A few weeks back on Bluesky I got a very nice compliment about how my books very frequently—actually, the word was inevitably—take a sharp turn. That got me thinking about twists in general. And then I glanced at that list I mentioned a few weeks back and… twists bumped up a few.

Before I dive in deep, though, I thought it might be good to define a few terms up front, just to cut down on any possible confusion as we move along.

A reveal is when the characters or the reader get a new piece of information. I refer you back to the often-quoted-here Damon Knight rule of thumb— facts my readers and characters don’t know are information, facts they already know are noise. Some reveals are key and dramatic. Others are not.

A mystery is when the main character and the readers are aware that information has been hidden from them and are searching for that unknown fact. Really simply, a mystery is when someone in my story has a question and is trying to find the answer.

Real quick aside—please don’t confuse mystery the story element with mystery the genre. All mystery stories are about mysteries, but not all mysteries are in a mystery stories. Make sense? I know, giving them the same name is confusing. Not sure who we can blame for that

Anyway, that brings us to a twist. A twist is when information is revealed that my characters and the audience didn’t know was being kept from them. Unlike a mystery, they don’t even suspect those facts are out there. When a twist appears, it comes from out of nowhere and changes a lot of perceptions for the characters and the audience.

So let’s talk about what makes a good twist. Or at least, what I think makes a good twist. Your MFA professor may have different ideas. And just for fun, I’ll mention a few ways they can go wrong.

I think a good twist always has four distinct elements…

First, as I just mentioned, my readers and my characters don’t expect a twist is coming. By it’s very nature, it’s a surprise that hits when we least expect it, often in a way we don’t expect it.

Keep in mind, if I tell you there’s a big secret about our hero’s best friend… well, I’ve just told you her best friend has a big secret. If I tell you you’ll never guess who they run into in Argentina, I’ve just told you they’re going to run into someone unexpected in Argentina. It’s a lot harder to be surprised by something we’re expecting, so it’s hard for any twist to land well when my readers are already on the lookout for it.

This is one of the reasons I rant about spoilers a lot. If I’ve structured my story so that this reveal has a certain dramatic weight, knowing the reveal ahead of time means that’s just gone from information to noise (there’s Damon Knight again). In my dramatic structure, it’s just gone from a high point to almost a flat line.

Second, the information a twist reveals has to be something my readers and characters didn’t already know but they need to know. Revealing that the murder victim is dead is kind of a given. Showing you Billy has a pet cat isn’t much of a reveal because, well, we’ve been talking about the cat since chapter four. It’s a fact that doesn’t carry any weight at all. Telling you Billy’s cat is a seven hundred year old immortal Wichianmat from the Empire of Ayutthaya —well, that’s something you didn’t know.

It’s worth noting I need to be revealing information the audience doesn’t know, but it has to be information they could know. It can’t break the characters or the world I’ve established. It needs to fit within that context. If I’ve been talking on and off about the ancient secrets of the Ayutthan Empire for twenty chapters now, cool. If this is a modern-day romance between rival hockey players that’s never referenced anything farther back than February… Empire of What?

A good rule of thumb is that whatever information I’m revealing in my twist is something my readers should be able to guess—even if it might mean a lot of guesses. If I have sixteen characters/ potential suspects in my murder mystery, it shouldn’t take forty-two guesses to name the murderer. If the big surprise is that Phoebe is Wakko’s niece, the readers should probably know who Wakko is. And why it would be shocking that he has a niece.

Third, the information revealed in a twist has to change how my readers and characters see previous events in the story. This is the moment when our view of things get twisted (ha ha ha now I get it) and we realize we’ve been looking at things the wrong way. And again, seeing them the right way should give my readers a bit of a thrill as everything realigns and fall into place in new ways.

That said, this new information can’t actually contradict previous events or any of the information my readers have been given up until now. Worth noting—this is when a lot of twists go wrong. I can’t reveal Billy’s dog is immortal when it’s been a cat for the past 200 pages. Also, this is still a hockey romance, but Billy was always a baseball superstar. And a federal marshal. Who’s here in New Orleans hunting immortal cats.

One of the worst examples of this is when we’ve been seeing over a character’s shoulder for a few hundred pages and they just, y’know, never happened to think about how they’re the serial killer the whole team’s been hunting. Or that Wakko knew Dot was the killer since chapter four but just didn’t mention it or act on it until the last twenty pages. For reasons.

Fourth and last, a twist needs time to build up strength. It’s really tough to have a good twist in the first five pages of a novel. As I mentioned above, a twist needs to alter our view of past events, which means… there have to be past events. So they tend to happen in the back half of the story.

I think a large part of this is that bit I just mentioned above about everything realigning. The power of a good twist comes from how many things it forces us to re-examine, so more time means more things. Some folks try to have their big twist in chapter two and it usually falls flat. Instead of seeing a dozen things in a new light we’re seeing… two? Maybe one? And sometimes, yeah… none

And that’s that.

Again, these are my own requirements, not something (to the best of my knowledge) taught in any courses or books. And as always, there’s always going to be a few exceptions, sure. But I’ve found these four elements tend to be pretty solid.

Y’see, Timmy, when a twist lands right, your readers will absolutely love you for it. They’ll re-read the whole book just to see how you slipped it past them. You can’t have slipped this past me! Holy crap you did!!!

But if I mess up a twist… at best it’ll leave readers with this gnawing, something-doesn’t-sit-right feeling. Or they’ll go back through the book and pick it apart. And at worst… they’ll just shake their heads, put my book aside, and forget about it.

And that’s definitely not the reaction I want a twist to get.

Next time… well, okay, next time is probably going to be in two weeks because I’ve got a handful of final tweaks to do on The Off Season. But when next time shows up, unless someone mentions something cooler, I’m probably going to talk about that one thing you were supposed to do.

Until then, go write.