Episode: 2584
Title: HPR2584: Plot Twists In Storytelling
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2584/hpr2584.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:08:47

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This in HBR episode 2,584 entitled Plot Twist in Storytelling, it is hosted by Lost in
Bronx and in about 12 minutes long, and carries a clean flag.
The summary is Lost in Bronx and MAM in Plot Twist, including the different types, and how
they can be used.
Today's show is licensed under a CC Hero License.
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At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
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Hello, this is Lost in Bronx, and you'll have to forgive me for the sound quality I'm
in the car right now, and this will be a short episode, but today I'd like to talk to
you about the writing or story telling, I should say, technique of the twist.
Now the twist could be a twist ending, it could be an element within a story that causes
the story to go in a different direction, somewhere, you know, it could happen almost anywhere,
but they're often reserved for the ending, for the sake of having a long setup, right?
You have the entire story to set up this twist at the very end, and also to leave the
listener, reader, viewer, whatever, whatever form the story is taking, form edits in,
to leave the audience at the end with that impression of that wonderful twist.
Now it's a narrative technique, and it can be used to tremendous effect, but it can also
be overused, especially when it comes to certain genres that we have come to associate
with twists like thrillers and mystery stories.
It can, strangely enough, the mere fact that it is included can often be predictable.
You know that at some point this whole thing is going to turn around, or is very likely
to, and therefore you start second guessing the story teller, right?
So you're going along with this story, say it's a thriller of some sort, it's a mystery
thriller, and there's a toward love affair going on, yet there's some sort of criminal
enterprise happening as well, and the background and the whole thing is some sort of manipulation
by one or more characters to try to get what they want, right?
Now we've seen probably hundreds of stories that are like this.
When you suspect a twist is coming in a story like this, and a genre like that almost screams
for it, it becomes very, very hard to surprise your audience because they are looking ahead.
They're looking at this thing wondering how it's going to twist, and they're watching
the story unfold, thinking in terms of, okay, this is what we're being given, but this
is not the reality of the story, or likely not the reality of the story considering what
kind of story it is, where is it likely to turn around, and very often it's easy to predict
these things, unless the storyteller, in whatever, again, whatever format this is in, unless
the storyteller is very clever and hides their stuff really, really well.
Now the movie, the usual suspects, that was a nice twist.
Now I've talked to people who did see it coming at some point or rather in the story,
or predicted it off a lot of it within the context of the story, but most people, that
was a great twist.
Even for me, when I saw it, I was like, oh, that was very clever, I wasn't blown away
by it, but I thought it was clever and I enjoyed it, and I didn't anticipate it because I was
letting it go, even though I suspected at some point where we're going to get some sort
of thing going on, it was interesting to see the way it played out, and I thought it
was handled pretty well.
But there are other stories where the twist is not surprising in the least.
Going back, there was a film many years ago now, it's about 20, maybe close to 30 years
ago called Body Heat, and it starred William Hurt, it was an early role for him, and supposed
a twist at the end of the movie was very easy to predict.
Now this movie did really well at the box office and it had generally good reviews, as
I recall, but the twist at the end was extremely easy to predict, and it had to do with the
way it was set up, not just the genre, it was the sort of genre where you're expecting
one, so they had that to fight against.
It was also poorly handled, right?
You know, a spoiler here, a major character walks into a building that we know is the audience,
there's a bomb in this building, and we have suspect, or at least I did, have suspect
that this character knows the bomb is there as well, and then the building blows up, and
the character is supposedly dead, but we find out at the end, no, the character isn't
dead, and did know the bomb was there and took full advantage of that.
But it was so predictable, because boom, this thing blows up, we know there's not going
to be a body, and sure enough, they can't find the body, because it was blown to smithereens,
but we know just by that setup that this is no twist, it was poorly handled, it's an
easy thing to take back, whereas in something like the usual suspects, the twist in that
story turned the entire film on its head, so that we have to question everything we saw,
that twist worked really, really well.
Now I've used twists in my own stories, I do a science fiction series called Star Drifter,
Cajin, Cajin, then you can probably dig that up on the internet somewhere, well I know
exactly where it's at my website, but anyway, I do use them, but I won't even try to say
that they are really great twists, they're little twists, they're little hooks, little twists,
to make the story a little bit more compelling, but something like the usual suspects is what
I would consider a really successful twist, a really well done twist, because it makes
you wonder about the entire film, you literally have to go back and look at the entire film
and reassess it in order to make sense of this twist, and that, at least to me, to my
way of thinking, that is a really powerful twist, that is a really good twist.
