Day 458: Crazy Twists Pt. 2

On Monday I covered the plot of 'Prey' which includes one of the best twist endings I've ever experienced. You can check out that post here. I'll be referencing it heavily throughout this post, but also some other well-known twists as well.

Usually this kind of post begins with a definition. What even is a twist ending anyway? We've all probably experienced one, but putting it into words might be a little more difficult. Here is a definition I shamelessly grabbed from Wikipedia:

A twist ending can occur as the result of information that is held until the climax and which places characters or events in a different perspective.

Putting all the events of the story in a different perspective is the crucial aspect of a twist that makes it all come together. 'But you were actually a Typhon all along!' sums up 'Prey' pretty well, but this format can be used for most every twist ending out there. 'He was actually a ghost all along!' ('The Sixth Sense'), 'The Narrator was actually Tyler all along!' ('Fight Club'), 'Ender was fighting the real aliens all along!' ('Ender's Game'), and the list goes on. Twists are really easy to identify, and the good ones are some of the most memorable and enjoyable moments in all of fiction. They generate a uniquely satisfying 'ah-ha' moment that's hard to find otherwise. Writing one though ... it's a lot harder. I've been trying to come up with a good one for years and they all seem to fall flat somehow. But I think with some help from my most recent read, 'Story Fix,' I'll take another crack at writing a good twist ending. Hopefully putting this process down will let me learn from it later, and maybe entertain you, the reader, along the way.

There are a few things I'll have to get right. First up is I need a good conceptual basis for a twist. The concept will have to be pretty flexible in order to accommodate multiple perspectives in a single plot. The more straightforward plot has to be interesting enough to keep me reading, meanwhile the twist ending's perspective needs to be lurking just beneath the surface the whole time. Like two sides of the same coin. Little ambiguous clues will bleed through from the other side throughout, and as long as they line up with the straightforward interpretation, they'll contribute to both readings. A concept like this isn't as easy to come by, and I'll have to do some serious thinking to find one.

For two, I need a protagonist with some skin in the game. This isn't unique to twists or anything, but one thing I will have to highlight is the protagonist's limited perspective. In 'Prey,' Morgan Yu has had his memories of the past several years erased, a major plot point that comes up time and time again. It puts him in this precarious state of constant realization, always finding out what he's done or where he's already been before, but forgotten. It primes the player for a huge reveal at the end by leading you on with breadcrumbs of discovery. Tiny hints of the big reveal at the end. In 'The Sixth Sense,' Malcolm's perspective is similarly limited by memory loss, but only one specific memory: his own death. His inability to communicate with his wife is another limiting factor in his ability to understand what's going on, and better yet, it also contributes to the perspective shift at the end in a big way. 'So that's why she wouldn't talk to him!'

The third big requirement is an unusually mysterious antagonist. In more straightforward stories, the antagonist gets to be easily understood. It's even imperative to fully understand who they are, why they do what they do, by at least the middle of the story, otherwise, why are would we even cheer for the protagonist in the first place? In 'Harry Potter,' Voldemort is a well-understood villain from the very first book. He's the dark lord, duh. In 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' however, the antagonist is a mystery right up until the very end for the sake of the potent twist. In fact, there are two twists, both borne of mysterious antagonists. 'Madeye Moody was the villain all along!' and 'Sirius Black was never the bad guy!' For most of the plot, Sirius's motivations for escaping Azkaban (much less his past acts of 'terror') are entirely unclear, clouded by propaganda. Madeye is a mysterious character as well, though a little closer to the chest than his foil. There are several hints throughout the story that give some clues, like the way he flicks his tongue, and how much he focuses on the dark arts in class. Every once in a while he gets caught doing something suspicious too. In his office is a Sneakoscope, which he says he had to turn off due to all the deceptive students that made it go off constantly. Of course, it was really Moody that was setting it off. Harry also catches him hovering around Snape's office, which the reader realizes later must have been him stealing the ingredients for polyjuice potion that kept him in disguise. These are clues from the other side of the coin peeking through. Harry, meanwhile, has his perspective limited by the wizarding world's propaganda against Sirius Black, and his own trauma that prevents him from analyzing Madeye's behavior objectively. I'm not sure a mysterious villain is absolutely necessary for the twist to land, but it's a trend I've noticed and am happy to follow along with.

I think with those three points in mind, I'll be able to come up with something juicy. The hardest part of twist though, is editing it. It's hard to know if a twist lands when you already know it's going to happen before the story is even begun. I do have a friend at the writing group who has read a great twist or two before. I'll have to see if has any pointers. And tomorrow I'll try my hand at plotting out a twist to round out this series.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley