The Earned Plot Twist
By Julie Carrick Dalton | May 7, 2020 |
Photo byronv2
I wish we had a long German word for the feeling of being surprised by a plot twist in a way that both satisfies and moves a reader. I need a way to describe the genius of a revelation that enhances all that came before it, but without making the reader feel foolish or deceived. A word that implies added layers of meaning the plot twist lends to existing elements of a story and characters.
The word must also suggest a contract that the twist will impart something meaningful the reader didn’t even know they were seeking. If the twist doesn’t satisfy, if it doesn’t make the reader rethink the book or maybe even their own beliefs, then it’s just a cheap trick.
We have come to expect twisty secrets, particularly in the suspense genre. We stand ready, always on the lookout for a clever surprise in books, TV shows, and movies. I don’t mean to be coy in this post, but I’m a big believer in not giving away surprises, so you won’t find any spoilers here, even when I allude to some well-known stories. I am committed to preserving the sanctity of the plot twist.
I remember exactly where I was, sitting on a creaky movie theater seat next to my cousins the day after Thanksgiving when I watched M. Night Shyalaman’s The Sixth Sense for the first time. The entire audience gasped at the same moment of that famous plot twist. My mind spun backward, trying to find a flaw in the meticulous plot construction. But, no, all the information was there, tightly assembled to distract me from seeing what was right in front of me – but without deceiving or tricking me.
A plot twist, just for the sake of a collective gasp would be nothing but a hollow, air-filled noise. If I had gone back to reflect on The Sixth Sense and not found the bread crumbs, I would have been angry. Instead, I was awestruck.
I had a similar experience when I saw Jordan Peele’s Get Out, in which a Black man is invited to his white girlfriend’s family’s home. We know right away something is off, really off, in the way the family treats him. But we don’t understand exactly what is going on. The twist here is bold and worthy of more than a gasp. There’s a lot to unpack, and it certainly made me reevaluate the expectations I held in the beginning and why I held them.
The unexpected twists in The Sixth Sense and Get Out stayed with me because, for different reasons, they moved and challenged me.
In contrast, television viewers of a certain age will remember the outcry when a much-anticipated episode of the TV show Dallas revealed the entire previous season had all been a dream. All those Who Shot JR? T-shirts, all that build-up for nothing. Yes, viewers were surprised, but they also felt duped. There’s nothing satisfying in feeling manipulated or tricked.
As a novelist, I hope to find that sweet spot that catches readers off guard, but in a way that feels organic to the story and characters. I don’t need to shock them, but I want readers to walk away surprised, with a new understanding, and thinking, Of course, why didn’t I see that coming? It makes so much sense now.
When done well, pulling off the perfect, satisfying twist looks seamless, easy. But it’s not. I learned this the hard way. In one draft of my forthcoming novel, Waiting for the Night Song, I introduced a character just to bring in a twist at the end. It involved lies, deceit, and a mysterious thumb drive with information on it that I never quite explained. So twisty, right? My editor politely asked why this character existed. What would happen if we just deleted him and the entire subplot? The answer was ‘nothing.’ It had zero effect on the plot. The character and the thumb drive were just lazy, gimmicky devices. (I’m still a little embarrassed about this.)
Poor Erik, with all his lurky creepiness, never made it into my book. I can’t even claim the guy as a dead darling because I never actually cared about him in the first place. I needed to interrogate the characters I did care about if I wanted to discover the secrets they were keeping from me. Plot twists, I realized, needed to be earned.
Some books, like Kathleen Barber’s Truth Be Told or Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere layer revelation after revelation that build upon themselves like a crescendo. Both of these books were scooped up and produced as limited TV series for a good reason. They keep us leaning forward to look for clues to twists we suspect are coming, but still cannot see.
Other books, like Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, wait until the end for a big reveal delivered quietly. Owens offers a secondary twist at the end of Crawdads involving a snippet of poetry. This whisper of a plot twist moved me even more than the bigger, dramatic revelation because it exposed a facet of a beloved character I did not already recognize. This tiny bit of new information felt intimate and enormous to me. It left me feeling – ahhh, what is the word? There really needs to be a word! Satisfied comes close, but it’s not big enough.
