How To Write A Good Plot Twist
Here’s a guide for all you writers who like to screw around with their readers;)
1. Give it an open ending.
Not necessarily the easiest, but one of the most practical plot twists is the ambiguous ending. It is a good one to use if you don’t want your overall storytelling to be affected by your plot twist too much.
When you leave a story open ended, this means you don’t explain how the story ends, but rather, you leave it up to the imagination of the reader.
The audience doesn’t know what happened to the characters in the end, but based on the story and what has occurred thus far, they can wager a guess and infer an ending in order to satisfy their need to tie up the loose ends in their minds.
2. Use an untrustworthy narrator.
This is a great technique to use because people are often conditioned to take the narrator’s word when reading a story. The narrator is the perfect character to use in order to confuse the reader, and maybe give them hints and suggestions that will lead them to a completely different conclusion from the one that you are setting up for your plot twist.
If you are going to use this method, however, it’s important to not make it glaringly obvious that the narrator is untrustworthy in telling the story. You should be foreshadowing it subtly, but the story that the narrator is telling must also be completely believable.
When used effectively, the reader will be very surprised at the plot twist, but will also have a feeling of “I should have seen it coming,” as well.
3. Reverse character roles.
A pretty straightforward approach, this is when your plot twist consists of either the hero turning into the villain or vice versa.
Sometimes it comes off forced when the character becomes a polar opposite of what he or she has been throughout the story, so it is best to give these characters some traits that would make their transitions believable.
4. Throw your reader into the mix.
A good way to make plot twists work well is by starting the storytelling in the middle of some type of climax. When you do this, you are giving the reader an immediately intriguing plot that could really go anywhere, because there is no backstory to reference.
The lack of prior information about the situation given to the reader gives the writer a lot of freedom with the plot twists that he or she plans.
5. Try an unexpected kill.
Your readers might hate you for a short while, but this technique provides an unexpected plot twist.
Killing off one of the main characters in the middle of the story is something that always comes as unexpected. Readers pick up on who the key characters are early in the story if they are well-developed, and they attach to these characters early on in the story.
Having one of these main characters die really twists things into an unexpected direction, because the reader is already looking forward to what will happen to this character at the end of the story. Finding out that this character will not be playing any type of role in the story’s ending is always a good shock for the reader.
These are only a few suggestions. There are many other great ways to introduce plot twists into your stories, which can help you to take your writing into a completely new direction.
When coming up with the climax to your story, discard every possible solution you can think of for your protagonist to succeed.
You’re trying to create an ending that’s so unforeseen that if a million people read your book, not one of them would guess how it ends (or how it will get to the end), but when they finally come to it, every one of those people would think,Yes! That makes perfect sense! Why didn’t I see that coming?
The more impossible the climax is for your protagonist to overcome, the more believable and inevitable the escape or solution needs to be. No reader should anticipate it, but everyone should nod and smile when it happens. No one guesses, everyone nods. That’s what you’re shooting for.
While writing, ask yourself:
What do I need to change to create a more believable world for each separate twist I’m including?
How can I drop the gimmicks and depend more on the strength of the narrative to build my twist?
Will readers have to “put up with” the story that’s being told in anticipation of a twist ending, or will they enjoy it even more because of the twist? How can I improve the pretwist story?
How can I make better use of the clues that prove the logic of the surface story to create the twist and bring more continuity to the story—but only after the twist is revealed?
When you work on your narrative, constantly ask yourself what readers are expecting and hoping for at this moment in the story. Then keep twisting the story into new directions that both shock and delight them.
To keep readers from noticing clues, bury them in the emotion or action of another section. For example, in an adventure novel, offhandedly mention something during a chase scene, while readers’ attention is on the action, not the revelation. Use red herrings, dead ends, and foils. Bury clues in discussions of something else.
While writing, ask yourself:
How can I do a better job of burying the clues readers need to have in order to accept the ending? Where do I need to bring those clues to the surface?
How can I play expectations based on genre conventions against readers to get them to suspect the wrong person as the villain or antagonist?
Readers want their emotional investment to pay off. The twist should never occur in a way that makes them feel tricked, deceived, or insulted. Great twists always deepen, never cheapen, readers’ investment in the story.
This is why dream sequences typically don’t work—the protagonist thinks she’s in a terrible mess, then wakes up and realizes it was all just a dream. These aren’t twists because they almost never escalate the story but often do the very opposite, revealing to readers that things weren’t really that bad after all (de-escalation). Showing a character experiencing a harrowing or frightening experience and then having him wake up from a dream is not a twist; it’s a tired cliché.
How do you solve this? Simply tell the reader it’s a dream beforehand. It can be just as frightening without de-escalating the story’s tension, and it can also end in a way that’s not predictable.
