Writing Lessons: The Princess Bride and delivering on promises

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

The last time I watched Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (originally aired in 1987), I was prooooooobably nine years old. That was twenty-five years ago. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting this time around—my memory of the film is hazy, flashes of images at best without a name to put to any character.

I have learned that her name is Princess Buttercup. That surprised me.

But you can be sure I remembered one throughout the years: Inigo Montoya.

Okay, that’s kind of a lie. I remembered it as “My name is… something, something. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

That line stuck with me for years as it had for thousands of others. Actor Mandy Pantikin went on to say that he took personal inspiration for his delivery of the line, as he had lost his own father to cancer and imagined the six-fingered man as the very cancer he had wanted to defeat.

Many elements go into why this line stuck with us—the repetition, mostly. But it settles on one fact.

The writers were delivering a promise with us.

It was the introduction, as the camera closed in on Mandy Pantikin’s face, and he explained intimately to us the backstory of his father’s unjust murder, and his vengeful desire with a faraway look in his eyes. You can see how he imagines it. And we root for it. We want him to meet the six-fingered man.

He would even speak to his father’s spirit throughout the film—we never see the exchange. He recites to his father more like a prayer, and will ask his father’s guidance. We see how important this is to him.

It was the way Inigo said it when he finally met the six-fingered man (I don’t remember his name already… does it matter? It’s disrespectful to Inigo to utter it, I say). And the coward ran away.

It was the way he muttered it when you thought he had failed. He can barely stand, stumbling onto a dining table, and you cheer him on and hope he finds the strength again to swing his sword.

And he finds that strength. It was the way he triumphantly exclaimed with every jab of his sword (six times, one for every finger on that hand).

Can you imagine what it would have been like if we received a tragic ending instead?

If Inigo Montoya never got to say everything he ever wanted to say. If at the very last moment, he starts to say the words, and the six-fingered man slices his throat, cutting off his voice.

Sure, it might have been more realistic given his injuries, but the film would have flopped completely. It would have infuriated movie goers, because they would have felt that they were promised something to be delivered and all they received was a pie on the face.

Why? Because that is not what the film is about. It’s not the promise it made.

There is a danger to breaking promises in fiction. In this fellow video I shared, writer Brandon Sanderson tells the story of a fellow writer who had not performed well in sales with his book. Said Writer Man (name was never given) had wanted to pull a fast one on his readers and wanted to spin their expectations on their heads. He changed the genre of his story three-quarters of the way through. Of course… that did not go well for him.

Here’s the thing. Expectations are good. They are the secret ingredient to keeping your audience engaged in the story.

Nice try, but The Princess Bride is a simple little story. What about the plot twist?

What about it? You still have to deliver on the promises that you’re presenting to the reader. A promise is not the same as foreshadowing too much (though foreshadowing often does help). It’s about the tone, the setting, the clues you’re putting into your story that keeps these elements in mind so that the reader doesn’t feel duped or fooled.

You have to be meticulous about what you’re putting down on paper if you want your audience to enjoy the betrayal sandwich you’re serving them (and not smear them on the face with it).

Yes, you want to reader to feel like they didn’t see that coming, but you also don’t want them to reply with, “What the fuck was this?!”

If every word on the page matters to your message, then every choice you make—the setting, that line of dialogue—is on its own a new promise you’re making with your readers. This includes the impending plot twist, the whodunnit, the carrot dangling at the end of the stick.

If you want to place a plot twist, you’re planting the clues, correct? The red herrings? These establish your story’s rules, and without them, your plot twist will feel like it’s made out of convenience, molded to whatever the plot declares it to be. Certain genres do not allow for certain subversions (for example, a romance must have a happy ending—without it, it becomes a tragedy).

These are the promises you’re making:

All in all, you’re making five promises to the reader: the characters, the voice, the world, the problem, and the event.

Of which can be broken, as mentioned before. But I want to add to this. Let’s look at some successful, beautiful stories that broke their promises outright:

In Stranger Things 4, Chrissy had promised to meet with Eddie Munson and you suspected a budding relationship between the two. That was broken when she died. (Similarly, Eddie promised himself and others that he would graduate. We know what happened.)

In Game of Thrones, we were also promised, down to the promotional artwork, that Ned Stark would be one of the main characters. He then he lost his head.

In The Last of Us, Sarah appeared as the main character in the first episode (or the first hour if you’re playing the game)… only to have it turn on us instead and realize it would be Joel, her father.

How do you pull this off?

You are also promising the tone of the story, and the themes.

The Princess Bride is labeled as a fantasy comedy—its tone is jovial and silly, heart-warming and adventurous. It believes in honor and integrity. It believes in the good guy saving the world.

The others I’ve mentioned are nothing like this at all. They are about death. They are about the consequences of your choices, your actions, your ignorance. Chrissy didn’t know how to reach out to the right people to help her before it was too late. Eddie’s story was less about graduation, and more about heroism and what that means for the weirdo that everyone villainized. Alternatively, Ned Stark trusted the wrong people, in a world where action had serious consequence. Joel learned first hand what grief and loss really meant, and the story pitted him right into those lessons all over again.

You want your main character to die? You have to try your damnest to give us a setting that rightfully makes us fear for their lives.

You would also need to shut that character arc down with their death and then open new ones—Ned Stark’s legacy followed through his children’s political struggles. It didn’t end with him, but that’s another topic for a different day.

So you have to be mindful and ask yourself,

What exactly are you writing?

You don’t want to be the Writer Man who held onto one genre for too long, without any prior warning that things were going to shift for his readers, only to disappoint them later on. Be mindful of what you’re putting down onto the page. If you don’t want to give too much away, keep a dreadful feeling in the pit of their stomachs.

The Princess Bride delivered exactly what it promised.

When Inigo Montoya strikes the final blow, he says, “I want my father back, you son of a bitch.” Everything we’ve been waiting for has happened, with an extra line to tie it neatly with a bow. A perfect package to a story about honoring the memory of a lost loved one, and about justice.

It was perfect. Any different, and it would have been ruined.