Plot twists are used when telling just about any type of story, but more often than not, they’re used ineffectively. If your plot twist is too predictable and can be seen coming from a mile away, it’s pretty worthless as far as adding any type of intrigue to your story goes.

The best plot twist is an unexpected one. This means something happens that the reader could in no way infer was going to happen, or perhaps a change in the story that might not have been completely unexpected, but occurred at a completely unexpected time in the story.

But, unless you’re really looking to write something completely abstract, moderation is the key. Once you think of a good way to put a twist in your story, the best thing is to map the entire thing out and see if you can make it work in a way that’s still believable and plausible.

▨ The Art Creating Plot Twists ▨

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▨ Creating Plot Twists ▨

- writeitsideways and janicehardy

• Brainstorming

Sometimes it's good to just free think and see what you can come up with. What is the most obvious thing to do in a scene? Scrap that idea. Now what's the least likely thing to happen? Most times, you can scrap that idea, too, because it's so far off in left field it won't work for the book. But it usually loosens your brain enough that you start thinking about things that are unexpected, but no so far off. Really brainstorm, and don't think about practicality at this point. When something grabs you, then start seeing how it fits into your scene and plot. Don't discard something because it doesn't fit or would require a lot of revisions. Let it simmer and see if something develops from it. A great twist is a surprise, and if it was an obvious fit odds are it wouldn't be a twist.

• Revealing a Secret

You can also surprise readers by revealing info that ties into the problem. You may have your protagonist resolve this issue exactly as the reader expects, but you slip in a major secret or detail that blows their mind and changes the meaning of the events they just saw. So what they expected, isn't at all what is really going on.

• Making it Worse

Ask the delightful, "what's the worst than can happen?" question on a variety of levels. What's the worst thing for the scene? For the current goal? For theprotagonist's inner goal? For the protagonist's flaw or weakness? For asecondary character that's important to the protagonist? For the antagonist? The "worst thing" might not be an external physical thing about to hurt the hero. It might be something that tears their world view apart, or shatters their beliefs or makes them doubt something they always trusted. It might be having to choose between them and a friend or loved one. What ways can you rip your protagonist apart emotionally as well as physically?
 

• Exposing a Liar

Is anyone not who the reader thinks they are? An unexpected betrayal can surprise the reader and change expectations. Or someone who's been lying about information the protagonist thought was reliable. Or maybe theprotagonist has been lying and is finally forced to fess up.

• Letting Them Lose

You can even do the unthinkable and let the hero lose and the bad guy win. Everything they've been fighting for is gone and now they have to regroup and find a way to go on. This is an extra sticky one though, because it can be easy to make your reader feel like everything they just read was pointless. Make sure that even when you let the protagonist lose, what they went through to get there still has meaning and wasn't a waste of the reader's time.

There are lots of ways to defy expectations if you spend time thinking about it. You can even ask your friends or critique partners what they think would happen next in X situation.

Then you can do stuff they won't expect.

• Give it an open ending

Not necessarily the easiest, but one of the most practical plot twists is the ambiguous ending. It is a good one to use if you don’t want your overall storytelling to be affected by your plot twist too much.

When you leave a story open ended, this means you don’t explain how the story ends, but rather, you leave it up to the imagination of the reader.

The audience doesn’t know what happened to the characters in the end, but based on the story and what has occurred thus far, they can wager a guess and infer an ending in order to satisfy their need to tie up the loose ends in their minds.

• Use an untrustworthy narrator

This is a great technique to use because people are often conditioned to take the narrator’s word when reading a story. The narrator is the perfect character to use in order to confuse the reader, and maybe give them hints and suggestions that will lead them to a completely different conclusion from the one that you are setting up for your plot twist.

If you are going to use this method, however, it’s important to not make it glaringly obvious that the narrator is untrustworthy in telling the story. You should be foreshadowing it subtly, but the story that the narrator is telling must also be completely believable.

When used effectively, the reader will be very surprised at the plot twist, but will also have a feeling of “I should have seen it coming,” as well.

• Reverse character roles

A pretty straightforward approach, this is when your plot twist consists of either the hero turning into the villain or vice versa.

Sometimes it comes off forced when the character becomes a polar opposite of what he or she has been throughout the story, so it is best to give these characters some traits that would make their transitions believable.

• Throw your reader into the mix

A good way to make plot twists work well is by starting the storytelling in the middle of some type of . When you do this, you are giving the reader an immediately intriguing plot that could really go anywhere, because there is no backstory to reference.

The lack of prior information about the situation given to the reader gives the writer a lot of freedom with the plot twists that he or she plans.

• Try an unexpected kill

Your readers might hate you for a short while, but this technique provides an unexpected plot twist.

Killing off one of the main characters in the middle of the story is something that always comes as unexpected. Readers pick up on who the key characters are early in the story if they are well-developed, and they attach to these characters early on in the story.

Having one of these main characters die really twists things into an unexpected direction, because the reader is already looking forward to what will happen to this character at the end of the story. Finding out that this character will not be playing any type of role in the story’s ending is always a good shock for the reader.

These are only a few suggestions. There are many other great ways to introduce plot twists into your stories, which can help you to take your writing into a completely new direction.

▨ Plot Twists Don'ts ▨

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• The author telegraphs every clue so that the reader has to be completely dense to miss it: It’s so hard to get those clues subtle enough that the average reader won’t know what’s coming, I know.  But when you’re making them so obvious, nobody’s going to miss them. 
• Absolutely no clues are given:  This is just cheating.  Readers need to have the opportunity to figure out the plot twists.  So the author needs to give hints, no matter how subtle, so that the readers could potentially have figured it out.  This also adds to the experience by the reader looking back (or rereading) and saying, “OMG, how could I not have seen it?”  Another reason to avoid this is that it looks like the author just suddenly decided, “Oh, I need a plot twist,” halfway through the book and threw one in.
• The novel depends on the plot twist being a surprise: This is where the novel has ho-hum characters or plot, but it promised great tension.  Only, because you figured out the plot twist on page two, the tension fizzles out and the has no punch.
• The clues are just as obvious on page 2 as they are right before the big reveal: Maybe this is just me, but while I love being able to guess a good plot twist, I don’t want to guess it in the first chapter.  I love when the hints become slightly more hinty as we approach the reveal.  
• “I’ve seen this plot twist before”:  Yeah, if the villain turns out to be the Main Character’s father, the reader has seen it before, and it’s unlikely they’re going to be shocked by it.
• The author’s plot twists are all similarly structured:  For example, if an author always puts the location of the hidden treasure in a famous site that they mention in the first chapter, it’s not going to shock the reader in the next book of theirs.  “Gee, I don’t even know what they’re looking for yet, but I bet it’s hidden somewhere in the Eiffel Tower.”  If the villain is the Main Character’s best friend in the author’s first book, we won’t be surprised if it’s the best friend in the second book.