Friday, August 12, 2022

Generating Plot Twists

 Copyright 2022 by Gary L. Pullman




Plot twists, whether they occur at the beginning, the middle, or the end of a story and whether the narrative is a short story or a novel, are popular with readers. The reasons are not difficult to discern. For one thing, as research shows, everyone likes a surprise. (Check out my article on these and other findings, “10 Unusual, Little-known Facts About the Human Brain.”) For another, such twists in the storyline enrich the tale, spinning it off into new directions and, therefore, creating new possibilities.

The problem that newbie writers often face when they want to incorporate plot twists into their works in progress, is how to create them. Doing so may seem nearly impossible.

Hopefully, the pointers I introduce here will help.

 


 

To ensure that they write a full story, reporters are taught to answer six questions: Who? What? When? Where? How? And Why? In terms of fiction, these questions relate to character (who?), events or circumstances (what?), setting (when” and where?), action (how?) and cause or motive (why?) In addition to ensuring that all the elements of a plot are included in a narrative, these questions can also generate plot twists. Here are a few examples.

WHO?

Appearance: Jenny is Louis's daughter.

Twist: Jenny is Louis's wife.


Appearance: Jay is trying to kill Dawn.

Twist: Jay is protecting Dawn from a stalker who seeks to kill her.


Appearance: Jake is hired as Jasmine's bodyguard.

Twist: Jake is posing as Jasmine's bodyguard to hide the fact that he and she are having an affair.


WHAT?


Appearance: Beth's familiarization with her new house suggests that she has been there before, although she has no memory of the place.

Twist: Beth has been hypnotized so that certain sensory perceptions trigger false impressions that make the house seem familiar to her.


Appearance: John tells police that Tim pushed him down a well; a lie-detector test affirms that he is telling the truth.

Twist: John fell down the well, despite Tim's effort to prevent his fall but honestly remembers the incident incorrectly.


Appearance: Joe expects Tina to accept his marriage proposal.

Twist: Tina makes her acceptance provided that Joe will agree to an open marriage.


WHEN? and WHERE?


Appearance: Shirl is excited to be flying to an island resort with Matt.

Twist: The “resort” is actually a prison that Matt constructed for Shirl on an island he bought a year ago.


Appearance: Lynda, a world traveler, enjoys a trip to Las Vegas.

Twist: Lynda is hospitalized in a coma; her imagination is programmed with images loaded into her brain through a computer link.


Appearance: Drake leaves his house to go to work.

Twist: Outside, the Martian landscape is a bitter reminder to him that he is not on Earth, despite the suburban house in which he lives.


HOW?


Appearance: Stella, a corrupt lobbyist, bribes Senator White to vote her way on an upcoming bill.

Twist: Senator White votes the way that Stanley, a rival lobbyist, wants him to vote because Stanley paid the senator more money than Stella did.


Appearance: According to news media, government scientists have discovered a new species of lizard.

Twist: The new species is actually not a lizard but an intelligent, lizard-like creature of extraterrestrial origin that has been purposely misidentified by the government.


Appearance: Instead of taking Donna, his fare, to her destination, Luke, a “mobility service” driver, transports her to a local police precinct, where she is met by police officers.

Twist: Face-recognition software aboard the mobility service vehicle identified Donna as an escaped prisoner and discretely signaled to Luke to drive her to the precinct.


WHY?


Appearance: Wanting to have more children, Karen undergoes fertility treatments.

Twist: When she has four quintuplets, Karen is delighted; now, she will have five children, rather than one, to sell.


Appearance: JoJo, a sidewalk magician, entertains pedestrians and passersby, free of charge.

Twist: As JoJo performs tricks, his accomplice Nancy picks pockets the several of the spectators.


Appearance: Martha photographs headstones in a cemetery to post to an Internet website that maintains a database of cemetery records provided by volunteers.

Twist: Martha delivers her photographs to Thad, the warden of a voting precinct, who expresses his confidence that his candidate will win the election now underway.





