Latest / Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori / 107. Twist Ideation for Mysteries, Thrillers and Suspense Novels

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107. Twist Ideation for Mysteries, Thrillers and Suspense Novels · Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori

• 0:05
  Welcome to the Show Don't Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vadori, where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction.
• 0:13
  Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be.
• 0:20
  Join me as I share the step-by-step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away, as I host successful writers who share a behind-the-scenes look at their own writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages, giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger.
• 0:38
  Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book.
• 0:42
  There are real and important skills that you need to learn.
• 0:45
  On this show, I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need.
• 0:49
  I can't wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing Today on the podcast, prepare to be maybe a little bit scared because I actually got scared when we were recording this one, which Sam actually had a lot of fun making fun of me for.
• 1:08
  But Samantha Skal is a fan of the scary, the mysterious, and suspenseful.
• 1:13
  She is the executive director of Thriller Fest, and she's the co-founder of Shadows & Secrets Writing Retreats, which is a series of thriller and mystery-focused writing retreats in Salem, Massachusetts' most haunted hotel.
• 1:26
  And she's also, like me, an Author Accelerator certified book coach, but she specializes in coaching mystery, thriller, and suspense, which is shorthand is called MTS in the industry.
• 1:39
  And she works with authors all the way from novel planning through the delightful hell that is revision.
• 1:45
  These are her words.
• 1:46
  Her superpower as a coach is brainstorming twists without ground up rewrites, and she recently released a standalone mini course for blocked thriller writers, which is called Find Your Final Twist.
• 1:58
  She's an enthusiast of homemade sourdough and cheese of all kinds.
• 2:03
  Sam is an agent and author who writes stories that keep her up at night, and she also lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
• 2:10
  I can't wait for you to hear this.
• 2:12
  You can hear me squirming as Sam sets up the- she uses so many examples in this interview where just with simple things and with the intonation of her voice and with some simple setups, she's actually creating suspense for us.
• 2:26
  It is absolutely beautiful, and we're gonna talk all about what twists mean.
• 2:30
  We might even invent a drinking game during this.
• 2:33
  It was a really fun interview that we recorded together, and there was so much insight that we actually created two episodes for your enjoyment.
• 2:41
  Enjoy these next two episodes- Oh, I'm so excited to be sitting here with Sam Skall on my couch recording this podcast.
• 2:50
  Welcome, Sam.
• 2:51
  Thank you so much for having me, Suzy.
• 2:53
  It is a delight to be here.
• 2:55
  So this is a big topic, and honestly, I don't always bring people on to talk about topics that I know very- not that I know little about, but I don't know what you're gonna say, but I can't wait- Oh… because I respect what you do so much.
• 3:08
  It's so cool.
• 3:10
  For some of our listeners, can you defi- like, can you just talk a little bit about the genres that you coach, because they're different, and just so that we know what we're talking about.
• 3:18
  Absolutely.
• 3:19
  So I focus almost exclusively on mystery, thriller, suspense, and then horror is my pet project.
• 3:25
  I love a, I love a good haunted house and little body horror.
• 3:28
  But most of my business is focused around mystery, thriller, and suspense.
• 3:31
  So we- Mystery, thriller, and suspense.
• 3:33
  Okay.
• 3:34
  So perfect.
• 3:35
  So thriller and suspense in particular are genres that don't necessarily-- They're not like romance or mystery that have like the formula, right?
• 3:44
  And yet, right, as a … I wish you could see Sam's face because- I'm grinning at her … she's like trying to jump in.
• 3:49
  Like, but, but structure of the book is very important in your, in these genres, correct?
• 3:55
  Or- Yes.
• 3:56
  Plays a role.
• 3:56
  Very.
• 3:57
  Can you talk a little bit about that for me?
• 3:58
  Yeah.
• 3:58
  Genre expectations for MTS; I'll stop saying mystery, thriller, suspense.
• 4:02
  MTS.
• 4:02
  Uh, it's very strong.
• 4:04
  You can really tick off your readers if you don't have, for example, three twists at least in a modern thriller.
• 4:09
  Mysteries you need something scary, you need a dead body, you need something on page one.
• 4:14
  And suspense, we need to know what to be scared of by the end of the first chapter.
• 4:17
  You can't just rock into a suspense novel and not give us something to be unsettled about.
• 4:22
  Yeah.
