21.36: Twists: How to Make the Unexpected Feel Inevitable

0:00 [SPEAKER_01]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends. [SPEAKER_01]: If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com slash writing excuses. [SPEAKER_01]: Season 21, episode 36. [SPEAKER_01]: This is writing excuses. [SPEAKER_02]: Twists, how to make the unexpected feel inevitable.

0:25 [SPEAKER_02]: Tools not rules for writers, by-writers. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Mary Rebenett. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Don Lawn. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Erin, and I'm Howard. [SPEAKER_02]: This week we are talking about one of the most hotly contested topics I think in any kind of narrative, which is how to do a twist.

0:42 [SPEAKER_02]: when you get it right, everyone loves it, when you have a surprising element that comes in at the end, and it feels like this is how it was always gonna happen, but you didn't see it coming. [SPEAKER_02]: I think a twist is something that people reach for a lot and in its failure states can either be very expected and therefore not that exciting or feel incredibly random and therefore, [SPEAKER_02]: You're disappointing in a very different direction, where it just feels like a Deus Ex Machina or unconnected everything else that's happening.

1:17 [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to toss this to the rest of the crew. [SPEAKER_02]: How do you all think about setting up a twist? [SPEAKER_02]: So it feels like it was always going to happen that way without people seeing it coming? [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to say a thing that is going to probably put people into despair, which is that my best twists are ones that I did not plan.

1:37 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, where I was setting up something else, and so you can, you can deconstruct this and figure out how to do it when you want to, which is that I was setting up something else and I was aiming for a particular trajectory, and then as I'm writing, realize I've got all of these other elements that are on the page that work these ingredients, and I'm like, oh, secretly, she's been a duck the entire time.

2:06 [SPEAKER_03]: I like that approach, just the idea that I know I'm going to twist, I just don't know exactly how, so I'm going to put [SPEAKER_03]: the things in the story that need to be in this story plus maybe some extras and then we'll figure out where the twist is and we have to, you know, edit and print later.

2:25 [SPEAKER_03]: I love that approach. [SPEAKER_03]: The approach that I don't like is the one that I got from a fellow comic book panel us to decade and a half ago where he said, yeah, I'd read the letters in the back of the, you know, letter and anybody who had guessed how my series was going to end. [SPEAKER_03]: I decided if that if that was one of my [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm really listening that and thinking, okay, I mean, but you guys were getting the email weekly.

2:53 [SPEAKER_03]: You were weekly, you were having people guess at the end of your story and if somebody got it right, you just had to can the whole thing. [SPEAKER_03]: I will allow myself. [SPEAKER_03]: for some readers to figure it out. [SPEAKER_03]: I do not have to be, I have never been. [SPEAKER_03]: The smartest person in the room, you know, but I don't have to outwit all of my readers.

3:18 [SPEAKER_02]: I actually think the most masterful execution of a twist is when the reader figures it out half a second before your protagonist do. [SPEAKER_02]: You want your reader to feel smart. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't want them to be completely surprised. [SPEAKER_02]: You want them to go, oh my God, [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that is the most satisfying experience.

3:38 [SPEAKER_02]: I think Ryan Johnson and his glass onion and knives out movies nails this vibe perfectly. [SPEAKER_02]: He's very good at setting things up in a way that you get it right before it happens. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, in the horror genre, it's critical that that happened, so that, you know, you're imagining, as you're reading, what's the worst thing that could happen to these characters, and then the surprising but inevitable comes to you, the reader, and this huge sense of dread, which accompanies you on the page turned to when you find out you're right.

4:12 [SPEAKER_02]: Just talk about a show that recently came out when we were recording this, which is Widow's Bay. [SPEAKER_02]: There is a thing that we do at one point in that show, which is a significant twist. [SPEAKER_02]: and everyone I've talked to figured it out in an entire episode before, and they make you sit in a conversation for at least 30 minutes of the next episode where you know what the twist is, but they're just not giving it to you in a way that is beautifully done.

