: Re: How do I deliver a historical plot reveal? Right before the climax of my scifi fantasy novel, there's a big reveal about who the bad guys really are and how they influenced the magic system

@Gail2416123

I'd say take an example from Star Trek. Remember that movie about the whales? Yeah. They had this build. Big bad guy rolling up. What are they here for? No one knows. The devastating message destroying the planet is being directed at the oceans. On a whim, they decide to see what the message would sound like underwater. Slowly they tuned the machine until, bam. Whale song. Whales were highly intelligent aliens that could transmit intergalactic status reports with their bodies, and this ship was sent to check up on them because they hadn't received a signal in so long. The signal was so strong due to being accustomed to long distance communication that they were unwittingly destroying the planet. This was doing rhe opposite of what you want. Introducing a bad guy and then revealing they're not the bad guy. Just do the mirror opposite. Have the bad guys revealed. You dont know what they want or what they do. They're just there. You don't even know if they're necessarily bad or not. They may even be viewed as good, or as a benevolent myth. However you want. Then have someone study pure magic, then find that it's not pure anymore. "It looks like, yes, it seems like some outside source has tampered with the magic! If that's so, it must have always been tampered with! Who would do such a thing?" Then have conspiracy theories tie in and loop together, explaining all the intricacies along the way, until the final loophole can be filled by revealing it was that group of people all along! Then if there's any loose ends, explain it away.

Alternatively you could go the Prometheus route. Have the holograms show bits and pieces. Maybe a red herring. False bad guys. Then at last reveal that, oh, oh my gosh, the aliens set a course for earth? Before there was life on earth? These aliens are the creators of humans? Why? In the movie it doesn't explain farther than that, but just put in like logs and records outside of the holograms. "What?! They affected the magic for all these years?! How?!" "I found this record right here! It says..." whatever you want it to say. Or have some wise man or village elder or something tell the whole origin story.

You have so many ways to do it, I'm having a hard time narrowing it down. I've given you two extremes. 1) all the information and then the reveal. 2) the reveal and then all of the information. You can mix it all up. As long as for the rest of the story you make absolutely no connection, whatsoever, that this group of people has anything at all to do with it, and then in the reveal it actually makes sense how they made everyone think they were innocent, your readers will be shocked. Your options are literally like a vast orchard right before the first harvest. Go and pluck

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