(TWIST AND SHOUT! C'MON C'MON C'MON BABY NOW...okay I'll stop, sorry.)
Alright. Plot twists. You have several different types of plot twist. The first thing to look at is what is causing the plot twist. You can have character-driven plot twists (someone decides to kill themselves, your parents buy you a puppy, etc.) or “outside forces” plot twists (your friend is killed in a car crash, there’s a tornado, etc.). If your plot twist is character-driven, make sure that their decisions make sense –– obviously if it’s a twist you don’t want to spell it out, but it should be clear in hindsight. (I talk more about character decisions in the next section.)
It's also important to consider that there are varying degrees of plot twists. There are certain ones you can't guess, but you realize that it makes sense after the fact; some that are very obvious to you as the reader (but are not as evident to the characters); and some that certain people spot right away while others don't. A good book should have some sort of mixture of this; if you think about it, what fun is a book where you always know (or conversely, never know) what is going to happen?
One example of a plot twist is a fifty-fifty split. You have half the story going one way, then something completely unexpected happens, and the other half of the story is the characters dealing with what happened. The plot twist needs to be serious to carry you through to the end of the book –– it should be your biggest climax.
Example: Looking for Alaska, by John Green. Besides this being a brilliant book (I highly recommend it) it’s literally split up into “before” and “after.” The first half of the book is made of up chapters that count down days (one hundred days before, eighty-three days before...) and the second half is the after…I would tell you the after, but that’d just ruin it.
The cool thing about a fifty-fifty split like this, when it’s executed so well, is that you have such a strong relationship with the characters that when the twist happens, you are extremely invested in their lives and how they’re affected.
Warning: When you have a big plot twist, it’s often synonymous with the climax of the story. The reason is that if it’s a good twist, it’s a big deal. So don’t go having big twists every couple of chapters –– it will decrease the shock value and confuse your readers. They won’t be able to keep things straight, and it can be hard to wrap all the ends up in a way that makes sense or makes the read a rewarding experience.
Example: (Pretend each sentence is a new chapter.) Start out with Kate, your typical girl-next-door, whose parents decide to move to China. Whoa! When she’s there she unexpectedly realizes she’s a lesbian at the Ice Capades. Double-whoa! She wins a radio contest for tickets to Hollywood. Triple-whoa! She runs into a famous model who dies in her arms from unknown causes. Quadruple-whoa! She’s forced to run away (from murder charges) on a cross country road trip with a debonaire stranger she recently met. Quintuple-whoa! She gets lost and separated from the debonaire stranger, ending up in Canada, where she has to fight a polar bear. Sextuple-whoa! She lies dying on the cold Canadian tundra and her final thoughts are “I wish my parents had never moved to China.” Septu-wait, what? It’s over.
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Writing Mistakes You're Making
RandomA self-help book for beginning writers, covering everything from grammar to plot with a dash of humor to keep you interested and learning! (The best part? Anything you already know, you can just skip over.)
