Let's Talk About Twists—Brandon Sanderson

BRANDON: Let’s take a little deviation and  talk about twists. Every story should have minor twists. Most of these are escalations,  like I talked about with Star Wars.

You do not need to have a twist ending to have a successful  book. A lot of people who are fans of mine know that I like having twists around the ends  of my books. But be careful with twists.

Escalation twists are almost always a good idea. These are the things where the same plot  is happening, but now it’s more dangerous, more scary, or larger in scope than you expected.  And indeed, some of the Hollywood formulas point out, “This is the place where you change  the scope of the problem to make it much larger.

” They’ll just say on page whatever. The Hollywood  formats love this. “On page this, expand the scope so it becomes more deadly and more dangerous,  whatever it is.

” In Star Wars, that’s losing Obi Wan, finding out that the ship is bigger, there’s  an even bigger ship. There’s always bigger fish. And finding out Luke doesn’t need to just  have adventure.

He needs to become a Jedi, and indeed, get revenge on the people  who killed his surrogate parents. These are all escalations. None of them are  classic twists.

Star Wars does not have very many classic twists. The only one that I would  call a classic twist is you get to Alderon and it’s been destroyed, and now you have to deal with  the Death Star. It does not have a twist ending.

If you watched that opening and said, “Wow,  I bet the little ship’s going to beat the big ship at the end,” and it does, it’s not  unsatisfying that the reader guessed what’s going to happen. If you’re properly signposting,  they should have an idea of what’s coming. That means that when Elizabeth Bennett and  Mr Darcy get together, you’re not let down.

You actually are fulfilled. It doesn’t need a  twist ending where she realizes that she all along loved this other guy. That works really well in  While You Were Sleeping because that movie has a different set of signposts.

It has a character who  has deep flaws and also has made a big lie that’s causing all kinds of problems. Different story  structure, despite both of them being romances. You don’t need one.

But if you’re going to do one, understand that giving people more than they  expected is almost always the best kind of twist. Imagine it as if you are giving a present to your  children or your nieces and nephews or whatever young individual in your life. And you find  out from them, they’re like, “I love cars.

” You’re like, “Oh, you love cars, huh? Do  you like Matchbox cars? ” They’re like, “Yes, I love Matchbox cars.

” And they’re like, “Man,  I bet Brandon’s going to give me a Matchbox car for my birthday. ” And they get really  excited by it. And then it’s socks.

That’s a twist. It’s not hard to surprise a reader  by giving them socks instead of a Matchbox car. Really easy to do.

And it makes for  a terribly unsatisfying experience and is a bad way to use a twist. Twists are easy. Good twists don’t do that.

Good twists are of a different sort, where the kid opens the thing,  and lo and behold, you have learned that they love Super Mario, and you have given them a Super Mario  Matchbox car. So it combines two of their loves. It’s more than they ever wanted.

Luke went on his  adventure, and he wanted to go on an adventure. But he also found a new surrogate family that’s  actually kind of more important to him than the adventure. He also saved a whole bunch of  people’s lives by going on his adventure.

That is cooler than just going on adventure. Luke  got, you know, he didn’t get a Matchbox car. He got a whole car.

There’s, like, a Mercedes wrapped  up under the tree. Because he got what he wanted plus more. That is the sort of quote unquote  “twist” that oftentimes you want to deliver.

Now, there are--. Oh, go ahead. Yeah.

STUDENT: What if you don’t know how to build rhythm? Pretend you’re doing  this backwards. You come up with Luke’s going to blow up the Death Star.

BRANDON: Yes. STUDENT: You want to have a twist that’s  going to be more. How do I write that, so I give the impression and promise to be  smaller than that, to where that’s a beneficial thing without it going off the rails?

BRANDON: This is practice. Everything is practice. But in this case, there are a couple  things you could do.

The question is, let’s say you want to have Luke destroy  the Death Star, and you are planning this, and you’re ready for it, but you don’t want the  reader to know that’s what you’re going to do. You want them to expect something smaller. How do  you teach them to expect something smaller, then give them more without them being disappointed  they didn’t get the small thing, but also make them not sad about the progress of the story?

And so there’s lots of ways to go about this. One of the ways is, again, the While You Were Sleeping  way, which is if you’re going to pull a reversal, you show the reader that the character  doesn’t need what they want. And so when they open the package--.

