: Re: Is an easily guessed plot twist a good plot twist? In my post-apocalyptic novel, there are two "twists", but they're mostly tied up in each other. The first is that humans have developed

I'm going with a frame challenge.

Not all reveals are a "twist"

A twist is new information that changes the meaning of earlier events. This is done by writing 2 plots with the same events. The MC believes the 1st plot until the twist when the 2nd plot is revealed as the true version of events. Readers should be able to re-read the story knowing the twist, and everything still makes sense (lines will have double meanings, motives are misinterpreted, etc).

To make this reveal be a twist, the story needs to make us believe that someone else murdered Eris' family. Maybe Eris believes she will find evidence this other person is the killer in the diary.

(I don't think this is the set up in your story, and I'm not trying to re-write it.)

It's a character's "truth"

What you have is more like a character struggling to face their own truth, and in most stories the protagonist will be the last to know, or the last to accept it. This "truth" has been the thing they've avoided. A friend tells them but that stirs conflict and triggers psychological defenses. The storyworld points them to this conclusion, but part of the MC's struggle is that they don't want this truth â€“ it's painful.

The reader needs to understand this truth at least few steps ahead of the character so we can know what's at stake, and what is motivating the MC's behavior. It is a kind of mystery, but it's more of an emotional, character-oriented mystery. The feeling should be more like "What has wounded this person to make them be this way?", not so much a Mission Impossible, pull-off-the-rubber-mask, "And you never suspected it was me! Hahaha!"

TL;DR

I think you're going for an emotionally vulnerable moment where the protagonist faces her demons, not a "omg-wtf I never saw THAT comingâ€¦" plot twist.

A "truth" reveal and a "twist" reveal would probably happen at the same point in the story but they are tonally different and move the story in very different directions. One emphasizes character growth, probably the climax of an emotional arc. The other fakes at being character growth but then throws all that emo stuff in the waste bin and introduces a new villain to chase for the last act.

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: Re: Is an easily guessed plot twist a good plot twist? In my post-apocalyptic novel, there are two "twists", but they're mostly tied up in each other. The first is that humans have developed

More posts by @Jessie137

: 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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