Who Left the Mayo–and My Character’s Deep, Dark Secret–Out in the Sun?

Minutes after the final Fade Out of LOST, the internet was alive with questions, comments, complaints–and spoilers.

As people who’d yet to see the finale fired up their PCs to check weather or sports, they stumbled over LOST tweets or facebook feeds. After spending six years on an island with the show’s characters, their emotional investment was shortchanged in seconds.

They have my sympathy.

I’d managed to sidestep spoilers until last year, when a novel’s climax was revealed to me, two books too soon.

The book: Jonathan Stroud’s The Amulet of Samarkand, a YA fantasy involving an alternate London, a cast of magicians, and the unseen creatures forced to do their bidding.  Stroud’s world was alive, his language elegant yet accessible, and his characters engaging. As the plot of Samarkand resolves in a slam-bang ending, seeds are sown for a broader story arc.

But I came late to the party. When I picked up Samarkand, books two and three of the series had been on the shelves for years. So when I searched for the title of Book 2, I found an abstract akin to this: “Great series! I couldn’t believe it when–”

I couldn’t believe it either.

A spoiler.

Not for Samarkand.

Nor for Book 2.

And not exclusively for the final book in the set.

It applied to the trilogy. In a single sentence, the reader revealed a plot point that would have delivered a solid emotional punch, adding meaning and resonance to what came before, had it caught me not looking.

While the scene is still in the story, primed and waiting, the heightened emotional response I would have experienced by living that scene moment to moment, is not.

Someone took it from me.

She took it from countless other readers as well.

And most distressingly, she took it from the author–a writer who worked and reworked pages to find the right pace, the right words, who labored with scene and setting and imagery and mood, building the moment, raising the emotional pitch paragraph by paragraph , slow-stepping readers to the resolution, getting it all…just…so.

It takes an element of uncertainty for the effect of a scene to be fully realized. Regardless of a writer’s skill, the sting of a sharp twist is never quite as keen on the second reading. Like a first kiss, part of the pleasure is in not knowing. In story, as in life, the thrill of the journey comes from not knowing where it ends.

So, being mindful of our Free Floggings to them what spoil stories credo, anyone have their suspense killed by a careless, review or another reader? Listing the title should be enough to elicit our sympathy. For that matter, your experience needn’t be fiction. Maybe someone commented on your lovely birthday gift, when your birthday wasn’t until next week.

It’s a new watch, by the way, and you’ll love it. Knew you’d want to know…

Joe Richardson has written for newspapers, magazines, trade journals and broadcast media. When not at his desk, he can be found photographing his family and other forms of wildlife. He lives in rural Illinois.

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