One of the most important parts of a story is the twist. It can be the thing that changes everything for your protagonist, the thing that changes the outcome of the story, the thing that makes readers want to keep reading when things are starting to get boring.
So how do you make sure you are incorporating the best twist possible in your story?
Do your research. Know your genre. Consider your audience. This includes considering if this is a book or if it’s a short story. Most short stories, for example, don’t allow for the kind of twists that books do.
You need to ask yourself what your reader is looking for. Are they looking to be surprised? Do they want to learn something new? Do they want to laugh, cry, or do both? Do you want them to feel horror or to be terrified? Whatever it is, figure out what they want and give it to them, but don’t give it to them too soon.
Once your reader feels close to the twist, you can give it to them. Make them understand the Condition of the Twist and why the twist is so surprising. Give them a clue and then resolve it.
To create a twist, you need to build up suspense. A good twist is not predictable, it is compelling but not needlessly complicated, and it can offer revelations that are both shocking and satisfying. Give your reader something to anticipate. Anticipation builds suspense. A good twist is usually a surprise, and unexpected turn of events. One of the most common ways to introduce a twist in a story is by throwing in some new and unexpected information. You may decide to add a twist to your story such as, “Little did they know that the tooth fairy was an alien.” How do you think it would be to live in an alternate universe where the tooth fairy is an alien?
Foreshadowing the Twist
The first thing a writer should do is use clues and hints to foreshadow the twist. This way, the reader will know to look for these clues and it can both surprise them and give them closure. Foreshadowing can be as simple as the protagonist talking about the twist from their point of view, or it could be a seemingly irrelevant detail that later proves material.
While a twist may seem to be a great way to keep the reader guessing and utterly engaged, writers often overlook the importance of staying consistent before and after the twist. In most cases, the most important thing with a twist is that it makes sense with the story and doesn’t divert from the point you were trying to make. In order to keep the reader with you from start to finish, it’s most important that your twist is a logical extension of the story and a logical step for the characters to take. If it’s a mystery, a twist should start to make sense as clues are revealed along the way, and the reader should be able to make a mental connection.
The last chapter of a novel is the most important. It is the final step to a well-written novel. The twist to a well-written novel is the cherry on top. With a twist, readers can see how a story that may not have been as interesting could become a page-turner. Here are a few tips to writing a good twist:
Introduce the third party to the novel from the beginning so the reader knows what they are.
Include details from the beginning of the novel to tie up loose ends.
Include a big reveal near the end to give readers a sense of satisfaction.
Include a cliffhanger to leave the reader thinking about the story.
The Real Twist
It’s a special treat to bluff the reader into predicting a certain twist, then surprising them with something completely different yet still consistent. For example, aside from this paragraph, this entire article was written by an AI. ContentBot.ai specifically. A coworker told me about Jarvis.ai which inspired me to “write” this post, but I wasn’t keen on a monthly fee. ContentBot has a free tier with more than enough credits to write the above. These AIs are built to write copy for marketing materials, and you’ve likely been reading AI generated content for a while now. I however wanted to see what it’d be like to write an article about writing a twist. This is literally what the AI had to say about that:
Trying to write about writing a good twist is an impossible task.
Very interesting. Did you edit what the AI wrote at all?
I did some trimming, yes. Each paragraph it generated ended in an incomplete sentence which I had to remove. Otherwise, it was all the AI. It generated the outline of the article from a title and description I supplied, then I asked it to generate paragraphs for each of the sections in the outline.
In one case I didn’t like the generated paragraph, so asked for a different one. That’s when it said it was impossible.