I’m always on the lookout for plot twists in thrillers and psychological suspense novels and films, but I particularly love them in quieter books where I’m not on the edge of my seat scanning the scene for clever hints of hidden information. When I settle into that dreamlike state of a good book, when I’m immersed and comfortable in the world the author created, I let my guard down.
In Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, author Gail Honeyman delivers a revelation that changed what I thought I knew about the main character— yet simultaneously reinforced everything I understood about her. The twist in this funny, sad, moving story gutted me. (I’m not going to say any more about it so you can discover this gem for yourself.)
I admire authors who quietly lay the groundwork for twists we were never looking for. My favorite example is Sandra Dallas’ The Persian Pickle Club, which, to me, always feels like a cup of tea and a favorite quilt on a cold evening. I’ve read it several times, given it as gifts, and recommended it to countless people.
In The Persian Pickle Club, Dallas tells a heartfelt story about a group of women quilters trying to survive during the Dust Bowl in Kentucky. The endearing and exasperating characters charmed me and broke my heart as they experienced losses, joys, and betrayals.
But there’s also this other thing that happens.
One sentence near the end of the book shook me. I’ve thought about it over and over for years. It changed everything I thought I understood about what had happened in the story, but at the same time, it bolstered the characters I had come to believe in. It moved me deeply.
The twist is so effective because of the deep love Dallas shows for her characters. She paints them with flaws and idiosyncrasies in a way that makes us feel like we know them. We trust that we see everything. But this quiet secret, when unveiled, doesn’t undermine what we thought we understood about the characters. It works because Dallas earned it. She populated her book with people who would absolutely keep this secret. She created them so convincingly that they hid it from me. I suspect they may even have kept this bit of information from the author herself.
I often wonder if, when Dallas was drafting this book, she got to that pivotal moment and gasped out loud at her own characters – then settled back into her chair nodding contentedly because it had been there all along.
If only we had a word to describe this feeling.
Why do you think we love the plot twist so much? What is your favorite twisty book? No spoilers! And, lastly, does anyone know a word – in any language – that describes that elusive, satisfying emotion you feel after experiencing a deftly executed plot twist? I will accept made-up words, if necessary.
Julie Carrick Dalton is the author of THE LAST BEEKEEPER, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG, a Most Anticipated book by CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, Parade, and Buzzfeed, and an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Books of the Month. As a journalist, Julie has published more than a thousand articles in publications including The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, and the Chicago Review of Books. A Tin House and Bread Loaf alum, and graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator, Julie holds a Master’s in Creative Writing and is currently on the teaching faculty of Drexel University’s MFA program. She also teaches Climate Fiction to undergrads at Tufts University. Julie is a frequent speaker and workshop leader on the topic of Fiction in the Age of Climate Crisis at universities, libraries, museums, and conferences nationally and internationally. Mom to four kids and two dogs, Julie is an avid skier, kayaker, open-water swimmer, gardener, and wannabe herbalist. Her third novel, THE FOREST BECOMES HER, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press. You can connect with her on Instagram @juliecdalton, or at juliecarrickdalton.com.
Epiphany? I was gut-punched by the revelation or plot twist in Marianne Wiggins’ Evidence of Things Unseen. I remember thinking OH NO and Yes, of course at the same time.
Hi Joni,
I haven’t read Evidence of Things Unseen yet. Thanks for the recommendation. Adding it to my list. I do love that feeling of OH NO and Yes, of course in the same moment. It’s so satisfying. Thanks for reading!
Julie
Julie, you described this so perfectly! Like you, I’ll never forget that moment of “OMG, no and of course!” when I watched “The Sixth Sense.” It’s exact opposite of those annoying red herrings. that lead nowhere Maybe there’s a German word for a green herring? Or a Yiddish one? Yiddish has so many words that defy translation , yet we know exactly what they mean :-)
Thanks for reading, Barbara. If you ever come across the word I’m looking for, PLEASE let me know. I just know it’s out there somewhere!
