a plot twist tip you don't hear very often
Sometimes suspense is worth it, even if it means serving your audience the entire plot on a silver platter:
In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows Juliet isn't dead. Romeo does not. It's a tragedy. You sympathize with the characters.
In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus tries to expose the murderer of King Laius, not knowing that he himself is the murderer.
In the TV-show Breaking Bad, a DEA agent is looking for a crystal-meth producer who calls himself ''Heisenberg,'' not knowing that Heisenberg is his brother-in-law. Throughout the show, we follow Walter White (Heisenberg) as he grows his drug empire, while also having dinner by the pool with his brother-in-law. And we can't stop asking ourselves: when will this DEA agent figure out that the person he's looking for has been right under his nose all this time?
That my friends, is what we call dramatic irony. A literary device in which the audience's understanding of certain events or individuals in a story surpasses that of its characters.
What is meant by that is simple: it's not necessary for each and every plot twist in your story to come as a surprise to your audience. We all know that Scar is the one who really killed Mufasa, but that doesn't take anything away from the emotional impact following his death.
You will still have your audience at the edge of their seats, not out of suspense of what's going to happen, but out of fear, and excitement, of how the characters they've grown to love are going to react to it.
So it's not in any way wrong to drop important information ahead of time! Sometimes the best way to tackle a twist is simply to let your audience in on what's happening. Let them anticipate the emotional reactions of the characters. In certain cases, that on its own can be torture for whoever it is that's watching.
For all they know, this plot twist, and I am using plot twist loosely, it can just as well be a secret big enough to destroy a relationship, but not something that is going to affect every character, could potentially come to ruin everything your audience have grown attached to.
It can turn characters against each other, massive consequences to follow. Perhaps a certain character is heading towards certain death, perhaps their partner's falling for someone else, unaware of the infidelity that is happening because of it.
Or, we find ourselves in the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. Today, a character is enjoying a nice day out at the park, not knowing that yesterday evening, a herd of zombies marched through that same exact location.
Instant alarm bells start ringing for your audience â the apocalypse are upon us, but where did the zombies go? And when are the characters going to find out about this? How are they going to find out?
But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that a close family member has already fallen victim to the undead, and now, having been missing for a couple days, is slowly approaching our main character from behind, reanimated as a zombie. The audience has already seen this family member be bitten and turned, but for our main character, it's a different story.
Your audience are emotionally invested in your characters. Use that to your advantage.
To have an audience sit on a piece of information, not knowing how it's going to affect their favorite characters and relationships, can have just as much of an emotional impact as a ''regular'' plot twist.
