Plot Devices: Twisting Your Plot

Whether you’re a “panster” with a predisposition to write your way straight into a sagging middle or a “plotter” who struggles to get the beats just right so you can sit down and write already, having a firm command of plot devices can be the game changer you need to craft storylines with strong pacing as well as captivating texture and dimension. Today, we’re going to talk about Red Herrings, Chekov’s Gun, and the controversial Deus ex Machina. These terms describe writing devices that twist the arc of a story and can delight the reader with unexpected surprises.

Red Herrings

A red herring is a diversion tactic used to mislead or distract the reader to create suspense and/or prevent the reader from predicting the story’s trajectory. Red herrings are a great tool to raise the stakes in a sagging section of a story, so let’s look at some memorable ones that work.

Warning: This section contains spoilers for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter Series, Stephen King’s The Shining, and Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing.

JK Rowling is heavy handed with the red herrings, a technique she uses to show how both good and evil can hide in plain sight. One could spend hours pointing them all out. Professor Snape and Sirius Black are both red herrings personified. These characters are initially portrayed as antagonists before they are later revealed to be allies. When Tom Riddle first appears in The Sorcerer’s Stone, he is helping Harry—only later is he revealed as the series’ antagonist, Voldemort. Tom Riddle’s diary in Sorcerer’s Stone and the potions book of The Half Blood Prince are red herring objects used by Rowling. Both are portrayed as windfall acquisitions that give Harry an advantage, yet they are turned on their heads as harbingers of evil as the story progresses.

Danny Torrence’s imaginary friend in The Shining, is a red herring for his ability “to shine,” a term used to describe an ability to communicate with the dead and others who “shine.” King cleverly disguises Danny’s odd behavior by focusing on the collective family, one that is in crisis. By pointing the story’s lens at Jack’s floundering career and alcoholism, and by using broad strokes to paint Wendy’s anxiety, the reader is lulled into giving Danny’s imaginary friend a pass as an innocent coping mechanism for the family’s turmoil and isolation. The darker nature of the “imaginary friend” is introduced later in jarring moments that pack a delightfully disquieting punch.

In Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, Brennan Sorrengail’s death is a red herring. Violet Sorrengail and the reader believe the protagonist’s brother, Brennan, has been killed in battle, a tragedy that haunts the story’s protagonist. But the reader later discovers that he faked his death to start the resistance and is allied with another red herring, the protagonist’s enemy turned lover turned enemy. Yarros does a great job of pocketing Brennan’s relevance to the developing story by being less nuanced with a second red herring, that aforementioned enemy turned lover. She manipulates the reader’s focus by using sexual tension and foreboding scenes as she sets the stage for the reveal—which is also a cliffhanger at the end.

Chekov’s Gun

Chekov’s Gun is a term of art associated with the Russian playwright Anton Chekov who asserted that every prop is a promise. In other words, if you present a character in a story with a gun, it better go off. (A notion Ernest Hemmingway vehemently disagreed with.) The term’s contemporary use describes a narrative element that seems unimportant at first but later takes on significant meaning.

More Harry Potter and The Shining spoilers in this section.

Taking her sweet time firing Chekov’s Gun, when J.K. Rowling introduces Professor Dumbledore in the first book of the Harry Potter series, she describes him as having a crooked nose that looks as though it had once been broken. Much later, in the final book, the reader is told that Albus’s brother, Abeforth, broke his nose at their sister’s funeral because he blamed Albus for her death.

Another slow fire that starts in the first Harry Potter novel and goes off with bang in the final book is when Harry slays a basilisk in the Hogwarts dungeon using a sword imbued with magic. In the final showdown with Voldemort, Ron and Hermione return to the dungeon to retrieve one of the dead basilisk’s fangs after surmising the magic had been transferred to its remains. They then use the fang to destroy one of the last remaining horcruxes.

The boiler of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining is one of my favorite examples of Chekov’s Gun because it is also a great metaphor for Jack. When Jack becomes the caretaker of the Overlook, he is warned that he needs to keep a close eye on the hotel’s boiler because it is in disrepair (much like Jack). Early in the story, Jack is diligent about tending to the boiler, but as Jack reaches his personal boiling point, he neglects the hotel’s boiler. Not long after Jack explodes in a violent rage, the boiler also explodes taking Jack and the cursed hotel with it.

Deus ex Machina (aka “a Deuce”)

The most controversial of the plot devices is the Deus ex Machina. Latin for “god from machine,” it’s a contrivance used to quickly resolve a plot predicament without context, nuance, or explanation. It is sometimes referred to as a Deuce, which is a term of condescension likening the device to a mulligan. Whenever I try to explain the Deus ex Machina effect, I always think of an old Gary Larson cartoon with two guys in lab coats standing in front of a blackboard with a long mathematical proof. One is pointing to a line among the numerals and symbols where, “and then a miracle happens,” is written, and he says, “I think you need to elaborate.” Sometimes a Deuce is a justifiable choice when a long detour to justify a resolution might deflate developing tension and conflict before a eucatastrophic pivot, but when it’s an outright cheat, it can be off-putting to the reader.

When I try to think of Deus ex Machina that work, it’s often tied to magical worlds where the suspension of disbelief is at a very high level throughout the narrative and at a point in the story where the pacing is so quick, the cheat goes unnoticed.

In The Chamber of Secrets, Fawkes, the Phoenix is both an example of Chekov’s Gun and a Deus ex Machina. The bird is introduced around the mid-point of the novel as just another piece of whimsy that is the norm at Hogwarts. But in the story’s climax, the Phoenix reappears at just the right moment with just the right tool Harry needs to defeat the basilisk. Its appearance is neither developed nor explained other than a flimsy statement from Dumbledore who says, “Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” Well, he could have also said, “God will come from the machine.”

In the world of Tolkien, if Sauron is The Lord of the Rings, then Gandalf could be called The God of the Machine. There is no shortage of examples where Gandalf fades to the backdrop of a Tolkien story only to reappear at the most opportune moment with a magical means of saving the day when all seems lost. Yet in the context of a fantasy novel with heavy dose of magic, the device typically works for Tolkien.

Broadly speaking, the Deus ex Machina is frequently considered a cheat or a sign of weak writing. Sometimes it’s necessary when an alternative will do more harm than good. But if you’re a “pantser,” and you’ve written yourself into a corner, instead of a Deuce, consider taking a page from George R.R. Martin and do the opposite of a Deuce…let your character die, let the unimaginable happen, and allow another to take up the mantle.

Conclusion

Plot devices are valuable tools for setting a compelling story in motion and then turning a linear path into one that twists and turns to keep the reader guessing or circling back to surprise the reader by elevating a small detail to a new height. As you can see from the examples, sometimes these devices overlap. They play together well. The key to using them effectively is to recognize how plotting methods work and to experiment with adding them in new ways to shift the momentum of a developing story in a direction that captures your reader and makes them think, Alright, just one more chapter.