• 4:23
  I mean, that is awesome and amazing that you can share that because c- but can you just take one step back- Mm-hmm … for a second and okay, I'm gonna be many of the writers that I meet.
• 4:34
  Love you guys all, but I hear this all the time.
• 4:38
  That's cool.
• 4:39
  Expectations, I'm gonna break them'cause I wanna be completely original.
• 4:42
  Can you just explain what the role in these genres, I mean it's true of all genres, but what the role in these genres plays and why you might wanna care about those expectations?
• 4:52
  Yeah.
• 4:53
  Well, you know, if you try to give a romance reader a thriller, you're going to upset them, right?
• 4:58
  Because they're expecting a certain thing.
• 4:59
  It's the exact same thing if you give a thriller lover a book that does not hit those three twists.
• 5:04
  If you don't have a midpoint twist, you don't have a climactic twist, you don't have a final twist, they're going to be very disappointed, and they will not read you again, which as authors is not our goal.
• 5:14
  And they might give you a one-star review- Yeah … because they picked up the wrong book.
• 5:17
  And so that's not to say that you don't have a good book, it just means that you shouldn't call it mystery, thriller, or suspense, right?
• 5:25
  If you're not following those genre expectations.
• 5:27
  Correct.
• 5:27
  It might be a great, I mean, it might be a stretch to say a women's fiction or something.
• 5:32
  Sometimes we can do that with romance.
• 5:34
  If you don't b- meet all the beats, maybe you're a book club fiction that has romance in it.
• 5:39
  Yeah, yeah.
• 5:39
  Um- You're going the genre that you fit the most in in the bookstore, and then you can have mystery or thriller elements or suspense elements, but you aren't gonna put that first.
• 5:47
  Yeah.
• 5:47
  That'd be a suspense- And would you say that that's true?
• 5:49
  Because, I, I mean, I know that a lot of your writers that you coach go on to be traditionally published- Mm-hmm … but some, is this true in independent as well?
• 5:56
  Oh, oh, for sure.
• 5:57
  Is this what you're seeing in that genre?
• 5:58
  Yes.
• 5:59
  Yeah.
• 5:59
  You, you really need to understand that, uh, you know, like romance readers, MTS readers are getting into this genre because they want to be satisfied with what they expect.
• 6:09
  Yeah, exactly.
• 6:10
  Okay.
• 6:10
  So it's literally in the name, but suspense makes writers Well, like try, when I see newer writers trying to write suspense, what they think that means is that they should just hide everything from the reader.
• 6:22
  What do you think about that?
• 6:23
  Because I see this all the time where it's like, what is happening?
• 6:26
  What is happening?
• 6:27
  And I'm flipping, I'm flipping the pages, nothing is happening, and they're like, "Because I've gotta get the suspense part is the twist later." What do you think?
• 6:35
  Y- yes, I see that all the time, too.
• 6:36
  I will tell you that unexpectedly for, particularly for new writers, the more that you get on the page in terms of fear and through interiority, which we will talk about- Yes, we will the more that the reader will feel that fear.
• 6:48
  And so I like to define suspense as a story where we both don't know what to be scared of, and we don't know how it's going to end.
• 6:56
  We don't have, like, a clear path for how we're going to solve what's happening.
• 7:00
  Mystery are, is the story of solving something that already has happened, and thriller is preventing something from happening.
• 7:07
  Obviously, these all get blended all the time, which is why MTS sits in, in the bookstore together.
• 7:11
  But interiority and explaining why the character is doing what they're doing, what they're scared of happening, what they think is going to happen, which sets you up for a twist, because twists are just assumptions proven incorrect, and if you do not have those assumptions on the page, you will not deliver that same impact to the reader that you're going for.
• 7:30
  Yeah, and so that's- You wanna scare them … and that's kind of similar to many other genres.
• 7:35
  We talk a lot about, you know, the reader has a question, and if you don't answer the question, they might just start skimming 'cause it's really annoying, and they wanna flip ahead.
• 7:43
  But sometimes we just answer the question wrong, right?
• 7:46
  And, and that's kind of the same thing as letting the reader make an assumption, and then you have a twist, right?
• 7:51
  It's incorrect or you just said.
• 7:53
  Yeah.
• 7:53
  Very well said about answering the question.
• 7:55
  I love that when I'm reading a book, and the author has answered the question that's in my head through the character's voice on the page, and then I can move on and be comfortable.
• 8:03
  But for twists, you, it, from, from an author perspective, you need to be thinking of what the reader is assuming, and you also need to be understanding what you have on the page that the character is assuming because the reader will assume what the character assumes in most cases.