Another way to generate plot twists is to provide a twist on actual news items. A good source for this approach is the News tab associated with your favorite Internet browser. (I use Firefox.) In the browser's home page's search field, type “news.” Then, click the “News” tab at the top of the page, or screen, that next appears. A list of stories' titles, each with a brief synopsis, will appear. Identify the item of interest to you and copy the synopsis shown under the item's title. Paste it into your word processing document. This is the apparent development that the reader expects as a result of having read your story (once you've written and published, released, or posted it).


Appearance: “A 49-year-old man is dead following a fight at General Motors' Orion Assembly a plant, the Oakland County Sheriff's Office confirmed.” (Source: USA Today by way of yahoo.com). (There's no need to include the source in your own plotting; I am citing it because I am writing an article, but if you do include the source of the information that you are using as a basis for developing a twist, doing so could help you to access the original story again, should you wish to do so.) I have stripped the synopsis of specifics, represented by the crossed-out words and phrases, since I need only the general situation for my own development of a story and it is best not to use specifics that you do not invent yourself, since many individuals and organizations may object to such treatment, even in fiction.

Twist: The company's annual championship martial arts event is expected to continue, as the company considers the event a good way to promote morale, when matches are “properly conducted” (i. e., the fights are “fixed”), while simultaneously eliminating “unmotivated and unsuccessful” workers among its workforce.


Appearance: “Ricky Shiffer, the [An] armed suspect in the Cincinnati [a local] FBI field office attempted break-in, was described as a "suspected domestic violent extremist," officials said. ” (Source: ABC News)

Twist: The FBI director compliments his Obfuscation Linguistics Team (OLT) for the clever invention of the new designation, "suspected domestic violent extremist," that was applied to this suspect, praising the designation as “especially effective in generating outrage and fear among the general population, even as it prejudices the suspect's alleged actions, labeling him as a dangerous threat to society before the formality of a 'fair trial.'”




A third way of generating plot twists is to identify those which have already been used by other writers and adapting them to the demands of your own story's development and needs. It is best, again to reduce specifics to generalizations; what you're after is not exactly how another writer developed a twist, but how it can be used as a general technique for generating a number of specific, but different, twists and twists for a variety of your own story, whatever your narrative's genre. Let's try a few using the Buff the Vampire Slayer television starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, which I am binge-watching now for the umpteenth time. (It's a great series for learning the writing craft.) (Maybe I will write another article, later, on “What I've Learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”)


Here's a list of some of the series' Appearances and their Twists.


Appearance: Amy Madison, a witch, uses dark magic to secure a place on Sunnydale High School's cheerleading squad.

Twist: Amy is actually her mother Catherine, who has used witchcraft to swap bodies with her daughter in order to relive the glory days of her own teenage years as a Sunnydale High School cheerleader.


Appearance: After Sunnydale High School biology teacher Dr. Gregory is murdered, he is replaced by Ms. French, a substitute teacher.

Twist: Ms. French is not a woman, but a giant praying mantis, able to take a woman's form. She killed Dr. Gregory so that she could mate with one of his biology students.


Appearance: The Order of Taraka, a group of hired assassins that includes a young woman named Kendra, seek to kill Buffy.

Twist: Kendra has seen Buffy kiss Angel, a vampire, so she mistakes Buffy for a vampire; Buffy believes that Kendra, who attacks her, is one of the assassins, when, in fact, it turns out that Kendra is also a vampire slayer.


Appearance: Buffy's mom, Joyce, dates Ted, a computer software salesman she met through an online dating website.

Twist: Ted is not a man; he's a robot that a dying man, also named Ted, had built to care for his soon-to-be widow.


Again, simply generalize these twists so that they can serve your own story, whatever its genre. For example, the first, involving the cheerleader-witch scenario, could be restated:


Appearance: To win a position against a rival, an individual cheats on a qualification test.

Twist: The cheater is actually cheating on behalf of another person who wants to acquire the position.


A second example:


Appearance: After the death of an expert, a substitute replaces him or her.

Twist: The replacement has an ulterior motive for accepting the substitute position.





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Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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