A Good Twist

I hope you all had a happy and safe Thanksgiving, and did not eat the bad Romaine lettuce.

(I am amused every time a vegetable is recalled due to food poisoning. If you're looking for an example of irony, this is it.)

Also, happy Cyber Monday! If you're looking for a good Christmas gift, may I suggest Under Locker and Key and Arts and Thefts?

 
 


















I don't know, I think they're pretty good. Great for kids who like heist stories, that's for sure!

Anyway, over the break I saw the new Fantastic Beasts movie, and I also got thinking more about heist movies after posting last week. This post is somewhat inspired by both, though not in the way you may think.

Here's my writing lesson for today:

Just because no one saw a twist coming does not mean it's good.

Just because no one saw a twist coming does not mean it's good.

Just because no one saw a twist coming DOES NOT MEAN IT'S GOOD.

Ahem.

I have to excuse good heist stories and even Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelvald from this. They actually handle their twists well. (As for my thoughts on the Grindelvald twist, it was foreshadowed well. I just didn't like it. No more now, since it's too early for spoilers, I think.)

No, what I'm talking about here is when the writer spectacularly fails to foreshadow the twist, fails to set up for it, and then yanks the rug out from under the readers' feet. And the sad thing is, too many writers and readers think this counts as a good twist.

For example, think of Frozen. How many of you saw the twist that Hans was evil coming, just based on what you saw in the film?

It wasn't set up for. Sure, you got a line about how he had twelve older brothers, but that doesn't immediately spell murderer, especially when you count in his smiles behind Anna's back, his consistency in helping the kingdom in her name, etc. His twist evil is never foreshadowed, and doesn't make a lick of sense.

But because it was a surprise, people think it's a good twist.

NO!

Another one of these was the Disney Channel movie Avalon High. The best part of that movie was the Merlin character. But the main character's identity is revealed at the end...and it wasn't set up for at all. In fact, the foreshadowing straight-up lies, telling viewers something incorrect just to prepare them for the wrong thing.

NO!

I'm sorry, this fires me up. (By the way, read the book Avalon High by Meg Cabot. That one has a good twist ending.)

Because bad twists are such a pale imitation of a good twist. A good twist does not lie to the audience. It does not come out of blazing nowhere. It's there, the whole time, just hiding and waiting. A clever audience could potentially discover it.

But they don't, and that's what makes it great. It's one thing to get jumped by a monster that didn't exist until a moment ago. It's another to be stalked the whole time, get jumped, and then understand all the clues that were there but overlooked earlier.

This happens in a great heist story: the heroes are checked and then check-mate their enemy, and we see how they did it. And then, when we rewatch the movie or reread the book, we see the preparations happening. We see how the "out-of-character" moments were part of the plan, or how everything came together. And we applaud it.

Because good twists are not easy. That's why so many rug-pulling bad ones exist. It's a difficult balance to present enough clues to the readers but not give the whole game away.

So, how to do it? Keep it natural. If a character would know something, don't suddenly start hiding their thoughts from the reader. That's lying. But it would be more natural to have that character focus on the present moment, all the problems and solutions happening now. Or, move to another character's head. Show it third-person. Movies do this well; it's harder in books. But possible.

Also, don't hide telling details without reason. In The Prestige, you see Christian Bale's character's fingers bleeding again, and you get no explanation. Until the end. But that clue was there the whole time. It would have been lying to keep it out. Kept in, a clever viewer might have caught on. The movie didn't make a big deal out of it; it was used to show character conflict. But it was there.

On that note, using clues in ways that make sense in other ways can help keep them subtle. Readers might expect a scene or detail to further character development, or show the political climate of the day. So when it is revealed to have another, hidden purpose in showing the possible ending, it's more surprising.

Or at the very least, just don't lie. Don't hide it. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, we learn Lisa's dad is the Vulture. That was not foreshadowed, but it wasn't hidden, either. We know Vulture has a kid, and we know Lisa has a dad. But there's no reason to see them together (Lisa's parents aren't home during her party, and Vulture keeps his work separate from his home life) until Peter shows up for Homecoming. This twist feels natural because it makes sense in the story, and the writers didn't deliberately force characters and plots to hide the twist until later.