• 8:16
  You're going to have clever readers who are looking for you to mess with them, which is what makes MTS so fun.
• 8:21
  It's a big puzzle, but your characters guide your reader through the story and through, and make those assumptions that cr- then create twists.
• 8:29
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:30
  And that, and to be clear, that's different from what we call an unreliable narrator- Correct … which is, like, a narrator who's lying to you.
• 8:37
  Do you wanna just- Oh, boy.
• 8:38
  Yeah … talk a little bit about the difference?
• 8:39
  Yeah.
• 8:39
  It, 'cause you can do that.
• 8:40
  That's a technique.
• 8:42
  Um, yes.
• 8:43
  With, with caveats.
• 8:44
  So unreliable narrators are, is a term that- It comes up a lot.
• 8:48
  Gone Girl is the most famous example.
• 8:50
  And the reason that Gone Girl worked was because she lied to us in written form, and so that was basically, it wasn't her interiority, it wasn't her inner thought that she was lying.
• 9:01
  If you, as an author, make the choice to lie to the reader in inner thought, you have broken the trust with the reader, and that is my single biggest no-no for all of MTS, is, in most books, I would argue.
• 9:13
  Yeah.
• 9:13
  Don't lie to the reader through inner thought.
• 9:14
  But you can tell the story through the, a different point of view character and have your liar character be lying through their dialogue.
• 9:23
  You can have them write something.
• 9:24
  You can have them, you know, write a news article or a diary or whatever.
• 9:28
  But you absolutely should never lie to the reader through inner thought.
• 9:32
  You will, just, it just breaks everything.
• 9:34
  Yeah.
• 9:34
  It, it does.
• 9:35
  It absolutely does.
• 9:36
  And we're gonna talk a little bit about what interiority is and how to do it and, and whatnot in a moment.
• 9:42
  But we just said never, never lie to the reader, but if they don't know that they're lying and they're making an assumption- That's different … that's different, right?
• 9:50
  That's different.
• 9:50
  Yeah.
• 9:51
  Yes.
• 9:51
  So an, an unreliable narrator could be somebody who is truly convinced that their version of the truth is what is going on, right?
• 9:59
  And they are proven to be unreliable later when they find out what the truth actually is.
• 10:04
  Drunk girl seeing their neighbor be murdered is a classic MTS trope that's been around.
• 10:08
  It's done, but they're also really fun, right?
• 10:11
  We have many examples of that, that have made it to Netflix movies and all of that because we love seeing somebody who's just not quite sure of what their reality is.
• 10:18
  You can have a character who's being gaslit and doesn't understand that they are being ch- told a version of the truth that's not actually real.
• 10:26
  That is also technically an unreliable narrator because they don't have what's actually happening.
• 10:31
  But this is, it's close to how you develop a twist because you're making assumptions about what's going on, but it's not the same thing.
• 10:38
  And an unreliable narrator is a It's a tricky thing to pull off, and so it, it requires a lot of study and reading of how other people have done it, and looking to see what the truth was in the end that they were unreliable about.
• 10:51
  But, you know- And why And why.
• 10:53
  We always need to know why at the end.
• 10:55
  That's one of the hallmarks of MTS as well.
• 10:57
  Yeah.
• 10:58
  Yeah, exactly.
• 10:58
  Okay, so you mentioned a few things here.
• 11:01
  You talked, like you kinda brushed past t- tropes, like the trope.
• 11:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 11:05
  Yeah.
• 11:05
  How do, how do… Can you tell us what a trope is, first of all, and how that plays a role in these genres?
• 11:12
  Yeah.
• 11:13
  These are important, right?
• 11:14
  They are very important.
• 11:15
  So, you know, a good one is the final girl, right?
• 11:18
  You have this woman who has survived the serial killer, and then the serial killer comes after her, and she must survive, and she has been just absolutely thrashed in her life, right?
• 11:27
  We know exactly how that story is going to end because we have seen it been told a million different times, and we know that she will survive and the serial killer will not win.
• 11:36
  Tropes can be really fun to play with, particularly if you subvert the reader expectations about what they think is going to happen, and you have it happen some other way.
• 11:45
  So maybe your final girl character is aware she's the final girl, and then your midpoint twist is something like she's actually a serial killer herself or whatever it is.
• 11:54
  I'd read that.
