Advice for writing plot twists and foreshadowing them
Credits: @/michael.bjork on TikTok
Transcript:
How to foreshadow a plot twist without giving it away. Here’s one way I like to do it: get the reader to believe a lie and then, when you start dropping hints, use the hints to reinforce the lie.
Here’s an example. Let’s say your hero is a young wizard. As they explore an ancient crypt, they find a mysterious spell on the wall and out of naivety, they cast it, summoning a shadowy creature that wrecks havoc across the countryside.
What is the creature? An older, wiser wizard says it’s a demon from another realm- and that is the lie you tell your reader. It is not a demon but your reader is new to this world and has no reason to doubt this explanation.
After they believe the lie, you can start hunting at the truth. Maybe the creature only attacks people the hero knows, maybe it knows the hero’s darkest emotions, and maybe its eyes are hazel, just like the hero’s.
But as you drop this hints, don’t let them raise questions. Instead, use the hints to reinforce the lie, such as by establishing that demons have a strange intimate connection with their summoner. That way (hopefully), your reader will never question anything until you reveal that instead of summing a demon, the hero actually created the creature out of the darkness of their own heart.
ONE: Spoilers for Lightyear, Pixar’s newest film, an animated film within an animated film.
TWO: I still really enjoyed this film. If you were a huge toy story fan and you saw the animated series and stuff, you’re going to enjoy this just because of the visuals alone, so don’t read this post and be spoilt just because some people are saying it’s not that good. With that said... I think the film can be enjoyed with these spoilers, perhaps even more because there’s slightly less frustration which I’ll explain in a moment so... it’s your call!
Lightyear is the film that follows Buss Lightyear the character that would later be turned into our iconic toy from toy story.
And there were plenty of moments in the film where the writers acknowledge that legacy. They knew the watchers of this film were mainly Toy Story fans.
This means we have Toy Story law in our heads.
They start the film by introducing three characters, Buzz himself, Alisha Hawthorne and a rookie named Featheringhamsten.
And here is the first problem this movie presents. They name the rookie. Pixar is good at storytelling and there are rules to storytelling. One you’ve probably heard is Chekhov's gun, the moment the rookie was named there was an expectation in the audience for him to come back, spoiler, he did not. The longer it took for him to reappear, the more confused I was, the more I expected him to secretly be some other character, or at the very least, a parent of one of them. Nothing.
Fine. This isn’t as big of a deal as the second issue.
They presented us Commander Burnside as a problem. He went against Buzz. We also got presented Zourg, but if you knew anything about Toy Story law. Zourg was Buzz’s father. So the expectation in the audience was for Zourg to be the good guy and Commandar Burnside to be the villain... but that never happened.
Zourg was not Buzz’s father and remained the villain in a different way (I won’t spoil it because perhaps if you aren’t expecting him to be the father the twist is enjoyable).
Burnside was good.
And the truth is, the story itself wasn’t bad. I think the main problem is the rookie should have just been called a rookie. And Zourg should not have been Zourg. Just change his appearance slightly, so in the shadows he looked like Zourg but wasn’t. And don’t give him that name. That way everything would have been the same except the moment he stepped out of the shadows and it wasn’t Zourg, we’d double guess ourselves and it wouldn’t feel like a mean trick.
Because the way this plot-twist worked was by essentially ignoring a canon detail we as an audience expected. That’s not a twist, it’s just a lie and it often backfires.
So, have you seen Lightyear? Did you enjoy it?
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