CRAFTING SURPRISE IN FICTION

By Beth Ann Bauman
Spalding MFA Faculty, Writing for Children & Young Adults

There are truisms about life we all accept—e.g., rejection and loss are painful, success feels great, grief is sad, and so on. And undoubtedly you’ll include universal truisms in your work because you want to reflect life accurately. But what’s more interesting and real are when characters and events surprise us in some way. Because here’s another truism—life is strange.