Have you ever written a novel with a twist ending? Something people stare at and think I did not see that coming. Which books spring to mind when you think of endings with a twist, that you remember being well done?

I personally dislike 'sad' endings, not that all twist endings have to be sad of course, but I tend to steer clear of such endings, personally.

I try to always have some sort of twist in the climax of my novel. Sometimes it's merely a twist in how to defeat the primary antagonist, sometimes it's a twist on the aftermath/epilogue part of the story that lingers from the climax. I'm not sure how good my twists are, but I think there's a value in having something that the reader doesn't immediately expect, but, upon further reflection, sees how the twist was being built up to throughout the entire book.

In terms of what books/movies spring to mind when I think about a twist endings, The Lord of the Rings, Mockingjay, and The Dark Knight all come to mind.

This. An ending needs to follow solidly from everything that has come before, or it will be very unsatisfying (though how much depends on the genre) ... but it can't be exactly and no more than what the previous events implied, or it will have wasted the readers' time.

The one book I recently read that had a well-foreshadowed "twist" at the end (though the book as a whole didn't feel entirely satisfying) was Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.

I love twist endings--especially because I'm terrible at guessing endings anyway and so instead of 'oh, that's how it works', my reaction is 'oh my goodness, how did that happen?!' XD

I'm just not very good at writing said twists. I try. I go into a story and think, how can I end this in a way no one will ever expect. I heard some good advice from James Scott Bell, who suggests that you think of your ending, come up with five alternative ends that you think "it would never end like this" and try using one of them.

The False Prince, by Neilsen is, I think has a twist-ending. It's in first person, but the MC hides something from the reader for the entire story. My sister says she felt cheated...I thought it was epic. *shrug* That particular idea-using first person but having the character know something hugely important that the reader doesn't-is something I'm trying to use in my newest story idea, which is still in plotting stages.

I have three words for you: The Icarus Hunt. It's my single favorite stand-alone sci-fi novel (by Timothy Zahn, of course ) and has a huge twist at the end-- but then you go: "Oh, DUH! This and this and this and that all pointed to it!"

Seriously, it's a great novel. Go read it.

Oh, I love Zahn...well, I love the one series I read by him. XD I'll have to check this one out.

It is a great book. Go read it now! Nice surprises, too.

I think my favorite literary device is a red herring. I'm still learning how to use them (they're tricky to do well), but preparing a writer for one thing and then actually doing the other is SOOOOO satisfying.

So, in one of my stories, I keep implying that this character is going to be rescued. (She's sure she's going to be at least!) Then when she is actually burned at the stake I hope my readers will be able to experience her shock and horror and complete unreadiness in the face of death. Not the best example, but the best one I can think of at the moment.

Wow. Yeah, I think you'll get your reaction.

You'll have to be careful to not make them hate you, though.

Oh, no. Too late.

Mmmm...twist ending: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Or Narnia: The Last Battle. Or The Hobbit.

Actually, I rather hope they do. What are ya'll's opinions on foreshadowing? General rules for how to do it tactfully?

Do really small, seemingly unimportant details in random places, such as Dumbledore casually mentioning the healing powers of a phoenix's tears during a conversation; or something like that.

Well, in one way, I'm sure, but if you make 'em too mad in the wrong way they won't read any more of your books.

I have a hard time getting what people mean by the term 'foreshadowing'. Could someone give me a definition, maybe?

Foreshadowing is an advance sign or warning of what is to come in the future. The author of a mystery novel might use foreshadowing in the early chapter of his book to give readers an inkling of an impending murder. (Dictionary Definition)

Foreshadowing, by dissecting the words, would mean the shadow of something in front of the thing itself. So, a vague reference to something (or someone) before the thing itself actually arrives. Technically, you could call a prophecy foreshadowing, because it reveals what is to happen in the future (A Halfling is to destroy the Enemy) without coming out and saying "Frodo is the one to take the ring to Mount Doom".

In my experience, when a writer includes a prophecy in a work of fiction, this is generally one of the most heavy-handed forms of foreshadowing, and in general the less heavy-handed the better.

It can be well done, I think, but perhaps not easily, and even the times it does work well may not be liked by a lot of people anyway. Perhaps a good question to ask yourself if you're considering using a prophecy would be "why do you have/want to have a prophecy in the first place?" I think a lot of the worst don't really have good reasons to be there. And in some cases (in a series) they can cause problems if things change.

So does character consistency fall within the realm of foreshadowing? ('He did that way back there, so of course he did this here, why didn't I realize he would do it earlier?) And subtle progression of a story line? (It's been happening all this time, so it had to end up like this, why didn't I notice that?) 0.o

Foreshadowing is the intentional, subtle, deliberate insertion of information which is necessary to the resolution of the plot. That may not be the actual definition but it's the most useful. The key differences between foreshadowing and simple info-dumping is that foreshadowing is supposed to be cleverly disguised. Often foreshadowing does end up taking the form of info-dumping, but the best authors disguise the information by making important at the moment it comes up. Because it seems useful then, but isn't used in a dramatic way which might break the suspension of disbelief, the reader simply accepts the information and moves on. Later the reader is surprised because they though the author was using the information to advance the plot early, but now they realize they were being set up.

Mm, that makes sense. I think I maybe getting a clearer idea of this.

In that case, foreshadowing is absolutely essential to writing endings with a twist – it's really the main difference between a surprising ending people hate, and a surprising ending people love, in my experience. Interesting.

So basically like if there's a bad guy that's gonna do something later in the book, a foreshadowing of it might be to have him show up just staring from a distance in the rain creepily. But that's kind of a cliche one.
Then there's like... if someone's going to set fire to something later in the book, foreshadowing of that would be... like even just a lit candle that the character stares at earlier in the book, or grabbing a box of matches etc.

