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I am writing a screenplay. I am an aspiring filmmaker and would like to direct it myself.
However, there is a twist I have in the story, and I do not know which way to present it. I could give hints leading up to it, or I could hide it entirely, till the last second to reveal it. This article suggest four types of twists and said one type is only good. Do you agree, or is one of the other twist types better? Which type is the best to go for?
Personally, I drop some information throughout the body that will make the twist seem logical without hinting at the twist. The reader reaction should be "Oh, wow. Didn't see that coming" without a bewilderment because it is out of character or doesn't make any sense with the story line.
It's going to depend a lot upon what the twist is. If your writing controls the information available to the main character, for example the first person in a murder mystery, the twist can come out of nowhere. But even then, it has to be logical.
An example of what I mean: my pet dog jumps out of the woods and bites a man who has assaulted me. OK, previously, in the story, I have to have been out walking with the dog. The dog has to always run out into the woods and back when I walk him. I can't spend the whole story without mentioning a dog or walking the dog. What I can do is to make the dog a big soppy cuddly teddy bear who wouldn't hurt a fly, or the dog is a coward, so it comes as a surprise that he bites. The reader knows I have a dog. The dog doesn't materialize out of thin air. What is unexpected is the bite, not the dog. However, the bite isn't really out of character to the point of disbelief, because all dogs are capable of biting.
If you are going to use a character for a twist, that character must already be in play in the story. If you introduce new characters or your players act out of character, your twist will seem contrived.
Also some serious advice: please do not use the stock drama drivel that is constantly regurgitated over and over on TV and in the movies. Original ideas are very nice and unfortunately rather rare.
Last edited by oregonwoodsmoke; 01-22-2015 at 07:30 AM..
An educated answer depends upon knowing the genre of your screenplay. I assume that it is fairly standard culinary episodic narrative.
A cozy mystery works best when there are ample clues to the twist, but enough red herrings to throw the scent off. Season 2 of the "Endeavor" police drama has some excellent examples. Such mysteries are exercises for those of us who like to solve problems.
Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories are interesting and readable, but the reader is never provided with sufficient clues to independently solve the mysteries before Holmes does. That works best if the character is idiosyncratic, like Holmes, to the point that the pleasure is taken vicariously through relating to the protagonist.
Teaching stories and allegory depend upon the surprise of the revelation to impact the brain of the viewer reader while his guards are down, thus inserting the new knowledge before it gets filtered out by filters.
I am writing a screenplay. I am an aspiring filmmaker and would like to direct it myself.
However, there is a twist I have in the story, and I do not know which way to present it. I could give hints leading up to it, or I could hide it entirely, till the last second to reveal it. This article suggest four types of twists and said one type is only good. Do you agree, or is one of the other twist types better? Which type is the best to go for?
Okay thanks. I did read from a lot more sources, but I found that one particularly interesting to share. One movie that I thought was a good example of hiding twists is A Perfect Getaway (2009). SPOILER
In that movie, two characters you think are good, but are not, hide the fact that they are bad by having to speak in the third person about themselves, while other people are around them. Two killers are on the loose, and it's them. They look at a security camera photo taken of the killers and put in the papers. One of them says "They could be anybody", cause you cannot recognize them in the picture because of the video quality. The other one says "Are you sure they don't look familiar to you?".
They were actually talking about themselves, but talked in the third person, in case people around them could here. That's a good way of hiding twists. However, in my script, which has a different story, I find myself unable to come up with scenarios where the villains would logically talk to each other about themselves, in the third person. I will keep trying, but I think I have written it as good as it's going to get and if the viewer figures it out before the hero reveals it to other characters, than perhaps that's still okay?
I am writing a screenplay. I am an aspiring filmmaker and would like to direct it myself.
However, there is a twist I have in the story, and I do not know which way to present it. I could give hints leading up to it, or I could hide it entirely, till the last second to reveal it. This article suggest four types of twists and said one type is only good. Do you agree, or is one of the other twist types better? Which type is the best to go for?
I would definitely suggest using "24" and "Sons of Anarchy" for inspiration. 24 definitely has very sudden plot twists that seem to come out of nowhere but are then explained. These plot twists also take the characters by surprise. 24 is also known for killing off major characters and some of these really are complete shockers.
In Sons of Anarchy it's often done where the viewer knows thing that the characters don't and we watch them live and act based on their ignorance. I guess its okay to spoil the first 4 seasons of the show since the show just ended after 7 seasons. We know that the main character Jax Teller's mother Gemma and his stepfather Clay Morrow were responsible for the death of his father many years ago, but it takes Jax a long time to find this out.
I write fanfics and there is a tradeoff between script and prose form when it comes to plot twist type stories. With a prose story you're able to get into the characters minds and their point of view, but then if someone is secretly a traitor or mole or evil you can't really keep that by the reader (unless you ONLY do the main protagonist's point of view). With a script format you can keep these from the reader but then you can't get a full history or internal dialogue for the characters.
