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Third Act Twist
Writing mystery/action on a pro level, after years of writing romance and training myself to think analytically about it, has been really interesting. Over the last 7(!!) years that I've been doing Zoe, I've read a lot about romance structure and feel like I have a pretty solid handle on how romance beats work, but I don't have nearly as much of a grounding in the theory, so to speak, of mystery, so it's been interesting coming up with a lot of it on my own and feeling out intuitively how it all works.
One of the things I've realized recently that I generally do when I'm plotting mystery or action/thriller - what makes it feel "complete" to me, in the way that romance needs certain beats to be complete - is something I've started calling the "third act twist" in my head, although actually, it doesn't necessarily happen in the third act; my books are not that tightly plotted. It can be anywhere from halfway to most of the way to the end.
What it is, though, is the point when the characters realize there's a second layer to the situation than what they knew about. The mystery isn't just "who did the crime"; in order for it to feel satisfying to me from a plotting perspective (though I don't always manage to do this; I don't think I did it in Dragon and Detective) there's a second level to it, where the characters find out that some aspect of what they thought was going on is just flat wrong, and this reorients their goals, points them at something new, and sets up the transition into a climax that is very different from what they thought the climax was going to be.
Critically, it's not just "you didn't know this" but also "your assumptions were wrong"; it's the rug-pull of thinking that they, and the reader, know approximately what's being set up, if not the exact details, and then finding out there's a second layer to it that's going to come into play in the climax and ends up setting up a different climax than the one the characters thought they were headed to. It's not revealing who the killer is, but rather, revealing that the victim isn't really dead, the entire crime is a cover for some other crime, the person they thought they were on the run from is actually an ally and there's a bigger bad out there, the person they've been trusting all along is about to betray them, etc.
I didn't do it in Dragon and Detective except perhaps in a very tangential way, and did it without realizing I was doing it in the subsequent Keeley books; then when I was plotting out another book this week, my plot was falling flat until I suddenly realized that I needed to add a second, hidden layer to the mystery, and then all of a sudden the whole thing clicked and came alive. It involves a certain level of reality-shifting - in order to get that satisfying "click" feeling, you need to find out that some early plot-driving assumption, on the part of both the reader and the characters, was wrong, and that sets the plot spinning off in a different direction than it looked like it was headed.
I don't think that you always need this to make the genre work, I'm sure there are plenty of perfectly excellent examples that don't have it, but by this point it's unconsciously become part of my Keeley plot formula.
Examples from my other Keeley books, with specific plot spoilers:
In Ghost & Gumshoe, the third-act twist is Wendy betraying them (and also the general "what's up with her anyway" deal with the elixir and her dad); in Fae & Flatfoot, it's that changelings aren't what everyone always thought, so their solution to their basic problem doesn't work AT ALL and they need a new one; in Dick & Demon, it's that Roos isn't actually their enemy, there's something much worse out there, and they need to team up with her against the real enemy. The book I'm currently writing has one that involves the actual nature of the crime as opposed to its presumed nature.
In general I think the main Third Act Twist variations I've been working with so far are: some aspect of the crime isn't what you thought it was, someone who was supposed to be a trustworthy ally isn't, or an antagonist who up to this point appeared to be the Big Bad switching sides and helping them against the real Big Bad.
For all I know there's an actual plotting-beat term for this, but Third Act Twist works fine for me; it describes what it does, and I know what I'm talking about.
Having figured this out is going to be immensely helpful for plotting this kind of book going forward, because I think when I get stuck on the big-picture plotting level, the solution is often just figuring out the second layer to the mystery and weaving it into the first.
It's also kind of interesting because this sort of sudden reversal of expectations/realization that Everything Was A Lie is exactly what you don't want in romance.
One of the things I've realized recently that I generally do when I'm plotting mystery or action/thriller - what makes it feel "complete" to me, in the way that romance needs certain beats to be complete - is something I've started calling the "third act twist" in my head, although actually, it doesn't necessarily happen in the third act; my books are not that tightly plotted. It can be anywhere from halfway to most of the way to the end.
