By: Rachel
Scheller
In
this excerpt from Story
Trumps Structure, Steven James presents four ways to craft plot
twists that readers will never see coming.
PLOT
TWISTS: PRACTICAL STEPS TO PULLING THE RUG OUT
1.
Eliminate the obvious
When
coming up with the climax to your story, discard every possible solution you
can think of for your protagonist to succeed.
Then
think of some more.
And
discard those, too.
You’re
trying to create an ending that’s so unforeseen that if a million people read
your book, not one of them would guess how it ends (or how it will get to the
end), but when they finally come to it, every one of those people would think, Yes!
That makes perfect sense! Why didn’t I see that coming?
The
more impossible the climax is for your protagonist to overcome, the more
believable and inevitable the escape or solution needs to be. No reader should
anticipate it, but everyone should nod and smile when it happens. No one
guesses, everyone nods. That’s what you’re shooting for.
While writing, ask yourself:
What
do I need to change to create a more believable world for each separate twist
I’m including?
How
can I drop the gimmicks and depend more on the strength of the narrative to
build my twist?
Will
readers have to “put up with” the story that’s being told in anticipation of a
twist ending, or will they enjoy it even more because of the twist? How can I
improve the pretwist story?
How
can I make better use of the clues that prove the logic of the surface story to
create the twist and bring more continuity to the story—but only after the
twist is revealed?
2.
Redirect suspicion
. . .
Read the full article HERE!
~*~
If you
missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are
again:
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