Acknowledging the Absurd
‘Hanging a lantern on it,’ also commonly known as ‘lampshade hanging,’ is a self-aware narrative technique used by writers to manage the audience’s suspension of disbelief. The core of the technique is simple: if your story contains something that might stretch credibility—a massive coincidence, a tired genre trope, a logical inconsistency, or a particularly convenient plot device—you have a character in the story explicitly point it out. By acknowledging the ‘problem’ within the text itself, the writer sends a signal to the audience: ‘Yes, I know this is a bit convenient/silly/clichéd, and you know it too. Let’s acknowledge it together and move on.’ This shared joke can effectively disarm an audience’s critical instincts, encouraging them to accept the element rather than reject it.
How It Works in Practice
This technique can be applied in many ways to address common storytelling issues:
- Addressing Clichés: In a horror movie, a character might say, ‘We should definitely not go into that dark basement; that’s classic horror movie behavior.’ By hanging a lantern on the trope, the writer makes the subsequent (and necessary) trip to the basement feel more like a fun, self-aware nod to the genre rather than a lazy plot point.
- Justifying Coincidences: After two characters who haven’t seen each other in ten years randomly bump into each other in a foreign city, one might remark, ‘Wow, what are the odds? This feels like something out of a movie!’ This acknowledges the incredible convenience and allows the plot to continue.
- Explaining Plot Holes: If a character suddenly has a new skill that hasn’t been established, another character might ask, ‘When did you learn how to do that?’ The first character can then give a brief, perhaps comically insufficient, explanation. The lantern has been hung, and the story moves forward.
A Tool to Be Used with Care
Hanging a lantern is most effective in genres that allow for a certain level of self-awareness, such as comedy, action, fantasy, and sci-fi. It can build a rapport with the audience and make the storytelling feel clever and playful. However, it is a tool that must be used with caution. If overused, it can shatter the audience’s immersion, making the narrative feel insecure and smug. It works best as a way to smooth over minor, unavoidable logical bumps, not as a substitute for fixing major, fundamental flaws in the story’s structure. A lantern can illuminate a small crack, but it can’t fix a broken foundation.