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The Outrageous Justification Writing Exercise

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In the promised follow-up to our last article, Turn that Scene on its Head, today we will be discussing an exercise to assist in pepping up your scenes by taking an ordinary situation and making it extraordinary.

Stock photo of two businessmen boxing, a comical metaphor for an outrageous writing exercise.
Why: The golden rule of entertainment in any form is DON’T BE BORING.  Unfortunately, many writers fall into the trap of writing “safely” where their characters act and react as would be expected of a normal person under similar circumstances, resulting in the scene being both predictable and dull.  Audiences want to be surprised and entertained, not bored to death.

Purpose: To turn a predictable scene into an interesting one by altering a character’s reaction to changing circumstances.

Challenge: Take an existing scene (or write a new one) in which a character finds himself or herself in a situation that has just changed.  Consider what the normal reaction might be for a character in those circumstances and then flip things around and have him/her react in a way that is diametrically opposite.  The reaction should be outrageous and unexpected.  Next, play out the consequences of this reaction.  You will then need to write a justification for this behavior (which may or may not appear in the same scene).

RULES:

  • For purposes of this exercise, your character’s reaction should be diametrically and outrageously opposite of what is previously written or normally expected. The more outrageous, the better.
  • The exercise works best when the situation is very normal or mundane. This lends more impact to the outrageous behavior which follows. (Need a little inspiration? Notalwaysright.com is a gold mine.)

EXAMPLES:

  • An office worker is called into his boss’s office and sacked.  The former employee doesn’t cry or beg to keep his job, he rejoices.
  • A young woman has just been asked out on a date by the man of her dreams.  Her reaction?  She starts screaming bloody murder.
  • A young man discovers he’s just won the lottery jackpot and this makes him very, very angry.
  • A mother’s oldest child has just moved out to go to college.  Instead of crying her eyes out she breaks out the wine coolers and redecorates the child’s room.
  • A married man comes home to find his wife waiting for him.  She promptly demands a divorce.  The man can barely contain his joy.

ALTERNATIVE FORMS:

Challenge yourself by making the exercise more difficult:

  • Attempt to justify the character’s unexpected reaction within the scene.
  • Add a double twist by having the character enter the situation expecting one thing but instead receives the opposite.  His unexpected reaction is harder to justify but also very interesting.
  • For an even greater challenge, choose an incident which could go either way, such as a woman just discovering that she has superpowers.  Both positive and negative reactions are expected.  How will you surprise us?
advice, how-to, tools

Turn that Scene on its Head (How to Fulfill Expectations by Defying Them)

stack of books story sci stock photo for exerciseDo you have a scene that’s dull, listless, unexciting, or otherwise lacking? Maybe everything is in place but for some reason the scene just isn’t that interesting. Have you ever considered that your scene might be too…predictable?

Believe it or not, this is a problem which afflicts the majority of not-yet-published creative works—the inability to capture the audience’s interest by fulfilling their expectations but doing so in a way they do not expect. Major and minor storytelling elements alike hinge on this very idea, such as plot points, gags, or character reactions, and work by bringing the audience into the story and creating conflict which, as we know, means story.

Although one could write an entire book on this premise, today we will focus on only one specific part of it: defying expectation through character reaction.

If a character reacts to an incident exactly how we expect him/her to there is no surprise and the scene falls flat with predictability, along with stakes, conflict, and the audience’s interest. Now imagine if that same character reacted in the precise opposite way we were expecting. Now that’s interesting! Why? Because now we want to know why the character is reacting differently than our expectations.

Let’s take a white collar worker named Dwight. He is called into the boss’s office. The boss sacks Dwight. Instead of breaking into tears and begging to keep his job, Dwight jumps for joy and celebrates exuberantly, culminating in an awkward bear hug with his stunned ex-boss.

Even in a situation like this the audience’s mind immediately begins to rationalize the seemingly absurd behavior. Often, such a reaction won’t seem absurd at all, but completely reasonable provided the reaction is justified by proper motivation. The scene will then play out the resulting consequences of the character’s surprising reaction and you will be expected to justify it, which may occur within the scene or sometime after.

In short:

incident > reaction > consequences > justification

Next time you are watching a movie or reading a book, pay attention to the characters’ reactions to changing circumstances. You will be surprised at the number of times they react in the opposite way a normal person would in the same situation. Also be aware that sometimes characters need to react exactly as they are expected to in order for a story to develop. Action movies are very good at combining both into a reaction that at first seems expected only to follow it with a reversal which reveals the unexpected.

(Consequently, the “opposite-than-expected reaction” has been a common strategy in TV writing for decades. Any episode of the hit series Lost hinges its entire plot on such reactions. For a more on-the-nose example, take a look at any scene in the original 90210 TV series from 1990s.)

Try It Yourself: Turn Your Scene Upside Down

  • Take any scene in which one of your characters reacts to a change of circumstance.
  • Change the character’s reaction to be the exact opposite of what it was previously, defying normal expectations.
  • Explore the consequences of that reaction.
  • Justify the reaction through character motivation.
  • Ask yourself, “Where can I take my story from here with this new and interesting turn of events?”

And voila! Magic happens.

Try it for yourself and share your results. We’d love to hear about it!