: Re: Can novels have twist endings? Can a novel have a twist at the end? Sure, a short story can be well written towards a not-so-obvious twist, but a 200+ page novel...can you suddenly whip it

@Shakeerah107

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I am not opposed to twist endings, but consider:

A twist has to be earned. Remember The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game. People loved those movies, because the twists made sense. Compare the 2001 version of The Planet Of The Apes. At the end, Marky Mark finds himself in Washington DC at the Aperaham Lincoln Memorial. Everyone was like, "Huh?" and wanted their money back.

But remember, The Sixth Sense was only two hours long. The twist in The Crying Game happened less than halfway through. A book takes days, even weeks to read. The reader puts it down, walks around, thinks about, even talks to other people about it. Plenty of chances to see through your cunning plan. Which means either

your twist makes no sense and will just annoy your reader, or
your twist does make sense and your reader will therefore probably figure it out long before the Big Reveal.

Hey, maybe you are incredibly clever. Be careful anyway.

I once was writing a book with a twist ending and started explaining the whole plot to my wife. I got halfway through Chapter One (about two sentences in my summary) and she guessed the whole thing, twist and all.

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