The Great Inception Debate by Jason Black
Warning. This whole post is a massive spoiler. If you haven't seen the 2010 Leonardo DiCaprio movie Inception yet, but plan on renting it sometime, come back to this post after you've seen it.
At the end of the movie, we're left with the image of a spinning top as DiCaprio's character Cobb goes off to play with his kids. It spins, it gyrates around on the slick tabletop. It teeters. And the screen fades to black, leaving the reader with a question: does the top fall?
The filmmakers elected to leave this question open, in what was likely a very savvy decision, motivated to keep audiences talking and debating that very question long after they've left the theaters.
Debate all you want (and in fact, I'd love to hear countering views in the comments), but I'm telling you that as a matter of storytelling, the top has to fall.
Here's why. The movie is all about dreams and reality, and spends considerable time on the question of how you know what's a dream and what's real. Further, it links the success of Cobb's mission with the return of his children. For him, the reality of his children is the ultimate stakes. He sees his children often in his dreams, but they aren't real and he can't truly interact with them. What he craves--and who wouldn't?--are his real children. Ones he can hug and talk to and who can respond to him. Dreams just don't cut it.
Viewers, of course, are rooting for him to succeed. We want to see him get his kids back. The movie repeatedly shows us a half-moment that Cobb's dreams often give him: seeing his children from behind, but unable to see their faces. We long for the completion of that moment, for Cobb to be able to call to them, and for them to turn towards him so he can finally see their beautiful faces.
The spinning top is Cobb's totem, his own personal answer to the question of how to know what's a dream and what's real. Thus, if the top falls at the end of the movie, all is well. Cobb is awake, his children are real, and we know that he is truly re-united with them.
But if the top does not fall, he is still dreaming. The children are not real. In fact, if the top does not fall, if it spins in endless defiance of friction and entropy, then the entire movie has been a dream. An intricately plotted and highly watchable dream, to be sure, but still a dream.
And that would kill the movie's stakes. If the top never falls, viewers are forced to question the very existence every element which gave the plot any weight. If it never falls, we cannot be sure that there really are any children, somewhere in some true-waking state that we were never shown. We can't be sure that Cobb's personal nemesis, his dead wife Mal, ever truly existed anywhere.
If the top never falls, all the elements that made us care about how the movie turned out evaporate in a cloud of doubt and leave the viewer questioning whether the movie had any point to it at all.
All of which is to say that if you're writing a novel which plays with the nature of reality--either through dreams, drugs, cyberspace, story-within-a-story, or something else--you have to give the reader something they can anchor to. Novels only work because the reader engages in that "willing suspension of disbelief" over the fiction of your novel. But stories which play with the question of what's real and what isn't, explicitly push the reader not to suspend disbelief. Such stories ask the reader to actively question their belief in what's real in the story and what isn't.
When it's done well, the results can be a ton of fun. I read a client manuscript recently that did this with the question of which parts were the protagonist's real experiences and which were actually the novel the protagonist had written based on her real experiences. When the moment in the story finally came where we got the critical clue and could figure out what was what, everything snapped into focus. The client had done it right, and it made for a wonderful reading experience.
But just as with Inception, it only worked because as a reader I was anchored in something. There was some part I could always hold on to that was real--that is, something about which I could maintain a suspension of disbelief. Take away that anchor, and suddenly nothing in the story actually matters anymore.
Inception gives us dreams within dreams within dreams. The anchor is the viewer's belief that the outer most level of what we have seen represents Cobb's true waking state. Kill that belief, and the whole movie becomes pointless.
The top has to fall.
At the end of the movie, we're left with the image of a spinning top as DiCaprio's character Cobb goes off to play with his kids. It spins, it gyrates around on the slick tabletop. It teeters. And the screen fades to black, leaving the reader with a question: does the top fall?The filmmakers elected to leave this question open, in what was likely a very savvy decision, motivated to keep audiences talking and debating that very question long after they've left the theaters.
Debate all you want (and in fact, I'd love to hear countering views in the comments), but I'm telling you that as a matter of storytelling, the top has to fall.
Here's why. The movie is all about dreams and reality, and spends considerable time on the question of how you know what's a dream and what's real. Further, it links the success of Cobb's mission with the return of his children. For him, the reality of his children is the ultimate stakes. He sees his children often in his dreams, but they aren't real and he can't truly interact with them. What he craves--and who wouldn't?--are his real children. Ones he can hug and talk to and who can respond to him. Dreams just don't cut it.
Viewers, of course, are rooting for him to succeed. We want to see him get his kids back. The movie repeatedly shows us a half-moment that Cobb's dreams often give him: seeing his children from behind, but unable to see their faces. We long for the completion of that moment, for Cobb to be able to call to them, and for them to turn towards him so he can finally see their beautiful faces.
The spinning top is Cobb's totem, his own personal answer to the question of how to know what's a dream and what's real. Thus, if the top falls at the end of the movie, all is well. Cobb is awake, his children are real, and we know that he is truly re-united with them.
But if the top does not fall, he is still dreaming. The children are not real. In fact, if the top does not fall, if it spins in endless defiance of friction and entropy, then the entire movie has been a dream. An intricately plotted and highly watchable dream, to be sure, but still a dream.
And that would kill the movie's stakes. If the top never falls, viewers are forced to question the very existence every element which gave the plot any weight. If it never falls, we cannot be sure that there really are any children, somewhere in some true-waking state that we were never shown. We can't be sure that Cobb's personal nemesis, his dead wife Mal, ever truly existed anywhere.
If the top never falls, all the elements that made us care about how the movie turned out evaporate in a cloud of doubt and leave the viewer questioning whether the movie had any point to it at all.
All of which is to say that if you're writing a novel which plays with the nature of reality--either through dreams, drugs, cyberspace, story-within-a-story, or something else--you have to give the reader something they can anchor to. Novels only work because the reader engages in that "willing suspension of disbelief" over the fiction of your novel. But stories which play with the question of what's real and what isn't, explicitly push the reader not to suspend disbelief. Such stories ask the reader to actively question their belief in what's real in the story and what isn't.
When it's done well, the results can be a ton of fun. I read a client manuscript recently that did this with the question of which parts were the protagonist's real experiences and which were actually the novel the protagonist had written based on her real experiences. When the moment in the story finally came where we got the critical clue and could figure out what was what, everything snapped into focus. The client had done it right, and it made for a wonderful reading experience.
But just as with Inception, it only worked because as a reader I was anchored in something. There was some part I could always hold on to that was real--that is, something about which I could maintain a suspension of disbelief. Take away that anchor, and suddenly nothing in the story actually matters anymore.
Inception gives us dreams within dreams within dreams. The anchor is the viewer's belief that the outer most level of what we have seen represents Cobb's true waking state. Kill that belief, and the whole movie becomes pointless.
The top has to fall.
