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.