Pretzels and Möbius Strips: On the Question of Plot Twists

When I was in junior high, I read Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy.” I absolutely loved it. I re-read it multiple times throughout the years, and each time I marveled at Asimov’s tight plotting, culminating in the triple punch of plot twists at the end of the third book. What made this work for me was the fact that one of those twists was solidly set up at the very beginning of the first book, the other two at the beginning of the third. As a result, though the curves were unexpected, they made sense, and I could go back and see how they were supported in the earlier parts of the books.

Asimov was a better plotter than character writer – I haven’t read the trilogy in at least twenty-five years, and am not sure how I’d feel about it today. But in this case, he did something quite brilliant – and he did it right.

Plot twists have a time-honored place in fiction. Authors in all genres have done twist endings that were genuinely mind-bending and brilliant. It’s a skill many writers emulate. But are plot twists necessary? Or even desirable?

First, let’s break down what a plot twist is. In one sense, it’s anything that turns the story to an unexpected direction, but most stories do that. A story isn’t a story unless it has a change or a “turn” somewhere in the narrative. That’s what makes a story different from a scenario or a vignette – something happens. Let’s call that a pretzel. During the creation process, what appears to be a breadstick has been looped over itself, which changes how the consumer perceives the product. Likewise, a story’s turn takes what the readers knows and changes the form. It’s easy to see how a tube of dough became a pretzel, but someone watching might not guess what shape it’s going to become until it’s done.

So, what am I defining as a plot twist?

A true plot twist not only takes a story in an unexpected direction; it recontextualizes the entire structure from beginning to end. At the same time, all the narrative elements need to be set into place, so they will click together when the author wants them to and no sooner. The reader waits for the tube of dough to fold, then the baker flips half of it over and attaches the ends.

In other words, it becomes a Möbius strip.

Suddenly the consumers – or the readers – find themselves in a world where practical geometry has been flipped on its head. This isn’t what they expected when they started to read the story. It’s fascinating. It’s just taken everything about the dough and made it into a science experiment. Suddenly, the reader sees the entire story in a completely new light. As a reader, it’s a delightful experience.

Books like Fight Club and Gone Girl do this beautifully. So beautifully, that they had movies made from them. And here is one of the first problems of the plot twist novel.

Many movies employ plot twists. They’re a perfect medium for it, because the camera only shows what the director wants it to show, and the angle is limited. The Sixth Sense is a great example. By carefully selecting the shots, the director was able to introduce the viewer to artistically arranged pieces of the story which only came together near the end of the movie. Mind blown.

Because a really well-done plot twist gives the reader a delightful shock, and that “Aha!” moment where everything realigns, many authors believe that every book should contain a plot twist. We’ve all seen so many movies it seems easy to do, and many writers think cinematically. But there is a difference between the media of movie and book. In a book, the reader is always privy to someone’s thoughts, whether the main character, multiple characters, or everyone in the book, depending on the point of view the author chooses to write. And it cheats the reader to keep back thoughts that are actually in a point-of-view character’s mind.

In other words, in order to make a successful Möbius strip, the author needs one of three things.

a) An unreliable narrator. This can be a successful device if done well, but it’s tricky. An unreliable narrator is a point-of-view character whose viewpoint the reader cannot trust. They either recontextualize events in the story to to fit the narrative they choose, or they are deliberately controlling the narrative to create a false impression in the reader’s mind.

b) A point-of-view character who is not aware of things that they know. There are multiple ways of handling this. Dissociation or memory loss come to mind.

c) The elements of the twist are not in the mind of the point-of-view character(s).

The problem comes when an author decides to withhold information from the reader, but not from the character. As I said, it makes the reader feel cheated, as if the killer in a murder mystery is produced out of the blue in the last chapter of the book. The reader wants all the pieces so that when they fall into place, they make sense. That’s the key to writing a good twist ending: satisfying the reader.

Then the question becomes, “Is it desirable to have a twist ending?” And in most cases, the answer is “No.”

Many big reveals aren’t that important to the story. If you’re baking your pretzel right, you should already have a turn in your narrative; a good pretzel is a satisfying thing. What the characters do, and how they accomplish things, is far more important than an artificial surprise ending. So, unless your entire plot depends on a twist, it’s usually unnecessary, and often better dropped to focus on the story as a whole. For every surprise ending like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie wrote multiple mysteries which took surprising turns but did not recontextualize entire books.

It’s great if you have a revolutionary idea for a plot twist, but those are few and far between. A story well-told doesn’t need gimmicks. Consider sitting down and having a good pretzel instead.