The Twist

Saarai

Lord of Bondage and Pain
Benefactor
Be forewarned, this thread is not about the dance of the same name. I apologize.

No, this thread is about the reveals, the shocking swerves in a story that completely change the experience for better or worse.

While I am personally a fan of twists in a story, I can't think of too many that have been done well, both in roleplaying and in the fiction I consume.

It's either too predictable or it seems like an ass pull, but overall I like that people try.

With that said, how do you all feel about plot twists in roleplaying? What are your favorites you've written or taken part in as a roleplayer?

Lastly, what are the least favorite you've written and taken part in, and what would you do differently?
 
Unpredictability. Like real life yea? Would you say that cavity you had last year in your lower left mauler was a plot twist because you couldn't predict it? But everyone has cavities eventually right? So why can't you say you predicted that cavity?

Leverage events like these up a notch, and suddenly you have natural plot twists making your stories more interesting. I frequently plan plot twists, but in order to hide it, I must play, plan, and lie so as to preserve the organic atmosphere that a twists need to be a surprise.
 
I love plot twists! Especially if it contains answers to the most important questions in the story. The feeling I get when the answers finally come to me with a surprise gives me goosebumps! In roleplay, its even better because I love engaging my own characters into good mysteries.
 
Twists can be fun! It's kind of difficult to write them well, at least for me, but it can add a lot to a roleplay if you can somehow make everyone go 'What? Wait. Ohhhhh...'. To me, a good twist doesn't just come out of nowhere, even if you can explain it well. If I'm going to try and write a twist (oh no), it's got to be a something people can read back over and see it coming. The random nature of RP can make that hard, and if someone gets it before, that's fine! If nobody catches on though, the reveal can be great! I'm like, really, really bad at it, but it's an interesting exercise to try and get one past people, especially if they're good writers! That's just my two cents, though.
 
In my opinion the best plot twists are the one's that both tie everything together and break down every preconceived notion all at once. i.e. The Usual Suspects and such. Never been in a roleplay that successfully pulled off a twist of that caliber though.

As far as my experience with personal twists; I was once in group doing like a supernatural house in the woods type thing where everyone was some kind of monster. Long story short, my dude was a human, turned out to be monster hunter. (Cliche, I know but I was like 14.) It wasn't great but it kinda breathed some new life into the slowing pace of the story. There wasn't really an over-arching plot for the group back then and we sort of just dropped bombs like this whenever we wanted.(Not great for writing a cohesive plot, but it was really just for fun) But that reveal seemed to change a lot of the feel of the story, there was a new sense of betrayal, distrust, and fear of other hunters coming to finish my guy's job. It wasn't great, or totally shocking. In fact I dropped so many clues I'm not sure it even could be called a reveal. But for the time it felt pretty cool and like "Whoa, no way!"

Well, that's all I got, my best and only plot twist moment in roleplay . . . good times.
 
In my opinion the best plot twists are the one's that both tie everything together and break down every preconceived notion all at once. i.e. The Usual Suspects and such. Never been in a roleplay that successfully pulled off a twist of that caliber though.

I tend to agree. Good plot twists are the ones that, whether you see them coming or they take you by surprise, make sense in the overall context of the story, and make you see what happened before from a different angle. Good twists may, in fact, explain a lot.

A bad twist is one done purely for the sake of a twist, and which only serves to confuse, and often doesn't make sense.

The season one finale of NBC's 'The Good Place' is another example of a good twist. When one goes back and rewatches everything leading up to it, all the strange things happening in that afterlife neighborhood make sense within context. (And of course it helps that the second season has some further backstory developed that answers some of the questions raised by the revelation).

Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes' ending, on the other hand, is a bad twist. It doesn't make sense on a number of levels, and is there purely for the sake of a twist that isn't just the twist ending of the original repeated. It doesn't answer any questions, and raises dozens more questions. Oh, and the twist ending of the original DID make sense.

As for RPs, I suppose twists can be done in them, as long as you have the twist in mind from the beginning and know just when to time the actual twist. It's like writing a whodunnit. You have to know who the guilty party is, and how and why they did it when you start writing the mystery. Only by doing that will you end up with a solution to the mystery that makes sense and satisfies the reader.
 
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