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.'”
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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