Good examples of literary twists

[KyriakosCH]

The thread is supposed to be a discussion of twists in literature (film/tv series can also be mentioned), with some theoretical elements, but mostly geared towards presenting examples you find of note.


I think that the literary twist can be divided to a few distinct categories, most of which have to do with form.


Scope-wise, any author/creator will give the audience ample time to identify the setting, before coming up with a twist - otherwise it's not the same effect, but something more akin to a cynical or otherwise moody introduction (an example of such a non-twist, because it happens already in the prologue of a story, would be Level's very nice short story about a bank employee who is presented as very good and thorough in his job and a model employee, but soon we learn he stole money and then did surrender to the authorities and admit he stole the money but also lied that he lost it by being himself robbed later on. In reality he entrusted it somewhere, with the plan to get it after he would be released from serving a few years in jail). So one parameter would be time given before a twist, if it's intended to be such.

Another parameter is whether the twist is discussed to any degree in the story, prior to happening - that is to say, if the reader is given reason to suspect something may be different than presented. A good example of that would be Tanizaki's tale about a student at whose dorm some objects have gone missing, and there is a mystery as to who stole them. The student (the text is in the first person narrative) goes into length examining who could be the thief (but later he tells us that he is the one). So this is a case of a twist which potentially could be foreseen since its subject is at the very forefront of the tale.

For an example of a work where the twist is simply not discussed at all, and nothing prepares for it, I always think of Lovecraft's The Outsider. Because there we as readers simply never have any reason to suspect

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that the protagonist, his vast castle and the dark forest around it, all exist hundreds of meters below the ground...

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Of course this type of twist is form-wise the safest. You can't look for something, when you are unaware that it even exists.


There are various hybrids. Agatha Christie's plots are typical of a subcategory of hybrid twist which is both discussed and we are given specific reason to look away from the direction the answer is - she usually achieves that by providing a seemingly more than adequate reason for the reader to identify the guilty character as innocent (eg by placing the murder in a location which brings other suspicions, or using doubles). Another hybrid is common in works by ETA Hofmann (such as The Sandman), where instead of having other characters being antagonistic as to the guilt, they just overshadow the chosen to be revealed as wondrous, by being presented themselves as mysterious and even possibly supernatural (eg while we focus on the titular character of The Sandman, who may be anything up to a flying monster,

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we may not notice that much of worth in a rather stiff girl by the name of Olympia, but later on she is revealed to be an automaton.

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Ok, after this very brief mention of a few of the types, feel free to suggest your own favorite twists in literary stories.



Ps: you can mention Shyamalan, if you absolutely have to   Personally I only find the twist in I See Dead People as being of note. Of course he didn't help himself by (after his second movie) making people expect every single project of his to have a twist.

That said, the twist in ISDP is part of the group where the reveal changes a significant part of the meaning of the story. This often happens in Philip Dick's works, although there it is based on tech that makes the distinction between reality and hallucination difficult to pin down (as in Ubiq, but most of his other novels too).

[Danvzare]

The end of Dragon Quest Builders 1.
I have never played a game that made me want to defeat the final boss and save the world, while giving it my all, quite like that game did.

I've put it in spoilers, because I don't want to spoil it. If you think you'd like a JRPG with some Minecraft-like gameplay thrown in, I'd highly recommend it.

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Throughout the game you're told that you're not a hero, and you take it with a pinch of salt. You know, maybe you did something bad before or maybe you'll become a hero. You get it. Except no. Right at the end after you've made all of the equipment to be used to defeat the final boss. The goddess who brought you back to life at the start of the game tells you to get lost. Because you're not destined to be the hero that defeats the final boss. You're told you can't defeat it because it's not your destiny, and you should just leave it for someone who is worthy.

So what you inevitably end up doing is saying "FUCK YOU AND YOUR DESTINY!"
The twist inspires you to do your absolute best and to not get hit, because as you're told. You won't be resurrected this time, especially since you're going against the wishes of the goddess. But you just want to give her the middle finger.

It's framed way better than how I'm portraying it as well. It's definitely the kind of twist that you could only really do in a video game. It's brilliant and will probably stay with me for the rest of my life.

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Dragon Quest Builders 2 is the better game by far. But the first game has the better story. 