• 11:55
  But like the, you're playing with reader expectations to make a twist in that way.
• 11:59
  And so understanding what the story norms are in MTS, you know, the butler did it.
• 12:04
  It's like something we all played in Clue.
• 12:06
  If you're going to have a story where the butler actually did it, you need to play with reader expectations well before that so it actually is satisfying when we get to that reveal that the butler was behind everything.
• 12:16
  Oh my gosh, I remember your, your, you know, I'm gonna date myself here for a moment.
• 12:20
  Ooh.
• 12:20
  But when Clue, when the Clue the movie came out in the movie theaters- Yeah … in the '80s, and I went to see it in my small town, talk about unreliable narrators, I find out there's actually more than one ending and they're playing in different movie theaters, but we only had one.
• 12:34
  So we didn't … I never did see the other ending I don't think I have either, and now you're gonna make me dig into this.
• 12:39
  Yeah.
• 12:39
  Isn't that weird?
• 12:40
  And maybe, I love, I, so I was probably gonna come back to you and tell me it was an urban legend and I just felt more left out than I was be- No, I, I, I've heard exactly the same thing, so I, it's, I think it exists, but- Yeah, yeah let us know if we're, if we're wrong.
• 12:51
  Cool idea, yeah.
• 12:52
  Put it in the comments because I actually wanna know.
• 12:54
  Okay, so a trope is basically just a really cliche storyline or a cliche thing that's been done over and over again that we have in a book, right?
• 13:04
  Yes.
• 13:04
  Unless- Yeah.
• 13:05
  No, I mean, that's a, I'm sure there are better definitions of it out there, but that's effectively how I would define it.
• 13:10
  Yeah.
• 13:11
  And the reason that they're not fun if you're just, you know, repeating a trope or repeating it becomes cliche because we know how it's going to end.
• 13:18
  So make it fresh.
• 13:18
  Make it your own.
• 13:19
  Make it fresh.
• 13:20
  We, we have tropes in lots of different genres, by the way, and I mean, I'm a, primarily a YA writer.
• 13:25
  I coach all kinds of fiction.
• 13:27
  But yeah, tropes like the chosen one or, or, you know, like there's tons of them, or in, in romance, ene- enemies to lovers or things- Yeah … like there's lots- Yeah … of different ones and, and they exist in this genre as well.
• 13:39
  Yeah.
• 13:39
  And I think that a trope can become uninteresting when it slides into cliche territory, which is just completely predictable.
• 13:44
  Yeah.
• 13:45
  And we don't want that because- You can use it as a base.
• 13:47
  Absolutely.
• 13:48
  But then decorate the cake, right?
• 13:50
  Like you're gonna- Absolutely.
• 13:50
  Yeah.
• 13:51
  Love that.
• 13:51
  Make it your own.
• 13:52
  Yeah.
• 13:52
  Make it your own.
• 13:52
  Yeah.
• 13:52
  I just came up with that on the fly.
• 13:54
  I love it.
• 13:54
  Yeah.
• 13:54
  I might use it again.
• 13:55
  All right.
• 13:56
  So when you talk about twists- Mm we're kinda teasing the twist along the way- Yeah … even though it was in the title of the podcast.
• 14:04
  What do you mean?
• 14:05
  So a twist is quite simply an assumption that your character is making about the truth that is revealed to be incorrect, and therefore twisty to them when the truth is actually revealed.
• 14:18
  So I like to think of MTS as the villain's story as told by the protagonist moving through the story.
• 14:24
  So you have a serial killer going around killing.
• 14:27
  We don't know who the serial killer is.
• 14:28
  Maybe we do, depending on the type of story you're writing, but we're on the journey, right?
• 14:33
  Like, we're entering the story at the beginning, and things are gonna change over the course of the story.
• 14:38
  Chaos is going to be brought to order, unless you're writing horror, and the story is effectively about how the serial killer is getting away with it up until the point that the protagonist stops them.
• 14:47
  In a mystery, it's trying to figure out who did the thing, and then also stopping them from doing it again, in a lot of cases.
• 14:54
  So that villain's journey is the thing that happens beneath the surface of the story that the protagonist doesn't see until they get to that climactic confrontation where they confront the person they think is responsible for everything, which- J'accuse … yes, deliciously may not be your actual final villain, right?
• 15:11
  That may not be the mastermind person who's behind everything.
