The Perfect Plot Twist (and Why You Should Write It)
Whether fast-paced or a slow burn, Thriller Stories are all about desperately making your readers want to know what is going to happen next. The primary tool in the thriller writer’s arsenal to achieve that is suspense - which I’ve talked about before. But another commonly used tool, so much so that it is deeply associated with the thriller genre - is the plot twist.
As you most likely know, a plot twist is a piece of information that, when revealed, causes a paradigm shift in the story: the villain’s identity isn’t who you’d think, a seemingly useless item is actually the key to saving the world, the protagonist isn’t who they or we thought they were. To be a twist, a plot element can’t just be new information, it has to be information that dramatically changes the way we see the story and/or its characters.
So, let’s talk about why plot twists are so useful to thriller writers (and writers in general) and what makes a twist good.
Why include a twist?
The simple answer to this question is shock value. But that is a word choice that carries negative connotations that isn’t exactly fair to a well-executed twist. That being said though, it’s not wrong.
When someone is reading a thriller story, they are getting hooked on the suspense. In fact, in a way, they are becoming an active participant in the telling of the story. Suspense breeds curiosity. As the reader turns the pages, they are trying to figure out the big reveal. They are consciously or unconsciously making guesses as to where the story is going and how it will end.
A well-written twist is the pay-off to that build up. In the worst case scenario (assuming the story is good), the reader gets the satisfaction of knowing they figured out the mystery. This can be a little underwhelming, but if they had to work to get there before the protagonist, it’s still a satisfying experience in its own way. In the best case scenario though, the reveal of the big twist is a shocking experience for the reader. It recontextualises the plot and characters and forces them to re-evaluate how they feel about the story. It’s not just a surprise, it’s a moment that leaves an impression.
This is more or less true regardless of where your twist appears in the story. If it appears early into the story, like Ned Stark’s death in A Song of Ice and Fire, a twist can serve to dramatically shift a reader’s expectations for what may come next - or even remove their expectations entirely. If the twist comes in the middle of the story, like the famous Darth Vader reveal, the twist serves as a paradigm shift for events going forward while also changing the context for the events leading up to the twist. If your twist is a twist ending, you leave a lasting impression on the reader by recontextualising everything they thought they knew about the story and forcing them to re-evaluate their own views on the narrative. The ending of The Sixth Sense is a particularly famous example of this. As another example, I wrote a comedic short about a woman complaining about (seemingly) her boyfriend’s lack of communication. In reality, she was lamenting how she had outgrown her pet rock.
In the case of the early and mid-narrative plot twists, it is the sudden shock of the reveal and the subsequent change in the perspective of the reader that adds to their curiosity and keeps them turning the page. Oftentimes, this is enhanced by an emotional reaction caused by being forced to change how they see a character. In the case of end story twists, the plot twist itself not only impacts the reader emotionally and intellectually by making them rethink the events of the story, it also serves as the dopamine-releasing payoff to the slow build-up of suspense through the rest of the story. Either way, a good twist leaves a lasting impression on your audience that both heightens their experience and keeps them talking about the story; a win for both reader and writer.
What makes a good twist?
In all fairness, it’s always a little difficult to define hard rules when it comes to Storytelling. There are always going to be outliers that don’t perfectly fit into any of our neat little categories that still work entirely because of the context around them. If we’re willing to generalise a bit though, I think we can mostly sum up the traits that make up a good plot twist through the following metrics: the twist is surprising, it is plausible and it is impactful.
I think the first metric is probably the most immediately obvious. Of course for a twist to be good it has to be surprising. If the twist is too openly telegraphed, you lose all the shock factor. That doesn’t mean a twist is bad if people do figure it out in advance - we have centuries of media literacy telegraphing plot beats to us at this point. However, a good twist should absolutely still catch a sizeable percentage of your audience off-guard - ideally most of them. At worst, even the people who see the twist coming should have at least a little doubt about it.
The second of our metrics is something I think some writers forget about. The twist has to make sense in the context of the story. A twist villain isn’t going to hit right if they missed a million chances to win to pad out your run time or if their motivations make no sense. A good way to achieve this is to foreshadow your story’s twist in advance. You don’t have to make it obvious, but leave behind breadcrumbs that make a lot of sense when considered retroactively. This is why a deus ex machina almost never goes over well with the audience. A deus ex machina being a sudden twist in the story that solves an issue for a character while having no foreshadowing and nothing in the world or narrative to indicate such a solution was possible. It makes that character’s success feel contrived and unearned and is just generally pretty unsatisfying.
The last metric is probably the hardest to clearly define, different people are going to feel different about the same story. As a general rule though, this just means that your story should be improved by the twist. The shock reveal should, as I said earlier, recontextualise the story. It should be a paradigm shift that has a sizable impact on your characters and story - and also your audience. Your twist should be something that the audience is still thinking about afterwards, that makes them want to pick apart the story retroactively and re-examine it. A great twist makes people who have finished the story desperate to talk about and makes people angry when it gets spoiled in advance.
That all being said though, I think it worth noting that a story doesn’t need a twist. There are some amazing stories out there that don’t have any twists in their storytelling. A twist that is or feels unnecessary or less interesting to your audience is going to go over much worse than a tightly written story with no twists. I think this is honestly why M. Night Shyamalan feels like such a hit and miss director to a lot of us. He’s made some fantastic movies - like the Sixth Sense - that are famous for incorporating some mind-bending twists. Now he seems to feel like he has to put a big, crazy twist in most of his movies when a lot of them would probably be more satisfying experiences if they were played straight.
Conclusion
A twist is a very useful tool available to storytellers, especially those of us who write a lot of thriller stories. They can serve as a satisfying pay-off to chapters of suspense building up, but can also be used as a turning point in the narrative that leaves the audience begging for details and continuing to turn pages to get them. A good twist can completely alter the way a Story feels and have a lasting impact on an audience while a bad twist can hurt a story more than it helps.
I think twists are something that seems simple on paper, but are actually more complex when you start thinking about actually executing them. Certainly, I think twists in writing are a really interesting concept to explore given how prominent they are in storytelling and how they have contributed to some of the greatest moments in literary history and popular culture.
I think I’ll be delving into plot twists more in the future, because there is definitely more I’d like to say on the subject.
