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Making The Plot Twist – Straightforward
I like the quote from the American novelist Jonathan Evison where the plot twist is the focus: “Limited points of view let the writer dispense - and the reader gather - information from various corners of the story. It all becomes a kind of dance, with the writer guiding the reader through the various twists and turns. The challenge is keeping readers in step, while still managing to surprise.”
Because that’s the secret, delivering the unexpected event whilst making sure your readers acknowledge that, having kept up with the story, they never saw it coming. My last few novels, mainly my British Bureau for the Arcane series, are ‘noir fantasy’ stories; detective-style mysteries that need that big surprise. I’m always super-pleased when reviews mention that surprise. It means they understood the plot yet didn’t expect the twist.
There’s always the danger the twist is contrived, made to fit an ending purely for the shock factor. Or worse, the surprise hasn’t been set up earlier in the story. It should hide in plain sight – not turn up as the long-lost brother or the identical twin sister that was never mentioned but happened to live next door.
Let’s look at some of the traditional tropes that deliver a great plot twist.
The Unreliable Narrator
Stories where the reader is misled so that the denouement is different to what was expected because of the misrepresentation. Anne Rice’s The Tale of the Body Thief is part of her Lestat series and in this story her infamous vampire lures us into believing he’s atoned, when he warns the reader not to continue because he’s about to do something awful. Patrick Rothfuss uses Kvothe as an unreliable narrator by convincing the reader he is the story’s hero. Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower describes Mawat as a fantasy-style Hamlet who must defeat his usurping uncle, a character compelled to tell the truth – except…
The hiding in plain sight element here is to convince the reader of their identity and then twist it into something else – while ensuring that “truth” has been evident all along. It’s a great premise but requires a lot of strategic writing.
The Identity Swap
Similar to the Unreliable Narrator, a character is not who they claim to be, or are two separate people who are actually the same person. It’s a popular trope in science fiction, using clones for example, as in Mirror Dance by Mark Vorkosigan, where Mark is a clone of Miles in order to carry out an assassination. Robert Heilein’s classic, Double Star, has an actor who takes the place of an unpopular politician and ends up adopting his identity completely.
The timing of the swap is vital to the story and the surprise, as is the motivation of the characters – when they’ve both known about each other presumably. Events likely dictate the swap but we mustn’t have it telegraphed in advance.
The Friend is Really the Enemy
I’ve used this trope in my last WIP to show how shared experiences can diversify into becoming very different people. Essentially, a close friend is the antagonist who discreetly sabotages the protagonists efforts to achieve their goal.
In The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, Rin and Nezha start off as friendly rivals but are driven further apart by war. I’m also reminded of Red Sister by Mark Lawrence where Nona’s friendships in the convent are slowly dismantled as her role develops. I love this trope because of the emotional baggage it carries, especially at the denouement when the friend’s treachery is discovered. It allows the author to explore the ‘baddie’ by making them something more than just evil; their motives may be driven by acceptable reasons, ones that don’t align with the protagonist.
A False Past
This trope reminds of a short story I wrote years ago about a woman who believes she’s the victim of a sequence of attacks that leave her too frightened to stay in her house. Her home has been a place of safety, where she grew up. At the end the reader discovers she’s suffering from dementia and what she sees are hallucinations and part of her deteriorating condition. The condition of the house now is completely different to what it had been to her as a girl.
My first example is a variation on this idea but such an original one. Arthur C Clarke’s wonderful Childhood’s End covers millennia but has its protagonist looking at Earth and remembering how it had once been before the psychic aliens had arrived. (Well worth reading!)
The Three-Body Problem by Ken Liu and Cixin Liu is full of plot twists but here the world as it was is not what we believed it to have been as the story progresses.
Another example where the past is drawn into question is in I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, the twist here is remarkable.
Conclusion
All of these tropes contain plot twists that need to be set up at the start and sustained throughout the story. There needs to be subtle references that the reader will miss at the time but realise (too late) provided the explanations.
It’s worth remembering writer Jim Thompson’s quote, ‘There is only one plot – things are not what they seem.’ The challenge for the writer is to hide that fact. To convince the reader of one thing while delivering another; a literary sleight-of-hand.
My question: What are your best plot twists?
Join us on BlueSky to follow up this discussion!
The Art of the Plot Twist
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I’ll be moderating a LIVE panel on this very issue on YouTube! With amazing authors, our discussion is bound to generate some fun and some insights too perhaps!
Hope you'll join us!
