#187. How To Write An Unforgettable Plot Twist In Your Novel With Samantha Skal

Episode Transcript
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Samantha Skall (00:00):
Once you figure out what your villain is doing
and why, think about what yourprotagonist will assume is going
on, because assumptions ofmotivations is another way to
think about twists.
I'm assuming this very logicalthing about why this person is
doing this thing and I am wildlywrong.
And the wildly wrong reveal isyour twist.
So if I'm in my awesome dressand I'm in this basement in

(00:21):
Prohibition era and there'sbarrels of whiskey or whatever
all around, I'm going to assumethat it's about the whiskey.
But maybe it's not.
Maybe it's about the building,maybe it's about who this person
was.

Savannah Gilbo (00:33):
Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy
podcast.
My name is Savannah Gilbo andI'm here to help you write a
story that works.
I want to prove to you thatwriting a novel doesn't have to
be overwhelming, so each week,I'll bring you a brand new
episode with simple, actionableand step-by-step strategies that
you can implement in yourwriting right away.
So, whether you're brand new towriting or more of a seasoned

(00:54):
author looking to improve yourcraft, this podcast is for you.
So pick up a pen and let's getstarted.
In today's episode, we'reexploring what it means to write
twists in mysteries andthrillers, and I have a special
guest today who is an expert inthis topic.
Her name is samantha skull andshe is the director of thriller

(01:15):
fest, the co-founder of shadowsand secrets writing retreats,
which get.
This is a series of thrillerand mystery focused writing
retreats in Salem, massachusetts, of all places, and in their
most haunted hotel how cool isthat?
And she's also an authoraccelerator book coach who
specializes in coaching mystery,thriller and suspense authors

(01:35):
from planning through revision,and Sam's superpower as a coach
is brainstorming twists, andthat's exactly what she's going
to talk to us about today.
So in this episode, you'regoing to hear us talk through
things like what it means towrite a twist, and how this
might show up a little bitdifferently depending on if
you're writing a mystery or athriller.
We're going to talk about whathappens when you don't play fair

(01:55):
with readers, giving them allthe clues they would need to
have in order to find out whodone it or why they did it and
why this is such a big, bigmistake.
You're going to hear us talkabout where writers go wrong
when planting clues and how youcan more effectively distract
readers from the true clues thatyou do plant.
We're going to talk about how tocome up with ideas for your
mystery or thriller, especiallywhen it comes to those twists,

(02:18):
and you're going to hear Sam'sthoughts on when to worry about
having all the clues and redherrings figured out.
So she's going to talk about isthis a first draft problem, a
final draft problem or somethingelse?
We're going to talk about whyyou should start with your
antagonist or villain when itcomes to planning a twist in
your mystery or thriller, and somuch more.
So I don't want to make youwait any longer to get into it.

(02:38):
Let's dive right into thisconversation with Samantha Skull
about planning twists in yourmystery or thriller.
Conversation with SamanthaSkoll about planning twists in
your mystery or thriller.
Hi Sam, thank you so much forcoming on the Fiction Writing
Made Easy podcast today.

Thank you so much, savannah, for having me.
This is just I adore you and Iadore your podcast.

so it's a thrill to be here.
Oh my gosh, it's a thrill to behere and talk about thrillers.
I love it.
We're going to probably have somany puns today of thrills and
thrillers, we sure will.
I love it.
So I already gave you a moreformal introduction in the intro
, but in your own words, couldyou just let my listeners know
who you are, what you do andthings like that?
Sure.

So I am Samantha Skoll and I focus on mystery,
thriller and suspense, with afocus particularly on twist
brainstorming.
I adore villains, I adore allthe dark stuff.
I dabble in horror a bit.
I'm not the very best with theliterary horror, but if you have
something supernatural andfreaky, please come to me.
And I am also the executivedirector of Solar Fest.

(03:36):
So I'm all up in this world andI just murder stories all day,
every day.

Yeah, that should be like a bumper sticker.
You had a couple good onesthere.
Murder stories all day.
Or you said if you haveanything dark and paranormal,
I'm your girl.

Yeah, yeah, exactly Bumper stickers, the
scarier the better.

Yeah, I love it.
Okay, so, like we kind ofspoiled, we're going to talk
about writing twists, becausethat is the thing that Samantha
specializes in.
It's the thing she loves.
So I think most of us know whattwists are.
But how do you think aboutthese things?

