…which do not necessarily explode when they come in contact with each other…

My other half gets the blame/credit for this one. No, he didn’t write it; he just made me start thinking about it. Always a dangerous prospect.

I’ve played with the concept of dramatic irony as a storytelling device for a few years, though I didn’t realize it. When I was growing up, ‘ironic’ was a catchall term that meant something like edgy or cynical, and I think most people still use it that way. But it can also be used to describe a situation where there’s a discrepancy between who knows what’s going on. Specifically, the audience knows a thing, but the characters don’t.

In the time-travel WIP, the audience and one POV character know that character’s backstory, but no one else does, making exchanges like, “How are you?” “Not dead at the moment,” a little extra funny and dark. Because the character has died previously but is alive now, so everyone thinks her response is a joke, except she and the reader know it’s not. The irony becomes more complex when the other POV character thinks he knows what happened, and acts accordingly- and wrongly. It’s also fun to write, because I want the narrative, particularly their dialogue, to be correct from each one’s point of view- nobody’s lying; everybody’s acting according to the information they think is correct- but the audience can see how they’re misinterpreting each other. Lots of very careful wording.

You could argue that, because one character knows what’s happening, it’s not ‘pure’ dramatic irony, but unless you intend to write from the perspective of an entity that’s not actually a character, your POV character has to be in on the irony, or really oblivious- in which case, why are they the narrator of the story? I think of it like a spectrum of irony; at one end are stories where all the characters are in the dark; at the other end, almost everyone knows what’s going on, and at some point a little beyond that, it’s not really irony any more. Each genre- each story, for that matter- is comfortable in a different spot on that spectrum.

On the flip side, you have anti-irony, which is when all the characters know something but the audience doesn’t. It’s that moment when all the characters look at a newborn baby and recoil in horror because, “He has the mark of his father!” but the nature of that mark isn’t revealed until much later, when it becomes vitally important to the plot. Or something of a similar nature. It works well in visual media, where the camera can cut to a shot of something significant and the characters all react appropriately, but the audience doesn’t know why.

I’ve started using this concept more, now that I’m expanding into mysteries. It’s good for building tension without actually having the villain hold the hero at gunpoint, because you can send characters off on their own little journey and take the reader along for the ride- “No time to explain, just come with me!” Of course, some readers put up with this about as well as they would in real life, but most will sit back and enjoy the chaos.

Anti-irony is also good for subtle world-building, if you apply it with a light hand. If all the characters are traveling past a valley and look grim, with remarks about how that land is evil and they should leave as quickly as possible, the reader can infer that something bad happened there, or something evil lives there. It can be foreshadowing for a later event, in which case, it’s no longer anti-irony, or it can be glossed over in a few sentences and left to add richness to the world, making it into a place where people have memories and legends, and talk about things that are important to them but might not be important to the plot. Sort of an anti Chekov’s Gun.

The trick with all of this is, go lightly. Too much of either can be off-putting; with irony, it can feel like the characters are stupid- how do they not see what’s right in front of them?!- and too much anti-irony makes the audience feel stupid. If you make the reader feel stupid too many times, they’ll spend their money in other places.

Explaining anti-irony can be a schtick all its own- Gavril the mercenary lets the audience in on a lot of secrets of his world, which gives the story and its narrator a ‘sitting beside the campfire, swapping tall tales’ vibe. I didn’t do this on purpose; he just has a very chatty ‘voice,’ and that’s what it turned into. The stories might be easier to write if I wasn’t part of his audience.

I haven’t decided- is it irony, if the character knows what’s going on, but the writer doesn’t?