Quantum Storytelling

There is a fiction-writing theory called the Superior Position. Superior Position is when the audience knows something that the hero doesn’t, such as “The killer is creeping up behind her.”

One of the tricks the pros use to create twists is inverting the superior position at the end of a scene. The audience knows something the hero doesn’t, the hero is in danger and doesn’t realize it yet. At the end of the scene, it turns out that either the hero DID know (and we the audience didn’t know the hero knew) or that they were genuinely unaware, but had forseen trouble and made some kind of preemptive action.

A great example of this is in the action-suspense movie 16 Blocks. The hero is supposed to transport a prisoner-witness to testify against corrupt cops. Of course, the corrupt cops can’t let that witness testify, and so the course of the story is comprised of the heroes being pursued by corrupt cops.

At one point the heroes enter a bystander’s apartment. Anonymous within the locked doors of the apartment, the heroes have bought themselves some time while the corrupt cops search the apartment building hallways, lobby, and rooftop outside. The hero makes a call to the courthouse and requests a safe pickup for the witness and himself. But of course, there is a leak within the courthouse, that forwards the apartment number to the corrupt cops.

The audience thinks, “Oh no… they know the apartment he’s hiding in and they’re about to bust down the door and get them!”

And then comes the twist in the form of a big BUT. BUT the villains bust down the apartment door only to have the wrong room. The hero told the courthouse the wrong apartment number intentionally, because he knew there would be a leak. And so we realize the hero has outsmarted the villains once again. This is a perfect example of inverting the superior position.

A good way to think about superior position and the ending twist is to think of it as a simple narrative.

“The villain has planted a bomb in the car the hero is about to climb into, oh no! BUT it is the wrong car.” or “BUT his friend climbs into the car first and explodes in a fiery ball of death.”

This is similar to Carolyn Wheat’s Four Outcomes. The idea of “Yes, but…” or “No, and furthermore…” is a narrative trick to put the hero in danger, move the scene forward and create suspense.

The ‘BUT’ at the end of every suspensful situation is your opportunity to invert the audience’s superior position and create a dramatic twist.