So I think of a twist as the reveal of the
villain's truth, and alsothey're built on misassumptions
and misconceptions from yourprotagonist about what's
actually going on, and so it'snot actually just an out of left
field, which they sometimes canfeel like, which can work
really well, but really welldone.
Twists have been well thoughtout by the author, and the

(04:28):
author knows exactly what isgoing to happen when, and
everything is very understood,which, honestly, as you're
writing, can take a little bitof the fun out of it.
It feels like it's going to beso obvious, but as a reader,
it's incredible when I mean,that's that like tightly plotted
feeling that you get when youput down a mystery that we all
adore.

That's what we're after, yeah, and what
gives us goosebumps when thereveal happens, and things like
that.
So we're going to talk aboutwhat they are, what they aren't
Before we get into that.
Are there any differences ifI'm a writer of a mystery versus
a thriller writer?
Are there any differences tohow I should be approaching
twists in those genres?

It's a really good question.
So I would say that thrillersyou generally have a little bit
more latitude with more POVs,and so you can get weird with
even the killer, the persondoing the bad things.
We know who they are as theauthor and we know what their
goals are, but we don't knoweverything and so you still have
some misconceptions on bothsides.
That gets kind of like expertlevel and I don't recommend

(05:23):
starting there.
But mysteries tend to be kindof first or third POV.
We're just following one personthroughout the story, so
misconceptions are very easy topull off.

Yeah, very, very easy to pull off.
And something I talk about inmy course and in the podcast a
lot is the red herrings, how weuse red herrings to help us pull
off these twists.
And something I say you tell meif you agree or not, is that in
a mystery we kind of use redherrings to distract us from
what has already happened.
So whodunit, what happened?
And then in thrillers we usered herrings to make us

(05:55):
incorrectly believe something'scoming.
So maybe something did happenand there's a little mystery to
that.
But it's more about what'scoming than what has happened.

My God, so well said, completely agreed.
I like to think of mysteries as, exactly as you just said, like
the exploration ofunderstanding what has already
happened, and then thrillers arepreventing what's going to
happen.

So very strongly agree.
Same page, I love it, okay, andso you kind of already hinted
at this.
But there's, you also have atake on what twists are not.
Can you talk about that a?

little this, but you also have a take on what
twists are not.
Can you talk about that alittle?
Yeah, so twists are not justsomething that you think of as
you're writing and you're like,oh, that's random, I'm going to
put that in there.
They always need to be logicalfrom the standpoint of looking
backwards, after the reader hasexperienced them and the
protagonist right.
So if I'm a protagonist walkingthrough the woods and I see
something and I make anassumption and then it turns out

(06:45):
that thing is absolutely thething that I was afraid of, the
logic will be that it's notbecause I will have thought, oh,
somebody else left it there orwhatever.
And then, after we get throughthe story and have to look
backwards and be like why didn'tyou see it for?

what it was Like .
You know, yeah, yeah, and Ithink one of the top mistakes is
exactly what you just said.
It's not playing fair.
So it's kind of like, no matterwhat we know or don't know in
the first draft, I'm talkingabout the final product.

So in the final product.

We need to play fair.
We need to give readers all theclues and then misdirect them.
That's where the art comes in,to do the twist right,
Absolutely.

I'm nodding vigorously over here.
Yeah, I like to think of itlike on screen.
I'm nodding vigorously overhere.
Yeah, I like to think of itlike on screen.
If you're watching a movie orwatching a thriller, go by
through your eyes as you'rereading it in a mystery, the
little clues that pop up thatthe protagonist, like, clocks on
the page and then looks overhere and is like, oh, that's
bloody footprint, isn'timportant.
I'm going to go focus on thisdead body or whatever and sorry,
that's super dark.

(07:40):
But yeah, you know, the bloodyfootprints are what's important
and the reader will clock it butnot necessarily pay attention
to it, because we, as the author, have manipulated them through
the protagonist to looking atsomething else, right?

So yeah, the other thing that I see a lot is
that writers will they go aboutthat drawing of attention in the
wrong way.
So sometimes if we use yourexample of the bloody footprint
and the body, well, I guess inthat scenario both are related.
Probably right, but let's saythere's like a clue.
Also on the sofa there's awristwatch.
So we have a wristwatch, abloody footprint and a dead body

(08:13):
and it's almost like sometimesthe writer will make us pay so
much attention to thatwristwatch because maybe it's
coming into play later and it's,yeah, okay, if we're in our
character's shoes, realisticallythey're not going to like
inspect everything when there'sa dead body to their left and a
bloody footprint in the middleright, and we can talk about
this more later.
But it's like, once you playfair and you have all the clues,

(08:34):
it's about knowing where to putthat spotlight and how much
time to let that spotlightlinger, and I think that's where
sometimes we go wrong that's sowell said.

