Here at Honeycomb Author Services, we have a story we're creating throughout our blog posts. So if you're new here or just want a refresher, here is our story's synopsis!
Now onto the episode!
Gabrielle here!
I have a soft spot for characters with mysterious backstories. That, or really any kind of secret. Anytime an event or person isn’t what they seem, I’m immediately hooked. But sometimes I’m really into a story and thus binge watch or read it, and then the answer to all my questions comes, and it sucks. It either wrecks a cool part of the story, or makes a character look dumb, or just doesn’t make sense. But how does this happen? How can a plot point start out seeming so cool and intriguing only to fail at the last possible moment? And how can us writers avoid ruining our plots? I’ve got a couple of thoughts about this, so let’s jump into it.
The Risks of Bad Plot Twists
But Gabrielle, you may be wondering, how bad can it really be? If a plot twist comes at the end, wouldn’t it only wreck the last few chapters? Well, brilliant bee, discounting the fact that the ending is often the most important part of the story, a bad plot twist can affect a lot more than the ending.
Re-Readability
Bad plot twists ruin re-readability. Imagine the reader loves your story all the way up to the plot twist, and one day they decide to re-read the story to relive their favorite moments. But while they’re reading, they run into the parts of the story that hint towards the twist. Instead of being intrigued, they’ll likely groan or be disappointed now that they know what those hints are leading toward. Instead of drawing them in, the intrigue pushes them away.
For example, imagine we spent the whole story building up the battle between Honey and the Unraveler. She learns the prophecy and hesitantly decides to try to save the world. She works alongside Hunter and Prince Jonathon to fix the world while things grow more and more dire. Finally, Honey stands before the Unraveler alone as reality falls apart, desperate to fix her broken world. And then the Unraveler was killed by a herd of stampeding zombie cows. Is that shocking? Absolutely. Is that a good twist? No, of course it’s not. It came out of nowhere and makes everything Honey did throughout the story seem stupid in retrospect. If the reader ever returns to The Threadborne Throne, all they’ll be able to think about are the stupid zombie cows.
Intrigue
Bad plot twists can also make the story less interesting. A general rule I have is if the untwisted version of the story is more interesting than the twisted one, the plot twist needs more work. A plot twist should make the story more compelling; the audience doesn’t need to like what happens (an ally being revealed as an enemy may make your readers cry, but it raises the stakes in an interesting way), but they need to be invested.
Imagine the same conflict as before. Honey vs. the Unraveler and the fate of the world is at stake. Honey has accepted the prophecy and is working to develop her powers. Then suddenly Hunter and Prince Jonathon gain the power to weave the world together too and they all work together to fix things. Is this surprising? Yeah. Is this a good twist? No, it contradicts everything that’s been set up so far. The intrigue and tension of the story involves Honey having to choose to save the world. She doesn’t want to be a hero, but her arc is all about making the difficult choice to abandon her simple life for the sake of others. That conflict is undercut and made less interesting if Prince Jonathon and Hunter suddenly gain superpowers.
The key to a satisfying plot twist is well-crafted foreshadowing, so we’re going to talk about my three favorite foreshadowing techniques you can add to your story.
Technique #1: Breadcrumbs
The title of this comes from our own Brianna De Man. This technique involves planting small bits of information throughout the story that point to the twist. These don’t need to be large things. It’s called breadcrumbs, not stray loaves. You don’t need to write characters having vague conversations, playing the pronoun game and all that. Your character can just notice another character wearing a specific piece of jewelry, or a character knowing a piece of information that they probably shouldn’t know under normal circumstances, or two characters seeming more or less familiar than they should. You don’t need to dwell on these moments. The idea is to fill this story with small moments that one their own don’t amount to much, but together create a big ol’ slice of plot bread.
Like we said earlier, our big twist is that Honey is the chosen one to defeat the Unraveler. In one chapter, Honey can demonstrate an aptitude for fixing unraveled tapestries.
This is a simple example and seems just to be developing her characterization and skills, but it’s also setting up her eventual role as the Weaver.
