Insert Subtle Setups in Your Novel

Have you ever read a novel in which characters suddenly do or say something they never did or said before? Especially later in the book, after you think you know those characters pretty well? It seems out of place, right? It makes readers wonder if the characters have changed in some way.

The reason writers sometimes do this is because they want to take the character in a different direction in order to create a new storyline or add a new wrinkle to an old storyline. Fortunately, there’s a way to accomplish this fluidly without confusing the reader.  

Here’s an example from my Bamboo Harvester novel, set mostly in the Sixties. In order to create a storyline in which Bamboo uses ham radio equipment (he is a talking horse, after all), I had to place that equipment in the barn where he lives. The equipment had to belong to Joey, his owner, but I had not yet mentioned Joey was a ham radio operator.

If I had matter-of-factly written that Bamboo was suddenly using Joey’s ham radio equipment, the reader might have wondered, “Since when is Joey a ham radio operator?” It would have seemed unnatural and forced.

So, I skimmed through several previous chapters and found a place where Joey is sitting at his desk in the barn. I altered the scene slightly so that as he sat down to work, Joey slid his ham radio equipment out of the way to make room for his typewriter and notebook.

I did not explain how often Joey used the equipment or what he used it for. I simply planted a seed in the reader’s mind that Joey owned this equipment. And since it was sitting on his worktable, he probably used it periodically or at least recently.

So now, when Bamboo tells Joey he wants to use the ham radio equipment to listen in on people talking in the area while Joey is gone for the day, it doesn’t seem forced or awkward. Readers already know Joey has this equipment on his worktable, so they don’t find it surprising that the insatiably curious horse desires to use it in Joey’s absence.

You can do this in your novel with just about anything you find yourself needing to set up for a future chapter. That’s the beauty of writing a novel. Until it’s published, you don’t have to worry about making everything flow perfectly. You can always go “back in time” and change things so they fit better with what you’ve got going in the future.

Wouldn’t it be nice if real life were like that?