Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to ADD PLOT TWISTS

17. Turns Out You Can't Trust That Jerkoff, The Narrator

The unreliable narrator is a classic move (Verbal Kint! Tyler Durden! Huck Finn!) — but it's not one that needs to be telegraphed so early on in the story. We begin every story, I think, assuming that what's on the page is as honest as Abe Lincoln's yearning need to behead vampires. That's good. You can use that. Let the audience settle into that sense of comfort, then start seedings hints throughout that the narrator might not be on the up-and-up.

18. What The [Shoes], I'm Pretty Sure That Major Character Just Died

(AKA, The George R.R. Martin Honorary Authorial Serial Killer Hugo Award.) Take one of your main characters and kill them. Do so as a part of the narrative, of course — I mean, spoiler alert, I guess, but it's not like Ned Stark gets hit by a VW Bug crossing a dirt road in Westeros. His death is an explicit part of the story — it's just a death nobody ever expects. Think of this as a character-specific version of the aforementioned Sweet Jeebus We Totally [Completely] Lost — the audience really doesn't expect you to drop the axe on a beloved major character. Which is exactly why you sometimes need to do just that.

19. [Urinate] On The Grave

In both religion and comic books, death is not so much a permanent condition as it is a troublesome speedbump — Jesus was, of course, one of the earliest superheroes, and that guy was pretty much unkillable. Point is, once again it's time to mess with audience expectations. Outside religion and comic books, generally speaking when a character dies, we assume it's a permanent pipe-sucking daisy-pushing state of affairs. So, to resurrect a character — whether literally bringing them back to life or simply making it clear they never really died — you turn the tale and surprise the audience. And that is part of what we do, isn't it?

20. Accelerate The Narrative On [Darned] Go-Go-Pills

A show like Homeland, you think it's going to be this one thing, right? They're going to drag out this War on Terror vibe and because it's television the entire "Who is Brody?" and "Get Abu Nazir!" plotlines are going to streeeeeetch out like what Bruce Banner does to his man-panties when he becomes The Incredible Hulk, but that's not what happens. Without spoiling anything, the show is on some kind of trucker meth — there is no "laggy middle." It's all rocket-boosters and caffeine enemas — and so you can give your story the same kind of energy by just pushing, pushing, pushing. Shove the narrative forward. Accelerate the timetable. Let the audience think your tale is about one man's struggle to dethrone a king but then, [screw] it, he dethrones the king in the first 100 pages. The audience is like, blink blink, "WHUUUUT."

21. Ah, Crap, It's The Pyrrhic Victory

A Pyrrhic Victory is a victory that only comes with great cost and sacrifice — something lost, something given, a hard choice made. Victory in one hand is a pile of steaming monkey [excrement] in the other. It's a good turn because our expectation is that victory is absolute — you can't win while losing, right? DOES NOT COMPUTE BEEP BOOP BEEP. Except, [fire truck] that. It works.

22. Jerkoff's Gun

Chekov's Gun is pretty straightforward: reveal a gun in the first act, that gun better get fired by the third act. Put differently, something that shows up earlier may seem important or it may seem insignificant, but if you're mentioning it, it probably matters. The trick is that the audience doesn't know how or why and so this makes for a powerful turn: any detail you reveal in an earlier portion of the story can come back in a big way. A stray footprint, an odd comment made by passersby, a funny-looking pubic hair stuck to someone's creme brulee.

23. The [Shoes] Just Got Fixed — Now What?!

The opposite of everything is lost is yay everything just got solved, except the trick here is that the end of the conflict doesn't come at the end of the story like everyone figures but rather, far earlier. (Beware: spoiler incoming.) Look no further than Breaking Bad, where Walter White effectively solves the problem put forth in the pilot: cancer's gone and the treatments are paid for, so what's the problem? It would seem as if a vacuum is created by the loss of conflict but instead it demands a deeper, more meaningful conflict as a troubling truth is revealed as he continues on his path: Walter White wanted to be the drug lord Heisenberg all along.

24. Story Within A Story Within A My Head Just [Fire trucking] Melted

For a good portion of the story, the audience thinks the story is one thing but then we realize that the main story is nested in a larger (or smaller) story: one minute it's a girl on a space station who wants to explore the stars but then later we realize that the space station story is the delusion of a girl abused by her mother and who just wants to escape her house. Or, maybe a more abstract version of this: we think the story is one about redemption but it ends up being about one of vengeance. We think it's porn but it turns into something about love. We think it's love but it turns into something about hate. We think it's a Western but it's really Elfpunk BDSM. Once in a rare while a story deserves big changes: dramatic thematic shifts and setting flips. (The Princess Bride and The Matrix are examples of this.)

25. The Nature Of Boredom Is A Straight Line

These techniques all add up to one thing: the audience grows bored when the story marches forward in too-straight a line. Even the standard "escalation toward climax" is a straight line that needs to be kinked up and broken apart from time to time. Which means all of these techniques boil down to: change [stuff] up. Envision what the audience will be thinking as they read it. What do they expect? What is the predictive course they have in their head? Then tweak that. Maybe a subtle shift. Maybe a really violent one. But don't be afraid to change things up. Go risky. Get crazy. In life, we adore comfort. In fiction, comfort is our greatest enemy.