It’s like saying to  your nephew, “Do you want a car for Christmas? ” “Yeah, I like cars. ” And then you spend the next  six months teaching them how cool planes are, and then you give them a drone.

So when  they open it, instead of being like, “Oh, it’s not what I wanted,” they’re like, “I never  realized I actually wanted this other thing, and now you’ve given it to me. This story is awesome. ” That’s one of the best twists you can pull.

It is difficult and requires subtlety,  but it is really powerful when it happens. Because it’s like you have--, whenever you can do  to the reader what is happening to the character. The character thinks they want something.

They  need something else. When the reader’s like, “We’re not going to get this other thing, but  I kind of want it to happen,” and then you give it to them through the course of the story,  they feel like the character did, and you have a big triumph there. The danger is that they  don’t get the thing.

Usually you try to give them the thing too. You make their quest about  vengeance, and you put the person that they’re getting vengeance on on your metaphoric Death  Star and blow it up. They get revenge and they blow up the Death Star.

You get that and more. But there are lots of other ways to accomplish this, and it’s often this kind of stage illusion  magic that writers do, where they’re telling you to pay attention to this thing, while they’re  foreshadowing this thing. Really powerful when you can do it.

Very dangerous because--. There’s a story I like to share about a writer I know. And we are running low on time.

But about a  writer I know who, I met them. My books had taken off and theirs hadn’t, and we both released at the  same time. And they’re like, “I don’t know why my book didn’t take off.

I wish it had really done  as well as your book. ” And I had heard of this person’s book. And it was a story I hadn’t picked  up because a lot of my friends said, “This is very like some well-worn fantasy tropes that we’re  just, the genre’s just kind of tired of.

” And so I told him, like, “I heard the buzz  around it that people are just not excited because of these well-worn tropes. ” And he’s like,  “Well, no. I upend those all in the third act.

I use them all at the beginning, and then I knock  the legs out of the reader, and at the end it’s this glorious reveal that it’s all post modern  and it’s really a good twist. It’s a post modern fantasy book, kind of like Mistborn is. ” Which  is one of the things that I did with Mistborn.

And this taught me a lesson. It taught me the  lesson--. I didn’t actually go investigate this, so I don’t mention the writer’s name, and  I might be remembering the story wrong.

The lesson is important. The lesson is that if  all of your promises up front and your progress is pointing toward something very expected, like you  are giving someone a by-the-numbers happy romance and then you twist end, you lose all of your  audiences. The ones who picked up that book and kept reading are the ones who wanted  the thing you were promising.

The people who would love the upsetting of the status quo  by the end won’t get to your end. So everyone hates this book, except for a small audience. The corollary to that, the counter proposal is Into the Woods by Sondheim.

Into the Woods  by Sondheim is the proof that this doesn’t hold true for all stories. Into the Woods  is all about playing into the cliches, upending it, and it becomes this genius work where  the second half is a horror story, and the first half is a lighthearted fairytale fantasy. The only thing I can tell you is, remember those exceptions, and if you can do what  Sondheim did, you can pull off twists like that, that completely upend the story.

And when those  work, because they are the exceptions to the rule, they tend to get a lot of traction and attention.  Because when that works, it’s so surprising, and people enjoy it. Unfortunately, most of us,  or most authors who are not quite as skilled or aren’t in the right situation, have the other  thing, where the people who would enjoy the upending of all of the morays of that given genre  don’t get to that part because they get bored by the opening.

And the people who would love that  hate it when it happens. So keep that in mind. Yeah?

STUDENT: Wouldn’t you say that part of that too is because people trusted Sondheim? BRANDON: Yeah. Part of that is people trust Sondheim.

And that’s an unfair part of this.  People trust me. Once you establish yourself as an author--.

Like Way of Kings by a new  author may not have done as well because it has a steep learning curve. It hits  you with a lot of characters up front, and it’s kind of brutal with those characters.  But people know that Brandon books generally have these points of light, they know I’m good at  endings, and they know I’m good at bringing things together, so they’re willing to give me a benefit  of the doubt that a new author doesn’t get.

And indeed, I mean, Sondheim had worked on many  famous musicals before that. People trusted him and knew he was kind of twisted. And so the people  who go to a Sondheim play at that point are like, “I kind of want something twisted.

Oh,  this happy-go-lucky fairytale is a promise, because Sondheim would never do that, that it’s  going to go really wrong for these people. ” And they get what they want. And that’s  part of why Into the Woods works.