If a pivotal scene late in your story turns on a character lighting something on fire, a way to foreshadow that would be to have him light something inconsequentially on fire earlier (like a candle, say). If he's going to start the fire by pulling a matchbook out of his pocket, then absolutely you should find some way to make sure the reader could have known that he had matches in his pocket---having someone hand him a matchbook (perhaps as advertising) and him absentmindedly pocket it would be one (fairly heavy-handed) way, and having him go through his pockets item by item (looking for something else?) and listing the matchbook among everything else would be a little more subtle.

Completely true. (Why do I always end up quoting you?! ) I love twist endings where I go, "My goodness! That makes so much sense! I should have caught that! Argh!"

However, in my experience as a reader, there's one other thing I can find a bit annoying in a twist ending: a long explanation right after The Reveal. I think this can work if the reveal is during a slower part, or if your book just has a slower pace...but if you get the twist right at a dramatic point, I may not appreciate a long explanation following, particularly if I already mostly understand what happened! The twist in Jennifer Nielsen's The False Prince wasn't the best in this regard, I think. Directly following the reveal, she spent about a chapter (if I remember right...it's been a while) describing all these scenes that had to do with it, kind of going on and on...

But then there was a twist in Rebecca Stead's Liar and Spy (which, overall, I thought was great, by the way) which was also accompanied by quite a bit of explanation...but Liar and Spy already had a pretty slow, thoughtful pace, and I felt like it was better and more elegantly done than the one in The False Prince anyways. In particular, Stead had to explain the thinking behind a character's actions, and she did this by having him tell a story...which I thought was very nicely done.

In a fast-paced book with a twist at the ending, I generally prefer the author to suddenly reveal what's going on...leaving you saying, "Wait! What?!", reading furiously, a bit confused, trying to piece things together...until finally everything's unsnarled and explained in the denouement, once the climax is done. I think Brandon Sanderson may be the master of this type of ending. I've read six of his books and four of them had very good twist endings. (One of the others had an attempt at a twist that fell kind of flat. I didn't see enough clear foreshadowing, so to me it came out of nowhere...but other readers did see lots of foreshadowing, too much foreshadowing, and so it was too obvious.) All of them involved a sudden realization in the middle of a tense scene, some quick thinking to take advantage of the reveal, and then, finally, after the climax, a full explanation. Or, actually, in two of those cases, the main character still doesn't understand what's going on even after the climax, and so the explanation is presumably left for the next book...annoying but in a good way. (Except for the fact that in one of those two of those four cases, the next book may never be written. But anyways! )

TL;DR: Please, if you have a big twist at a dramatic moment, don't take a long time to explain what's going on. In my experience, if the writing is good, I don't care at the moment about understanding exactly what happened. I'll let myself be swept through the scene and will happily accept explanations later.

(* grins * I don't know.... When I joined, I ended up shadowing RunningWolf around by accident.)

If you've foreshadowed effectively, and if it's one kind of twist, you shouldn't actually need to explain it. Like the one at the end of LotR... not a lot of explanation needed for that. You know perfectly why Frodo refused to destroy the ring, and of course Gollum would steal it.

Though I admit there are some kinds of twists that need explanation. The end of some mysteries, for instance... like 'The Red House Mystery', that used a letter from the 'villain' for an explanation. It turned out well, I think.

And perhaps it's actually less bothersome to have an explanation than usual anyway when it's explaining an ending with a twist, because the reader really, really wants to know what's going on, whereas at the beginning of a book... they don't really care too much yet. Though of course you're right that it can be annoying even when it's about a plot twist. Like I said, a lot of twists don't need it.

Good point. It does have a lot to do with the tone and style of the book, whether a certain twist or way of dealing with a twist will work.

If you would just stop saying stuff that's so true I wouldn't have to keep quoting you!


Oh, argh. Spoiled again. I suppose I should just hurry up and finish LoTR, since it's one of those classics that people have no qualms about posting spoilers for...

Anyways, that's very true that many twists don't need much explanation...and that often the reader is so excited to find out what happens that s/he doesn't care how long the explanation is! I guess you could say that whether or not you should have an explanation, and how long it should be, depends on three things:

1) Do you need it? And how badly do you need it? In some of Sanderson's twist endings, I didn't see all the details of how they could have worked, but they did make general sense at first glance. So I was happy to wait on a further explanation. If, on the other hand, a twist left me thinking, "Wait a minute. How could that be? That doesn't make any sense!", then I would really want an explanation to convince me and leave me going, "Wow! I can't believe it! It really does work! This is so cool...!"

2) Does an explanation at this point fit with the tone? As I mentioned in my earlier post, some books have the kind of slow, thoughtful pace that allows for a long, character-centric explanation ala Liar and Spy. Other books are more fast-paced, e.g. Steelheart, and so should probably more leave you gasping and scrambling to keep up.

3) Is the explanation interesting? Would the reader be happy to sit through it all even if it were long? Of course, this is one of those impossible questions. How can we as writers tell accurately if something we've written is interesting? But we can at least try to guess, and see what our beta readers think!

I probably forgot something, but anyways...the point is that I think it's good to be aware of your explanation if you do a twist. An awkward explanation can dull the effect of a good surprise, in my experience.

Yes, Ma'am. I'll get on that.

* winces * Oh. I'm so sorry.... >_< I thought to myself 'What book will nobody be spoilered by? Lord of the Rings, that's the second most top selling fiction book of all time, and this is fantasy forum, everybody's read that'. I would have to be wrong. * thumps head * I'm sorry.

Yes, you should finish it. * grins *

I believe that's a good organization.

Thanks! Have to organize things.


No, that's okay. It's really my fault for not reading it...and besides, I've been spoiled about it many times before. (Curse you, TVTropes.) I'll do my best to forget.