Reversal In A Small Compass

Peripeteia and the scene

Some narrative devices transcend medium.

Like peripeteia, the reversal of fortune. Aristotle was the first to diagnose it, in the dramatic plays of his day, but I learned several useful things about it while reading webcomics and collections of adventure comics.

If you read a comic with careful attention, you find reversals in just about every single installment. Not, of course, the grand ones, where the Evil Overlord falls from power to death; where the detective realizes how all the clues add up and passes from bafflement to knowledge; where the hero and heroine overcome the obstacle to their happiness.

But lots of little ones. Hopes are raised, if only for a meal, to be dashed; despair arises, if only that there will not anything to eat, to be dispelled; ignorance turns to knowledge, even about a small thing, or knowledge is debunked, restoring ignorance; a peril starts to menace, or is escaped.

I have seen adventure comics where a monster would appear to menace and then be vanquished the next strip, or even the same one in the next panel so the story advanced in the other panels, and this monster would never to be mentioned again, no matter how improbable its presence in that ecosystem.

Not always, of course. Sometimes a webcomic installment runs on charm, or splendor, or some other attraction. But not often, and even those tend to be reaction to a very large reversal in the comic before.

Writers, having not such hard endings in such small intervals, have a little more leeway, even when writing serials. They do not have end every paragraph with a change.

The wise and prudent writer takes as little advantage of that as possible. Let the course of the story run smoothly as little as possible. Put in all the shifts you can work in.

On the other hand, the writer can take advantage of prose's superior access to the character's thoughts for this effect. Without an intrusive thought bubble, the character can forge onward down the river, noting the good places for ambush and being surprised when they do not happen. This can be the lead up to a cautious but not particularly wary approach actually meeting an attack. It can also use another advantage of prose -- summary -- to tell how they inched their way down in fear of ambush every meander, and how they had to keep their fears up when they were dashed, but they reached the keep and, after their moment of elation was crushed by the thought that their enemies knew they had to take this part, managed to get in without a fight.

Then, of course, the story should contain larger and larger reversals, which structure the main movements of the story. A major reversal at the inciting incident, a large one at the midpoint, and a final, grand one at the climax. With non-trivial ones in-between.

This shows a need for balance. On one hand, you want the continual reversals in the course of the story to keep it alive. On the other hand, they have to be low enough that the scene's reversal is clearly that and not a minor reversal that shifts the story, or a major one that sets the story path, or the main one that makes all complete.

Following the example of comics doesn't generally work as well. Adventure comics are often an interminable stream of adventures, without a fully formed story -- and if they did have one, it would be much too long to be perceived by the reader, which is a problem noted as long ago as Aristotle. True, such a comic will have smaller ones -- caught by the tentacles of a carnivorous plant as your boat goes by, and escaping them -- and larger ones -- reaching a stronghold of a noble friend from wilderness, and then, perhaps after a breather to heal and re-equip, having to flee after treachery lets in the enemy -- but they do not form a complete story structure.

A writer should more wisely follow the pattern of a few major reversals, a number of minor ones, and a slew of little ones, organized to form a full blown story with a beginning, middle, and end. If only because while he doesn't have the hard ending on every comic, he does with the end of the book.