Q&A: ‘Why don't my plot twists land with readers?’
Here’s a question I received from a writer on my email list:
Hi Kahina! You know that writers group I joined a while back? It’s going really well, and everyone seems to like my story. My critique partners are over halfway through it now. BUUUUT I must be bad at plot or something because they’ve already read through two of the biggest twists in the book, and all three of my partners just… didn’t react? They didn’t comment on the twists at all, good or bad. That can’t be a coincidence, right?
I know I could ask them about it, but I’m kind of embarrassed and don’t want to hear them say, ‘That was supposed to be a twist?’ 😅 I’m hoping you can tell me what might have gone wrong so I can be prepared when I work up the guts to ask them, haha.
Thanks in advance!
Thanks for the question! Firstly, some reassurance: the problem isn’t that you’re ‘bad at plot’. Plotting involves so many different skills working in tandem that no one can be great at all of them. I suspect the problem is much narrower – and more fixable.
At the same time, you’re right that two twists being met with silence from three different readers probably does point to a craft issue worth investigating.
Without more context, it’s hard to say for sure why your plot twists didn’t land with these readers. But I’ve seen this problem enough times that I have a hunch about one crucial step you might not be taking.
And it applies to far more than a story’s biggest plot twists.
(And no, it’s not that readers saw the twist coming. For most kinds of stories, readers anticipating the twist doesn’t compromise the story as badly as writers tend to assume.)
In my experience as an editor, the most common reason that plot twists and reveals of any sort don’t land is this:
The reader expectation(s) that the twist is meant to subvert was never clearly established in the first place.
That’s it.
The whole point of a twist (something unexpected happens) or reveal (a type of twist in which a character and/or readers learn information that changes their understanding of the plot’s events) is that it subverts a prior expectation about the story.
It can’t do that if readers don’t have clear prior expectations to begin with. In that case, they just end up confused or underwhelmed. They’re not surprised and don’t feel any particular emotion about the twist because they don’t know what they should have been hoping/dreading/anticipating would happen.
A scene-level example of a twist
Let’s get more concrete using an example that’s simpler and smaller-scale than a major twist with a lot of moving parts.
A fantasy author writes a scene in which the protagonist visits a sorceress they’ve never met to ask her for a spell. What readers know about this sorceress is her name and that she might be able to help the protagonist. The sorceress agrees to help, but the protagonist will owe her a favour of her choosing. The protagonist is nervous about that favour, but otherwise delighted.
The author wants readers to end the scene feeling surprised that the sorceress turned out to be so willing to help, like the protagonist.
But see what’s missing here? We were never given any reason to think she wouldn’t be. This scene-level twist falls flat because we were never told how the protagonist expected the sorceress to react to the request for aid. We didn’t know there was any expectation to subvert.
Readers need these expectations spelled out. And if you pay attention next time you read a well-written story, you’ll likely notice just how obvious good storytellers are about this. They take the time to show us what characters feel or think about something they’re about to experience before they experience it.
Had this author taken a paragraph or two to show us the protagonist dreading the meeting with the sorceress – fearing that she would slam the door in his face, kill him on the spot, whatever makes sense for the story – readers would have been primed for the twist.
How to establish expectations for readers
The most common ways are:
Introspection. It’s common for people to mentally rehearse things. Writers take advantage of the human tendency by showing the character thinking about how they expect a situation to go just before they enter it. For instance, the character in the example above almost certainly would have imagined how the meeting with the sorceress would go while walking to her house.
Dialogue. Same as introspection, but characters discuss the expectation aloud. Showing multiple characters independently expressing the same expectation can strengthen the expectation. If the character above asks several people to point him in the direction of the sorceress’s house, and they all react with warnings or doubts about her, that gives readers more reason to expect the meeting to go poorly.
Exposition. Sometimes, information you’ve given readers about your story world gives them the context they need to form expectations. If the author of the example story had previously told us that sorceresses are unfriendly or wicked or that this particular sorceress is known to be hostile, that might be enough to signal to readers that they should expect the meeting to go badly. (Though you might want to remind them about the relevant exposition shortly before the twist rather than expecting them to remember it from a hundred pages ago.)
Previous plot events. If others have let our protagonist down throughout the story, having the sorceress readily help him can feel like a subversion on that basis alone.
Description and atmosphere. Occasionally, expectations can be evoked through description and subverted when the twist clashes with that expectation. For example, if the sorceress’s house is described in obviously creepy terms but she herself turns out to be warm and welcoming, that can help play into the twist around her helpfulness. This approach can work especially well in comedy.
Bigger twists also require reader emotional investment
For bigger twists, there’s also another element to consider: reader attachment to the expectation.
In other words, for big twists to be truly effective, readers usually need to be emotionally invested in what they think is going on. This most often means that a character they care about, probably the main character, is emotionally invested.
For example, a common type of reveal I see in manuscripts is the main character learning that their biological parent is someone other than they thought. Sometimes, they learn that the person who raised them is not their real parent. Other times, they learn that the person who raised them actually was their biological parent all along.
There are many variations on this twist.
What they all have in common is that most of them are actually pretty neutral without emotional setup.
Sure, readers intellectually understand why the main character would be surprised. But if the author hasn’t taken the time to show us the way(s) in which the character was invested in their previous understanding of their parentage, readers aren’t going to care.
What makes them care is knowing what exactly is rocking the character’s world in light of this reveal.
Is it that they have a close relationship with their guardian and are devastated by the new reality of not having that special blood connection with them? Great – make sure you show us that close relationship. Give the character and their guardian scenes that show the love they have for each other.
Is their real biological parent someone they’re ashamed to be related to? If so, that person’s reputation had better be foreshadowed so readers feel secondhand shame.
Do they struggle with the idea that they had to be raised by a stranger because their biological parent didn’t want them? Then how does that clash with how we know they felt about themselves before? Do we instantly feel pain for the character because we know they already have self-worth issues? Or do we feel the dent in their previously high self-worth, the new doubt eating at them?
You might be surprised how often writers forget to seed this context into their stories before dropping the big reveal on unsuspecting readers. More often, though, rather than forgetting it outright, they simply don’t dedicate enough page space to teaching readers to feel what they need to feel for the twist to work.
Same with betrayal-based twists. These often fail to hit hard when the betrayed character’s feelings for the betrayer aren’t shown in enough emotional depth for readers to get invested in the relationship.
In other kinds of twists, reader emotional investment in the expectation might be less relational. For example, a betrayal-based twist might hit hard without emotional expectation of loyalty because the main character desperately needed the betrayer’s help to make their big plan work. In that case, the emotional investment is in the outcome the betrayer represented, not in the relationship itself.
But the principle is the same. The harder you want the twist to hit, the more investment you need to drum up in readers.
So, dear question-asker, the first thing I would do in your position is look at how well you set up the expectations you want your twists to subvert.
Did you establish expectations at all? (Don’t worry if you didn’t know you needed to do that; even veteran writers overlook this sometimes!)
For big twists, have you given readers a reason to get invested in the expectation(s) that your twist shatters?
You can also use these points to ask your critique partners more specific questions. The truth is that even they might not know why your twists didn’t work for them! If you approach them with questions like ‘Was it clear that [expectation] was what [character name] thought would happen?’ or ‘Did you get the impression that [expectation] really mattered to [character name]?’, you’re much more likely to get helpful feedback.
Want to ensure your big twists land with readers? Consider developmental editing with me.
I also offer one-off, on-demand Chat Consultation coaching sessions, as well as the Story Structure Rescue, a special coaching intervention for writers who are stuck.
