Mixed Messages Can Deepen Your Fiction's Plot & Dialogue

Employ ambiguity to enhance your story's complexity

Credit: Tim Green from Bradford

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Special announcement for CA readers!

On Wed. Sept 11, at 7pm in Pasadena, CA, I’ll be moderating an Open Book conversation between Percival Everett (author of the award-winning novels James and Erasure), and David Mas Masumoto (author of Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm). I hope you can join us.

For tickets and more information, go HERE!

Hi Everyone,

Are you feeling addled by all that’s happening? I am! The GREAT news is that it looks like maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to return to normal life and stability after November. [I did say, maybe!] Until then, my focus is going to be fractured, but starting today, I plan to steer this Substack back to its core mission of MFA-level writing craft advice and inspiration.

Real quick, before we shift gears, though, I’d like to share the fun we’re having over at authors4Harris, posting authors’ reasons for supporting HarrisWalz2024 AND posting literary quotes advocating democracy and activism. Examples:

So, if you’re an author and you’d like to join our facebook group, we’d love to have you at authors4Harris. If you’re not an author, please follow us on Instagram and/or Threads @authors4harris !

As always, thank you for reading.

And write on!

Now this.

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The Dramatic Value of Double Meanings

As every seasoned fiction writer knows, uncertainty is the rocket fuel of storytelling. Keep ’em guessing! Raise the stakes! Introduce new possibilities at every turn of the screw [and for more on that, click HERE for my essay on Henry James’s original Turn of the Screw as an instructive work of metafiction].

There are many devices that ignite uncertainty. Secret identities, covert assignments, unreliable narrators. Hardy and Shakespeare loved to deliver letters that somehow never reached their intendeds. But one of the most devious and easily deployed devices is the mixed message. When a single word or phrase has two or more meanings, it can be easily misunderstood, and that ambiguity can keep both readers and characters guessing and chasing red herrings through multiple scenes, chapters, episodes.

Mixed messaging is especially useful in dialogue, where it can misdirect characters into inappropriate reactions or introduce unexpected interpretations of a situation. This increases the scene’s complexity by confusing the characters and opening up new plot possibilities. The effect is like magically adding balls to a juggling act.

The meaning of “jealousy”