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For me, the key to a plot twist is whether it makes "emotional sense." If people feel like your character has earned their success, then plot twists will seem extraneous. If they feel like your c...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:53:56Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25950 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Chris Sunami
·
2019-12-08T05:53:56Z (almost 5 years ago)
For me, the key to a plot twist is whether it makes "emotional sense." If people feel like your character has earned their success, then plot twists will seem extraneous. If they feel like your character needs to do more work to gain their ending, then the plot twist works. Consider the _Wizard of Oz_ --the ending has what seems like a very odd series of plot twists. After overcoming some huge obstacles, Dorothy first discovers that the super-powerful wizard handing out her happy ending is a fraud, and then unexpectedly misses out even on his more mundane solution to her problem. But _then_ it turns out she can get home under her own power, and could have done so all along. Logically, it's kind of a mess, and in theory, the magic shoes should read as a _deus ex machina_. But emotionally, we feel both that she's bought and paid for her happy ending, and also that the last thing she needed to learn was to rely on herself. So the ending works.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2017-01-09T19:30:02Z (almost 8 years ago)
Original score: 2