If you
don’t get the title reference, I’m afraid you have to leave. It’s not my choice, you understand. It’s the law.
Anyway...
I’ve run
into a few folks recently talking about spoilers, usually pertaining to twists. It’s a little bothersome how many times I’ve
seen people say that knowing a twist in advance shouldn’t—and doesn’t—affect
their view of a story. And this is...
well, just wrong. That’s not a matter of
opinion. It’s just flat out wrong.
So I thought
it might be worth discussing some of the finer points of a well-executed twist.
First,
though, let’s define a few terms.
A mystery is
when the main character and the readers are aware that information has been
hidden from them, and the story usually involves the search for that unknown
fact. At it’s simplest, a mystery is when someone in my story asks a
question and then tries to find the answer.
Suspense is
when there’s an important piece of information my readers know and the
characters don’t. The key here is that my characters don’t
know that they need to know this vital fact. The woman Yakko
is going upstairs with is the murderer. There’s
a bomb under the table. Dot’s going into a meeting with a bunch of her
superiors who all know what she did. These
are common suspense situations.
A twist is
when information is revealed that my characters and the audience didn’t
know was being kept from them. They
don’t even suspect those facts are out there, waiting to affect the
story. When a twist appears, it comes from out of nowhere and changes a
lot of perceptions for the characters and the audience. We’ve all been told that Luke Skywalker’s
father is dead, so when we learn that Darth Vader is his father, it’s a
bombshell that alters our view of everything.
Assuming we
didn’t see all the advertising for the prequels...
But that’s
a different discussion...
Notice that
in most of these, the characters and the readers are in the same position. Their view of things lines up. The only time it doesn’t (with suspense) is
when the characters are in extreme danger because of what they don’t know,
which cranks up the tension for the audience.
Going off
the above definitions, one of the main components of a successful twist is that
the reader (or audience) doesn’t know it’s coming. We can’t be surprised or taken off guard by
something we’re expecting, right? So without
that element... well, it’s not a twist anymore.
This moment becomes empty, poorly structured suspense, a missed beat in the structure of my story.
Personally,
this is why I’m so nuts about spoilers.
One small spoiler can rip the heart out of a great reveal and leave it
flapping in the wind like an empty shirt on a clothesline. Rather than identifying with the characters,
we’re waiting for them to catch up and shaking our heads at how long it’s
taking them.
Y’see,
Timmy, saying a twist should still make sense whether or not I know it’s coming
is like saying a defibrillator should still work whether or not it’s got
electricity running through it. We’ve
removed a vital element that it needs to function. A working defibrillator won’t always perform
the function it was made to, yeah, but it simply can’t when it’s not even
plugged in.
Now, there
are two other things that can make a twist flop. One is when the information the twist reveals
isn’t actually a surprise, or it’s something the reader probably figured out on
their own. If you’re a long-time fan of The
Simpsons, you may remember one time when Homer told the Nativity story in church. And he ended his little
sermon with these drama-filled words...
“And did
you know that baby Jesus grew up to be... Jesus?”
It’s a
perfect example of this point. If I’m
two or three steps ahead of the characters and the author, a “reveal”
like this borders on comedy. Which is
great if I’m writing comedy, not so good if my book is a techno-thriller. A twist that tells us something we already
know, by definition, isn’t a twist, and it doesn’t matter if the author hasn’t
specifically spelled it out or not in the book.
If all my readers figure out who Dr. Acula really is on page two, it’s
my own fault when the big twist falls flat.
The second
thing that kills a twist is the flipside of what I just said. It’s also not a twist if there’s absolutely
no way we could’ve suspected it. Yes, a
twist depends on us not knowing something’s coming, but when it arrives it
needs to fit with everything we’ve been told all along. A reveal should mesh with what we know, not
contradict, and make us look at things in a new way. Finding out Phoebe is my long-lost cousin in
the last fifty pages is a twist. Finding
out Phoebe is a third-gender alien from the year 2241 in the last fifty pages
means I should...
Wait, an
alien from 2241? Hasn’t this a period murder-mystery novel for the past two hundred pages? What the hell...?
I once read
a book where we found out in the last twenty pages that the leader of the
all-woman biker gang is actually a vampire.
And while we’d known this was an urban fantasy novel, there’d been no
clue whatsoever that vampires exist. It
was a first person story and the main character had never even told us
that vampires were a thing, even though we learned in those final pages that this is the
vampire she knew had killed her husband.
The reveal clashed with what I knew about the world and the character,
and that clash jarred me out of the book at a point when the author really
needed me to be sucked into it.
And that’s
the real killer. When my twist falls flat, for any reason, it breaks the flow of the story. And since big twists tend to come toward the end of a story, it means I’m giving my readers
a reason to stop when I want them to be checking the clock to see how late it
is and if they can finish the book tonight.
A twist is
a powerful device, the five-point-palm technique of storytelling. It needs to be done a certain way, but if I
can master it I’ll be unstoppable. And if I do it wrong... I’m just going to piss off my target.
Next time,
I think we need to discuss paying dues.
Especially those of you who’ve been here for a while.
Until then,
go write.
Just wanted to say I love your books. I first read The Fold, which I loved, and then proceeded to read all your other books. Now I'm waiting for you to write another. In other words, I love your books, in case you couldn't tell. Kudos and thank you!
ReplyDeletePerfect example of the 'twist' being ruined by marketing: Terminator Salvation. The movie is about Sam Worthington's character (what? No, Christian Bale is not in this movie lalalalalal can't hear you) and the marketing campaign gave away the twist in the first trailer. This utterly destroyed the point in the film where the big reveal happens because we, the viewer, already know the secret behind Sam's Marcus Wright. The film plays it as what should be a surprise to both viewer and characters and it falls completely, utterly flat as a result.
ReplyDelete