EDIT: And I know you wanted books, films, and TV shows. But video games have writing in them, heck two genres are practically called books because they essentially are for the most part (Interactive Fiction and Visual Novels). Also this is a forum about Adventure games, so... I hope you don't mind that I chose to talk about a game.
I did make sure to pick something I thought was especially noteworthy though, and not just the latest thing that's been on my mind. 

[Snarky]

John Dickson Carr, The Burning Court
Carr was a master at locked room mysteries/impossible crimes, managing to provide rational explanations of events that at first seem like they must require a supernatural cause. And he was also excellent at creating a spooky and terrifying atmosphere, so that some of his mysteries almost cross over into horror. The Burning Court is probably his finest achievement on that score, and the solution is audacious.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Given its familiarity, it can be easy to forget that Marlow's confrontation with Kurtz is a twist: all along, Kurtz has been presented as an idealist, and contrasted with the corrupt and brutal company men whom Marlow despises.

Charles Palliser, The Quincunx
A labyrinthine dispute over a will tangles up five families and causes the protagonist to endure all kinds of Dickensian hardships and dangers in this brick of a novel, which makes sure to keep its readers in uncertainty, ignorance and confusion as much as the main character. And once everything finally seems to be revealed, two final twists—one in the very last sentence of the book—force us to reconsider the meaning of it all.

Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
To me, the impressive twist in this book is not the early one that got all the attention, but the ending, because I think it's one of the very few original endings in the mystery/psychological thriller genre in decades. Of course, it's possible that it has been done before in some story I haven't read, and it has some similarities with a book I'm currently reading but have already been spoiled for: Before the Fact by Francis Iles (aka Anthony Berkeley Cox), the basis for Hitchcock's Suspicion. A variation of the same was also used in another movie I liked...

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Phantom Thread.

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Personally I only find the twist in I See Dead People as being of note.

The movie is actually called The Sixth Sense.

[Crimson Wizard]

I'm not a literature theorist, but one twist that impressed me for being both mildly expected and whimsically funny (that's why it stayed in my memory) was the Edogawa Ranpo's short story "The Human Chair". To me this is an example of a story where you have a almost physical growing anticipation of something "dark" to be revealed as it progresses, and also the one that gives you a hint practically right from the beginning, if you pay attention to a specific element.

This story has 2 consecutive twists actually.

[KyriakosCH]

I am actually reading a Carr story these days. But given I want it for locked room examples, maybe I'll switch to the Burning Court (I was reading the Hollow Man, but I already know its plot).

[ThreeOhFour]

When we read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier everyone in my book club expressed quite shocked delight at the twist. Completely recontextualises the story and characters in a wonderful way.

[CaptainD]

The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl has a fantastic twist, similar concepts have been used in movies and literature since so it may seem quite hackneyed now, but this story (written in 1955) made quite an impression on my when I read it in a sci-fi anthology in my younger years. I'm fairly sure the idea was pretty unique back when it was originally written (though I could be wrong).

If you want to read the story itself, don't look at the hidden description below!!

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A chemical plant had exploded, killing all the inhabitants of Tylerton. A ruthless advertising executive, Dorchin, took over the ruins and rebuilt the town in miniature. The dead people's memories and personalities were read from their brains and copied into minuscule robots, which are being used as captive subjects for testing high pressure advertising campaigns. Each night, the power is cut and Dorchin's employees manually reset each robot's memory in preparation for the next experiment.The protagnosit founds out that his whole world fits on top of a table. The story is told from the point of view of one one of these people who, unaware of any of the above, slowly realises that things are not as they should be, and tries to uncover the truth... then maybe wishes he hadn't.

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The most famous example of a similar idea is in the movie

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The Truman Show

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[Crimson Wizard]

The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl has a fantastic twist <...>

If you want to read the story itself, don't look at the hidden description below!!

Spoiler

...rebuilt the town in miniature. The dead people's memories and personalities were read from their brains and copied into minuscule robots, which are being used as captive subjects for testing high pressure advertising campaigns. Each night, the power is cut and Dorchin's employees manually reset each robot's memory in preparation for the next experiment. The protagnosit founds out that his whole world fits on top of a table.

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Hey, I know another example, and imo it is more close to this idea:

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The "Dark City" movie, where aliens recreated a human city in space, and use humans as test subjects, wiping their memories and changing the roles they live.

