Twist Endings (Caturday Questions)

Little Cat has been seeing versions of this joke all over the internet these days. And why not? It’s a classic. It’s the basis for a lot of Emo Phillips’s material. And of course, twist endings are having their day in the sun in Marvel movies, horror and thriller films… And was it only a few years ago, the television series A Game of Thrones devolved into A Game of Twists, with the writers working overtime to keep one step ahead of the internet commentators.

But why?, wonders Middle Cat. Surely, if you’ve been laying clues all along, those clues should lead somewhere, shouldn’t they? He himself has been meticulously laying a trail of dry kibbles along the floor all morning long. And would consider it the height of artistic irresponsibility if that trail didn’t end in a huge pile of cat-turds on the bathroom rug.

Big Cat, Little Cat

Twist Endings

It’s not particularly easy to outsmart your audience. Okay, you could leave insufficient clues as to the outcome of the twist. Or you could have a character act irrationally. But those can hardly be considered outsmarting your audience.

A Twist too far

Perhaps outsmarting your audience is not the right way to think about a twist-ending. Good storytelling is the oldest, best, and cheapest special effect. And good writing is composed of good characters, good setting, and good plot. So if you have those, but you do not outsmart your audience? Have you still accomplished your goal? Well. Were you trying to write an ending or a story? If the former, then no. If the latter, then yes.

The thing is, if you have an exciting ending to a bad story, readers are not likely to see the end. But if you have an exciting story with a bad ending? As long as you don’t do it too often, you can still be Stephen King. Or at least be in good company, thanks to him.

And if you do put one over on your audience and serve them up an ending they couldn’t possibly have predicted, but to do so you needed to conjure up a secret Mormon murder cult? Well… Better luck next time.

I Like my Twist Endings Extra Twisty with a Side of Cheese

That said, Big Cat loves a big, cheesy twist. He was laughing his vestigial tits off watching the later Game of Thrones seasons. And to this day, he invites over big parties of friends to get nibble catnip and read or watch A Study in Scarlet all afternoon. Though usually, the whole affair devolves into the lot of them just chasing their own tails, in tragic imitation of a hacky writer chasing a movie deal. All of which proves: there’s no accounting for taste.

But writing that stands the test of time is a balancing act. So don’t be astonished when you go too far in one directly and your big-budget classic gets relegated to the ranks of cheesy cult classics.

Actually, maybe that’s the greatest twist of all.

Do you like Twist Endings?

So picture two stories. In one, the twist ending took you completely by surprise. But maybe that’s because the author was more into surprising the audience with twist endings than with grounding the ending in character and plot and setting. In the other, you saw the twist coming but it was the just culmination of a well-told story. Which do you like better? Are you in it for the journey or the destination? The highs and lows or the firmness of the foundation?

There’s no right answer except what you prefer. And maybe you don’t like twist endings at all, predictable or otherwise. Even the best-wrought sleight-of-hand can feel like just that… A magician’s party-trick.

Description

Three identical panels, side by side, each depicting a large orange cat smiling down indulgently at a smaller grey cat. The little grey looks out of the frame with a sour, discontented expression on his face.

First Panel

The large orange asks: How was your trip?

Don’t get me started, answers the grey.

Second Panel

Predictably, he gets started: I was playing got your nose with my nephew at the airport.

Third Panel

The little grey continues: When suddenly, airport security starts hassling me with all this nonsense about “vandalism” and “making the planes unsafe to fly.”