• 15:14
  And so you can think of, of MTS as like, you're gonna have this mastermind person who's Machiavelli, like pulling strings, framing people, you know, all that stuff is going to exist in the story, and your protagonist won't know any of that until they get to the 98% mark for the final twist.
• 15:31
  But you, the author, sure need to know it at a certain point in your writing process.
• 15:35
  Yeah.
• 15:35
  Absolutely, and if you know it when you start your book, that's even better because then you can plant the clues and you don't have to go back later.
• 15:40
  Yes.
• 15:40
  Right.
• 15:40
  Yes.
• 15:41
  And it's, you know, so the twist thing comes in when the protagonist or, or your POV, any POV character is making an assumption about what is going on, and that assumption is incorrect but logical.
• 15:51
  Okay.
• 15:51
  And I, I just said j'accuse- Mm-hmm … and, and that's, it's sort of one of the beats in, in mystery in particular, and it's, it just means I accuse you in French, but I, I gotta say, I was watching the Olympics and Jack Hughes is one of the hockey players that won the gold for UFA, and I kept doing this, and my family was like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "It's Jack Hughes." Anyways, I think I'm really funny, but they didn't really get it.
• 16:16
  I, I think it's funny.
• 16:17
  Yeah, but it's funny too, now you're never gonna watch a hockey game when he touches the puck- No, I know … and you won't, yeah.
• 16:22
  Yeah.
• 16:22
  Jack Hughes.
• 16:22
  Jack Hughes.
• 16:23
  All right.
• 16:23
  I'm sure he's heard that before, or maybe he just doesn't have enough literary geeks in his- Maybe accounts.
• 16:29
  I don't know.
• 16:29
  Maybe we should write to him.
• 16:30
  Perhaps we should.
• 16:31
  Maybe we should have him on the podcast and ask him.
• 16:33
  Okay, we're getting a little off topic here.
• 16:35
  Okay, so we're talking about twists.
• 16:37
  Is it fair to say that a twist is just a fancy word, or a less fancy word maybe, because it's less syllables, than for a surprise?
• 16:44
  Or is it different?
• 16:45
  It's different.
• 16:46
  So surprise to me indicates that when you see it, so let's say you're the protagonist, you're moving through the story, and you're trying to figure out what the hell happened, right?
• 16:54
  And the, so, you know, surprise, it's this person.
• 16:58
  That- Is not logical.
• 17:01
  When you look at it, you're going, you know, you're surprised.
• 17:03
  You couldn't possibly have predicted this.
• 17:05
  And the thing that makes a twist is when you get past that twist in the story and your protagonist is like,"Oh, rats, I should have seen this the whole time because all the clues were there on the page for me to see.
• 17:16
  I just misinterpreted them inc- like, I misinterpreted them incorrectly." Yeah.
• 17:20
  Interpreted them incorrectly.
• 17:21
  Yeah.
• 17:21
  And so y- I mean, a great, you've done a great job as a writer if a person can go read the book again- Yes, and see the clues … and, and see it and be like," Oh my goodness." Yeah.
• 17:31
  It's kind of like, you know the saying that the perfect ending to a book, and this is true of all genres, is something that is, what is it?
• 17:40
  Surprise, yet inevitable.
• 17:42
  Yes.
• 17:43
  And it's like, it's surprise, yet inevitable.
• 17:45
  It's a tall order.
• 17:46
  It's not really fair.
• 17:47
  Yeah.
• 17:47
  Here, the whole construct and the whole structure of these books is to have that surprise, yet inevitable.
• 17:56
  Yeah.
• 17:56
  I mean, I like to think of the villain's story again as beneath the surface of the, the villain's journey is beneath the surface of the story, and you're gonna have little moments where it kinda like pokes out through the surface of the story for the protagonist to clock on the page.
• 18:08
  So, you know, one of my favorite examples I give is let's say you have this character and they've come home, and the window is open, and there's bloody footprints on the ground, and there's, like, an earring back on their kitchen counter.
• 18:20
  And they look at the bloody footprints and the open window, and they're like, "Oh, my God, this is definitely, something terrible has happened." Sinister, right?
• 18:27
  Like, so scary.
• 18:28
  This is absolutely the thing, the clue that I should follow.
• 18:31
  And the earring back, that doesn't really make sense, but you know, my sister mentioned last week that she lost an earring, so, like, that's probably what it is.
• 18:38
  Obviously in this, in this scenario, you're going to predict that, you know, as the reader, you're gonna be like, yes, the bloody footprints, the open window.