Yeah, I, yeah Early drafts of mysteries.
I will say they're not bad,right, like we as writers evolve
over time and so it's okay tohave a draft where it's like,
wow, that's obvious.
Yeah, but you know, as yourevise, you can look and you can
think, as you just said, likelogically, what would my
character do?
Like they're not going to belike, ah, dead body, whatever.
I'm going to focus on thisthing for 20 minutes and then

(09:04):
come back over to this thingBecause, trust your reader, your
readers, especially mysteryreaders, are noticing every
single thing that theprotagonist notices and looking
for that manipulation.
And I think that's 90% of thefun of writing mysteries is the
reader knows that we're tryingto mess with them and so we're
trying to mess with them, eventhough they know that we know
what they know.
Yes, we're trying to outsmarteach other.

Yes, yeah, I love that, and so I know we're
going to talk about how toideate thrillers, because that's
kind of your specialty.
But just since we're on thistrack of mistakes, the third
thing I was going to mention isthat sometimes it's like we
don't have a solid enough redherring to distract us.
Like what we've both beensaying is, sometimes we set up
something and we want readers tobe looking over here and it's,

(09:48):
but logically that doesn't makeany sense, or like you've also
given me evidence to know thatthis person is not the killer or
whatever.
And, like Sam said, there'sfirst draft problems and later
draft problems.
But yeah, and so we're going totalk about how to ideate in a
second.
But it's like I just want todump everything on you and then
have you parse through mythoughts Amazing as my true

(10:21):
trail of clues.
So it's almost like because I'mthinking of being a writer and
hearing you explain what youjust did is I might be like, wow
, that sounds hard and it is,but it's also kind of not,
because you just kind of plottwo stories right and then at
the last minute you kind ofswitch what we are thinking
about.

Oh gosh, you just kind of blew my mind.
That is such a good way ofsaying it.
It's exactly what red herringsare, you know.
They need to make sense.
They can't just come out ofnowhere.
It can't be like I'm going tofocus on this cute cat instead
of the dead body.
It's got to be logical, and socoming up with something that is
plausible for your andbelievable for your protagonist
to focus on logically, that'sthe difficult part.

(10:57):
But once you figure that out,it actually is pretty easy,
because you're just going tofollow their logic for what
they're looking at, assumingthey don't know what's actually
going on, which is what thevillain actually did.

Right and there's so many.
You're dropping so many goodnuggets because it's so
important to get in yourcharacter's head, because what
is happening to your characteris happening to your reader,
ideally, if you've done it right.
It also allows you to play with, like you said earlier, what
they think they know.
So they're going to interpretall kinds of things right and
wrong, which is great.

Usually wrong.

Yeah, usually wrong, which is great for us and
it's great for how your readeris going to experience the story
.
But again back to what you saidis we do not need to know all
of this as we're drafting, andsometimes the more obvious we
are to ourselves when drafting,it's cool, it's out in the page.

Now we can finesse it from there,
absolutely.
Yeah, I mean sometimes when I Imean we'll get into ideating in
just a second, but I could jumpthe gun for just a minute.
But sometimes when I'm juststarting out, I'll figure out
what the actual story is withthe villain and then I'll go
back in and figure out like well, what else could they focus on?
What would be logical?
Because villains don'tgenerally want to be caught.
The people doing bad thingswant to keep doing the bad thing
, which is what makes them anantagonist.

So yeah, yeah, I love that.
And so, okay, let's talk aboutideation, because that's like
your jam.
So if we're trying to write amystery or thriller and let's
say we don't even really knowanything about what we're doing,
we know we want to write a book.
We're aiming for, like, let'ssay, 80,000 words.
Yep, maybe we know that we wantto write it in the prohibition

(12:27):
era.
Like, maybe we know somethingabout setting, right, what do we
do next?

So I tend to start with a single scene, and
that's what I tell my people aswell, the people who hire me to
help them is you know, sit thereand pick up something that, if
we're writing about prohibition,right, so that my mind
immediately goes to likespeakeasies and underground and
things that are not.
You know, it's all about whathappens beneath the surface.
There's like the shiny surfaceand then there's like the dark,

(12:52):
fun, illegal underground, and sosee if you can come up with a
scene where something happens.
If we're writing a mystery,there's usually going to be a
dead body in the first chapter.
So picture the dead body.
What do they look like?
Is it a male, female?
What are they wearing?
Are they rich, are they poor?
Are they holding a bunch ofliquor or are they like running
from something, whatever?

