If it's not plausible, it didn't happen

you don’t want your reader being knocked out of your story because something doesn’t add up

A few years ago, I attended a Poetry Ireland event at which the poet Don Patterson spoke. Someone asked what he thought of themed collections, noting they seem to have become more popular in recent years. Though Patterson wasn’t exactly dismissive, there was the sense that he could take it or leave it, the idea of the themed collection of poetry. It was neither here nor there, for him, whether the poems within one book cohered along the same topic. What you want, he said, was if someone opened your book at any page, for it to be good.

I’ve thought of this on and off over the years. Most recently while watching the film Supernova.

Open that film on any page, and it’s good.  

There’s a lot going on for that to happen, of course. But the thing that really strikes me about this film is the quiet integrity within each of its scenes, and within this, the plausibility of everything that happens. Never once is there a sense of things being stretched, of the viewer being asked to swallow something they’re not sure about. It all goes down as easily as one of the glasses of wine its characters drink (red for one, white for the other). 

Take the first scene. Two men driving a campervan somewhere in England. They are arguing, but in a squabbly, nothing serious kind of way. In this exchange (and their nonverbal communication too), we understand they have been together a long time and that they love each other very much. We also understand that the man driving (Sam) is concerned the man who is the passenger (Tusker) may have forgotten to pack something, and that Tusker is having trouble reading the map. Sam suggests they use the SatNav, an idea Tusker will not countenance. ‘Turn right,’ he mocks, in a fake-posh English accent. ‘Why aren’t you turning right?’ At the beginning of the scene, they are driving in silence. At the end they are laughing and the radio is playing a love song from the seventies.

We see a lot here: their love for each other, how Tusker deflects Sam’s concern by humour. But what tiny change has been chronicled? Because every scene has to do that. At the beginning, it had not been confirmed that Tusker can maybe no longer read maps. At the end, without either character stating as much, it has been confirmed. The next scene in which they need help with directions, the SatNav comes on. (There is a deeper, hidden poignancy to this first scene that is only revealed having watched the whole film. But I’m trying to write this sans spoilers.)

Anyway, what a small but significant change that is. How perfectly it fits within its scene.

the artist who wrote the seventies love song

In the second scene, the two are in a roadside diner. Sam watches as Tusker takes a drink from his glass of water. There is something strange in the way he does so, a kind of effort that he is also trying to disguise, almost imperceptible but there – as though taking a drink from a glass of water is something he has only recently learned to do, that he is maybe still getting the hang of it. Another detail is that Sam’s plate is cleared, while Tusker’s is still full. Sam says he himself feels like a nap, to which Tusker responds with, ‘I’m fine.’ He then proceeds to mortify Sam by telling the waitress that he noticed her looking at Sam and would she like his autograph? (Sam we learn in this exchange is a pianist.) Again, the scene ends with them laughing.

So this thing is deepening – the subtly darkening signs that Tusker’s health might be worsening in some way, and alongside that his determination to fight back – by lightening the mood. And his success (thus far) in doing so. Within this second scene, another tiny change has been chronicled too, one that builds on the first one: Sam has witnessed, for the first time, the effects of the journey on the passenger. And these effects are concerning. He may have seen him take a drink from a glass of water like that before or not, or to order a meal and then not eat it, we don’t know. But the sight of it is enough for him to make his clunky attempt to get Tusker to take a rest. In other words, we are watching him attempt the carer role, and struggle in it. They have never quite been in this situation before.

And see how these changes don’t tend to be the obvious focal point of their scenes. Even though change is the thing that drives narrative forward, here it doesn’t draw attention to itself. Most of this scene concerns the silly stunt with the waitress.

In the third scene, a remark about the campervan having some life in her yet resonates with both of them, and they hold hands. And thus we have a sense that being out on the road like this has just enabled both of them to look in the eye their current situation in a way perhaps they couldn’t do at home. It is enabling them somehow to face it. This too is new, and it builds on what came before. Again, a small, perfectly plausible shift. A change that has been earned, that does not ask any stretching of the viewer.

In the scenes that follow, something happens to bring these ‘background’ concerns to the fore, so that the story’s kernel steps into the focal point. They pull up at a Spar. Tusker is asleep so Sam goes to buy some food. We see him occasionally glance nervously out of the window at the campervan as he browses the aisles. There is a sense of him maybe telling himself he’s being foolish to be so worried. But back at the campervan, he finds no Tusker. The next scene is of him driving too fast down a narrow country lane, swearing (we only see the lane, the viewer as Sam). Then – something strange: a car stopped on the road, its lights on. And then in front of it, he/we see Tusker. He is clearly disorientated and does not understand how he got to be standing there. Sam goes to him. They embrace.

This moment of drama is entirely plausible because it has been earned by the moments of quiet change that went before and those that will follow, in which it will resonate. If the movie began with this scene, it wouldn’t have been implausible, but neither would it have had the same emotional ring of truth. The understanding it brings partly rests on the prior scenes. Tusker is at an early stage of dementia. If this is still unclear, it’s made explicit in the scene that follows when they ‘make a tape’, a thing we understand is something they started to do since the diagnosis.

Did I mention I like this film?

There’s no need to keep going (though I happily would). Suffice to say the film continues like this all the way to its remarkable end – a pebble path of moments leading to a final, extraordinary one where I definitely wasn’t drinking any wine because of the ginormous lump in my throat. As far as I’m concerned, that final moment really happened. It’s as true as anything I’ve actually experienced.

And that is why Supernova is thus, for me anyway, a masterclass in plausibility in fiction. We take in this deeply moving climax because of the way we have been led to it. And the reason I’ve focused on it is because a masterclass in plausibility is just what the psychological thriller genre needs. Because it’s with plausibility that this genre is most vulnerable to falling victim (pun not intended) to Bad Writing.

The conventions of the psychological thriller require some pretty extraordinary things to happen, don’t they? More so arguably than other genres that fall under the crime fiction umbrella, because the life or death scenario arrives at the protagonist’s own front door, not via their place of work. It’s where its greatest challenge lies for the writer: bringing in the long knives* without ending the fictional dream. Meeting the conventions without letting them bully your characters into doing things they really wouldn’t.

            Next week, I want to look at plausibility within a psychological thriller: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

*For the record, I do remember that last week’s post was all about Chekhov’s insight that in stories such as ours the false note of implausibility can paradoxically ring true in the mind of the reader, basically because life is bloody weird too. So I am aware of the blinding contradiction here, between last week’s post, which makes the case that implausibility is okay in this genre, and this post, which says it isn’t. I’m not sure what to say about that. Both feel true to me. Maybe the genre contains multitudes. I suspect there’s a better, more nuanced point to be made here, that accommodates both, but it’s just out of reach, at least for me and for now.