Lampshading

Here are the definitions of a few words I learned recently.  I didn’t pay much attention to them until the fifth word:

• Anachronistic (a-NAK-row-NIST-ick)—Something chronologically out of place, such as mentioning Diet Coke in a story taking place in the 1700s.  This occurs commonly in stories set a thousand years ago, where characters swear using modern-day obscenities such as the f-word or the s-word.  Just so you know, the f-word first appeared in its current spelling in 1535 by the Scottish poet David Lyndesay.  The s-word was first used to describe a person in 1508.  What happened in the 1500s?

• Perspicuous (per-SPICK-you-iss)—Clearly expressed and easily understandable.

• Hypergamy (hi-PER-guh-me)—marrying someone of a higher social or economic status than yourself.

• Gaslighting—Persistent psychological and emotional abuse by deceit as a tactic to gain power and control.  This can be done by shifting blame, trivializing an issue, denying it, or even refusing to hear someone’s point of view.  The term “gaslighting” came from the movie Gaslight (1944) about a husband who manipulated his wife using deceit and psychological abuse to hide his crimes from her.

• Lampshading—When authors or moviemakers point out plot holes or improbable events in their stories, usually through dialogue, so fans will think the far-fetched story events are okay because the writers have pointed them out.  It’s when a character exclaims to another, “There's no way it can do that!”

The last definition left an awful pit in my stomach because, for years, I’ve been advising young authors to, when they don’t want to fix their plot weaknesses, have a character say or think, “I know, [this part of the story] is ridiculous, but....”

What I’ve unintentionally done is encourage budding authors to engage in lampshading.

Here’s a brief example of lampshading: Captain America’s Shield

I must now apologize to the countless impressionable young authors whom I have misled.

Is it ever a good thing?

Use of lampshading may be appropriate under very limited conditions, but only when you’re an expert and seasoned author who isn’t just lazy and doesn’t want to put the work into writing a better story.

Speaking of supposed experts, the movie Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (2025), with a $400 million budget, features multiple scenes where characters discuss the next stage of their mission, and someone in the group says what every viewer is thinking:

“This is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard!

There’s no way it’s going to work.”

That is lampshading.

Toward the end of my first novel, a particularly stuffy manager had written motivational quotes in black felt pen on a piece of cardboard and taped it to one of his cubicle walls:

Fate loves the fearless.

Good judgment comes from experience.

Experience comes from bad judgment.

After my daughters read my novel, they told me, “Dad, that’s what you would do, not what he would do.”  How did I fix the problem?  I had one of the characters think,

He didn’t seem to be the type to like slogans.

That’s lampshading.

It’s like in Die Hard 2 (1990), when the hero says,

“I can't believe this.  Another basement, another elevator.

How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?!”

The character says this because that’s what the audience is thinking.

There are degrees of lampshading, such as in Rear Window (1954), when multiple characters throughout the movie say,

“How could Thorwald be so stupid as to commit a murder

with his window shades open?”

Was that lampshading, or was Thorwald really that stupid?

Getting down to it

Here’s the bottom line.  Don’t do it!   This is because lampshading reduces the seriousness of your prose.  Do you want your story to be a big joke or an honest and genuine piece of literary fiction?

Who likes the guy who, during a traumatic event such as a death in the family or after a serious automobile accident, cracks a joke?  Don’t be that guy!

Lampshading takes the edge off your story's tension.  It serves to obscure the true impact of your scenes and reduces your iconic story to a Saturday-morning cartoon.

Enrich your stories.  Don’t cheapen them.  Don’t tell me that’s a wildly impossible idea that won’t work, because I know you can do it.