Surprise

I recently watched another film based on an unusually popular book and unlike many others, the ending completely surprised me. In fact, it surprised me so much, that I forgave the rapid flow of events at the start and the rather frustrating leading actress.

At first I thought, here we go again, that’s Hollywood for you – changing another ending of one of my favourite books-turned-film.

And the scene I’m referring to continued for a good 10 minutes (or so it felt).

While it was playing on screen and the clips became worse and worse, I just became more and more annoyed.  And every single time something happened that wasn’t in the book, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking:  that’s definitely not how it happened!

It wasn’t until it was revealed that really the ending hadn’t changed, that it had played out exactly as it had in the book, and that they (the director, the writers, whoever) only wanted you to think it had changed, that I realised how effectively they surprised not just the people who had never read the book, but also the ones who had.

And this led me to the questions – Does the start of the third “act” of my current novel arrive too early? Does the last “disaster” strike too soon?  Does it leave the last few chapters in the lurch?   

But the most important question of all – Will the ending surprise my users enough, to forgive the rapid flow of events and the rather frustrating protagonist?

I guess we’ll find out sooner rather than later.

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