While writing, ask yourself:
Will readers feel tricked, deceived, or insulted by this twist? If so, how can I better respect their ability to guess the ending of my story?
Have I inadvertently relied on clichés or on any plot turning points that have appeared in other books or movies? How can I recast the story so it’s fresh and original?
4. Write toward your readers’ reaction.
The way you want your readers to respond will determine the way you set up your twist. Three different types of twists all result in different reactions by readers: (1) “No way!” (2) “Huh. Nice!” and (3) “Oh, yeah!”
When aiming for the “No way!” response, you’ll want to lead readers into certainty. You want them to think that there’s only one possible solution to the story.
The more you can convince them that the story world you’ve portrayed is exactly as it appears to be—that only one outcome to the novel is possible—the more you’ll make their jaws drop when you show them that things were not as they appeared to be at all. If the twist is satisfying, credible, and inevitable based on what has preceded it, readers will gasp and exclaim, “No way! That’s awesome! I can’t believe he got that one past me.”
With the “Huh. Nice!” ending, you want to lead readers into uncertainty. Basically, they’ll be thinking, “Man, I have no idea where this is going.” When writing for this response, you’ll create an unbalanced, uncertain world. You don’t want readers to suspect only one person as the villain but many people. Only when the true villain is revealed will readers see that everything was pointing in that direction all along.
Finally, if you’re shooting for the “Oh, yeah!” reaction, you’ll want to emphasize the cleverness with which the main character gets out of the seemingly impossible-to-escape-from climax. Often we do that by allowing him to use a special gift, skill, or emblem that has been shown to readers earlier but that they aren’t thinking about when they reach the climax. Then, when the protagonist pulls it out, readers remember: “Yes! That’s right! He carries a can of shark repellent in his wet suit! I forgot all about that!”
Relentlessly escalate your story while keeping it believable, surprising, and deeper than it appears.
While writing, ask yourself:
If I want to shock readers with the twist, have I led them into certainty as they try to predict the ending?
If I want readers to suspect a number of different endings, have I satisfactorily built up all the potential outcomes?
If I want readers to cheer at the ending, have I (1) created a seemingly impossible situation for the protagonist to escape from or conquer or (2) allowed the protagonist to persevere through wit or grit rather than with the help of someone else (that is, deus ex machina)?
1. Plot twists must be unique
The requirement of any good plot twist is that it must have a reasonable shot at surprising readers. That’s kind of the point, right? If readers figure it out ahead of time, they’re not going to be surprised. This means you can’t pull the same old gag and expect readers to blithely fall for it. When Barry Levinson’s Bandits reaches its climax with the two best friend main characters apparently killing each other during a bank hold-up, I didn’t buy it. Going into that scene, I had already figured out this was just a poor man’s The Sting. Yawn.
2. Plot twists must be executed cleverly
Again, the point is to catch readers off guard. In order to do that, you have to properly set up the twist. You have to foreshadow it just enough to make it all make sense after the payoff. But you can’t tip your hand too broadly—or readers will figure it out. Another twist I saw coming was that found in Neil Burger’s The Illusionist. After all, the main character is a magician. What else are readers to expect but a magic trick?
In comparison, Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom, about a pair of con artists, could easily have inspired the same hyper-awareness. But the twist in its ending was so perfectly foreshadowed and so expertly executed that I almost didn’t believe it even after I’d seen the proof to back it up.
(If you want to learn how to properly foreshadow events in your writing, check out THIS POST all about it!)
3. Plot twists must advance the plot
Plot twists must be about more than fooling readers. There has to be a point to it all. Why is this deception going on under the surface? Why are the characters fooling the readers as well as, presumably, other characters? The elaborate deception in Christopher Priest’s The Prestige, the revelation of truth at the end of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and the celebrated twist in M. Night Shymalan’s The Sixth Sense are all like the dot at the end of an exclamation point. They’re not twists just for the sake of a twist; they’re there to explain the plot itself.
4. Plot twists must create interesting story situations
Most importantly of all, plot twists have to be able to create situations that readers will be excited to read about. If (horror of horrors) someone figures out your twist ahead of time, that twist still needs to be able to create such an interesting story situation that, instead of being disappointed, readers will be super-excited about the possibilities. Instead of saying, “Darn, I figured it out,” you want them to say, “Oh, baby, please let that be what it is!” Who wasn’t excited by the possibilities when Darth Vader turned out to be Luke’s father? When I figured out the twist in Brent Weeks’s The Black Prism, I couldn’t wait for it to pan out. The results of the twist were even better than the twist itself.
5. Plot twists must not take away from re-readability
If the focus is so tight on the twist itself that the story loses its oomph once readers figure out what’s going on, then you know something is wrong. The sign of a good story is that readers will love it just as much (if not more) when they enter it for a second time knowing how everything pans out. This is exactly how I feel about Brent Weeks’s twist in Beyond the Shadows, when readers (and the protagonist) discover that certain decisions the protagonist has been making throughout the book have been having unforeseen consequences all along.
