15 Killer Plot Twist Ideas and Examples (to Plan in Plottr)

Want readers gasping, flipping back pages, and texting their friends? Plot twists do that. Here are 15 big surprise ideas (plus how to track each jaw-dropper in Plottr).

What are Plot Twists?

Twists are surprise moments that reveal secrets, change a character’s goal, or make you see the story in a new way.

What do authors and film makers say?

Make Plot Twists Central to the Story

Author Elizabeth Brooks writes:

It’s easy to chuck a startling event into a novel, but if the “I am your father” moment happens completely out of the blue then the effect will be unsatisfying. It’s not that you need lots of heavy-handed foreshadowing, but the twist has to be there from the start, running through the story like an invisible thread.
– Elizabeth Brooks, Writer’s Digest, “6 Tips for Adding Twists to Gothic Novels”

Build Suspense Toward Surprise

Twists pull the rug out from under us. Writers let us expect one thing, then show us we were wrong.

Example: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The story follows students at what seems like a normal boarding school. We think they’ll grow up and live ordinary lives….

The students turn out to be clones raised solely for the purpose of donating their vital organs.

This twist changes everything: what the characters hope for, what their love means, and how we read their quiet, human moments.

Alfred Hitchcock said:

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
– Alfred Hitchcock, Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984)

Use Twists to Raise the Stakes

In the final beats of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there’s a life-or-death situation involving Indy’s dad, Henry Senior…

Indiana Jones’s dad is shot by Walter Donovan, one of the main villains. Donovan does this so that Indy has no choice but to lead him to the Holy Grail, since the Grail is Indy’s only hope of saving his dad.

Besides the main goal (finding the artifact), there’s a big twist near the end. This gives Indy a personal reason to keep going.

George R. R. Martin says of high stakes in plot twists;

Nothing bores me more than books where you read two pages and you know exactly how it’s going to come out. I want twists and turns that surprise me, characters that have a difficult time and that I don’t know if they’re going to live or die.
– George R. R. Martin, quoted by theworld.org public radio

Make Plot Twists Serve the Story

Plot twists can stray into cliché.

Unless you’re making fun of the plot device as a concept (like Futurama poking fun at amnesia in soap operas), it shouldn’t steal the whole spotlight.

Twists should help the story first. A good twist fills in gaps, shows why things happened, and makes characters’ feelings and ties feel deeper or messier.

Here’s what filmmaker Robert Eggers (who wrote and directed the 2024 horror/mystery Nosferatu remake) says:

I don’t like twists. I don’t get much out of them. If you know two cars are about to run into each other, you don’t walk away and say, ‘Oh, I know what’s going to happen.’ You watch.
– Robert Eggers, quoted by Industrial Scripts

It reminds us of this: a twist doesn’t need to shock; it needs to matter.

How to Plan and Track Plot Twists in Plottr

Before we examine more plot twist ideas and examples, here are five ways to track and plan your twists in Plottr:

1. Tag scenes that contain twists. This will make it easy to filter your plotlines to see an overview of where twists fall in the broader narrative sequence.
2. Color-code your surprises. For example, you could color scene cards that contain major twists a dramatic red.
3. Create a dedicated plotline for twists. This way, you can plan and pin twists alongside any of your character arcs or your main plot to see associated simultaneous events (and before and after moments) side by side.
4. Keep notes about twists. You can add links, images and more and use notes as a scribble pad and story organizer where you can jot down ideas for major reveals.
5. Use stacked scene cards. You can also stack a scene card just for the twist next to the main plot point where it happens. This way, in small (S) view, your twists show up as extra dots, so you can spot every big reveal at a glance.

Plot Twist Ideas and Examples

Looking for plot twist ideas? Here are 15 types (with examples):

Betrayal

A trusted friend or ally turns out to be working against the protagonist.

1. In Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, it’s revealed that heir to the throne Maven manipulates the protagonist Mare into a fake relationship solely to help himself become king.

2. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, the Pevensie siblings realize their brother Edmund has betrayed them to help the White Witch.

Careful What You Wish For

A character wants or wishes for something, yet gets the opposite of (or more than) what they hoped.

Examples:

1. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the king’s decision to divide his kingdom according to which daughter flatters him the most backfires, resulting in his being cast out and going mad.

2. In the 1902 horror short story, ‘The Monkey’s Paw, a man wishes for £200 only to find out his son has been killed in an accident and that the worker’s compensation is that amount.

Dead All Along

Characters turn out to have been dead all along.

1. In M. Night Shyamalan’s film The Sixth Sense, Dr. Malcolm Crowe is revealed to have been dead the entire time. He’s one of the ghosts the protagonist can see.

2. In the Alejandro Amenábar movie The Others, a woman and her children plagued by a haunting turn out to be the real ghosts.