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[Stupot]

I read Ender's Game for the first time a couple years ago and had no idea about the twist at the end of that one. I guess most people here already know it, but if you haven't, I recommend the book (if you're someone who can separate art from their artists).

[CaptainD]

Hey, I know another example, and imo it is more close to this idea:

Spoiler

The "Dark City" movie, where aliens recreated a human city in space, and use humans as test subjects, wiping their memories and changing the roles they live.

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Ooh haven't seen that one CW, though funnily enough I was looking at it on IMDB yesterday as a segue from someone mentioning that it shared several props with The Matrix (or bought them after The Matrix finished filming, to be more precise).

[CaptainD]

I read Ender's Game for the first time a couple years ago and had no idea about the twist at the end of that one. I guess most people here already know it, but if you haven't, I recommend the book (if you're someone who can separate art from their artists).

Sadly I read the book after seeing the movie so it was less of a surprise, although they movie and book did deal with it slightly differently.

[KyriakosCH]

Chesterton's The White Pillars Murder also has a nice subtype of twist. Though in a way it is similar to the one in Mousetrap, it rests on different protections and the short story is worth reading imo (can be found online, it's in the public domain).

[KyriakosCH]

I was recently watching some videos about Dead Space, and the nature of the "Marker" there is also a type of a twist. Though ultimately it is the same scheme as with WH40K "gene-stealer cults", since the object/being just tricks its victims into believing it's something positive for them, while it merely seeks to use them as fuel.
It's not a pure type of twist, though. Because to any outsider, it'd likely not represent something positive (unless they are religious zealots who already worship it from afar).
Thus it could work as a twist only if the story is presented from the pov of a believer or someone under the influence of the Marker.

[KyriakosCH]

Hm, I am a little over 9/10 of the Burning Court. Unhappy to say that it will take nothing short of a miracle for this book ending up as anything other than garbage.
The issue isn't the utter lack of any literary worth (that became known from the first few pages). It's the plot itself. But I shall wait till the end.

[cat]

How do you obtain those books? The Burning Court and The Human Chair, for example, don't seem to be in public domain, yet, but I also couldn't track down printed copies.

[KyriakosCH]

Amazon certainly has copies: https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Court-John-Dickson-Carr/dp/1780020031
There are also library-styled sites, where you can read for a fee, eg: https://archive.org/details/burningcourt00john/page/n9/mode/2up

[Ali]

I love mystery stories, and I love stories-with-a-sting-in-the-tail. I even enjoy several M. Night Shyamalan films. But I think it's hard to recommend stories with twists without giving something away.

And, I think there's a reason why stories with twists aren't regarded as respectable. It's the easiest thing in the world to write a twist (at least, the first thing I wrote had one!) because all you have to do is withhold information from the reader or the audience. The quintessential student film or short story ends by revealing that the protagonist who you were supposed to like is actually... the bad guy! Wow! Looks like I, the author, really wasted your time, huh?

A twist is often a bit of cleverness designed to make the writer look smart. It can be undramatic. It's structuring a narrative like a joke, with a punchline that has to be kept hidden. But when it works, I love it.

I haven't read We Need To Talk About Kevin but Lynne Ramsay's film is excellent, and it breaks every rule they teach about screenwriting. It simply unfolds the story for the audience - the protagonist already knows the ending - and yet it's gripping.

I'd recommend, in addition to Rebecca:

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Jamaica Inn and Don't Look Now. Also, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Lovecraft's short story The Outsider. They're more about suspense than surprise, though.

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[cat]

Amazon certainly has copies: https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Court-John-Dickson-Carr/dp/1780020031

A paperback for 100$ that doesn't ship to my country 

But I'll have a look at the online library.

[KyriakosCH]

Well, I'd certainly advise against paying 100 dollars for this. Or even 1 dollar, for that matter.
Read it all now, btw. The ending somehow managed to be the worst part of this silly book. Laughable farce doesn't begin to describe it.

[KyriakosCH]

Read The Arrow of Heaven, by Chesterton.
It has the typically pleasant style of the Father Brown stories. And a locked room. But the guilty party was pretty easy to guess, from the first part of the short story. The ruse was a bit artificial/flamboyant.