(13:13):
And then I like to think of howI would tell that story from
many different perspectives, andI'll give myself 200 words, 500
words, a thousand words,whatever, and one of those
typically ends up being myprotagonist, because your
protagonist always needs to findthe dead body in a mystery.
And so maybe the villain'sthere, maybe they're not, maybe
the villain is watching througha hole in the wall because

(13:33):
prohibition, and then you kindof just go wild, right.
But once you have that initialcore scene, you can start to
figure out like, okay, whatbrought us there?
Because, again, mysteries areabout what already happened and
we're trying to figure it outand thrillers are about what's
about to happen.
So if we're in the mysterymindset here, it's absolutely
going to be focused on like,okay, what do I see?
What clues exist here andworld's your oyster from there.

(13:57):
It can go so many differentdirections.

I love that, what you said about looking at
it from different perspectives,because in all stories that's
true, where each character hastheir own version of events.
But in a mystery or thriller.

It's like, yeah, that's super important because
they're all going to be rightand they're all going to be
wrong in their own way,obviously, the master of writing
these locked room mysteries,which is a genre that I
completely love, but in allcases, it's about discovering
what happened, but from allthese different perspectives,

(14:34):
and you don't have to have sevenPOVs, you can have one, but
they're going to be interviewingpeople and they're going to be
getting experiences throughout,and so I think, just let
yourself be open.
If you have an initial scene,just think, okay, is there
someone spying through the door?
Is there someone peeking fromunderneath the floor?
Is there another body?
Is there whatever right there's?
Just let your mind run wild andjust see what kind of pops to
the surface for you.

Yeah, and then I'm sure you can take what you
come up with and dig into anypiece of that more Exactly yeah,
so let's say we've done thatand we know the gist of why the
crime happened.
Maybe we've identified this isour protagonist, this is the
antagonist.
Do you recommend people startby fleshing out the antagonist?

But for mysteries and thrillers,
generally speaking, the persondoing the bad things is your
antagonist, because their goalis to not get caught and your
protagonist wants them to getcaught, Right, so that's your
forces of opposition.
So I love digging into whypeople do what they do and I

(15:34):
think that's what makes a reallyrich dig your nails in and
understand a really coolantagonist.
And this is what makes it notfall flat when you have this big
discussion that typicallyhappens in the climactic scene
or the final twist of whatactually happened why did you do
this thing?
It's so much more interestingif some, instead of someone,
just you know, saying oh I do itbecause I like murdering people

(15:55):
or whatever they're like.
Oh, I really I wanted to savemy father's company, so I made a
series of increasingly baddecisions and ended up with this
person being murdered and oneother little note focusing on
this like dead body scene in thebeginning.
What we're really doing withthe mystery is unpacking what
has already happened for thelast like two months, month, six
years, whatever, and so it canreally help to think through,

(16:18):
like everything that happenedright up until the point where
we enter the story and thenthat's your protagonist journey
is figuring out the why.

Yeah.
So that's really cool because Ihear a lot of it's like you're
opening doors into multipleversions of backstory.
So the protagonist, what gotthe villain to be where they are
today?
Why was the victim chosen?
Was it random?
Was there a specific purpose?
So it sounds like we can startby just brainstorming all these
things and asking why about?

everything.
Yeah, I mean exactly Right.
And then all of a sudden youend up with a lot that you're
looking at and you can pick andchoose what story you want to
pursue the most you know.
And sometimes that dead bodymaybe they were the supervillain
and your villain killed thembecause they had to and the
final twist is who this personreally was.
Right, like some reveal ofmotivation.
Yeah, the motivation is so keyand I think that's once you

(17:08):
figure out that there's usuallylike this semi audible click
when you're on a call withsomebody and or you're yourself
or writing, and you sit thereand you're like, oh that that I
just figured it out.
And then it all falls into placefrom there.

And it's amazing too, because even if you're not
writing a mystery or thriller,the motivation piece of any
character unlocks everything1000%.
Yeah, suddenly it's like youknow why they're showing up on
the page the way they are.
You know why their quirks aretheir quirks, or why they're
taking certain actions.
So yeah, huge piece of thepuzzle.
Okay, so let's say we'vethought about this.

(17:43):
We know our villain'smotivation.
Usually, it seems like theprotagonist just gets caught up
in things and there's then likea personal connection of why
they care about uncovering thecrime or whatever.
What do we do next, like how dowe sort through all the
possibilities of what a plot canbe, what a red herring can be?
There's so many options.

There are so many options and I think this is
partly this is a good placewhere people get overwhelmed.
It's very frequent to feeloverwhelmed at this stage, so
just keep pushing through it.
If you're listening to this andyou're like, that's me.
So once you figure out whatyour villain is doing and why,
think about what yourprotagonist will assume is going
on, because assumptions ofmotivations is another way to
think about twists.