Earth All Along

A planet mistaken to be another planet turns out to be earth.

1. Astronauts who awaken from hibernation after a crash landing to find a planet of apes discover that the planet is actually Earth after a nuclear war (the 1968 adaptation of Planet of the Apes).

2. Three astronauts make a crash landing on a desert planet and fight to the death over water. The lone survivor discovers they’d actually landed in modern-day Nevada and the conflict was for nothing (The Twilight Zone).

Faked Disappearance or Death

A character’s death or disappearance turns out to have been faked. They may have done this to escape a situation, to exact revenge, or for another reason.

Examples:

1. Amy Dunne fakes her own disappearance and death to frame her husband Nick Dunne after discovering his affair in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

2. Juliet fakes her own death to avoid an arranged marriage and be with Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Family or Kinship Twists

Characters previously unknown to each other find out they are related. Or, characters who thought they were biologically related may find out they’re not.

Examples:

1. When Darth Vader he reveals he is Luke Skywalker’s father in Star Wars.

2. The protagonist in The Face on the Milk Carton (1990) by Caroline B. Cooney recognizes herself in a missing picture, opening up the possibility she was kidnapped as a toddler.

Fake or Concealed Identity

A character turns out not to be who we thought they were, or a mysterious deed doer’s identity is surprising.

1. In Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Pip’s mysterious benefactor turns out to be the escaped convict Abel Magwitch he met as a child and not the wealthy Miss Havisham.

2. In Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the wizard of the title turns out to be an ordinary man named Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs from Omaha.

Fake-Out Twist

A plot twist is soon out-twisted by another revelation.

1. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Dr Elsa Schneider betrays Indiana Jones, revealing that she’s colluding with the Nazis, before she betrays them in turn to help Indy.

2. In ‘The Gift of the Magi’ by O. Henry, Della sells her hair to buy Jim a platinum watch chain, only for him to reveal he sold his watch to buy Della combs for her hair.

Fantasy All Along

Events turn out to be the product of someone’s delusion, imagination or coping mechanism.

1. In Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, the protagonist tells two versions of the story of his survival at sea. In one, he survives with a raft of animals. A second is revealed that is far more brutal, and it’s up to the reader to decide which version was true.

2. In Martin Scorcese’s Shutter Island (adapted from Dennis Lehane’s 2003 novel of the same name), a U.S. Marshal investigating an asylum patient’s escape discovers he is one of the patients being held there himself.

Not Quite Dead

Someone thought to be dead turns out to still be alive.

1. In The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Edmond Dantès is presumed dead after imprisonment but returns in disguise to seek revenge.

2. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy is presumed dead when a tank on top of which he’s been fighting Ernst Vogel goes over a cliff, but it turns out he saved himself in the nick of time.

Twin Twists

Twins use their close likeness to some or other end (or create confusion due to their similar appearance).

1. In Tamora Pearce’s The Song of the Lioness series, identical twins Alanna and Thom of Trebond swap places so that Alanna can become a knight and Thom a wizard. The swap leads to many surprises and twists.

2. In the Nancy Meyers movie The Parent Trap, identical twins separated at birth meet at summer camp and decide to switch places to reunite their parents.

Timeline Plot Twists

Surprising information is revealed about a timeline of events.

1. In the central section of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, we discover what seems like a pre-modern world of minimal technology and superstition is actually a post-apocalyptic, post-reset one.

2. In Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, the protagonist dies and restarts her life repeatedly, giving readers fragmented glimpses of alternate histories until a final twist reframes her mission.

The Protagonist Was Really the Villain

The audience (or the protagonist themselves) slowly pieces together that the protagonist is really the villain or antagonist of the story.

1. In Chuck Palahnuik’s Fight Club, the main character slowly realizes that he is Tyler Durden who was an antagonistic separate character at first.

2. In Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the narrator Merricat seems whimsical and childlike but ultimately reveals that she poisoned her family.

The Thing Behind the Curtain

Something previously represented as terrible or powerful is revealed as much weaker than expected.

1. In The Silver Chair in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, the terrible ‘beast’ feared in the underground turns out to be an enchanted Prince Rilian.

2. Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is feared as a recluse. The children imagine he is threatening and scary, but he turns out to be their quiet protector.

The Unreliable Narrator

The narrator of a story has mislead the reader, either intentionally or due to their own delusion, bias or confusion.

1. Humbert Humbert in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is a predator who glorifies his selfish actions. The reader must be watchful for the gaps, omissions and blind spots in Humbert’s slick verbosity.

2. Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement is a young aspiring writer who misrepresents events due to her own assumptions and limited perspective. In the story, other characters’ POVs conflict with her version of events.

Plan Mind-blowing Plot Twists and Reversals

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What’s a favorite plot twist of yours from any book or movie? Comment below.

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