"I want to gasp. I want to put the manuscript down and just enjoy that moment when the author turns the story upside down."
Yes! And that's exactly what happened to me when I read I Let You Go. I found myself scrabbling back through the pages to see what I missed. But you know what? I hadn't actually missed anything.
Ms Reid explains it like this: "That's what surprise is: we had the info, but we didn't know what it meant. . . A good surprise makes perfect sense but you just didn't see it coming."
I want to do that for my readers, whether it's in the short form of a story or in the long form of a novel. I want them to have that moment, maybe even more than one. It's certainly something worth striving for, even if it is, as Ms. Reid says, ". . . really, really simple stuff . . . and hard as hell to carry off."
Is there a book that stays with you because of its twists and turns? How about a movie or TV show? Do you aim for that in your own writing? How do you achieve it?
