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A twist is a sudden change in a story that surprises and engages the audience, often through a twisted ending. It reintroduces surprise into a familiar plot, with skilled writers using foreshadowing. A good ending should be surprising and inevitable, with twists taking various forms such as revelations, reversals, and changes in fortune. All twists should fit neatly into the established story.
A twist is a sudden change in the narrative of a story, intended to surprise and engage the audience. Examples include the revelation of a previously unknown secret about a character or a change in a protagonist’s fortunes. Such a surprise at the conclusion of the story is called a twisted ending. Literary masters of the twist include writer O. Henry and many great crime novel authors. Alfred Hitchcock’s films and the television series The Twilight Zone have also been known for their twists and turns.
“Plot” is a literary term for the structure of a story. In their most basic forms, many textures are very similar to each other. Indeed, it has often been stated that there are only a limited number of basic storylines. For example, most disaster films follow the same formula: set up the characters and the situation, introduce the catastrophe, and then follow the characters as they struggle to survive afterward. While this creates a familiar feel, many viewers may think they know what to expect from a given story based on their past experiences with similar stories.
The twist is a way to reintroduce the element of surprise into the story. While the basic plot may be familiar, the writers are capable of endless variations on the story details. A trusted ally of the protagonist can turn out to be a traitor, for example, or be killed at a crucial moment. A truly skilled writer can insert twist hints at the beginning of the story, a technique called foreshadowing. If the hints are subtle enough, the audience will only recognize them in retrospect.
Screenwriter William Goldman said a good ending must be surprising and inevitable. That is, it should proceed naturally from what happened before, but it should be presented in such a way that the audience cannot predict it in advance. This is not an easy task. One way to achieve this is with a twist ending that challenges the audience’s established beliefs about the previous story, called a twist ending. The American short story writer O. Henry was such a famous master of twisted endings that they are sometimes called O. Henry endings.
The twist can take numerous other forms. A sudden and unexpected revelation about a character or story element is sometimes called a revelation. An event that has the opposite outcome to what the audience expected is called a reversal. A “reversal of fortune” is a sudden change in the protagonist’s state, for better or for worse. As with twisted endings, all of these twists should fit neatly into what has previously been established in the story; otherwise, they may seem forced and artificial to the audience.
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