The Science Behind Plot Twists

Let’s say you’re a scientist in your lab, mixing up a plot twist. There are a lot of things you can add to your solution, without affecting the chemical reaction you hope to get from the finished product. You can pour in a dram of meaning. You can supersaturate with devastation. If you want, you can even sprinkle in a drop of rekindled hope.

But there are two things that absolutely must go into your beaker for your solution to function as intended. Surprise. And support.

Surprise, of course, is a no-brainer. We know that plot twists are supposed to be surprising. But support is just as crucial. While your reader may greet your plot twist with a moment or two of disbelief, she must not reject it. She must be made to feel that the twist, no matter how shocking, is ultimately believable. It makes sense. Perhaps, she will come to realize, it was telegraphed to her all along.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. If we’re going to be digging into plot twists with a scientific mindset, the first thing we need is a working definition of what a plot twist actually is. I’ve read a number of definitions, from a number of different writers, but here’s the one I like: a plot twist is nothing more than something the reader believes that turns out to be false.

Let’s see just how well this definition works by examining some plot twists at work in some well-known stories: