When I was in the ninth grade, my family lived in a Northern Virginia suburb. I was standing on our back deck one Saturday afternoon in the fall, enjoying the sight of the meadow at the back of our house surrounded by colorful leaves while I leaned into the cool, crisp breeze blowing towards me. Above me was one of those perfect cerulean blue skies you only see in October. But then I heard an unearthly, wailing sound that reminded me of whale song. For about two beats of my heart, it was eerily beautiful. I won’t ever forget the shock I felt in my stomach when I realized I was hearing the howling of a dog in pain. I whirled inside, found my mom, and the two of us tried to figure out where the sound was coming from, and if there was an animal that needed help. About the time we figured out the sound was coming from behind a house across the street and up the hill a little bit, it had stopped. When we got to the house, we knocked on the door and the man who came to the door told us that everything was fine and there were no problems. Mom asked around and found out the next day that the neighbors on either side of the man suspected him of beating his dog, a beautiful 1 year old golden retriever and wanted to report him to the Humane Society. I immediately agreed to testify to whoever I needed to about the sound I had heard. Fortunately, the shelter didn’t need my help, but very quickly the dog was removed and re-homed.
What I experienced in that second of shock was the twist, a shift in my perspective, a turn from the reality I thought I was living in to the reality that was.
A couple of years later, we had moved to Alabama, my parents had gotten a difficult divorce, and my mom had full custody of myself and my sisters. Burning with filial piety and the desire to do something really nice for her, the three of us very inexperienced cooks decided we would surprise her when she got home from work with Crepes Suzette for supper. It didn’t go well. By the time Mom got home, the kitchen looked like the Swedish Chef and the garbage disposal had gotten into a food fight with pancake batter and cream. She smiled, showed us how to finish the dish correctly, and told us how much she appreciated our efforts. We were so proud to have done something nice for her.
I never knew how much that moment cost her until I walked into my own house twenty years later after a long day at work to see the mess my daughter had made while trying to make me a cake. To be fair, her mess was a lot worse even than ours had been because she believed recipes were unnecessary. Flour mixed randomly with eggs and sugar and scorched at 400 degrees for an hour in the oven has a very distinctive smell. Just as with the more horrifying incident with the golden retriever, I experienced the twist, my brain latching on to the existing reality rather than the reality I thought I had been living in when I tried to make my mother Crepes Suzette.
Good mystery writers have mastered the twist. Carefully, they send us down a cultivated trail of clues, red herrings and misdirection guiding us to believe one thing, then showing us at the end how the truth was something else entirely.
What techniques have you found helpful when plotting (or editing, for you pantsters out there who were just as surprised as everyone else to find out who the culprit was when you finished your first draft) your own mysteries to send the reader in one direction while making sure the truth lies in another? Are there any hard and set rules you like to follow? What was the best twist you ever read in a mystery novel?
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