Palate Cleansers

Palate Cleanser:  “A neutral flavored element in food that clears the palate from one flavor to another.” -Wikipedia

Palate cleansers are usually used to clear your taste buds for the next item on the menu, so that you can taste its flavor without the previous item influencing the taste of the next.  I have found that this principal can also apply to what you are reading, with very helpful results.

I am, by every definition, an avid reader.  I travel with a book in my bag or under the crook of my arm everywhere that I go.  The more I read, the more ideas I gain for my writing and the more intriguing methods I learn for revealing plot, developing characters, and structuring sentences.  Reading a lot both gives me a view of things I want to do in my writing, and things I want to avoid.  The problem with a constant stream of reading is that your brain gets tired.  Just like when you are tasting new foods, you need a break in-between bites to breathe.

There are a multitude of ways to do this, but it all boils down to a simple enough concept:  look at the books you have been reading, and then read something totally different.  If you just finished a marathon of fast-paced thrillers, opt for a slow exposition piece instead.  If you just trudged through several lengthy paid-by-the-word descriptive books, grab a trashy romance novel instead.  The basic idea is to read something so totally different your brain has to reset.

One of my all-time favorite palate cleansers is Manga.  These Japanese graphic novels mostly express the story through pictures and word bubbles, and with many of them being printed in a right-to-left format, you literally have to flip the way your brain thinks in order to read them.  These stories can be just as compelling and engaging as regular novels, or they can be goofy and playful and not remotely serious, so selecting the right Manga for a situation is also a factor.

Regardless of whether you decide to go full on picture-book for your palate cleansers, or simply pick up that Classic novel that has been collecting dust in your closet; giving yourself a much needed break allows you to prepare yourself for the next great adventure rather than growing tired and taking a break from reading all-together.  There is nothing inherently wrong with letting the books lie for a while, but you lose some much needed momentum when you do this, and it makes picking up the next book all the more difficult.

Just like writing, reading is much easier when you just keep going.

 

Red Herring

Noun:

“Something intended to divert attention from the real problem or matter at hand;  a misleading clue.” (Dictionary.com)

Also a fish.

A red herring is one of those literary devices almost everyone has heard of.  Frequently used in mystery stories as a “Gotcha!” the red herring is often a character or a piece of evidence that the heroes later discover was completely “yanking their chain.”

When I write, I am always thinking of the next twist, the next surprise I can try to spring on my readers.  What’s the fun of reading if you are never surprised?  Having been through the craziness that was 24, I got to the place where I always suspected crazy things to happen.  Even if a character had acted unsuspiciously up to that point of the story, I would still keep one eye on them and think, “What if?”  I remember watching Once Upon a Time and thinking, “What if that guy turns out to be Henry’s dad?” and then he WAS.  I was totally vindicated.  It was one of those fist-in-the-air moments of triumph because I guessed the twist long in advance.  Equally pleasurable was the moment when the first season of Elementary blew my mind by revealing its villain.  My jaw has not hit the floor that hard in a long time.

So red herrings, and twists in general are all about giving you clues to follow and seeing if you can guess what is coming.  It does not always matter if you succeed at guessing the twist or not.  What matters is that the writer wanted to take that journey with you, and you let them.

Personally, I would take a good plot twist over a fish any day.