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Q&A Magic is the twist

From your description I think, you are overthinking this: You are describing a very basic plot twist, in which one of the assumptions your characters made turned out to be false, changing the meani...

posted 5y ago by TheSexyMenhir‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T12:31:07Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46833
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar TheSexyMenhir‭ · 2019-12-08T12:31:07Z (almost 5 years ago)
From your description I think, you are overthinking this: You are describing a very basic plot twist, in which one of the assumptions your characters made turned out to be false, changing the meaning of other established facts.

The fact that you are talking about magic is only tangential relevant. First and foremost you must make sure of three things:

## 1. There must be significant rammifications for the plot.

If the twist doesn't change anything it only wastes the readers time.

## 2. The rammifications for the plot must be understandable.

If your reader can't understand the implications of a plot twist, it's the same as not having the plot twist do anything.

## 3. The twist doesn't change the "ideology" of the story.

Your story will always only apeal to a certain subset of the population. If your plot twist changes the underlying ideology (or the methodology in which your characters understand the world) too much, you risk alienating the readers you've hooked so far, and other readers will never see this part of the story anyway.

## Aplying this to your story:

**Bad:** Your story so far has been a mystery story that showed the merits of logic, but now suddenly your characters start taking everything on blind faith just because magic is involved.

**Good:** Your story so far has been a mystery story about solving cases with logic, the existence of magic is a new fact with it's own implications and rules that changes prior conclusions.

* * *

Caveat: Of course alienation might be your intended effect if your stories aim is to lure in a certain kind of reader and then to "convince" them of a other viewpoint.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-07-23T10:17:32Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 2