4:37 [SPEAKER_02]: They do it just long enough that I go, maybe I am wrong, and then you're right. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that points to one of the things that twist can do well. [SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, I think that [SPEAKER_00]: An ideal twist to me is one in which the story works with the twist and without it, where the twist is not holding up the story like the only reason this is a great thing is because you didn't see this coming.

5:02 [SPEAKER_00]: I read a story recently that had like an absolutely masterful twist and sadly not out yet, but it is like [SPEAKER_00]: What's great about it is all the elements are there. [SPEAKER_00]: They're just hidden. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think first of all is a lot of misdirection. [SPEAKER_00]: You can have, you know, there's like an obvious interpretation of what's going on.

5:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And then the story does the thing that is the, I would have never thought of that interpretation what's going on. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very similar to how a lot of really great humor works. [SPEAKER_00]: where you go for the thing that the audience is thinking and then you go slightly off from that, but they're like, I see how you got there.

5:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But also I read the story and I did not get the twist the first time. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was not the careful reader. [SPEAKER_00]: And when I got it, it was hilarious. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I re-read the story and loved it just as much for seeing all the moments I had missed that were obvious clues in retrospect to where it was going, but just made the story so much more delightful.

5:52 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think that that's really the key is, especially if you want people to do re-re-re that if you write a book or a story that only works when people read it once, then that's not going to be satisfying, but if the second time through, if that twist adds another element of tension, whether because you get to enjoy the ha ha, see how clever they are, or because you're like, oh no, doesn't anyone see this?

6:20 [SPEAKER_01]: then for the people who guess the twist before they get there, they're getting that tension. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're thinking about it as a backbone of tension, in addition to the, aha, look how clever I is the writer am. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the failure mode of a twist. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

6:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Is when you are writing it not for an emotional punch for the characters, but for the reader to go, look how clever that writer is. [SPEAKER_03]: Two excellent twists that we've seen in cinema in the last 30 years. [SPEAKER_03]: One is the sixth sense, and we come back to that because that was Shalom's trademark, or practically.

7:09 [SPEAKER_03]: And then the Matrix. [SPEAKER_03]: from, I think, few years later, yeah, I think so. [SPEAKER_03]: I remember the time. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember the timing, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Point is, in both cases, our protagonist realizes that they are not in the real world. [SPEAKER_03]: Bruce Willis discovers he's a ghost and Neo discovers he's a derousel battery.

7:34 [SPEAKER_03]: Spoilers for 27-year-old movies. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a real man. [SPEAKER_03]: But here's the thing, I have watched sixth sense twice, I will watch the matrix any old time it's on and that's because sixth sense completely depended on that twist and invited me to go back and watch it again to see if I could spot the clues and be clever this time.

8:06 [SPEAKER_03]: gave the twist, expand it, you know, this whole world view, and when I watch it again, well, yeah, I just have the expanded worldview. [SPEAKER_03]: Now, I'm going to watch the bullet time over and over. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's, it's fascinating to me how they're both really good twists.

8:23 [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a, I learned about the twist since we're talking about things from last century, from a writer. [SPEAKER_01]: That was an act of cruelty saying it that way. [SPEAKER_00]: My bones. [SPEAKER_01]: Did I earn it? [SPEAKER_01]: I earned it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

8:41 [SPEAKER_01]: So, but I seriously learned about this from a writer from the 1910s, which was Oh Henry. [SPEAKER_01]: And most people know him from the gift of the magic. [SPEAKER_01]: But people don't realize this. [SPEAKER_01]: He was an incredibly prolific short story writer. [SPEAKER_01]: And what he was known for was that all of his stories have a twist.

9:00 [SPEAKER_01]: The thing that he did was that the twist causes you to re-contextualize everything that came before that. [SPEAKER_01]: And that I think is one of the keys is like, how does it make you view things differently? [SPEAKER_01]: Not just, oh, I didn't expect this, but how does this make you view things differently?

9:19 [SPEAKER_01]: So when you look at the gift of the Magi, which has been remade and it's this young couple and she's a pianist and he, I can't remember what his fancy job was, but [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, but they both are like, yes, I'm going to my work today and it turns out he's actually had to take a job doing boiler make boiler repairs and she is working as a scholarly made and they sell.

