Gone Girl – Believe in the Characters

Word count: around 1.300

Fair warning: there’ll be quite a few spoilers.

I loved Gone Girl, and though luck always plays a part in these matters, I think it’s success can to a very large part be contributed to the skill of the author, Gillian Flynn. The novel was suspenseful, thrilling, and Flynn used every trick in the thriller and mystery writer’s arsenal to great extend. But what really set it apart, what took from being an entertaining read to a story I’ll still remember a decade from now, is it’s realism.

Realism, really, in a crime story with a plot as unlikely as me being hit by lighting twice while writing this. Yeah, but not realism in its plot or basic premise, realism where it matters, in its characters and their personal struggles. Great stories have this, and it’s what ground us in the most fantastical of stories and settings; it’s why we can relate to characters in Game of Thrones or Star Wars even though we’ll never find ourselves in their setting or playing parts in faith-of-the-world events.

My first reaction when reading Gone Girl was, wow this is creepy. I could see so many of my own flaws in Nick, the protagonist, and so many of Amy’s, his wife, flaws reminded me of ex girlfriends. That’s how deep and accurate the characterization was. And everyone I’ve talked to who’s read the book felt the same way. They not just felt like real characters, they felt like someone most people have known at one time or another. Without creating flat, stereotypical characters, Flynn created characters that hit spot on, on some very distinctive and typical male and female behavioral traits. She bascially created the fiction version of horoscops, someone everyone can identify with, and yet they still felt odly specific.

Flynn then used one of the most basic rules of storytelling, which is specifically important in a often high-paced genre such as thrillers; she threw the characters into the deep end, creating conflict right away. But she didn’t open with the big, murder mystery, the unrealistic plot. She opened with Nick and Amy having relationship problems, something most people can relate to. And above all else, that realism, is was drags us into a story and keep us there, not explosions and other spectacles. It’s not until we’re severally hooked and are already loving and hating the characters, that the big problem, the main conflict actually gets underway.

And once we’re hooked, Flynn never lets us getawy. She uses every trick in the book, even the cheap ones, unreliable narrator, cliffhangers, continuously raising the stakes, twisting the plot. You name it, she uses it.

But most of all, she uses mystery, a dramatic question, and because we care about Nick and Amy and the question is tied to them, we’re dying to find out the answer. There’s the big one, that’s raised early on and answered late: what happened to Nick’s wife? But there’s also a smaller one that’s answered with the first reveal/twist/revelation/whatever you want to call it about 1/3 into the story: why does Nick have a second phone and who’s he calling? The big question, what happened to his wife, is answered about 2/3 into the story, but the answer, and this is brilliant part, immediately raises a new question: who will turn out to be the winner between the two lead characters (or if you feel the story is too predictable: how will Nick pull through)? So, there’s always a big question we want answered, and Flynn guides us, slowly but steadily, towards the end.

Then there’s the pacing. Gone Girl is actually very slowly paced compared to most thrillers, being more of a psychological thriller than an action movie in book form, but you don’t really notice while reading, at least I didn’t. That’s because there’s always a lot at stake for the characters, and the stakes just keeps rising throughout. There’s the inter-character conflict between Nick and Amy that just keeps growing and becoming more and more important as the story progress. There’s the initial conflict for Nick: his wife is missing. And here the conflict twists and the stakes are raised as he becomes the main suspect and the evidence against him grows into a mountain. There’s all the other relationship conflicts Nick goes through due to the investigation, the relationship with his sister, with Andie, with his in-laws, and with the public. And finally, even in Amy’s chapters there’s constant conflict, early on with Nick and later with the other characters she meets. All of this conflict, all these raised stakes creates tension, and it leaves us wondering every time: How will they get through this one?

So Flynn never lets us get away, never lets the tension sizzle out. Even when we get backstory on the characters and their relationship, the focus is always on the conflict, on how things went wrong, adding not just character depth but also layers to the conflict, both of which pulls us deeper into the story. And though I don’t think she had too, Flynn isn’t above using cheap tricks to keep us reading. As we near the climactic second twist to the plot, a few of the chapters ends on cliffhangers. Though, she also knows not to do so too often and, thus, avoids making it a point of annoyance.

The only point where I think the story falters is towards the end. Don’t get me wrong, Gone Girl was an excellent story, but as Flynn needed a resolution to all the questions she’d raised, and she opted for an original but plot-driven ending rather than a character-driven one. But how can that be wrong, how can an original ending be bad?

I’m not saying it is. Maybe it was the best ending, but though Flynn tried to change Amy towards the end so that it would seem like her choice to go back to Nick was in line with her character, I think she failed. When Amy decides to return, despite what both she and Nick says, it felt way out of character and forced. It was original, yes. Instead of having Nick or the police find some final clue, it was Nick’s emotional conceit and Amy’s lack of judgement that led to the final showdown. But it just didn’t fit with her character.

It read as if Flynn sat with a chart of The Hero’s Journey (or some other plot formula) and said, Nick needs to change, based on his mental journey, in a way that makes him succeed. But plot structures are like scales for musicians; if you simply play the tones of the scale, stick to it completely, it sounds good, but it doesn’t make for a great solo over whatever chords the rhythm section is playing. But if you make just the right changes, specific to the particular rhythm and chords you’re playing over, then you end up with something amazing.

Similarly, plot structures are great (and in my opinion necessary) tools to create a coherent story, but for it to be really satisfying, you need change things up in just the right place, move thing half a note to create something new, something original, with just the right harmonics. In Gone Girl, following the structure in the end broke the strongest part of the story, the characters.

Despite the ending not being as close to perfect as the rest of the book, it was still an excellent read, well worth recommending. So if you haven’t read the book and don’t mind all the spoilers above, and if you want to see how well a thriller-mystery can be pulled off, I urge you to read Gone Girl.