Julie
When I got to page 75 in Clare Macintosh’s I Let You Go, I gasped, wrote WTF and Bravo in the margins and promptly went back and read the first 75 pages again. Sure enough, totally earned. Totally fooled me. I’m always on the lookout for these books and thanks to you this morning, Julie, I’ve added a couple to my list.
Hi Maggie! It’s so great to see you here! I love your margin notes: “WTF and Bravo” That could have been a great title for my post. If you read The Persian Pickle Club, let me know what you think. I love that little book so much. It’s quiet, but it sticks the landing at the end like a gold-medal Olympic gymnast. I’ve been thinking about it for over 10 years. Thanks for the recommendation of I Let You Go. I’ll check it out.
Julie
I know what you mean about needing a better word for “satisfied.” I think I know what books like that do to make us feel that thing with no word to describe it: They make us believe there is meaning—true, incredibly relevant meaning—in chaos. And we as humans need to believe in that; it’s almost vital for our emotional survival. Books like that deliver a thing we didn’t know to need—a kind of mental nutrient—and leave us sated, quenched, fueled up, and maybe even empowered to seek meaning in our own lives.
Therese,
MENTAL NUTRIENT! I love this. I agree, our minds are always searching for meaning in chaos and a well-thought-out plot twist, revealed at exactly the right moment, delivers exactly that — meaning from chaos. I think we are all searching, maybe moreso than usual, to find meaning these days. Thanks so much for chiming in with this bit of wisdom.
Julie
Loved this post and the examples you gave! Finding the sweet spot between leaving a trail of bread crumbs and throwing down chunks of the stuff is every mystery writer’s dilemma. As much as I love Agatha Christie’s stories, I always feel a little resentment because she used trickery sometimes rather than giving clues. As you point out, a good plot twist with just the right amount of foreshadowing is very satisfying. Once the big reveal happened in The Sixth Sense, all the little odd bits that felt off but couldn’t quite be explained fell into place and it made perfect sense. It was a very satisfying reveal indeed!
I’ve always felt the same about Agatha Christie. Loved her stories, but oftentimes felt duped. There was a wonderful comedy made in the 70s called “Murder by Death” that spoke to that very issue, concerning several mystery writers. Very funny, with an all-star cast.
Linda,
I agree, I feel decieved when an author uses trickery, but without the pay off of added meaning or insight. The Sixth Sense is such a satisfying reveal, in part because most of us didn’t see it coming, even though it was there the whole time. The twist adds meaningful layers to characters we already believed to be well-reounded. Ahhhh, soooooo good! Thank you for reading my post.
Julie
Oh so true. Too many stories use twists as a gimmick — a good idea thrown in too casually.
“The truth is more important than the trick.” A story is made up of revelations, and a twist is only as good as the real insight that’s there behind the curtain. Presenting it with a twist, rather than suspense or contrast or other methods, is simply playing up how this time it’s the kind of truth *we might have missed* in real life. Both the truth and the misdirection in front of it need to fit.
For a word to capture that, we just might try “completed.” It doesn’t sound weighty enough (or different enough from an ordinary ending). But it can make us think: until the truth came out, we didn’t realize the whole story had been incomplete.
Ken,
I agree with your sentiment. A good reveal makes the story feel “complete. ”
And your point that “a twist is only as good as the real insight that’s there behind the curtain” is also great. If there is no meaning behind the shock, what was the point? Thanks so much for reading, and for your wise observations!
Julie
Well Julie, there may not be any German words that fit this perfectly, but at least you’ve demonstrated your sprachgefühl here today.
It seems like such a simple thing, to have earned a plot twist–like it’s something we of course should’ve known from the start. But I’ve got a doozy in one of my manuscripts. It’s troubled readers for some time, but I’ve never understood why quite like I do now. It feels unearned! And I can fix it.
