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04/08/2006: Twist Inflation


Many years ago, I read a friend's spec feature script. It was a murder mystery, a classic who-dunnit. In the script, there was an obvious suspect. He was shifty, clearly hiding something, and the clues all pointed to him. And then there was his brother. Clean and above suspicion -- I think he might've been a senator. But he shared a blood type with his brother (this was significant in crime-solving many years ago), and they also shared an agenda that overlapped on many interesting points, some of the same enemies, that kind of thing.

My friend the writer knew that clever readers/viewers would be looking for a twist. He knew they'd know that Brother Shifty didn't do it. That they'd suspect Senator Brother. So he tricked 'em! The end of the screenplay revealed that it was Brother Shifty all along!

Thud.

We all have to deal with the fact that audiences are onto us. They anticipate most of our tricks. The only response to this is either to play a different game, stop writing who-dunnits, or to make fancier tricks. The untwisting of a twist is not gonna get it done. Because no one is going to enjoy being told that the killer was the guy standing over the body with the bloody knife.

What my friend needed to do, of course, was come up with another option. Recently, the other option of choice has been confidante/best friend/lover of the investigator, the one person they trust. But audiences have caught onto that one, too. If my hero beds a new girlfriend during the course of his investigation, I pretty much assume she's the killer. If he gets crucial advice from a brother cop who's been tracking this killer for years, well, then, it's the cop.

If he has a new girlfriend AND a brother cop? Well then, now it's getting interesting. But whatever he does, the writer can't look backwards at Brother Shifty or Senator Brother. He needs to keep pushing ahead. Maybe even by twisting the twist again: It's the investigator himself, rendered unable to remember his own act! (Seen it)

It's a terrible game, really, since in order to be shocking, each new step forward pushes credibility that little bit farther.

Keep track of what a savvy audience is going to anticipate. They 've been watching TV shows (or, for YOUR audience, reading spec scripts) for a long time now. They've seen a lot of twists. Not just in who-dunnits, either. In all kinds of stories. They know that if the heroine of your sitcom kisses a guy she just met in a bar, that it's going to turn out to be her new boss and/or her roommate's boyfriend. They know that if she meets a great guy on the phone that he won't look like what she pictured when she meets him in person. Think about what they've seen before, anticipate it, and then shoot past it. And good luck. This is hard business, surfing the anticipation curve.

Lunch: a ground turkey with fennel seeds thing I found in the South Beach Cook Book. Really good!