• 18:44
  And the character has just potentially answered something incorrectly or answered something wrong, which means that you as the reader don't stress because it's been answered.
• 18:52
  Correct.
• 18:53
  Yes.
• 18:53
  Right?
• 18:53
  Yeah.
• 18:53
  Yeah.
• 18:54
  So you're gonna clock the earring back and have a logical explanation for it, but in this scenario, the earring back is actually the thing that you, that, you know, when you look back at the entire story, they're gonna be like, oh, the earring back was the thing that the killer left.
• 19:07
  The bloody footprints are because I made a bad choice in roommates, and they killed a deer and, like, tracked the blood inside.
• 19:13
  Or it was ketchup.
• 19:14
  Come on.
• 19:14
  Yeah.
• 19:14
  I mean, I'm a little bit more, you know, creative there.
• 19:16
  I know.
• 19:16
  No, just kidding.
• 19:18
  Don't miss the- I did bring on a MTS coach to your podcast.
• 19:23
  Exactly.
• 19:23
  And we're gonna talk about Darren Soo.
• 19:24
  Yeah, no, I know.
• 19:25
  Okay, so, and then we were talking about the surprise, yet inevitable.
• 19:29
  One of the things, like, if you have a solution or, or you think you're making a twist that is just a complete surprise, like it was all a dream, right?
• 19:39
  Don't do that.
• 19:40
  Don't do that.
• 19:41
  And, and I have a writer that listens to this podcast that will likely send me an, an email after this because his book won't have this in it.
• 19:48
  Every time I say it he's like, "Are you talking about me?" Hello, writer.
• 19:51
  I love you.
• 19:52
  But yeah, it's, it's one of those things where if you completely turn everything on its head and the reader feels tricked, they're going to be angry.
• 20:01
  I wanted to, you know, you- they're gonna wanna throw the book across the room.
• 20:04
  Yeah.
• 20:05
  So part of the thing about, you know, I would say mysteries in particular, but modern thrillers as well, is that we are there as the reader to solve the puzzle.
• 20:12
  We know that the author is messing with us.
• 20:14
  We know that they're trying to misdirect us, and by the way, misdirection is simply those logical explanations that are incorrect.
• 20:20
  Those are red herrings, right?
• 20:22
  The bloody footprints, and not paying attention to the earring back.
• 20:24
  That's how you get through the story, is red herrings until you get to the actual truth, which is a twist.
• 20:29
  But the, the puzzle is what people are coming for.
• 20:32
  And so if the answer to your puzzle is, "Oh, just kidding, this was all fake, it never happened," that's gonna be really disappointing.
• 20:38
  It's kinda la- it's kinda lazy writing as well.
• 20:40
  Like, it's- Yeah.
• 20:41
  Yeah … it's not, it's not your best effort.
• 20:43
  No, and you wanna, you wanna give the readers what they want.
• 20:46
  You want to create a journey for your readers and suck them in, and then give them an ending where they're like, "Oh my God, I didn't see that coming, and like, now that I look back, I've, it's obvious this is what was happening this whole time." And yet there's no other way that this story could possibly end.
• 21:01
  Right.
• 21:02
  Yeah.
• 21:02
  It's that clue that tells you that you have to go to a neighboring town, and maybe you'll get a new ending.
• 21:07
  Yeah.
• 21:08
  Well, and that's where your final twist comes in, right?
• 21:10
  If you have that climactic confrontation, and it's like, oh, it was this person and not that person, and oh, it's just so twisty.
• 21:16
  And then, you know, your protagonist sits there and they're like, "Wait, but my sister couldn't possibly have left the earring back in my house because she was in Hawaii, and so who left the earring back?" And then that leads you to your final mastermind villain and final twist.
• 21:30
  And that is how you connect someone from page one to page, you know, 400 or whatever, and keep them completely hooked the entire time, is by misleading them deliberately as an author.
• 21:41
  I love that.
• 21:42
  I love that.
• 21:43
  I, I like to say sometimes, 'cause I, I'm, I'm that type of person who sometimes I'll say things and I know I'm being sarcastic, and I think I'm incredibly funny sometimes.
• 21:53
  You are funny.
• 21:54
  I am in real life, maybe not on the podcast all the time.
• 21:56
  But, but yeah, and sometimes people will come back to me and they've acted on something I said because they took me seriously, and I feel really terrible.
• 22:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:03
  But I don't know where I was going with this, but- Yeah … but the point is- … if you can do it with a straight face, but yeah, make sure that you know when it is that you're lying.