Now I don't want to sound like I disparage the minor twist, as I say, I use it myself,
but think of it like a tool, a twist in and of itself is a tool, but think of the minor
twist as something that will build upon your plot and your story to generate not just a
particular effect, but also to alter the course of your story during the story, so having
a minor twist somewhere along the line of a tale turns out to have a great effect at
the end of the tale, there was a film, again some years back, it was a Kevin Costner film
called No Way Out, and during the course of the story you find out that one of the major
characters of this movie is gay, now that doesn't seem to have any effect on the story in
and of itself, and their handling of homosexuality was, I don't know, pretty primitive, in my
opinion, but it was in there and you think, well, let's just suppose to, I don't know, let
us know a little bit more about this character, but in the end it has an effect on the tale.
Now this wasn't a tremendous story, but it did have a huge twist at the very end, unrelated
to this particular detail, which was pretty clever, but it's one of those where they took
the entire film to set up the twist at the very end, but this detail, where one character
is a homosexual, has an important bearing on the tale itself and how the tale plays out,
and it was an effective tool at the time, and as I say, I don't think it's the greatest film
in the world, but with regards to twists, it did some things pretty well, so there are different
types of twists and they can be used to either guide the story in a particular direction,
they can be used as the payoff for a long, long setup, or they can be used, in my opinion,
the best possible version of this, they can be used to entirely flip the tale around so that you
have to look at everything that happened in a new light. In fact, you may want to immediately
watch the film again, now that you know what you know, and I think that these are, they're
certainly distinct, but I think they can also be done on smaller scales, so you don't have to
have a giant story to have a twist ending, there are a lot of short stories that do it, in fact,
some would argue that short stories do it best, because you don't have a lot of extraneous nonsense,
you just have one small tale, one focused story, and then one focused twist, and that, you know,
some people anyway, I don't necessarily agree, but some people feel that that is your best
way to use the twist as a particular type of storytelling tool, however, there are poorly
done tales that use twists, and effectively, there are stories where the only thing about this story
was the twist, in fact, the story only exists, apparently, to flip the story at some point,
with a twist, twist ending usually, and you look back on it and you realize that was all this story
had, was that, it was like a funny payoff, or a pun, like a shaggy dog story, with a pun at the
very end, and you're left with that feeling like, you know what, this really wasn't worth the trouble,
it wasn't worth sitting through this entire film, reading this book, listening to this audio
drama just for this little bit at the very end, that's because all they had was a twist, and they
somehow confused a plot twist with a plot, and that's too bad, but you do see it from time to time,
a plot twist, a twist ending, whatever, these are tools, they're not the story itself, and some people
would argue that they cheapen almost every story they're in, unless it is one of those deals where
you can re-examine a tale in the light of this revelation, many people would feel that it is
nothing but a cheap technique, I don't think it's cheap in and of itself, but I think it's been
used cheaply, especially in film, it's been used quite cheaply over the years, and you could
consider a plot twist a cheap thing to do simply because it has been so poorly handled in so many
different circumstances, not just film, television does it a lot too, you can probably look at
it as being something you never want to touch, automatically your stuff is going to be seen as poor
or cheap, because of it, now I personally feel like everything deserves to be judged on its own
merits, so if you decide to include a twist where several twists in your story, rather than just say,
well, you know, plot twist, some sicka plot twist, can we just have a story? I find myself feeling
that way sometimes when I see something, but in the end it's how it was handled, it's how it turned
out, and if it turned out okay, there's almost no reason not to include it, these things really do
have to be seen on a case by case basis, and there you go, there's the thing, and why plot twist
have been so overused, and why very often they're seen as being cheap, or just a cheap technique,
anyway, it's because certain genres it's assumed you have to have them, and because not everyone has a
story that supports it well, not everyone can use the technique very well, sometimes they're crammed
in after because it doesn't seem like there's a plot twist, and we gotta have a twist, especially
thrillers, especially mysteries, and as a result you end up with a lot of poorly done ones, and it
doesn't have to be that way, but anyway, as I said, this was a short one, and just a few thoughts
about the plot twist in a story, if you have any opinions about this, please feel free to leave
them in the comments for this episode on HPR, or better yet, make your own episode talking about
this or any other subject, you have opinions, you have interests, and we want to hear about them,
this has been Lost in Bronx, thank you for listening, take care.
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