Surprise twists vs. dramatic irony: when and when not to show your cards

[Feo Takahari]

I often dissect stories that do something wrong. This time, I'd like to dissect one that does something right.

Rainbow's Edge by Vernor Vinge begins with intelligence analyst Gunberk discovering a devious plot revolving around YGBM (basically, mind control.) He kicks it up to his mentor Alfred, and they trace it to a lab in San Diego and hire a hacker to investigate. Afterwards, Alfred goes off to think by himself about the progression of terror--first two countries could destroy the world, then every country could destroy the world, and finally private citizens could destroy the world--and, well, this happens:

Poor Gunberk. He had the truth exactly backwards. Effective YGBM would not be the end of everything . . . t was humankind's only hope for surviving the twenty-first century. And in San Diego, I am so close to success.

Yup. Vinge just revealed the bad guy's secret identity in the first freaking chapter, and it is brilliant. Because the reader knows Alfred's leading the plot, it's obvious just how hard it will be to stop his plans. This also provides a great opportunity to show Alfred's perspective and explain his actions, lending depth to what could otherwise be a cliche villain.

With that said, there's another opportunity Vinge misses here. The hacker Alfred hires is speculated to probably be a teenage script kiddie. The dust jacket specifically mentions that the protagonist's teenage granddaughter is much better with computers than he is. It's not hard to guess that the girl is the hacker even before the story starts hinting that she's involved in something big, yet as of a hundred pages into the book, Vinge is still trying to pretend it isn't obvious and not showing her POV. She's my favorite character, and I'd have loved to get her perspective, but Vinge instead tries for the surprising reveal.

What are your thoughts on surprise twists? What do you think they're useful for, and how do you decide when to use them or not use them?

 

[Svrtnsse]

When things start going obviously bad for a character I like I often start hoping there will be some sort of surprise twist to save them. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

I'd like to try putting in some interesting surprise twists in my stories, but I'll get to that in due time.

 

[Penpilot]

Twists are hard to do. Too much info and people see it coming a million miles away. Not enough and people call BS. If the twist isn't all that great or you make them wait too long for it, people may groan and wonder why you even tried to make something a twist.

Personally I stay away from twists when they involve hiding information. I generally think you can gain quite a lot by revealing things. For example imagine that instead of revealing that Bob is a child killer at the end, reveal it at the beginning to the reader but not the main character. Now this fact colors everything Bob does and says now. If Bob offers to babysit the main character's kid, now there's tension to that offer that wouldn't otherwise be there. Or if Bob says, "I love kids. I could just eat them up," it adds to the tension too.

The kinds of sort-of-twists I like to use are a change in direction of the plot. I play with the expectations of the reader because of the story arch-type. For example, in sports stories, it's expected that the hero will make the final shot/ score the winning goal and win the game, but maybe I'll play with that.

They might not win the game, but they'll win in some other way. Or maybe the sports aspect of the story fades into the background as something else comes to the forefront as a consequence of the main character's actions as they struggle for their figurative goal.


It comes down to the idea of "Surprising but inevitable." Hopefully that makes sense... any of it.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We like a twist ending, and pull them out both in character arcs and plot direction, but for us the trick is to make it very natural. It has to make sense for the twist to be there, not just dropping it on the reader out of nowhere, because there have been subtle hints toward it all along, but the only way to make this work, in my mind, is to bury the foreshadowing among red herrings. It comes down to the illusionist's misdirect - show the flash here up front, but the real action is happening in the background, in small exchanges and details that all come together to form an unexpected, but completely believable, whole.

It's not easy, and it takes an eye for detail, but it's doable.

 

[BWFoster78]

I agree completely with Penpilot.

Often I see new writers striving to make everything a big reveal. In doing so, most of the time they end up confusing the reader and reducing tension.

If you want to build your story around a surprise ending, plan carefully and run it by a lot of beta readers to make sure you didn't miss anything.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

As a reader, I don't really like out-of-the-blue surprise twists, except for the very rare occasion when it's mind-blowingly awesome. What I do like is when an author reveals something late on, but has dropped enough clues along the way that an alert reader can see it coming. That 'Yes! I was right!' moment is very satisfying. It makes me feel clever.

 

[Devor]

I go by the "surprising yet inevitable" standard. That guideline usually works well.

 

[Steerpike]

Read some of Jeffrey Deaver's short stories if you want to see someone who handles surprise very well.

 

[Malik]

 

[The Dark One]

Massive twists have become my signature, but I don't like talking about my techniques too much because I think they're fairly unique. I have talked about one technique that worked well in Straight Jacket (my latest - no-one has picked the twists yet) but I've said nothing about the way the twists work in my surrealist/sci-fi-ish novel THEM. Part of the reason for my reticence is that I would hate to spoil the surprise for anyone who might get around to reading them, but very basically, I hide the true drama by building a couple of smaller dramas all around the big one - which is partly revealed at every plot turn, but in a way that also sends the reader off on a wrong path of expectation. When the big reveal comes, it is always something far beyond what the reader expected because of the way I have pressed their buttons to get them to the place I want them to be when the rabbit leaps out of the hat.

The revelation MUST be satisfying and make sense within the rules of the book. The true test of a great twist is when readers keep telling you they enjoyed it even more a second time to study how you set it all up and screwed with their brain so profoundly.