The Rules of a Good Plot Twist | Semi-Ramblomatic

A good plot twist is when you try to fire a beloved leader from your company and then half the staff fires you instead!

A tip I've always heard to writing a good plot twist is that "It makes earlier confusing events make sense, rather than make earlier sensical events confusing."

I feel like the reason so many of those twist rules are broken is specifically because of the “author wants victory over the audience” mentality

The cardinal rule of twists: The twist shouldn't be worse than just playing it straigth

While "surprising but inevitable" are important parts of plot twists, I'm glad the third part "don't try to out smart you audience" was brought up. George R R Martin (the King of making the incest babies plot twist work) mentioned something about that once, something like "If someone talking about book one has already guessed the plot twist you're setting up for in book 4, you can change it, which breaks the story, or you can just go with it and live with the fact some people figured it out."

The whole bit about lying to the audience reminds me of this one episode of Bob's Burgers where Linda puts on a murder mystery dinner theater show in the restaurant, and during the opening she says "can you guess the murderer? Its not meeeeee!" In a very obviously lying tone. At the end of the show she reveals she was the murderer and a couple people in the audience say this: "Hey wait a minute! You specifically said at the beginning you weren't the murderer!" "That's right! Its a TWIST!" "No, its a lie! A lie is not a twist!"

I would like to add a rule that Red from OverlySarcasticProductions came up with: when your plot twist re-contextualizes the story, the new story has to be at least as good as the one without the twist though that might fall under 'no incest babies'

I can’t believe Yahtzee ruined my cauliflowers.

Don't be scared of your audience figuring out the twist either. If your audience looked at the clues and deduced what they mean...that's GOOD WRITING. A bad twist people see coming is either because you over explained a plot detail too early, or it's such an established trope people actively look for it (X character was dead the whole time, for example)

In my experience, the perfect twist is the one I realize about 30 seconds before the truth comes out. Because, yeah, it all came together, but not 10 minutes into the movie. You had me up to the very end but I kind of knew where it was going anyway.

I'm still blown away by how Bioshock's twist was pulled off. Technically it tells you what's happening at the opening cutscene and you just didn't notice. Masterfully done.

"There's a difference between 'unreliable narrator' and 'the plot flat-out lies to the audience.'" THIS.

Man gotta say... the animations in second sight have aged gracefully.

Rule 4: The twist must add to the story, not take away from it. The twist at the end of 12 minutes is "none of that was real, it was all in your head, but also you needed to do the thing in your head to get the ending that starts the whole game over" which... just robs the whole game of any point. By forgetting, we're doomed to repeat the "mistake" that led us here, but it isn't a mistake it's a freaking hypothetical.

Knights of the Old Republic still has one of the best plot twists in gaming imo. 2 stories for the price of 1 was a perfect way to put it.

Yahtz, after following you for years i know the entire plot of Silent Hill 2, including weird dog alternate endings, and i have never touched the damned thing.

A rule I'd suggest for "was this set up or is this an ass pull" is "could someone who knew the twist call your attention to the appropriate moments right before it's revealed such that you figure it out yourself". Knights of the Old Republic's big twist literally does exactly that, and if you're like me, you audibly went "oh my GOD" when you figured it out mid-cutscene.

Hugely underrated game, but Jade Empire had a great twist where characters throughout the game would comment on how your fighting style seems to lure people into seeing a weakness that isn't really there, until you end up trying to save your former master. Upon "saving" him, he turns out to be the main villain and comments that you diligently learned everything from him, "even your weaknesses," and proceeds to exploit the weakness that everyone else thought was an illusion.

Best recontextualized twist is definitely Ghost Trick Phantom Detective. The pieces are all there, and once you put them together with the final twist, seeing the story a second time makes everything much more fun.

The writers of Westworld were so mad the internet predicted their twists in season one, they made season 2 utterly incomprehensible in response. Talk about real dickweeds.