• 22:12
  But I often will tell people, "Oh yeah, I forgot I lie for a living.
• 22:16
  I literally am a screenwriter for a living, so have some fun with it." Okay.
• 22:19
  Yeah.
• 22:20
  So let's have some fun with it- Yes … because your pitch to me, to this pod- I mean, we were gonna do something, but you're like- Yeah … "Let's do this," was Twist ideation Yeah Coming up with the twist.
• 22:31
  So I don't know what the answer is, but we're gonna talk about it.
• 22:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:35
  Sam, how do you coach writers to come up with the twist?
• 22:38
  Come up with your villain first, right?
• 22:40
  And you're not ideating a twist, you're ideating what the villain really did, and why they did it, and what their motivations are, and figure out what that looks like.
• 22:50
  And then figure out how your protagonist has ruined their life on page one by messing up their grand plan.
• 22:57
  Right?
• 22:58
  Because your villain at that point is going to react to your protagonist ruining things by being an amateur sleuth, and like getting annoying, and trying to figure out who did it.
• 23:06
  And they might frame someone.
• 23:07
  They might plant a clue.
• 23:08
  They might do this.
• 23:10
  They might run.
• 23:11
  Whatever it is.
• 23:11
  But those, the villain's truth is what you need above all else, in my- What actually happened.
• 23:18
  Yeah.
• 23:19
  Yeah.
• 23:19
  What actually happened you must know in order to create those twists.
• 23:23
  And again, twists are just assumptions, but you can't have an in- Or misdirections.
• 23:26
  Yeah, yeah.
• 23:27
  You can't have an incorrect assumption until you know what the actual thing is.
• 23:31
  Yeah.
• 23:32
  Until what actually happened is on the pa- you know, in your head.
• 23:34
  It's not on the page until the very end.
• 23:36
  You'd be surprised, I mean especially if you're a pantser, this probably isn't the genre for you, right?
• 23:41
  Well- I mean, you can, but- You can … it's gonna be hard if you don't know what's gonna happen.
• 23:45
  It will be hard, yeah.
• 23:46
  I mean, I myself am a plantser, so I have a lot of empathy for people who don't love to outline from the very beginning.
• 23:52
  I'm a quilter.
• 23:53
  That's amazing.
• 23:54
  It's such a skill.
• 23:55
  Such a skill.
• 23:56
  But you know, I have writers who are magical unicorns, who can like pants their way through a mystery novel and have it hang together, and maybe we're just figuring out like, oh, this clue came too early and we're just need like one more red herring to make this work, right?
• 24:10
  And I have people who love outlining, and start from the very beginning, and do it that way.
• 24:15
  I recommend if you're trying to figure out where you start for a mystery or a thriller, pick a scene where you have the thing that has happened, right?
• 24:24
  Like this isn't, we're not preventing, you know, James Bond isn't preventing the bomb from going off in the climactic scene.
• 24:30
  This is the beginning where we're entering the story.
• 24:32
  And then, you know, in a mystery it's, it's a fun example.
• 24:35
  So we have a dead body is on the ground, right?
• 24:38
  Who else is around that body?
• 24:39
  Is it your amateur sleuth jogger, who was like, "Wow, my morning is ruined"?
• 24:44
  And you know, what's happening- Is it a cozy setting where it's- Yes you know, it can only be one of 30 people- Yes … or whatever the number is?
• 24:50
  Is it your medical examiner?
• 24:52
  Is it, you know, the person watching from behind the tree?
• 24:54
  What are they doing?
• 24:56
  You know, is it a nosy neighbor?
• 24:57
  Like whatever it is, and then try to tell the story, try to tell like one page of the story from each of their perspectives.
• 25:03
  And then you'll learn a lot about who might be your villain actually, who might be your protagonist, what kind of story you wanna tell.
• 25:10
  And that's, you know, that, that leads you a- along a very nice path to determine what- what the end result will be.
• 25:17
  But at some point in your process, you do need to figure out what really happened so that you can ideate the misdirection, which is ideating the twist.
• 25:26
  Yeah, and I mean, just from a practical standpoint, no matter what genre it is that you're writing, knowing what happens is very helpful, and I can often tell when people ha- don't know.
• 25:36
  I'll be like, "You haven't decided this yet, have you?" And they say to me, "Suzy," I'll put that comment in the margin, and then they're like, "How do you know that?
