In a post on CrimeReads, Jessie Garcia offers six tips for landing a great plot twist. It’s a tricky path to walk. You want to leave hints for your readers, so they don’t feel cheated, but those clues need to be hidden carefully, so they aren’t too obvious. Garcia shares these six tips:
- The unreliable narrator. Your narrator may share information, but not everything he knows. His observations may also be shaded by his agenda or a flawed interpretation of events.
- A strong backstory. The character providing the twist needs a strong motivation, so that it makes sense to the reader. “Readers do not like it when a protagonist does something wildly out of character,” Garcia says. “It feels cheap to them, like the writer did it just for shock value rather than putting in the time to properly build the story.”
- Clues. Leave hints for the reader, but don’t beat them over the head.
- …And where to hide them. “One way to hide them in plain sight is to slip them in and around other things,” Garcia writes. Clues can be hidden in character bits or long pieces of description. You can also distract a reader with an unexpected action immediately after describing the clue.
- Make it believable. “An alien can’t just drop into your world if you have not set this up as sci-fi,” Garcia notes. “Think of things that are shocking to the reader but not so unrealistic that they lose trust in you as an author.”
- A few final tips. Make sure you tie up your loose ends. Readers will feel dissatisfied if you don’t wrap up your details. Garcia also notes that clues and twists may arise after your first draft. Minor characters also may emerge as a source for a twist. “I encourage you to give yourself permission to drop in fresh easter eggs or change trajectories as you go,” Garcia says.
