So. I want to write a great twist. Maybe even a double twist. I love them to death, some of my favorite
parts of my favorite books are when I come upon something I didn’t see coming
and all of a sudden the game is changed. It’s like magic, the way authors can
lay down the hints and wrap every thread of a book together so that one twist
suddenly makes everything fall into place like a giant puzzle who’s picture was
a mystery without that final piece.
But I have this teacher, one of the best personal
authorities I have when it comes to literature, who has said before that he
doesn’t like twist endings the likes of O Henry and such. Now, a twist for its own sake, or one that
doesn’t improve the story is to be avoided.
And I think he was talking about turning literature into a gimmick -
“Hey look, I can trick you into thinking one thing and slam you into a brick wall at the end by doing something completely different! Wasn’t that fun?”
Yeah, not the type of twist ending I want to write. Instead I want to write something so good it makes me feel like an all-out genius. My, we authors are a presumptuous crowd, but it's true.
“Hey look, I can trick you into thinking one thing and slam you into a brick wall at the end by doing something completely different! Wasn’t that fun?”
Yeah, not the type of twist ending I want to write. Instead I want to write something so good it makes me feel like an all-out genius. My, we authors are a presumptuous crowd, but it's true.
Twists are tough, though. They can be done so wrong that they ruin the entire book. So how do you write a good twist? I’m not trying to plan out an entire book in
advance, but twists do generally work best if you know the twist is coming (as
the author). So. What are my favorite twists and why do they work? (I'll limit this to twists within the genre I'm writing, so as not to make this post 150 pages long)
*Spoiler alert!
The Fault in Our Stars
Two kids with cancer fall in love. The girl is in bad shape, the guy dies. When I found out that it was Augustus that
was dying, it completely wrecked me. I
was so sure it was Hazel that was in worse shape, he was in remission, it
wasn’t fair. I’ll never forget the line “my scans lit up like a Christmas tree, Hazel
Grace.” Or some such. I think what really made the twist hard to
see coming was the misdirection (like any great magic trick). I thought I was supposed to be gearing up for
the death of Hazel. I was looking right
where the author wanted me to be looking: at the distraction. So what makes this twist great? The misdirection, the tragedy of death and
young love coming to an end, I wasn’t unwarned – he said at the very
beginning that his cancer could come back, and it was the very same thing I was so
afraid would happen – to someone else.
We Were Liars
Okay, this twist was great because I knew something
was wrong the whole time but I kept ignoring it. Nothing made sense but I kept ignoring the
obvious conclusion – she had a head
injury and was seeing things. The
unreliable narrator is sort of a controversial thing – are you cheating? Are you lying to your audience? Personally, in this case I think it works because you know she's injured and you know that things aren't lining up. But a main character outright
lying, for instance, would not work for me. So if a narrator isn’t reliable, but mostly
because they aren’t in possession of all the facts, that can work. Plus it was just so tragic and startling –
her best friends were dead and we just loved them all by the time we understood. So much possibility came crashing down, and
suddenly everything made sense. If a
twist can somehow make everything make sense, that’s an accomplishment.
So misdirection, staying honest, characters not being aware of all the facts of the story are all good ingredients. But it's still a tricky recipe to get right. Thoughts?
So misdirection, staying honest, characters not being aware of all the facts of the story are all good ingredients. But it's still a tricky recipe to get right. Thoughts?
Let me sleep on this. I've been running a chainsaw, an axe, a pickaroon, wedges, and a tractor most of the day, and all I can think about right now is which will be the next tree to fall for FireWood Fest 018-019.
ReplyDeleteYou've fairly described my objections to a certain kind of twist ending. Typically, with really unsophisticated writers I dealt with their twist was "And then I woke up and it was all a dream!"
ReplyDeleteThey really resented it when I rained on that particular parade. That kind of thing is simple audience abuse.
I'd hate for you to think I'm a literary snob or that O. Henry is somehow not classy enough for me. I probably read all or at least most of O. Henry when I was in my mid-teens. Of course, I liked and enjoyed being surprised over and over again. O. Henry was very good at his trade--can you name any other magazine writer from a century ago, much less one whose name is attached to annual short story awards?
But tastes change and sometimes people want more from a writer than a clever switcheroo on the last page.
Nigel's amputation comes as a surprise because people are conditioned to think of happily-ever-after. But it's not a cheat. Nigel is reckless; Nigel does one bad thing after another; anyone paying attention (as you say above, one is not 'unwarned') knows that eventually the piper must be paid in some hard way or another.
ReplyDeleteThere are earned and unearned twists. The unearned of the then-I-woke-up variety.... Here's the story of an earned twist.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a novel about ritual satanic abuse back when that was a hot topic. I knew two adult women with 'recovered memories' who accused their parents of committing unspeakable acts on them as children.
So I wrote about a family that was destroyed in the wake of accusations: mother, father, two adult daughters, and a granddaughter. The daughter (and mother of the granddaughter) who had the recovered memories and made the accusations was a crazy mess. The novel's question was (1) was she a mess because she had genuinely been abused and it had driven her half-crazy or (2) were her preposterous accusations against her innocent parents part of her craziness?
John Goldfine, the person, did not believe either of the two 'recovered memories' women he knew. And when I started the novel my inclination was to paint the portrait of a crazy woman who destroyed a family. But the more I wrote, the more the situation grew ambiguous, and so, by the end, as the crazy daughter is committed to a mental hospital because everyone is convinced that (2) is the case, and the grandparents take over the care of their granddaughter, I had earned the reveal: (1) was the actual truth of the matter.
Have you ever read Henry James's novella 'The Turn of the Screw'? He does a masterful job of not offering closure, which is very much the modernist style, and very much unlike O. Henry. But it is a master class in sowing doubt in the reader's mind and developing every facet of the unreliable narrator.