: Re: Magic is the twist It feels silly to say, but I've got myself into a bit of a bind of a side project. In a three-act structure (not what everyone uses, but a good reference point) you generally

Is there any possible way to do it right, without foreshadowing it so hard that the twist is moot?

I would say ... No. But you can write the story, without letting your MC agree to call it magic.

This is the way it is done in many stories; an MC is searching for something "scientific" and discovers it and calls it "new technology", even though it is scientifically impossible and really just some form of magic. Teleportation, FTL travel, cloning with an identical mind, instant healing, all the X-Men powers or powers from the series Heroes, telepathy, telekinesis, mind-reading, lightning bolts from the hands, time-travel, all of Superman's powers, Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth, unlimited (or insanely efficient) power generation, etc. They just never call it magic!

You do this by setting up in the first Act a mystery the MC cannot solve, and don't make any existing explanation plausible, have your MC argue the case against that. Make your MC an actually competent investigator or scientist.

The reader is set up for some weird explanation of all this, and identifies with the MC you make "the smart one", the Sherlock that will find the answer.

When the answer turns out to be Magic, he refuses to call it that, even if other people are. It is a force, or machine, or something he doesn't understand, but as a scientist (I am one) that is as far as he goes. It is a technology or discovery he will learn to exploit, just like we learned to exploit fire and coal to make steel, and learned to exploit electricity, and magnetism, all of which other people at the time considered "magic".

If you bring a laser to the middle ages, or even a flashlight, it will seem like magic to them. Arthur C. Clarke famously said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

So your twist is the same, minus the word "magic". Like electricity and magnetism IRL, your MC can learn to use this new force without exactly understanding it.

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: I don't understand the dilemma, just write it the way you want. Ultimately if you want a strong women that embraces her femininity, you are going to put her in a dress, have her pay attention

@Odierno164

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: Is it okay to have a sequel start immediately after the end of the first book? The sequel to my first book is supposed to start immediately after the end of the first book. Zero time gap.

@Odierno164

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: Doubt about the concept of "true (or complex) character" Following the answer of @Cyn and my comment (on Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation ): I would like

@Odierno164

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: Doubt about the double action of the concept of plot in fiction writing In the first discussion of the concept of "plot" given by [1] I, maybe, understood two different, but complementary, concepts

: Re: Magic is the twist It feels silly to say, but I've got myself into a bit of a bind of a side project. In a three-act structure (not what everyone uses, but a good reference point) you generally

More posts by @Odierno164

: I don't understand the dilemma, just write it the way you want. Ultimately if you want a strong women that embraces her femininity, you are going to put her in a dress, have her pay attention

: Is it okay to have a sequel start immediately after the end of the first book? The sequel to my first book is supposed to start immediately after the end of the first book. Zero time gap.

: Doubt about the concept of "true (or complex) character" Following the answer of @Cyn and my comment (on Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation ): I would like

: Doubt about the double action of the concept of plot in fiction writing In the first discussion of the concept of "plot" given by [1] I, maybe, understood two different, but complementary, concepts

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