Okay thanks. Well in my script, it's a crime/police thriller, where there is a mole in the police station, working for the villains.
The reader is made aware of this very early on, and a lot of the story is waiting until the hero finds out that one of his fellow officers is a mole.
However, I was told by a reader that this is not the way to go, cause it ruins the element of surprise, and I should do it the same way as 24, where the reader finds out the same time as the hero as is completely blindsided by it, as much as the hero is.
However, there are some movies that let the reader know who the mole is right away, long before the hero finds out. The Departed (2006) for example, does this.
SPOILER FROM THE DEPARTED
Now I was told that I ruin elements of surprise. But would The Departed have been a better movie, if it withheld that Matt Damon was the mole, all the way until Leonardo DiCaprio's character found out? Or is it sometimes better to reveal early on to the reader that there is a "bomb under the table" so to speak, so that the reader has that build up throughout the story as to what is going to happen?
Speaking as a reader and not an author, I'm not a big fan of plot twists. Mainly because so many are poorly done. They often come across as a "cheat" by the author who seems to have either written himself into a hole and can't get out or as a cheap gimmick to justify the rest of the story. I've actually had books that I was enjoying ruined for me when the author has spent pages and pages building up a great mystery and then all of a sudden, something pops in out of left field to explain everything, the hero marries the girl, two pages of epilog. The End. Instead of enjoying, it's "where did that come from?" and "how does that even fit into the story?"
If, playing off your example, the mole turns out to be a total surprise, his best friend "Bob," and it comes in completely out of character for Bob as you've built him throughout the story, it just doesn't fit. On the other hand, Broadchurch (the British original) is a great example of the twist done well.
Okay thanks. Well in my script, it's a crime/police thriller, where there is a mole in the police station, working for the villains.
The reader is made aware of this very early on, and a lot of the story is waiting until the hero finds out that one of his fellow officers is a mole.
However, I was told by a reader that this is not the way to go, cause it ruins the element of surprise, and I should do it the same way as 24, where the reader finds out the same time as the hero as is completely blindsided by it, as much as the hero is.
However, there are some movies that let the reader know who the mole is right away, long before the hero finds out. The Departed (2006) for example, does this.
SPOILER FROM THE DEPARTED
Now I was told that I ruin elements of surprise. But would The Departed have been a better movie, if it withheld that Matt Damon was the mole, all the way until Leonardo DiCaprio's character found out? Or is it sometimes better to reveal early on to the reader that there is a "bomb under the table" so to speak, so that the reader has that build up throughout the story as to what is going to happen?
I was late getting into the theater to see the Kevin Costner movie No Way Out and missed the opening sequence, which let the viewers know that Costner's character was indeed a mole. The ending obviously blew me away. I kind of liked seeing it the way I did!
I was late getting into the theater to see the Kevin Costner movie No Way Out and missed the opening sequence, which let the viewers know that Costner's character was indeed a mole. The ending obviously blew me away. I kind of liked seeing it the way I did!
The opening sequence didn't spoil the twist. We know Costner is being questioned after an even that happened earlier, but there's no clue as to who is questioning him.
The twist remained intact and was amped up because Costner was a Naval intelligence officer, which gave the audience the assumption he was a spy hunter. And he was, at one level. That made the twist even more shocking.
The Departed works on an entirely different principle; it's a cat and mouse game. The audience knows one is a bad guy in disguise, but is helpless to assist the good guy. This is used for mounting suspense, not a shock.
Alfred Hitchcock became famous for using the suspense trick; he would show the villain just behind the curtain, while the innocent hero steps ever close to danger with every step he takes toward the window.
But in Psycho, he completely broke his audience's expectation with a sudden dramatic twist that blew the audiences away. The first third of the movie led the audience to think the story was all about the secretary who stole the money from her boss. Throughout that third, he used all his old suspense tricks- the boss sees the secretary just as she's leaving town, a patrol cop follows her for miles and miles, and then heavy rain starts to fall after dark. All classic devices to create suspense.
And then, she sees the neon motel sign. The audience is relieved. But Hitchcock. master that he was, only gave the audience a short breather. The young man behind the counter seemed nice enough, but there was a lot of subtly creepy stuff in the motel and the old house on the hill that created a sense of vague unease. More suspense, just a little, for only a few minutes, bit by bit.
That was geared very carefully. Everyone was watching intently, with a lot of questions in their minds, before he did something no one ever expected.
It wasn't a movie about the secretary and her lover at all. That's the real shocker he created.
But it all had to be planned out, second by second, to make it work as well as it did. The thing about Psycho that no one ever thinks about is how short the picture actually is. It seems much longer than it actually is.
The big twist only took the first 30 minutes out of 90. The other 2/3 of the movie reverts back to Hitchcock's typical suspense devices, and then delivers a second twist at the very end of the flick.
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