Someone important to the action is poisoned.
Give a minor character an unshakable faith in something that the main character doesn’t believe in. How does this set them at odds?
A case of mistaken identity: Someone mistakes your main character for an important cultural icon, a known villain, a spy, or someone from their past. Shenanigans ensue…
The place that your character was just traveling toward–whether it was the kitchen, the school, or another city–suddenly no longer exists.
Startling, direction-altering information is brought to your characters’ attention by … an animal.
The next step for your main characters is revealed to one of them, with crystal clarity, in a dream. Only … it turns out that the dream was wrong.
Your character is locked in a prison of some kind. The only way to get the key is by singing.
Set an important scene in an art museum. One of the paintings or sculptures reminds your character of something important, long forgotten.
A rumor gathers momentum and ugliness. It soon divides your main character from her allies.
The only one they can trust right now is a con man.
A coin toss takes on tremendous importance.
A character is suddenly inducted into a secret society. Will the other members of the society be the worst sort of antagonists, or unexpected allies?
It was the last thing they ever expected to find in the kitchen.
What character does your protagonist most revere? And what happens when she finds out that that character isn’t all she thought?
An unexpected gift seems like a wonderful present at first. But it quickly becomes a source of damage, chaos, and grief.
The only one who (grudgingly) agrees with your main character is his least favorite person. Now they’ll have to work together.
Their next bit of insight, or their next clue, comes from an important historic figure.
Your characters have to escape into a garden… Which, it turns out, is full of something other than flowers and plants.
There’s a word no one should say. Or a name that no one will mention. A place nobody talks about. Or a proverb that no one repeats. … Except for your main character, who totally goes for it.
Two characters fight over where they’re each going to sit. It gets out of hand … fast.
The next calm scene is interrupted by water: a flood, a leak, rain coming through the windows, an overflowing bathtub, a spilled teacup…
Some part of your character’s life, something she has taken for granted all this time, turns out to be a message for her, in code.
Someone from the character’s past shows up out of the blue, intent on revenge.
No one’s ever eavesdropped quite like this before… Your character is forced to stay in a painful or precarious position to hear what he desperately needs to know.
Some part of your cast now has to rely on an unusual (for them, at least) method of travel. A reindeer, or hot air balloon, or roller skates…
Your characters are somehow forced to interrupt a funeral. One of the mourners provides them with unexpected wisdom.
Your villain becomes obsessed with knock-knock jokes. Her alarmed second-in-command plots a coup.
They unexpectedly find their dream house. And it changes everything.
Just when they couldn’t slow down, your characters get caught in a local celebration, festival, or holiday.
That terrible fear that your main character has been nursing, and having nightmares about… Yeah. If he doesn’t face it now, he’ll lose everything.
An essential character steadily refuses to talk to your main character. For reasons that no one can understand. (Yet.)
They come across a chair with magical or mythical properties. Does your character sit in it, or not?
Whatever problem your characters are facing, they cure it with salt water: sweat, or tears, or the sea.
Just when your characters thought they could relax, the roof falls in. (Or a tree limb drops. Or the tent collapses. Or the mine caves in.)
To stave off certain doom, your character has to invent an elaborate story.
A minor character falls in love with the worst sort of person for her, at the worst possible time.
The next stage of your characters’ plans are thwarted by a massive insect attack. (Ew.)
Whatever tool or skill or technology your characters were most relying on–it breaks. It stops working. It’s faulty. Now what?
Something disagreeable surfaces in your protagonist’s bowl of soup.
It turns out that all the old tales about this time of day, or this character, or this place, or this tradition, were true. And that is very bad news.
Your characters knew that they were running out of time. New information cuts their remaining time in half. This forces your characters to rely on someone they know to be untrustworthy…
If you haven’t killed off a minor character yet… do it. If you have killed one, try resurrecting him, one way or another.
And then they find an old letter, with terrible implications for them, for what they’re about to do, and who they’re up against.
Your characters (either the good guys or the bad guys) interrupt a play, concert, recital, movie, or sporting event, and demand help from the entire audience.
Someone falls: through the flooring, through the ice, into quicksand, through the stairs. Wherever they are, the ground gives way.
Something irresistible tempts your main character, but if she gives in now, she loses everything. How does she fight it?
A barrier that everyone counted on–whether physical, mental, social, financial or emotional–gives way. In the chaos, what does your character do?
Time for a natural disaster. Storm, flood, fire, earthquake, avalanche… Send your characters scrambling.
To move forward, your main character must travel to a place to which he swore he’d never return.
Your main character risks everything to save someone weaker than herself.
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