Narrative Misdirection
A vital storytelling lesson from the popular movie franchise
The “Knives Out” movie franchise has captured the imagination of audiences all over due to its quirky characters, twisting plots and charming super sleuth. But another staple of the movies is that midway through the film the tone and theme of the movie shifts, and what started off as a simple chamber mystery has morphed into an entirety different type of story. What makes this possible is something I call narrative misdirection. The story leads you down the wrong path, distracting you from what is really happening in the story until the proper moment to reveal the truth. And this is done more often than you may think. Many classic movies from Bryan SInger's “The Usual Suspects” to Chris Nolan's “The Prestige” to David Fincher's “The Game” are built around deliberately deceiving the viewer. And many books like Tiffany Jackson's “Grown”, Ren Suma's "The Walls Around Us" and Gillian Flynn's “Gone Girl” rely on unreliable narrators to keep the reader guessing.
When narrative misdirection is done well, then the Audience won't realize that what they think they're reading/watching/playing isn't what they're ACTUALLY watching/playing/reading until they are thoroughly immersed and invested in the story. This storytelling sleight-of-hand can be tricky to pull off, but it can be done. And if it can be done, then you can do it. I will show you some examples of how, but to do it I'll have to delve heavy into spoiler territory. You've been warned.
Crucial revelations
Some of the better episodes of the popular TV show “Quantum Leap” feature Sam (or more recently, Ben) setting out to accomplish one mission and then realizing - when it's almost too late - that he was supposed to be doing something else (like an episode where he is a death row inmate trying to prove his innocence before realizing he really did do it and he wasn't there to save his own life). Something similar happens in the Tom Cruise movie “Vanilla Sky”, where at a crucial moment he learns that he didn't really survive the car crash that also killed his best friend. That revelation completely alters the narrative and makes you rethink what you were watching earlier. In the horror film “Final Destination 5,” the viewer is watching what they think is the latest sequel only to find out at the end they've been watching a prequel that leads directly into the first installment of the franchise. And every moviegoer knows how the ending of the original “Planet of the Apes” changed how viewers saw everything leading up to it.
A third example is the classic "hero is actually the villain" trope utilized in such popular video games as “Kirby's Adventure”, “Shadow of the Colossus”, “The Beginner's Guide” and “Heavy Rain.” In these games, the moment where it is revealed that you as the player were doing more harm than good recontextualizes the entire game.
You can achieve similar effects in your story by withholding any narrative-changing moments or major revelations until later on in the narrative, after you have firmly entrenched your reader in one particular story arc or plot path.
Changing perspectives
You can mislead your audience even with a simple change in perspective. I previously mentioned unreliable narrators (and writing one of those might be a topic for its own separate post), but there are other approaches you might want to consider. The classic novel “I Am Legend” shifts perspective from Roberty Neville to the creatures he hunts, totally altering the way the reader sees him. The critically acclaimed video game “Rime” has you playing as a boy in a strange land searching for his father...right until a perspective change makes you realize the game was never about the boy. With this approach, ask yourself if another character would view the events of your story drastically different from your point-of-view character, then try to tell your story through their eyes. You may find some discrepancies you can use to misdirect your readers.
Playing with time and space
One of my favorite examples of narrative misdirection is in the horror film “Saw 2”. In that film, a group of people are trapped in a warehouse full of death traps that they have to navigate through to escape. At the same time, a cop leads a team of officers to that building in a desperate attempt to rescue them. The viewer is hoping the cops can get there in time to save any survivors. The cops arrive to find that particular warehouse had been abandoned for quite some time and the lone survivor was nowhere to be found; the scenes where the people were trapped chronologically happened long before the police scenes, despite being presented in the film like they were happening concurrently. It was a clever way of manipulating the audience that threw everyone off. Likewise, M. Knight Shaymalan introducing a modern highway into the historical thriller “The Village” and Chris Nolan revealing that his gritty murder mystery Identity is happening all in the mind of a man with multiple personalities illustrates ways you can rearrange the sequencing, settings and context of your story to mislead your readers.
Setting up a swerve
In a previous article I wrote about effectively setting up plot swerves and tonal shifts in your narrative. Misdirection can be a crucial tool at your disposal if you're aiming for that. In the novel “The White Hotel,” our heroine is a relatively normal Jewish woman living near Germany shortly before WW2, living her life and doing her thing. Over the course of the story we get so caught up in her letters to Sigmund Freud about her bizzare erotic dreams, and her trials and adversities as an opera singer, and the ups and downs of her marriage, and all of the other aspects of her life story that we forget SHE IS A JEWISH WOMAN IN GERMANY AT THE START OF WORLD WAR 2; a fact we are very violently reminded of towards the end of the book. You were reading a Holocaust story all along and didn't even realize it. It was the misdirection of focusing on the minutiae and trivialities (by comparison) of our heroine's life instead of the greater, more dire situation she was actually in that allowed for a greater impact when the plot swerve took place, and specifically the proverbial "$#!+ Gets Real" moment that changes the entire tone and focus of the story actually happens. If you are planning a drastic shift in your story arc, you want to catch your readers off-guard, but you have to be fair. While you are misleading your readers, you should plant at least a few clues and hints at what is really coming.
Conclusion
If you want to add a new level of depth, intrigue and unpredictability to your story, then perhaps using your story to mislead your reader will be the solution you need. If you can surprise your readers or keep them guessing and reevaluating, then you will have created memorable moments within your story they will talk about long after. I recommend giving it a try.
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