Spoiler alert: Even though I’m pretty sure that the surprise ending of The Sixth Sense is common knowledge at this point, I feel compelled to tell you that I reveal it in this email.

Buon Giorno, Reader!

There’s something about fall that makes everything feel anticipatory. As we watch our shadows grow longer and the leaves begin to change, summer fades into the background and debates begin over whether or not it’s too early for Christmas decor to hit retail shelves.

Fall is such a romantic season and I feel like we rush through it every year, forgetting to savor the crispness of the air, or noticing how quiet it is in the early hours of the morning. We are on the cusp of change, and even though we can feel it coming, there’s still an uncertainty that lingers.

That feeling of lingering uncertainty is why this week, I want to talk about The Sixth Sense.

I’m old enough to remember when M. Night Shyamalan’s debut film hit theaters in 1999. The marketing leaned heavily on the twist ending, which worked because that moment delivered. But what made the twist so unforgettable wasn’t the reveal itself.

It was the feeling of knowing something was off, but you couldn’t quite put a finger on it. The clues were revealed in plain sight, but our conscious minds could not connect the dots.

In the film, child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe begins working with Cole, a quiet, anxious boy whose mother worries he’s haunted by something he can’t explain. Malcolm believes Cole is suffering from trauma and sets out to help him.

In one of the film’s most famous moments, Cole finally confides in Dr. Crowe what’s bothering him They’re sitting together in a quiet hospital hallway with the fluorescent lights humming softly above them. Cole looks terrified. As he’s wrapping a blanket tightly around his face and shaking gently, he utters the line that defined a decade of movie quotes:

“I see dead people.”

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For many years, The Sixth Sense was lauded as one of the best plot twists of all time. But I don’t think it’s so much about the twist as it is about the trust Shyamalan put into the audience to feel what was happening before they could name it.

That’s the same invitation every great storyteller offers.

The real art is in creating emotional recognition. It’s giving the audience enough information to let their intuition guide them enough that, when the truth lands, it feels more like a remembering than a surprise.

When you watch this clip again, knowing that Dr. Crowe is one of the dead people Cole sees, every word that Cole utters is a reveal. And you can sense it, right? Once you know this, everything clicks into focus. Everything that was a little fuzzy before is now crystal clear.

As speakers, we often focus on what we want to say. But the most magnetic moments on stage aren’t the words themselves. It’s the way we are able to connect what’s being said and what’s being felt.

Next time you’re crafting a talk, experiment with creating an invisible thread. Let the pause hang a little longer than feels safe. Let the audience sit inside the question before you give them the answer. Let them feel what’s coming first, then help them bring it into focus.

Until next time,

P.S. If you want to play more with this kind of tension, I invite you to check out The Craft with Sam of Indie Copy Studio. It’s the perfect space to practice conjuring a little narrative witchcraft of your own. Sam is the writer who inspired me to start this weekly series, and I took The Craft earlier this year. It was seriously the best money I’ve spent on my business in a while.