: Re: How can I avoid a predictable plot? When writing a novel, authors generally don't want the reader to know how things will end. This is especially true of mystery novels, but obviously applies

@Mendez196

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The trick may lie in making your story sound fairly predictable but in reality it is not. For example, the newcomer has amnesia, but there could be no explanation to why this is so. This starts all sorts of alarm bells to ring for the reader.

That he is likely to slay the monster is not a given. He could in reality be the person who controls the monster (unknown to himself). The villagers, for whatever reason, may need to be controlled by a monster (or at least the presumed threat of a monster).

Basically, a double-bluff.

The Village (2004) by M. Night Shyamalan has many of these hallmarks, where we are strongly led to belive that the story is about an early 19th Century community in fear of monsters in the woods, whereas in reality this is only a pretence behind an entirely different plot.

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