A Plot Twist Tip You Don't Hear Very Often

a plot twist tip you don't hear very often

Sometimes suspense is worth it, even if it means serving your audience the entire plot on a silver platter:

In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows Juliet isn't dead. Romeo does not. It's a tragedy. You sympathize with the characters.

In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus tries to expose the murderer of King Laius, not knowing that he himself is the murderer.

In the TV-show Breaking Bad, a DEA agent is looking for a crystal-meth producer who calls himself ''Heisenberg,'' not knowing that Heisenberg is his brother-in-law. Throughout the show, we follow Walter White (Heisenberg) as he grows his drug empire, while also having dinner by the pool with his brother-in-law. And we can't stop asking ourselves: when will this DEA agent figure out that the person he's looking for has been right under his nose all this time?

That my friends, is what we call dramatic irony. A literary device in which the audience's understanding of certain events or individuals in a story surpasses that of its characters.

What is meant by that is simple: it's not necessary for each and every plot twist in your story to come as a surprise to your audience. We all know that Scar is the one who really killed Mufasa, but that doesn't take anything away from the emotional impact following his death.

You will still have your audience at the edge of their seats, not out of suspense of what's going to happen, but out of fear, and excitement, of how the characters they've grown to love are going to react to it.

So it's not in any way wrong to drop important information ahead of time! Sometimes the best way to tackle a twist is simply to let your audience in on what's happening. Let them anticipate the emotional reactions of the characters. In certain cases, that on its own can be torture for whoever it is that's watching.

For all they know, this plot twist, and I am using plot twist loosely, it can just as well be a secret big enough to destroy a relationship, but not something that is going to affect every character, could potentially come to ruin everything your audience have grown attached to.

It can turn characters against each other, massive consequences to follow. Perhaps a certain character is heading towards certain death, perhaps their partner's falling for someone else, unaware of the infidelity that is happening because of it.

Or, we find ourselves in the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. Today, a character is enjoying a nice day out at the park, not knowing that yesterday evening, a herd of zombies marched through that same exact location.

Instant alarm bells start ringing for your audience — the apocalypse are upon us, but where did the zombies go? And when are the characters going to find out about this? How are they going to find out?

But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that a close family member has already fallen victim to the undead, and now, having been missing for a couple days, is slowly approaching our main character from behind, reanimated as a zombie. The audience has already seen this family member be bitten and turned, but for our main character, it's a different story.

Your audience are emotionally invested in your characters. Use that to your advantage.

To have an audience sit on a piece of information, not knowing how it's going to affect their favorite characters and relationships, can have just as much of an emotional impact as a ''regular'' plot twist.

"There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.”

― Alfred Hitchcock

i never expected byler, ronance or steddie to happen. but for a show that handled robin being a lesbian so well in s3 (although i do have some things to complain about that, i was satisfied with it because her coming out scene with steve was beautiful), i sure was fucking disappointed. the duffers are sick for thinking any of the shit in vol2 is good representation.

to tell us will was going to come out, which is a HUGE deal, and then leave his queerness simply as subtext. he never confesses, he never says “i am gay”. instead we get a heartfelt monologue about his feelings for mike that only serves for mileven development.

don’t get me wrong. i loved his scene with jonathan. but we don’t need implied representation. we need more characters who actually say they are lgbtq+ onscreen.

as for robin... to have her side-lined and with a romantic partner that is basically her clone is just disgusting for me. i wish i could have liked vickie because i love amybeth but i just don’t. like, her bf broke up with her and suddenly she likes robin? out of the blue? and we’re supposed to love that? no. fuck that.

it’s 2022. the duffers deserve to get a lot of shit for treating their queer characters like that. fuck them. there’s no excuse.

- maybe it’s okay to be like the other girls

As much as I love the Queen’s Gambit, some aspects could’ve been updated to fix the story better. The most important one, in my opinion, is the use of the magical black best friend trope that Jolene embodies. She’s probably the most important person to the protagonist, but she only shows up as soon as Beth needs someone at her lowest point to save her. The show tried to lampshade it by having Jolene tell Beth she’s not there to save her when that’s literally what she’s there to do.

Another thing is how Beth’s romantic and sexual feelings for women aren’t given the same attention and focus as her relationship with men. Yea, she flirts and has sex with Cleo, but after that’s done, she’s never even mentioned again and has no lasting impact on Beth’s story. Beth’s romantic feelings for Jolene are meant to be understood in a platonic sense when Jolene is the only person in the entire novel who Beth says she loves. I love the show, and Beth Harmon is so important to me, but I don’t know why we have to have the same tropes from a book written in the ‘80s in a show made in 2020 :(

- maybe it’s okay to be like the other girls

How I’m feeling now I’ve had time to process the bullshit I just watched