Neil Gaiman #003: The DOUBLE DELAY

          Today, we’ll look at a very powerful technique Neil Gaiman makes use of in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s one I call the DOUBLE DELAY. Now, even kids know what a cliff-hanger is if they’ve ever read a Hardy Boys or Goosebumps book. The idea that you end a chapter at an interesting part that people want to know more about isn’t a new one.

          But Gaiman makes use of a DOUBLE DELAY at the end of one of his chapters. Here’s what I mean:

Every now and again, I tossed a hazelnut into the middle of the pond, the pond that Lettie Hempstock had called. . . It wasn’t the sea, was it?

That’s the first. We want to know what she called it. Three paragraphs later, he answers that question and brings up a new mystery at the end of the chapter:

. . . it wasn’t the sea. It was the ocean. Lettie Hempstock’s ocean. I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.

She called the pond an ocean–we know that now, but we don’t know why (new mystery). Also, the narrator now remembers EVERYTHING, and we want to know what that is too (and it’s the rest of the story!).

          One thing I like about the delays here is that Gaiman understands it doesn’t have to be someone in a car that’s flipping off the road and over a cliff or a bomb about to explode–a cliffhanger, a delay, merely needs to be something readers will be curious to know more about.

Try this:

Either rework the ending of a chapter in a previous work of yours so that it includes a double delay, or, model the paragraphs above and write the ending of a chapter for a new work. Create a mystery; answer it; and in that answer, create a new mystery.

Coming tomorrow: Technique #004 from Gaiman: HIT ‘EM HARD!