• 25:43
  How do you know?" And I'm like, "Because everything that you wrote was so vague and boring, it, it felt like AI." Oh.
• 25:48
  That's how I feel about AI, right?
• 25:49
  It's so vague and boring.
• 25:51
  There's no detail because you're trying to write past it, but you haven't made the decision, and now it's gonna be really tricky to go back and fix.
• 25:59
  So yeah.
• 26:01
  Well said.
• 26:01
  Yeah, specificity, and the more detail you can get on the page, not overwhelming detail, but the more detail you can get on the page about what the POV character thinks is going on and why they think it's happening, the more engaging your story's gonna be, and that is interiority.
• 26:15
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:16
  Okay, we haven't talked about interiority quite yet.
• 26:20
  Okay.
• 26:20
  Exactly, but I'm going to come back to that.
• 26:23
  Don't let me forget.
• 26:24
  Okay.
• 26:24
  But just back on twists, and actually I'm really enjoying the number of times I'm making you say twist.
• 26:29
  And I think it might be a drinking game at some point later in the day.
• 26:32
  Yeah.
• 26:33
  But yeah, it's a great word, twist.
• 26:34
  It's one that I don't use enough, and okay, so when we're talking about ideating twists, like, do you have an opinion on how wild can we be?
• 26:42
  Like, how original do you need to be?
• 26:44
  Mm. Should we have elephants and monkeys and bears, oh my?
• 26:48
  Or is that you're embarking on the counter- Okay.
• 26:52
  Well, the earring back on the counter is your clue that leads you to what, what really happened, right?
• 26:57
  Who's behind it.
• 26:57
  Yeah.
• 26:57
  But in terms of, you know- Sorry, yeah, that wasn't a twist.
• 27:00
  Got it.
• 27:00
  Yeah, I gotcha.
• 27:01
  But like, you know, let's say you, um, I don't know, you wanna have something completely bonkers.
• 27:07
  Like, you're looking to have actually the person behind whatever you're trying to solve, like a heist, is the elephant trainer, and they use their elephant to help get away with it.
• 27:18
  And a few monkeys, just because.
• 27:19
  Sure, yeah.
• 27:20
  You need to figure out why this person would make that choice, and make it logical, right?
• 27:25
  You can't just have a twist for twist sake.
• 27:27
  You never want it to come out of left field just for the sake of having it come out of left field.
• 27:31
  You don't want it to just be like, ta-da, you know?
• 27:33
  Like, here's a surprise.
• 27:35
  There needs to be a very logical explanation for why this person has been doing this thing beneath the surface of the story this whole time as your protagonist has been going along the surface and trying to figure it out, so that in the end, when they otherwise y- would've just left the story, they don't.
• 27:51
  And that's another big thing that I like to think of for villains, and I like to coach, is why wouldn't your villain just exit stage left?
• 27:58
  Why would they keep- Why do they hang around?
• 27:59
  Why do they hang around when your amateur sleuth or your police person or whatever is trying to catch them and stop them?
• 28:05
  What is so important about their goal, and what is their goal, that they keep doing these terrible things?
• 28:11
  Because we're writing in this genre where terrible things happen.
• 28:14
  Why don't they just leave?
• 28:15
  Why don't they stop?
• 28:16
  And answering those questions can be really difficult, and that's where the majority of the brainstorming help that I do comes into play, is like, okay, let's talk about these people who are making these choices, you know?
• 28:27
  And they feel like it's the right choice for them.
• 28:29
  They aren't … People don't do things because they think it's the wrong choice.
• 28:32
  They do it because they think that it's going to help them achieve a goal, or seek revenge, or because they're jealous or whatever.
• 28:39
  But they think that their journey is the correct one to be on, and it's important enough that they will not just leave the story.
• 28:46
  Oh my goodness.
• 28:46
  I mean, I don't think … I mean, I do coach in this space as well, but, but I, I'm not planning to write a thriller anytime soon.
• 28:54
  But I'm just imagining hiring Sam.
• 28:57
  Ooh.
• 28:57
  I'm like, getting to brainstorm this with you would be absolutely amazing.
• 29:02
  Your clients are very lucky.
• 29:11
  Thanks for tuning into the Show, Don't Tell Writing Podcast with me, Suzy Vadori.
• 29:15
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• 29:21
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• 29:34
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• 29:37
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• 29:51
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• 29:53
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• 29:58
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• 30:08
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• 30:10
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• 30:20
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