Don't force a twist just because that's what the cool kids do these days. Like any part of a story, a twist should feel natural and inevitable. We just missed it growing this whole time. A good twist is a magic trick: we want to be fooled in a flashy and fun way.

But no one likes being lied to.

Heist Stories!

I'M BAAAAACK!

Two weeks of time off, and it's over. In all fairness, I could have come back and blogged last Monday, but I got hit hard with a bad cold, and last Monday it had a thriving business in my chest and throat and was opening a franchise in my nose, so all I wanted to do was sleep it off. Now, a week later, my voice is (mostly) back and so is my motivation.

Like I said, it was bad.

The social media fast was good. I learned that I can be super-productive when I'm not on social media, and I also learned that while Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media sites let you turn off notifications to your phone, Facebook not only doesn't allow you to fully turn them off, but also totally ignores your input on the ones you DID turn off.

Darn it, Facebook.

Anyway, today I want to talk about heist stories.

I don't think it's any surprise to you that I

Love

Heist stories.

On a related note, I saw Solo over the social media fast (the new Star Wars movie) and I really liked it. I was hoping for thieves in space, which was exactly what I got. It was fun and exciting and a blast to watch. I don't know why it did so badly in theaters.

I was talking about this with a friend and she said she actually liked Solo better than Ocean's 8, another heist movie. I asked why, and she said Ocean's 8 was too straight-forward. There wasn't a moment when the heroes seemed to have lost, like in Ocean's 11 or in many, many episodes of Leverage.

That got me thinking about heist stories and what we love about them. Sure, there's the element of the "bad boy" hero - the thief that we're supposed to root for, and that's a fun twist. But if that were all, then we'd be okay with something like Ocean's 8 or a simple back robbery story. We'd see thieves winning, and that would be enough.

But it's not.

There's something about a heist story that makes it different than a subverted hero trope, or even an action/adventure story. I've been thinking about it, and this is what I have decided.

The most important part of a good heist story is two powerful minds at war with each other.

It's a game of freaking chess, but with laser grids and motion sensors. And oddly enough, considering how many people might not care to watch a game of chess, that mental game is the draw.

Heist stories are all about outsmarting each other. We're not happy, as an audience, unless we see someone win through brains and planning, not by getting off a cheap escape or by pulling a gun. (By the way, I often see pulling a gun as proof that the gun-toter has lost the game.)

Player 1 has something valuable. So, Player 1 sets up the best protection they can to protect this valuable thing. No matter when the story takes place, this is always true. This can be walls, devices, guards, bribery, etc. The stronger the fortifications, the more hopeless the task to steal this, the better.

Player 2 (or "players" 2, in the case of a team) wants to get the thing, but they plan to do it in a sneaky, clever way. They have to think past all the protective walls and guards and policies to get what they want. We sit and watch them work against impossible odds, wondering how they'll do it.

But Player 1 didn't just vanish after the first play. Oh, no. They're still there, ready to counter any move they see Player 2 making. And in the best stories, they do. And Player 2 counters, and plans.

In my opinion, the best heist stories are the ones you can't see the end of. You don't know who is going to win: the mark or the thief. Even though you know who the heroes are, you don't know if they'll actually pull this off and get away with it. Even better, at the end, you actually think they lost.

But then they pull off one last sleight of hand, one last plan that proves that they were the smartest player after all. It doesn't come down to a car chase or shoot-off; it comes down to that last chessboard play when the thief knocks down the king for good, and there's nothing Player 1 can do about it.

(On a related note, I saw a stage production of The Scarlet Pimpernel this weekend as well; that's one heck of a great heist story, if set in Revolutionary France and with a very heroic "thief.")

We like the puzzle and cleverness of a heist story. We want to see how the thieves will outwit the mark. They can't just win; they have to win with style. And when that happens, and we were duped and surprised just like the mark, by the people we've been rooting for the whole story, we are delighted by it. A heist story isn't just a robbery; it's checkmate.

And it's so, so satisfying.