Lost Change

Bonus Chapter - Change Rejected

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Author's Note - 'Stab, Twist'.

One thing that I really, really love as a reader is something I call the 'stab twist'.  Twists are always fun and keep the story interesting - "Oh, you thought the story was almost over?  That it was just a straight shot to the happy ending?  Surprise, the bad guy just offered the morally dubious character money to betray everybody, and what a twist, he took it and stole the MacGuffin!  Didn't see that one coming, did you!  Now there's more to the story, where our heroes have to go after their once-companion to recapture the victory you thought they almost had."  Twists are unexpected bits of fun that keep the story interesting.

But there's a special kind of twist that goes beyond that.  This is a twist that not only changes how the story will go from that point, but changes everything in the story before that point, and does so in a way that hurts.  This is the 'No, I am your father" line, where suddenly the evil cyborg that had chased after Luke Skywalker and killed his friends, killed his adoptive families, and tried to kill him... is actually the father Luke had been looking for all his life - and what's more, some of the characters had known about it all along.  It's the revelation in Unbreakable that the wheelchair-bound mentor figure to Bruce Willis' character, the person who had been guiding him as he discovered he had superpowers and teaching him the ins and outs of being a superhero... is actually his nemesis, a supervillain in his own right, and that he had been manipulating everything from the very beginning.  Or that the main character in Sixth Sense was actually dead the entire time, changing every interaction in the movie before then.

And I like it even more when the twist is so heart wrenching that you just want to give everyone involved a hug.  The revelation in The Last Airbender that the mentor figure to Zuko, the wise General Iroh that was always there to help him, that was always so concerned with his own well being and happiness, and who was always playing that song... ... ...had failed and lost his own son, and that his guilt and sorrow over that was a major part of everything we had watched him do up to that point.  And that the lyrics to his song hurt.

It's the kind of twist that means you have to go back and rewatch the movie or reread the book, because even though you experienced one story, there was a second story going along right beneath your nose that you missed.  Jim Butcher, one of my favorite writers, is really good at this when he pulls one - his Dresden Files series has a few, and the book Ghost Story has a really good one.

I love those twists.  Twists that completely change everything you thought you knew about a character - their motivations, what they hope will happen and what they fear could happen and are desperate to avoid, the things that make them sad and cause them to suddenly go quiet.  Even the very reason they decided to help the main character in the first place.  Big surprises that you don't see coming at all, but which you find had little hints and foreshadowing about right in front of you all along.  The first time a reader experiences the story those things can seem explainable for other reasons... but after the twist, after you know what the character has really been through... then those little hints suddenly mean so much more.

Because I'm such a fan of them I'm always wondering how I can work one into my own stories, and Lost Change was no exception.  As I wrote through I kept thinking about the different characters, and what surprise revelations might change how a reader would come to view all of that character's interactions with Nate.  Minna was an obvious choice - as the main figure in his life, and because a huge focus of the story was around Nate coming to forgive Minna.  If Nate learned something surprising about Minna, it could have easily helped with that, and provided that 'everything you read before this point actually meant something different' twist that I love.