9:50 [SPEAKER_01]: their most precious possessions, each of them, in order to buy Christmas presents that are the Christmas presents that like she buys him a watch fob for the watch that he is sold in order to buy her that the comes for her hair. [SPEAKER_01]: But people don't notice when they talk about this or forget when they're talking about that.

10:08 [SPEAKER_01]: They talk about the [SPEAKER_01]: The reason they realize that she has a burn on her arm and he knows he realizes that she got her arm burned as a scullery made because he was working in the boiler room and had to send a degree soak drag for that, for that, made who had been burned and he realizes, oh my god, that's my wife.

10:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And so they re-contextualizes everything that they both [SPEAKER_01]: that they haven't had this fancy job the entire time, but they are so in love with each other that that love continues as the through line. [SPEAKER_01]: And so anyway, oh Henry is really great, but I think it's that the point is that that that that re-contextualization does re-contextualize is not just that single thread of the twist line, but also everything that connects to it.

11:08 [SPEAKER_02]: The thing we've been circling around in all those conversations is reader expectation and how to play with reader expectations. [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to take a break when we come back. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to talk more about expectation and how that dull tales with your character motivations.

11:24 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, before the break, we've been talking about twists and how to make them feel inevitable, and the thing that kept coming up was audience expectation. [SPEAKER_02]: What is the audience think of the story is, what do they think is about to happen? [SPEAKER_02]: And then how do you reveal that what they thought wasn't, but also is connected to what's been happening all along, that re-contextualization that Mary Rubinette was talking about.

11:47 [SPEAKER_02]: For me, how I think about that a lot of times, I mean, when I'm setting up a twist, when I'm doing creative work is usually in a GM in context, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So, it's an interesting thing because I have to plan the twist ahead of time, but how we get to that point. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm doing the opposite of what you're doing, mirror up in it, which is you're setting up plot points, and then I get the Christie like realizing what the twist is, halfway through.

12:08 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm kind of setting a twist out as a destination somewhere down the road, and then we're improving our way to that point, [SPEAKER_02]: So the way that I have to do that is to play with character motivations. [SPEAKER_02]: What am I, characters want, what am I villains want, and then how do I get those two intersecting away that will feel really surprising for the players?

12:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I have, I do have twists that I have plotted, but, but I was also just recently on a panel where we were talking about twists and all of us were like, yeah, my best one's just happened. [SPEAKER_01]: But when I planned them, for instance, without telling you which book in one of the novels I killed someone.

12:51 [SPEAKER_01]: And I knew from the beginning that I was going to kill them. [SPEAKER_01]: But the arc that I set up was not the... [SPEAKER_01]: You know when you're watching a film and you're like, oh, okay, sorry, that person's dead. [SPEAKER_01]: Look how happy they are. [SPEAKER_01]: But if you set up a, what I did was I set up an argument arc.

13:08 [SPEAKER_01]: And so the obvious thing that was going to happen was that they were going to drift apart and they were going to come back together and the resolution of that arc was them reconciling their differences. [SPEAKER_01]: And I truncated. [SPEAKER_01]: So, I don't set up the, we're so in love, I interrupt the, um, an arc that is planned that I make very clear and very obvious to the reader.

13:31 [SPEAKER_01]: This is, this is the journey that we are on. [SPEAKER_01]: We are on a reconciliation journey. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I, then I, I just murder someone. [SPEAKER_00]: always the solution to it. [SPEAKER_00]: I, it's funny because we're talking a lot about twist on sort of a macro level because we're talking about structures, but I always often think of them on a micro level because I love to play with unreliable narrators where they're like, it's not necessarily a twist so much as [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you don't realize this person's true motivations or you don't realize what this person is truly about and so I just wanted to share in the spirit of tools not rules a couple of like micro things that help me as I'm trying to like create this kind of arc or set these kind of things one is to play with aware like actual information that would help you discern the twist.

14:19 [SPEAKER_00]: or the information is within a paragraph or page. [SPEAKER_00]: Humans really are into primacy and resenciate. [SPEAKER_00]: We tend to remember the first thing and the last thing. [SPEAKER_00]: So last lines of paragraphs and pages and first lines, really stick with us. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you have something you want to hide, it's always great to put it in the middle.