You’ve definitely instilled geborgenheit within me, and for that you have my dankbarkeit. Wonderful post!
Vaughn,
This made me laugh out loud (after a visit to Google translate.) Sprachgefühl is a spectacular word, and I’m going to try my best to remember it. Thanks you! Good luck with your doozy of a plot twist. I’m glad my words may have offered some insight.
Julie
Überraschende Aufregung-ho! At least that’s my Gerglish phrase for it.
Great article, Julie. I love a plot twist done well, and you drove it home with excellent examples. Gut gemacht!
Hi Mike!
I think you are winning my unofficial contest to find the perfect word (orphrase) to capture that emotional response to a perfect plot twist. “Überraschende Aufregung” just rolls off the tongue nicely. Surprising excitement! I love it! Thanks for your kind words.
Julie
Love it, Mike!
Great post, Julie, with amazing examples. As readers we often are lulled into the story by language, by our love or distain for a certain character and thus not noticing the bigger picture. But I must confess that’s what being “lost” in a book, in that world means. That’s what I want for my reading. When called upon to be a detective in a novel that is not of that genre, I might be pulled back a bit. I think that’s why Crawdads wasn’t my favorite. But I also feel strongly that is why we have many writers, many points of view and the ability to analyze and decide whether the work spoke to us or did not.
Hi Beth! So great to see you here. I know a lot of folks with mixed feelings (or negative feelings) about the ending of Crawdads. And you are right, it’s all about whether it works for each individual reader. Do you have a favorite book with a noteworthy plot twist that stuck with you? I’d love to hear what you are reading.
Julie
Hi Julie, always great to hear your voice. Recently I read OLIVE AGAIN, by Elizabeth Strout. Love it. Now only did she let us see into Olive’s later years, but if you’re a Strout reader, she brought back characters from her other novels. Wonderful. I read Marilynne Robinson, her books always a journey, sometimes filled with dips and struggles, the language amazing. And I truly enjoyed AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE by Tayari Jones. You held tight to the characters, all of them, not sure how their lives would settle in, not sure they would each find what they needed. THANKS FOR ASKING. I love hearing what others are reading and recommending.
I am so in awe of the well done plot twist. Flash Fiction, when done right, is a story place where there are so many gut-punch, twisty endings, many times summed up in just a sentence! I’ve often wondered if this is a skill that can be learned, or if it’s muse-like inspiration. Because the plot-twist is almost magical, I tend to lean toward them being a function of inspiration. :)
Hi Lara,
Thanks for reading my post. I’m always in awe of flash fiction that can pack a punch in so few words. I definitely think some folks have a naturally ability, or inspiration, to tap into the emotions that conjure that gut-punch feeling. but I also believe we can learn these skills by reading and studying writers who do it well. I have a lot to learn. Maybe I’ll try reading more flash fiction as inspiration. Thanks!
Julie
Lara, this is why I love so much of flash fiction. The most poignant and heartbreaking one is this famous six-sentence story: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
That one guts me every time I read it. So much power in so few words.
Great post, Julie! I think one reason such twists are so satisfying is that they reveal as much about the reader as they do the character. A big reveal carries the power to lift the veil of our preconceptions and show us our blind spots. After that, you are so bonded with the character you will not set down the book. (This has proven true for me even when the writing is less-than-stellar. Despite the fact that one novel I read offered little else, all those chants of “Wait for it…wait for it…” kept me reading until, you know, my jaw dropped.)
One great example I can think of is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I’m not a huge rereader (there are just too many books!) and novels built specifically for that one big twist—like the one I mentioned in the above paragraph—don’t inspire rereading. Once you’ve been duped once, the thrill is over. But Like Elinor Oliphant, Setterfield’s novel begs rereading. I’ve read it three times (so far), and each reading pulls me a little deeper into the story. The sign of a great novel!
Hi Kathryn!
