![]() ![]() Remember that the story’s characters can help you reveal (or withhold) information for effect. Always be aware of whatever tantalizing possibilities your early acts might intentionally (or unintentionally) promise, and make sure you deliver on them by the end. With every clue and setup, your story is making promises to the reader. If you hint that a character is a killer and then (surprise!) they aren’t, that’s a perfectly fine reveal-but you’d better make sure there’s either a real killer still lurking in the story somewhere, or you’re winding up to deliver something even better. This all comes down to keeping your promises. I believe it’s a writer’s job to ultimately give readers what they want-just never how they expect it. This is a simple point, but ignore it at your peril. It should still deliver on your promises. Crowe has been dead all along, and that’s certainly part of why it’s remembered so clearly-but it’s also a perfect conclusion to a satisfying story. Crowe has helped his final patient and made his peace to move on to the afterlife, and Cole has learned to use his gift in a positive way. It perfectly unifies the two protagonists’ arcs-Dr. It encapsulates the story and reveals all of the ice left under the surface. There’s a reason people still talk about the surprise ending of The Sixth Sense-it’s far more than a gotcha. Plot twists serve to gradually reveal the rest of the iceberg. The premise or hook is the ten percent of the iceberg visible above the surface, and the lurking, unseen ninety percent is the true story. It must expand or deepen the central conflict. The information revealed in a killer twist should cut the story closer to what it’s truly about. The clearer the reader can recall these “signposts”-and the longer they’ve been embedded in the story-the bigger the exhilaration when you circle back on them to deliver an unexpected (but fully unavoidable) revelation. A complication can be simple bad luck, but a twist is inevitable. While out-of-nowhere problems are a great way to intensify the story’s moment-to-moment suspense (I often delight in imagining things that can go wrong for the main character), it doesn’t land with the same visceral impact as a plot twist because the groundwork isn’t there. It’s also easy to mistake a complication for a twist. Just being unexpected isn’t enough (another reason why the “it was all a dream” ending is so maligned). That’s the real elegance of the magic trick-that you’ve been playing fair with your reader. It must emerge organically from what came before, and that means that all the clues should have been there. As surprising as a good plot twist is in the moment, when viewed in retrospect, it should also be foreshadowed. In my view, here’s what makes a killer plot twist. When twists fail to work as intended, the most common criticism is that they are “predictable.” And while you should always take care to misdirect readers away from anticipating your surprise beats, it’s also far from the only thing you’ll have to consider. A well-executed plot twist is all about the careful delivery of information. ![]()
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