14:36 [SPEAKER_00]: This is also true of sentences. [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a list of several items and something important is like the third from the last, a lot of times people will just get into, [SPEAKER_00]: not fully skim it but kind of get into like okay okay i see what this list is and not pay as much attention to the individual items so you can sort of like hide them in there and i think a lot of this has to do with like focus like where you there you know you're where you're directing focus in a film you can actually [SPEAKER_00]: miss focus put something out of focus that you don't want people to pay attention to and in focus zoom in on what you want them to even if that isn't the important thing but we can do this as writers as well by really putting more description towards an item that isn't as important because if it has a lot of adjectives or lush description we draw focus and then take something that isn't as important kind of downplay it by not making it as not making giving it the amount of richness because the richness will come from the context that is driven by the twist that you read later.

15:35 [SPEAKER_02]: I think of this as overwhelming the reader with detail, right? [SPEAKER_02]: You describe a bunch of things, or you give up a bunch of different information. [SPEAKER_02]: Half of it is not relevant, half of it leads directly into the thing. [SPEAKER_02]: I think the other thing that you can do to sort of, in a microwave set up, these reveals is a lie to your readers, right?

15:52 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's really important that you, the narrator, you, the writer are not lying to your audience, but you have a character, misdirector. [SPEAKER_02]: So when you reveal information, somebody says, oh, yes, of course, that was because somebody did XYZ, which has nothing to do with anything.

16:09 [SPEAKER_02]: That person is just wrong. [SPEAKER_02]: You can have a character be wrong and a scene, and then that will lead your readers down one direction when really what's happening in another direction. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's a way to give people information. [SPEAKER_02]: You also have to show that the person who was wrong is an idiot in some way, or, you know, said, they have a real reason for thinking that.

16:27 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: It's helpful to, for me anyway, to categorize a plot twist at a high level and like simple stuff, friend is an enemy, enemy is a friend. [SPEAKER_03]: Truth is a lie, a lie is the truth. [SPEAKER_03]: just thinking about it at that high level and say, oh, enemy is a friend.

16:50 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh goodness. [SPEAKER_03]: Wow, that gives me a whole jost by having the category handy. [SPEAKER_03]: The last one is that I could think of was world-building and it's very very, very general and all I could think of to say was MacMuffin is a MacGuffin. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, something about the world building is not what we thought it was.

17:09 [SPEAKER_03]: Something unimportant is magical, or something magical is useless. [SPEAKER_03]: But. [SPEAKER_03]: Like I said, that category is early days. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think one thing that is really important in all of this is connecting your twist to character motivations, right? [SPEAKER_02]: What your protagonist want and what your antagonist want and the way that those move in different directions and the way that the twist should reveal something that the protagonist, your POV character, didn't understand about the forces that oppose them and what they want.

17:43 [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think the best twists are ones. [SPEAKER_02]: The reason the matrix twists works better than the six cents twist, right? [SPEAKER_02]: The sixth cent is famous for a rug pull moment, but it's not narratively satisfying in a rich way. [SPEAKER_02]: The way the matrix one is, because what the matrix one does is it reveals, here's what the heroes want, and here's what the villains want, and how diametrically opposed they are.

18:01 [SPEAKER_02]: And then that changes the status, and then the whole [SPEAKER_02]: back half the movie is contending with that versus success is just that oh my god and now the movie's over so i think what you really want is a re-contextualization in that moment that echoes back through the story and that means i care from motivations have to be aligned in a way that connect with them.

18:22 [SPEAKER_00]: That's interesting, because I think twist can sort of be seated in the world or seated in the characters. [SPEAKER_00]: So you can have the character, isn't what who I thought they were like type of moment in which it turns out that probably you understood their motivations, but not the actual thing they were trying to get to.

18:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted love, but I wanted it by killing everyone in the room is a very different motivation than I wanted love by hugging everyone in the room. [SPEAKER_00]: And since those are both physical actions, you could write a story in which you think, [SPEAKER_00]: a very weird story like a character is going in for a group hug but it's murder uh and so please write that story someone out there [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have to.

