I’ve a researched a bit about writing plot twists properly. The conclusion I came to was simply: Twists shouldn’t be too predictable but they shouldn’t be completely random either. There was also this method a writer used which was simply: 20% of the audience should figure out the twist LONG before it’s revealed and about 80% of the audience should figure it out JUST before it’s revealed. These are all great advice but I’m struggling to apply them properly. Thing is: I often have a hard time thinking from the audience’s POV. I’m not struggling with writing twists themselves but rather the foreshadowing/hints. I’m curious, how do you all incorporate your hints into the story? How many hints are there? How do you exactly employ hints, via dialogue? Via a character’s actions? Via small visual details? Do you employ hints in only one way or several? Simply put, I’m trying to ask the following: How do you all put hints/foreshadowing of a plot twist into the story?
I was just in a writer’s critique group where I was trying to parse through this.
self harm
My MC has self harm scars on his arms. It’s not revealed until later that they take a big toll on his feelings of security and acceptance. It starts out as a fae mentioning his forearms. Then anxiety about taking off his shirt and how he prepared for the possibility. Then begging a lover not to ask his friends about them.
What really landed for me as a schema I want to follow is how Oda does foreshadowing in One Piece.
One Piece spoilers
When One Piece starts, the whimsical guy’s name is Monkey D. Luffy. You go, oh that’s a silly name. Then you get a reveal that the pirate king was Gol D. Roger and you go, huh, that’s weird. Then you learn that they always die with a smile and it’s like, what the helly? And by time Luffy awakens Joyboy within him, Vegapunk mentions them in his dead man’s switch video, and the mural mentions the half moon clan you’re begging to know what the fuck is up with that fucking D (like ur mom)?!
When you’re new to the series and ask “what does the D in Luffy’s name stand for?” You need something more and something deeper than if his middle name was Donovan or something. Therefore the foreshadowing works to draw you into a deeper mystery. Because when the author tells you “the D. means that he has inherited his will from a lost kingdom from a bygone era, but the second world, not the first” you can get a sense of why that’s awesome because you built a world first.
So, from my POV, and I haven’t implemented it well, so I need to edit the novel, the significance isn’t just in the fact that there’s a mystery. There is more entertainment and clarity of narrative if your foreshadowing grows in scope or significance over time. If more hinges on discovery or if each successive hint means something more engaged with the world that you’ve built then it serves to draw the reader in.
spoiler
PLOT TWIST: I decided that the topic was about foreshadowing and not plot twists and answered anyway because I hate you