: 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

I think something that will be key to making your story work within your parameters, i.e., keeping your readers happy even with a 7th-inning paradigm shift, is to focus on the elemental genre of wonder.

What's that? "Elemental genre", which is a term coined by the writing-lessons-with-bestselling-authors podcast Writing Excuses,* is a method of story classification based on the primary human emotions or fundamental desires that an author wants to evoke in their readers. These include wonder, horror, issue exploration, humor, relationships, mystery, thrills, and a bunch of others. Note that these are not equivalent to bookshelf genres (how books are sorted into genres for marketing), though some of those are closely tied to specific elemental genres (like "thriller"). One of these elements can be employed as the primary elemental genre, dictating the author's approach to the whole work, or as a "subgenre", running counterpoint to the main tone of the story to enrich it with a different set of emotions and instinctive desires.

The elemental genre wonder is attained by deliberately fostering a sense of awe in the reader, consistently, throughout the book. For your story you may find success by bringing the reader along for an engrossing ride. Make the odd happenings so interesting, and not just puzzling, that they will be happy to experience more of them for reasons other than trying to crack the mystery. Infuse them with beauty or terrible magnificence, and let them blow your protagonist's mind. If your protagonist is so awestruck that it gradually becomes more important to attain personal enlightenment or one-ness with the magical source than to make some sort of career-changing scientific discovery (even if they're a scientist!), the reader can accept that, too. (Think Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which has a great wonder "subgenre".)

If you can't make that work with your story, you may have to resort to structural changes, such as moving the reveal much earlier, or taking @wetcircuit 's suggestion of a double twist, which lends the story balance and primes the reader to accept a second paradigm shift.

*The Writing Excuses podcast spent an entire year exploring different elemental genres, and they're a very interesting way to get out of the "bookstore-genre" mindset when trying to analyze or critique a story, including your own works in progress. The podcast explores ways to achieve wonder in three episodes: 11.06, 11.08, and 11.09 (all conveniently listed in the link above, with audio and transcripts available-- audio is better for a first go because it's a group conversation). You may want to listen to 11.01 first for an introduction to the series.

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: Point of View Confusion Iâ€™m confused about point of view. In my storyâ€”so farâ€”I only reveal to the reader what the main character, a child, can see/hear. Not often, but at times, I write

: 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

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: I think native speakers of the same language can generally develop a good ear for variations in language and achieve passable mimicry of a specific person without an explicit analysis, but

: Balancing setting, theme, and character arcs: how to deal with a setting that carries emotional weight but is left behind? When writing a story, how do you find a good balance between the significance

: Character is called by their first initial. How do I write it? A character's name starts with a hard G, as in Gary. Another character (dismissively) calls him by his first initial "G", said

: Point of View Confusion Iâ€™m confused about point of view. In my storyâ€”so farâ€”I only reveal to the reader what the main character, a child, can see/hear. Not often, but at times, I write

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