In a new blog post, Janice Hardy offers advice on creating plot twists. “Readers pay attention when they don’t know what’s coming next,” she says. “Readers revel in that unexpected event or revelation that changes everything they thought they knew and takes the story to a whole new level.”
There’s no formula for writing a great plot twist, because they are story-dependent. However, Hardy says defying the reader’s expectations is key. Some things – such as the death of your protagonist – can’t happen or your story will end rather abruptly. If you can’t do the unexpected thing, do it in a way that the reader can’t predict.
“Give readers what they expect, but not in the way they expect it,” Hardy writes. She starts by considering what she would expect to happen if she were reading her own books. Once she sees the obvious paths, she continues digging for ideas the reader might not see coming. “It doesn’t take much effort to devise a list of possible outcomes readers won’t anticipate,” Hardy says. “Even if these options aren’t a true twist, they’re still less predictable than the original.”
