: Re: Too soon for a plot twist? In my story, I will have a hero begin a journey. It will be the underdog story as well as good-vs-evil story. Think Frodo vs Sauron for massive oversimplification.

One-third of the way in is an excellent place for a plot twist, but a bad place to switch viewpoints

Using a plot twist to catapult your story from its first act to its second works wonderfully. It gets readers attention, and sets a path for the rest of the story to take that was not one that they were expecting. It allows you to take the characters that the readers have come to know and love, and put them in situations that they were not expecting themselves to be in.

On the other hand, this is a bad place to switch viewpoints. The first act is all about introducing the characters, getting to know them and care about them. Switching to a new viewpoint at this point in the story undercuts all of that, and will frustrate your reader, who will be more interested in following the characters you've introduced so far (presumably you've made them interesting and engaging, yes?) than starting all over with new ones.

Having said that, there are some stories that tell the first third or so from a different viewpoint than the eventual main character. The Passage by Justin Cronin does this, as does (to a slightly lesser extent), Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey. The trick is that in each of these cases, the trick works by strongly signaling that the initial viewpoint will not be the main one, and by finishing the narrative arcs of the initial viewpoints.

Those techniques run counter to your goal of creating a surprising reveal, and will likely to be hard to pull off in the story you're trying to tell.

If you haven't read Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, I heartily recommend it. It too features a hero turned villainous, but it does so in the prehistory of the story, and lets the details unfold through exposition and storytelling rather than making it part of the plot of the book itself.

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: Re: Too soon for a plot twist? In my story, I will have a hero begin a journey. It will be the underdog story as well as good-vs-evil story. Think Frodo vs Sauron for massive oversimplification.

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: How to write a chaotic neutral protagonist and prevent my readers from thinking they are evil? I've come across a problem with one of the main characters in my book. The "heroine" of my story

: Mariner Software for writers I'm boring and just use Word and Excel for writing my novel and keeping track of stuff. I've tried a couple others, including Scrivener and Evernote, but never

: It might be more strange if your character instinctively knows the man is Kenyan without knowing who he is. Perhaps he is wearing a small pin in the shape of the Kenyan flag or talking

: How many stages would it take for a character to be convinced of x? My MC - who has a dangerous reputation - is captured by a member of Bolivian Security, who decides to take him to her

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