Your Guide to Writing the Perfect Story

Twists: When and How to Use Them

Plot twists are an important element in all stories and you need to learn how to use them. Some novels do it well and others fail miserably. Plot twists are there to ensure that the reader can't guess the ending before it happens.In this chapter, I'll be giving you some tips on how to pull it off.

Tip #1:

Mislead your readers. Let's take a murder mystery, for example. For about the first half of the novel, keep your readers convinced that they know who committed the crime. As the tension escalates, put them in a situation that proves the person they thought was the culprit couldn't possibly be. This will put them right back at stage one and they'll be so lost, they won't know who to suspect next. Why? Because all the evidence against another person was buried by their belief that it was someone else.

Tip #2:

The calm before the storm. Have a break in your story where everything is going just fine for the protagonist (but make it brief) and then, once your reader thinks everything is getting sorted out, throw in a plot twist that will blow their mind, hence the storm.

Tip #3:

Put yourself in a readers shoes. Think up all the solutions to the problem your readers might expect and discard them from your memory. Think of the last thing you would expect to happen, and use it.

Tip #4:

Make sure that all of your twists are believable. You can do this by dropping subtle hints or vague foreshadowing leading up to it so that your readers won't guess, but they'll understand what happened.

Tip #5:

Never pull the "it was just a dream" act. Your readers will feel cheated and angry and you can bet they won't be recommending the book to any one else. However, I've seen shows and read books where it turned out that they were dead all along and that they were in the after-world, which explained all of the strange things happening to them.

Tip #6:

Don't explain things that make your readers have questions until later in the story. That way, you have the opportunity to create a plot twist they would have never anticipated out of these questions.

Tip #7:

A classic plot twist is where an important character dies that was necessary to solve the issue, leading to more conflict, or when another important character turns out to be a traitor. These are easy to play with and shock the readers every time, no matter how many times they've seen it before. However, make sure that there are motives behind a character's betrayal.

Tip #8:

Make everything not as it seems. For instance, if your character was told that their people were being taken away so they could go to somewhere safer, better, reveal that really they were being brought to a lab to have lethal experiments done on them.

Tip #9:

Give everything and everyone layers. Over the course of the story, starting peeling back the layers so that their true appearance is revealed. It should never be what a reader would guess.

Tip #10:

Give everyone a backstory. The readers only have an impression of the character in the present so their past can prove to be quite exciting and unexpected.

Tip #11:

Please don't bring any character's back to life. It's cliché and quite possibly the most groan-worthy trend in YA fiction right now. Unless the character was never seen dead, but only suspected to be, don't even attempt it. I don't care if my favourite character died; once they're gone, they're gone. Bringing them back to life as your plot twist is boring and unrealistic.

Tip #12:

For the majority of the story, have your protagonist searching for the solution to a problem, but once they solve it reveal that it wasn't the biggest issue after all.

Tip #13:

Make your character make a mistake, but don't let them realize it was a mistake at the time. That way, they will think that they've made a victory but it will turn out to be their downfall.

Tip #14:

This is a really neat plot twist that I, personally, am a huge fan of. Have an untrustworthy narrator. What this means is that you believe the protagonist is the good guy but as you go along, they start dropping subtle hints until the climax of the story, in which you realize the protagonist you believe to be good was really just telling their version of the story all along and they are actually the villain.

I once read a fantastic mystery story that switched from a couple different perspectives in the past and present tense. There were two women, let's call them Susan and Mary. Part of the story was told from Mary's perspective, to her daughter, and her friend Susan had died in an air raid long ago. In the past, the story is told from both young Mary and Susan's perspectives and at the climax, it is revealed that the older Mary was only pretending to be Mary and was actually Susan. Mary had died in the air raid and Susan wanted an escape from her old life so she pretended to be Mary in order to do so. I was so shocked at this plot twist and I never saw it coming.

Tip #15:

Remember that they are called plot twists for a reason. There can't be a big reveal that shocks your readers for a little while but the story continues to advance. It must turn the story around, so that the characters start working in a new direction towards a different goal, or they must adjust their plan so that they can reach their goal, which now seems even further away.

Tip #16:

Have a fake threat, and then when the time is right reveal the real threat, which turns out to be even worse.

Tip #17:

Have your character believe that they are moving towards their goal but then reveal that they were doing exactly what the antagonist wanted them to all along.

Those are all my tips for today. There are so many things you can do with plot twists, I can't begin to name them all. I suggest reading some articles about it because there are some really great ideas. If you are interested in seeing some great examples of twists done right, read any of Kate Morton's mystery novels -- they are fantastic reads -- and watch the show "Lost", which is also quite good. I swear, I don't think any one could ever guess the ending in Kate Morton's books and "Lost" has a plot twist in every episode, especially in the later seasons. Remember to be original and that your main goal is to surprise your readers, not give them what they anticipated. I hope this was helpful.