How to build a bomb

A blueprint from Tommy Orange’s THERE THERE

There are SO many ways to put the proverbial bomb under the table in suspense. Longtime readers know what I’m referencing, because Andromeda and I love to use Alfred Hitchcock’s famous analogy and advice for suspense writers.

At the bottom of the piece, I’ve linked a video of Hitchcock giving the analogy himself, but to summarize, which would you rather read: A) a long, boring conversation between two people who are sitting at a table, and suddenly a bomb explodes, or B) a scene where you see a man plant a bomb under a table, and then two people sit down at the table and start talking, unaware of the bomb ticking away out of view?

Even if you think you might prefer A because you love to be shocked by a book’s *~*cRaAaZy*~* twist, I bet you’re still a B person, because I bet you go hunting for books that are known to have twists…the book’s marketing puts the bomb under the table! You’re still on the edge of your seat as you read, waiting for the shock.

There are so many ways to plant the bomb in a novel. You can use a prologue. Dual timeframes: one before the bomb has detonated, the other after (or heck, maybe even during the explosion!). A villain’s point of view (see also: this piece on dramatic irony).

But when I think about the way Hitchcock himself gave the advice, I have to say, Tommy Orange might get the gold star for There There.

Screengrabbed from Vox, with photos courtesy of Knopf

As with other books I’ve discussed here (Sea Wife and Master Slave Husband Wife), There There is not marketed as a suspense novel. I bet it’s shelved with literary novels. It’s a family saga. It’s the story of urban Native Americans. But it is suspenseful, let me tell you. (And I will!)

Begin with the bomb

The book begins with an experimental, very literary feeling prologue, which to me indicates that Tommy Orange was not worried about writing a suspense novel. He knows readers are here for his voice, his ideas, his observations. But he doesn’t waste time getting to the bomb: in chapter one, we meet Tony Loneman, an older kid with fetal alcohol syndrome, and we learn that he has been roped into helping rob the Big Oakland Powwow at gunpoint.

From there, we move on to meet eleven more characters, each one moving toward their own attendance at the powwow.

The opening chapter barely asks a question–it is a warning that there will be a massacre at the powwow, just like the prologue discussed the history of massacres against Native people. The only question I was asking as I read chapter one was: what exactly is it going to look like, when this robbery goes wrong at the powwow? For me, the real driving suspense questions came in every chapter after: is this person going to survive the massacre?

If Tommy Orange had written the story differently and surprised us with the robbery at the powwow, leaving out the point-of-view characters who were involved in planning it, the massacre at the powwow would have been a shock and a trauma, but there would have been no suspense leading up to it. And, all of the stories of the people heading to the powwow would have lacked urgency. Yes, they had interesting stuff going on in their lives, but there would have been a sense of…so what?

Give the bomb a timer

The first chapter tells the reader that the robbery will happen during the powwow, which draws nearer as the pages tick on.

Contrast this with stories where we know a bomb will go off but we don’t know when (see: Sea Wife). That’s suspenseful, too. Neither is “right.” But I loved knowing that the robbery was going to happen at the powwow. It gave me such a clear anchor as the reader. Every time the powwow got mentioned, often innocuously from the character’s perspective, I was like, GAH, THE BOMB. (Dramatic irony!)

I wasn’t just reading this book for the sake of experiencing suspense. I was reading it for Tommy Orange’s characters, use of language, and ideas. But as the powwow arrived, my stress was through the roof. The chapters got shorter, which made it feel like time was speeding up.

A writer can even control the timer. Using the example of the “bomb” from this book, if Tommy Orange had wanted to, he could have had something happen on the way to the powwow, where the robbers had been drawn into a gunfight. The guys could have moved their target to something else sooner in time. The powwow could have been rescheduled. And so on.

I am helpless not to think of one of my favorite movies, The Man Who Knew Too Little, where Bill Murray is unaware that he’s walked into the center of a spy plot, and he’s holding a bomb and keeps turning the timer on and off without realizing it.

Point being: you can give your proverbial bomb a timer and still manipulate that time if you want, keeping your reader on their toes.

Show the people building the bomb

At the risk of getting confused in my own analogy, instead of opening the book with someone putting a bomb under the table, it’s more like Tommy Orange started by showing us one set of characters who are making a bomb that they’re planning to put under a table, and another set of characters who are planning on going to the restaurant and you don’t know yet which ones are going to sit at the table. Hot damn, that’s a lot of suspense.

Orange had multiple scenes of characters planning the logistics of the robbery–-a guy on the inside who was giving information about the cash prize for the regalia; the kids using a 3-D printer to print a ghost gun from the internet and a drone to scope out the site of the powwow; and Tony Loneman, who was tasked with throwing bullets over the wall so they could load the guns once they’d gotten inside, past the metal detectors.

These scenes accomplished two important things. Obviously, they kept “the bomb” on the reader’s mind. (More on this next.)

But importantly, these scenes also made the characters who were responsible for the novel’s surface-level tension (a massacre is coming) into real people, who had problems and families and understandable motivations for wanting to steal money. I enjoyed reading their points of view. I even cared for some of them. Whether you want your villain to be truly villainous (see ARL’s piece on Speak No Evil) or not, it makes for a richer reading experience when the people responsible for “the bomb” feel like real people.

Remind us of the bomb

What good is it to stick a bomb under a table if we’re going to forget it’s there, right?

In addition to those scenes where we saw characters planning the robbery, Tommy Orange would frequently choose words that foreshadowed the violence to come. Here is where I wanted to find specific quotes but failed–I wish I had marked my copy as I read, but I was too busy enjoying the story to be thinking ahead to a Present Tense piece I might write. But I remember him using imagery involving bullets and shootings often, which had this incredible effect of pulling me backward (to the historical trauma of these characters’ ancestors) while pushing me forward (reminding me of the plot to rob the powwow).

Writers have so much control in their choice of words. In a story that promises an impending stabbing, for example, thoughts might cut through the mind; fear might stab the heart; the moon might shine like a curved blade; and so on. Don’t forget small but potent opportunities to remind readers about the bomb!

Surprise us when the bomb goes off

For all that Tommy Orange promised and foreshadowed, the reader still did not know precisely what would happen at the powwow. And for all the things I expected to happen, characters still surprised me when the violence finally erupted. I’m going to hold off on talking about this in more detail, to save the ending for those who haven’t read the book and might like to. The point is, you can tell readers how the book will end and still surprise them.

Andromeda has pointed out before that one way to come up with interesting twists and reveals is to ask yourself questions, subverting your own expectations and assumptions about your story. What is the bomb in your story? How might you show it sooner? And when it “goes off,” what are you assuming about how that will go? How might it be different?

Have I convinced you to read There There? If not:

bet you weren’t expecting a Sex and the City screengrab in a piece about Tommy Orange

As promised, here’s the master, one more time!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a bomb of my own to build. (Just kidding, I’m going to watch The Man Who Knew Too Little for the 1000th time.)