We can get even a little metaphysical here. Honey is the Weaver; her cosmetic duty is to repair what’s been broken. So she can fix things or attempt to fix things in other ways leading up to the reveal. Back in Ilverseed, she can help mend the strained relationship between her friends, and by going after her brother is a method of “fixing” her family. Since this is a written medium, we can play with the language a lot too by using sewing or repairing language.
Technique #2: Context
This technique is very rooted in the characters. With this technique, the characters act as if the audience knows all the context. This leaves information obscured because the character isn’t going to explain something that’s either 1) well-known to them or 2) something they’re trying to keep secret or don’t want to talk about. This is also a helpful technique for preserving re-readability. If the characters are acting as they would if the audience knows, things won’t feel off when the audience returns to the story. This also avoids characters talking in unnecessarily vague ways, which can be frustrating or out of character depending on the circumstances. I love using this technique when I want to keep a POV character’s secrets from the audience. If the POV character wouldn’t feel the need or desire to directly think about something in their headspace (ex: it’s super traumatic and they’re actively repressing it or it’s so basic they wouldn’t spend mental energy on it). And a twist revealing that the POV character has kept something from the reader can be really impactful. It shows that this character that the audience has gotten to know so well hasn’t just lied to the characters around them, they’ve lied to the reader.
You know the drill. Honey. Unraveler. She’s gotta fix things. But even though she doesn't know anything about her destiny, there are characters that will probably know about the prophecy. Specifically, Prince Jonathon who, as a highly educated member of the upper class, would know more about the world and culture.
Notice how the lack of information comes as a result of POV character, not vague narration. Honey is choosing to not learn more, which makes the delayed reveal make more sense. Consider how you can use a character's priorities and personality to obscure information. Also notice that because this is really familiar to Prince Jonathon, he’s not bothering to explain it like he would to an unfamiliar audience. Yes, the audience is asking questions, but these are the right questions. You want the audience to wonder about this, but they still have enough information to keep reading.
Technique #3: Dramatic Irony
This is less of a surprise to the audience than it is the characters. The benefits are that you don’t need to worry about keeping secrets from the audience, the characters will be totally surprised, and the audience will marinate in tension while the story builds towards the reveal. However, this does remove the element of surprise from the reader. And a really fun part of plot twists is surprising the reader. So decide what you want a plot twist to accomplish: do you want it to primarily shock the characters or the reader? If you primarily want to shock the characters, this could be a good tool to use. You can have characters say and do things that are highly ironic and make the readers squirm or cackle as they wander towards their own unknown fate. This is one of the easier ways to preserve re-readability since you’re telling the audience about it from the beginning. Also, the audience’s pattern-loving brains will scour for evidence pointing towards the upcoming twist. Your reader may pick up on evidence you didn’t intend at all (in that case, you always take credit for it).
For example, if we wanted the audience to know from the beginning that Honey was destined to stitch the world back together, we could say that from the beginning. We could do it in the form of a more distant narrator (“This is Honey Heimsol, and she’s going to save the world”) or if we wanted to be more subtle, we could have a prologue where the prophecy is revealed. It wouldn’t explicitly name Honey, but it would give the reader more information that Honey.
So if the audience knows the prophecy, we can add highly ironic moments throughout the story. For example, in an early chapter Honey can talk to her brother about never wanting to leave Ilverseed and just wanting a simple life. We can also add those breadcrumbs moments from earlier, but there will be an immediate payoff added weight. Intentionally adding dramatic irony is a similar effect to a reader re-reading a story; the difference is that you can expect your audience to immediately notice all the little details as contributing to the greater mystery.
Conclusion
Secrets and plot twists are fun, and they’re the most satisfying when they are carefully crafted. There are a lot of subtle ways to set up a good twist. I’ve heard it said often online that a plot twist shouldn’t be “I never saw that coming,” but “I can’t believe I didn’t see that coming.” Our goal with plot twists shouldn’t be being as surprising or subversive as possible, but adding something that deepens the story. And speaking of things that add depth to stories, next week Emily is going to talk about subplots.
Until then, bee brilliant!
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