I’ll definitely look into The Thirteenth Tale. It sounds great. You make a great point that all readers come to a story from a differnet perspective. We all carry our own preconcieved ideas, prejudices, and life experiences. Therefore, we experience the story differently and the twist digs at us in different ways. As you so eloquently put it: “A big reveal carries the power to lift the veil of our preconceptions and show us our blind spots.” I love this.
Thanks so much for this comment. It adds a lot to the conversation!
Julie
Julie, E. B. White called that moment the Revelation Cupcake. (I just made that up, because I wanted to say “cupcake.”) I loved the twist in Eleanor Oliphant, which was jarring, but as you said, the author did supply the loamy earth of Eleanor’s weirdness in which dark things grew.
By the way, if you do like odd and unsettling—but well-drawn—characters like Eleanor, try “Eileen” by Ottessa Moshfegh. It’s twisty.
Hi Tom!
As a writer with an insatiable sweet tooth, I will embrace the concept of the Revelation Cupcake. Shall we make that a thing?
Did you you say twisty? Twisty is my favorite! Adding Eileen to my list! Thanks for the suggestion and for reading my post!
Julie
Second the recommendation of Eileen.
Ok. Now I really need to check out this book!
Julie, I loved your post. Sixth Sense remains one of my all time favorites. But now I have some other books to check out that I’ve not read. You might like my own YA novel, BOUND, for its twist. When it first came to me I was so surprised because it was so perfect.
Of course, I think the greatest twist occurs on Good Friday. What the world sees as defeat is in fact victory beyond all our imagination. O death, where is your sting? O hell, where is your victory?
Thank you for your kind words, Vijaya! I’ll look for your book. Thank you for reading!
Julie
Something for which German doesn’t have a word? Unbelievable! But you’re right, we totally need one.
I remember reading Thr3e by Ted Dekker and part way through I thought I’d figured out the plot secret. Sure enough, along came the twist (oh, aren’t I clever?), and then wham! it twisted round once more and smacked me in the face. Shoulda seen it coming.
I started reading my mother’s Agatha Christies at an early age (6), and I’ve always admired the way Dame Agatha planted a clue while making you think it’s actually about something else. But having tried the delicate art of mystery writing myself, I realize how hard it is to hit the balance between ‘came out of nowhere’ and ‘obvious’ – that delectable balance called ‘obvious in hindsight.’ Particularly when so much depends on the reader.
I was delighted when I managed to spring an unexpected twist on the aforementioned mother when she was beta-reading my latest novel, The Wound of Words (out in a week). Should I die unexpectedly before publishing anything else, please ensure “neatly rounded ending with great unguessed twist” is carved on my gravestone. (Now that I think of it, I’d love my life to have a neatly rounded ending, but I’m dubious about the desirability of unguessed twists at that stage!)
Hi Deborah,
May we all have neatly rounded endings with just enough plot twists to keep things interesting! Thank you for reading my post, and CONGRATS on your forthcoming book!
Julie
Thanks!
I am a little late, but still would like to chime in, as German native speaker. :-) I don’t think there is word for it yet, but in German, you can create your own nouns easily by combining two or more.
So, what about “Aufdeckungsfreude”? “aufdecken” in this case would mean “bring out in the open”, “discover”. So this would be something like “discovery pleasure”.
Or what about “Enthüllungsbegeisterung”? “Enthüllung” meaning disclosure, “Begeisterung” meaning excitement.
Hope you like one of them…. :-)
And I totally agree with you, there is nothing more satisfying than the moment when all puzzle pieces fall together and you experience this moment of “oh”.
Cheers from over the Atlantic!
J
Thank you so much!!! You just made my day!
Enthüllungsbegeisterung and Aufdeckungsfreude are now my favorite German words. (Unrelated side note, I grew up on a military base in Augsburg and have a lot of love for the German language, although I don’t remember much, as I went to an international school.)
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Julie
Happy to have made you happy!
It’s not often someone gets excited about the German language. Mostly, the reaction is something like “it is such a difficult language …” followed by a sigh.
I used to live close to Munich for a couple of years, so I know Augsburg too – the world is full of unexpected connections!