What it is, though, is the point when the characters realize there's a second layer to the situation than what they knew about. The mystery isn't just "who did the crime"; in order for it to feel satisfying to me from a plotting perspective (though I don't always manage to do this; I don't think I did it in Dragon and Detective) there's a second level to it, where the characters find out that some aspect of what they thought was going on is just flat wrong, and this reorients their goals, points them at something new, and sets up the transition into a climax that is very different from what they thought the climax was going to be.
Critically, it's not just "you didn't know this" but also "your assumptions were wrong"; it's the rug-pull of thinking that they, and the reader, know approximately what's being set up, if not the exact details, and then finding out there's a second layer to it that's going to come into play in the climax and ends up setting up a different climax than the one the characters thought they were headed to. It's not revealing who the killer is, but rather, revealing that the victim isn't really dead, the entire crime is a cover for some other crime, the person they thought they were on the run from is actually an ally and there's a bigger bad out there, the person they've been trusting all along is about to betray them, etc.
I didn't do it in Dragon and Detective except perhaps in a very tangential way, and did it without realizing I was doing it in the subsequent Keeley books; then when I was plotting out another book this week, my plot was falling flat until I suddenly realized that I needed to add a second, hidden layer to the mystery, and then all of a sudden the whole thing clicked and came alive. It involves a certain level of reality-shifting - in order to get that satisfying "click" feeling, you need to find out that some early plot-driving assumption, on the part of both the reader and the characters, was wrong, and that sets the plot spinning off in a different direction than it looked like it was headed.
I don't think that you always need this to make the genre work, I'm sure there are plenty of perfectly excellent examples that don't have it, but by this point it's unconsciously become part of my Keeley plot formula.
Examples from my other Keeley books, with specific plot spoilers:
In Ghost & Gumshoe, the third-act twist is Wendy betraying them (and also the general "what's up with her anyway" deal with the elixir and her dad); in Fae & Flatfoot, it's that changelings aren't what everyone always thought, so their solution to their basic problem doesn't work AT ALL and they need a new one; in Dick & Demon, it's that Roos isn't actually their enemy, there's something much worse out there, and they need to team up with her against the real enemy. The book I'm currently writing has one that involves the actual nature of the crime as opposed to its presumed nature.
In general I think the main Third Act Twist variations I've been working with so far are: some aspect of the crime isn't what you thought it was, someone who was supposed to be a trustworthy ally isn't, or an antagonist who up to this point appeared to be the Big Bad switching sides and helping them against the real Big Bad.
For all I know there's an actual plotting-beat term for this, but Third Act Twist works fine for me; it describes what it does, and I know what I'm talking about.
Having figured this out is going to be immensely helpful for plotting this kind of book going forward, because I think when I get stuck on the big-picture plotting level, the solution is often just figuring out the second layer to the mystery and weaving it into the first.
It's also kind of interesting because this sort of sudden reversal of expectations/realization that Everything Was A Lie is exactly what you don't want in romance.
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It's like a series of historical detective books that I read last year. I enjoyed them all, but one of them did leave me feeling a bit flat. I'd worked out who the murderer was very early on, well before the protaganist did. In fact, the 'twist' was supposed to be that this person did it!! I hadn't worked out the motive, so at least there was that, but yeah, I hate being right. I like dectective/mystery books to outfox me! Give me unexpected twists please!
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I'm also noticing with my own plotting that if I have a second twist, I don't need to be as sneaky with the first mystery because it doesn't matter as much if readers figure it out. In fact, if they're distracted by thinking they've already figured it out, the second twist is going to hit even harder!
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And, yes, "trap door" is a most excellent name for it. I feel as if a "rug pull" suggests that the characters must fall down, but will then stand up again in the same setting, while with a "trap door," the characters may or may not land on their feet, but always then find themselves in a changed setting.
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Hopefully the first project is the most difficult!
I just finished reading Kellye Garrett's Like a Sister, which does the third act twist -- in fact multiples . . . very, very well.
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