Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to ADD PLOT TWISTS

6. Sweet Jeebus, We Totally [Completely] Lost

We're conditioned to believe that the heroes are going to win. Even when we reach that all is lost moment, we still have a tiny ember glowing bright in the ash-pile of our expectations: we still suspect that things are going to turn out okay, we just don't know how. Ah, but, again, storytelling is an act that refutes the status quo and in this case audience expectations are that status quo. Which means we must defy the audience. Which means in this case actually letting the characters lose. Not a fake defeat. Not a temporary one. But that thing they were hoping to achieve (save the victim, rescue the hostages, defeat the Satanic Unicorn Lord in his lair of bedazzled bones and elf-flesh), mmmnope, too bad, sorry, too late. The victim cannot be saved. The hostages are [completely] dead. The Unicorn Lord is triumphant. Take them past the point of utter loss and there may lie the end of the story or a new story may exist in the dread and unexpected space after. The goals shift. The emotional frequency changes. The plot turns.

7. The Fake-[Butt] Victory

This is a real [screw]-you-flavored move for the storyteller to make, but hey, sorry, that's life in the Big Story, pal. In this one, you lend the protagonists a victory: "Oh, ha ha ha, I did something good! We're gonna win!" and then you kick the chair out from under them and watch them hang for it. John McClane calls the cops and goes through hell to keep them there, but his only ally turns out to be a donut-chugging desk jockey and the entire police force not only doesn't help him but instead accuses him of being one of the terrorists.

8. A [Darned] Knife In The Back

Betrayal is powerful story-fu. A character close to the protagonist suddenly turns and sticks a dagger in the hero's back either out of new opportunity for the traitorous character or because he was planning on doing some cold-as-ice backstabbing all along. The girlfriend is really a demon! The boyfriend is actually a doom-bot! The jealous best friend has been planning the downfall of his buddy for the whole book! This works only when we believe the original relationship to be rock-solid but at the same time engineer into the narrative reasons that the betrayal makes sense. (That's the weird trick of storytelling: on the one hand, you have to tell the story with all the elements in place to uphold logic, but at the same time you're trying to direct attention away from many of those elements so that the audience isn't stunned into disbelief.)

9. Ha Ha Ha This Is All Part Of My Secret Plan, [sausage]head

Here the oil-slick story squirms away from the all is lost or the false victory moment and tears off its mask and says, "HAR HAR HAR, I ENGINEERED IT THIS WAY FROM THE VERY BEGINNING." The hero appears defeated but then she pulls a machete out of her ass-crack and starts cutting fools to pieces. Or the antagonist is thrown in jail but suddenly we realize that was his intention all along and now he's closer to the Queen's Jewels he wants to steal or the orphanage he wants to blow up or the Whole Foods where he buys his sinister quinoa.

10. Variation: The Villain Knows Everything, Dumb[butt]

This is a variation on the above — except here, it's not so much that the villain has engineered the whole thing from the beginning but rather that the hero hasn't been as sneaky or clever as he thought. The hero performs some elaborate scheme and sneaks into the monster's lair only to have the monster slow-clap while emerging out of the darkness while wearing a smoking jacket. The monster says, "I knew you were coming because you butt-dialed me two days ago and haven't hung up since." Or maybe this ties into the earlier Knife in the Back and the villain's surprising knowledge comes from a betrayal within. (Mix and match for maximum fun!)