18:59 [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to Aaron's Freestory ideas. [SPEAKER_00]: Good luck. [SPEAKER_00]: But you can also have something where, and I think this is more typical, especially in the movie world where a lot of what we're seeing is externalized is like we're talking about the motivations and the character remains the same.

19:13 [SPEAKER_00]: But they're understanding of the world around them shifts radically and they then have to understand how to re-seat their motivation in this new world. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a misunderstanding of the systems that they're embedded in, right? [SPEAKER_02]: where you realize, oh, the magic is different than I thought.

19:30 [SPEAKER_02]: And that says something about how we thought the world worked and how my character was interacting with that world. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think if you don't have an antagonist involved in the twist and it's more the world respond or them understanding the world in a different way, I think that still has to connect with ideally or ideologically what your POV character hoped the world was and now they're realizing something different.

19:54 [SPEAKER_02]: Or vice versa. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, as you were talking, you made me think about another category of twist, which is the twist that happens in a heist, which is that all of the characters are in on the twist, but the reader is not, and and that is the thing where you have to have or or eight.

20:18 [SPEAKER_01]: a thing that I have found, I guess, a tool that I have found is that the giving the character something else to worry about, that still points at the problem, but points at it in a way that the reader thinks that they understand a different thing. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a form of lying to the reader, [SPEAKER_01]: If I used a situation where there was a magic system known as a danger of having a seizure and so when a character goes through the motions of faking a seizure, [SPEAKER_01]: the reader does not know that they're faking it.

21:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I have set up the entire time. [SPEAKER_01]: This is a dangerous thing that might happen as a result of doing this. [SPEAKER_01]: And so the reader believes that they understand what is happening. [SPEAKER_01]: And my character's reaction is, this is this is the sound out of her nightmares.

21:17 [SPEAKER_01]: which is true. [SPEAKER_01]: I have not lied to them at any point, but I have pointed all of my all of the things that I've pointed at are look over here and instead of this is the thing that's happening. [SPEAKER_02]: I think the role of Julia Roberts in Oceans 11 is a great example of this because it gives Danny Oceans a different motive other than just pulling off the heist and so at parts in that movie we just think oh he's going off script he's leaving the heist behind going after his own personal goals [SPEAKER_02]: But really what's happening is this is all part of the plan.

21:53 [SPEAKER_02]: This is all connecting. [SPEAKER_02]: What he's doing is deceiving the villain who's name I'm forgetting. [SPEAKER_02]: He's deceiving that character and us at the same time. [SPEAKER_02]: And then it puts us in the seat of everyone around any ocean, which then is the joyful reveal at the end of like, oh, this is all connected.

22:11 [SPEAKER_02]: And he's going to get the girl again, spoilers. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, I feel like we should put on this episode, caution old people, spoilers. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes, 20th century spoilers. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think maybe we should go ahead and leave it there that was a really fun conversation about how to set these things up.

22:33 [SPEAKER_02]: So I have a little bit of homework for you, which is putting this into practice. [SPEAKER_02]: If your work in progress has a twist in it, what I want you to do is write out all the logical steps that lead up to that reveal. [SPEAKER_02]: How do you get there as a writer? [SPEAKER_02]: Why did you put this into place?

22:51 [SPEAKER_02]: So put all those out. [SPEAKER_02]: and then take that list and begin to remove details until you reach the breaking point where your twist no longer makes sense. [SPEAKER_02]: What can you take out that isn't load bearing? [SPEAKER_02]: Play around with this, take some out, see if that works, and then swap some back in, right?

23:09 [SPEAKER_02]: And until you can find the breaking point of that, and then see if that's a better way to structure your reveal in the story. [SPEAKER_01]: This has been writing excuses. [SPEAKER_01]: You're out of excuses, now go right. [SPEAKER_01]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends.

23:28 [SPEAKER_01]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dong Wan Song, Erin Roberts and Howard Taylor. [SPEAKER_01]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds. [SPEAKER_01]: For more information, visit writing excuses.com.