: Re: How far apart can the dots be? I've written enough to know the kind of writer I am, my voice, my style. I am often accused of making the reader work too hard to put the plot points together.

@Rambettina586

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What you can or should do depends on your aims. For example, do you want the ending to be ambiguous, obvious, or what I'll call Twilight Zone-y? By that I mean, "well, there's only one explanation, but it does require magic", like him ending up in a reality where he did marry someone else. Whichever one you want is fine, as long as you achieve it.

The problem, of course, is that there's always another off-the-wall option your readers hopefully won't think of. For example, maybe he never married Amanda in the first place, but due to some mind-bending he got the details wrong early on. While a reasonable reader will disregard that option as long as you don't give them reason to doubt the original narrative, the "number of explanations" is determined by what real readers are like, not just your words. You have to be very careful to write around that.

I know from experience watching TV or film with people of low or average intelligence that endings I think couldn't be clearer often aren't. In theory we can blame the writer instead of the reader (although I don't feel from the examples that come to mind like I know how the writer could have prevented the confusion), but I think the most viable strategy is not to worry about it too much as you write. Do your best to deliberately have your intended effect as you draft, but then see whether beta readers "get it".

The best stories have details that are realised on a second run to be foreshadowing. You may find it easier to add these in a later draft.

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