(18:25):
I'm assuming this very logicalthing about why this person is
doing this thing and I am wildlywrong.
And the wildly wrong reveal isyour twist, right?
So if I'm looking, I'm in myawesome dress and I'm in this
basement in prohibition era andthere's barrels of whiskey or
whatever all around, I'm goingto assume that it's about the
whiskey, but maybe it's not.
Maybe it's about the building,and then you can play it out

(18:50):
like that, but always thinkabout the fact that your person
who's doing bad things is tryingactively not to get caught, and
so they will be putting thingsin place to prevent your
protagonist from figuring outwhat's happened, which can be
red herrings, right?
This, I don't know, chest ofgold.

(19:14):
That is obviously the reasonthis is happening.
What if that was planted therefor the sole purpose of
derailing your protagonist'sinvestigation into what happened
.

Yeah, that makes sense.
And so there's things, like yousaid, the villain can do.
There's things that think about.
If you have, let's say, fivepeople in the room, right,
there's another person thatmight have been cheating on
their spouse and so they mightbe worried they're going to be
found out, so they're alsotrying to manipulate, even
though they have nothing to dowith the crime.
They just don't want to bequestioned, Right?
So it's like it all goes backto that motivation.

(19:41):
There could be someone elsethat's in the country illegally
and they don't want to be foundout, so they don't want to be
questioned.
You can just think about whatis everyone doing, which I find
really helps populate the plot.

Absolutely, and it's not.

I like to come at it the way that you do.
Which is villain first, andthen who else can make this
messy?
And then what's my protagonistgoing to do, knowing they have
the agency to start solving thecrime?

Yes, absolutely yeah.
I love the idea of what can Ithink of to make this messy?

That's a really good way of saying it and you're
so right.

Like everyone, someone who's being shifty when
being questioned, the assumptionis going to be that they were a
part of the crime, but if theyhave a very good reason for that
shiftiness, that has nothing todo with it.
All of a sudden, there's atwist, right, and it doesn't
have to be like a major twist.
It can just be maybe closer toyour midpoint, maybe 65%, and
just keeps it moving.

(20:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's a great way oflooking at it.

Yeah, and there's thinking of our plots
too.
There's usually multiplesuspects, we kind of go through.
Absolutely so some are dismissedpretty quickly, some are
dismissed a little bit in themiddle of the story.
So you know, you have thinkabout too like the strategies
that the protagonist will gothrough, and it's usually
usually they have to start withthe assumptions and the most
obvious.
So they're going to start thatway.
They're going to kind of closethe door on somebody and then

(20:58):
what opens up the next door ofsuspicion, and then we have to
kind of also run parallel what'shappening that way versus what
the villain's really doing.
So everything else makes sensein the end.
This husband who is cheating onhis wife we thought it was him,
but then we uncovered it's nothim.
However, what also was thevillain doing to play into that?

Yes, yeah, so one of my favorite things to do
when I get to that point is onceI kind of have a landscape of
what's going on and I have allthis messy stuff.
I figure out what I want myclimactic kind of moment to look
like and which person myprotagonist is going to face off
against.
That doesn't always have to beyour person doing bad things.
Ultimately it does have toanswer the story question of who

(21:39):
killed the person in the bodyon the first page, but you can
have all kinds of stuff thathappens before then and so
mapping out, like what myprotagonist is experiencing is
what's on the page, is the plot,and they'll have like sub
bullets of what the villain isactually doing during all of
this and what they're like oh myGod, they're too close, I'm
going to burn this building downor whatever.
And then seeing how theprotagonist reacts to that

(22:02):
on-screen clue basically of like, oh, the building burned down
because of lightning or becausethis eating spouse decided they
didn't want their evidence to beuncovered.
But that doesn't actually solvemy initial crime, and so
getting messy really good way ofsaying it.

I like getting messy.
That's the fun part of theideation.
The hard part is then takingthe mess and making it something
.
But something else that I'vefound that helps writers is
think about, for whoever you'regoing to suspect or whoever was
in the room.
Think about motive, means andopportunity, because that's a

(22:37):
big one right.
Usually, if we've done all thework you've set up until now, we
know the villain's motivation,means and opportunity.
But think about, even like themost innocent person in the room
, is there some way that youcould build in that the motive,
means and opportunity so thatthen they could become a
potential suspect or justsomeone in the background that
readers might suspect?

Absolutely.
And that's like the next levelup is looking as you get through
a rough draft of your story,reading through it with the
eyeballs of a new reader, if youat all can, and thinking like,
oh, I super suspect this personand then running with that,
knowing that the reader willassume the author is messing
with them so they're not goingto suspect that person.
that person, but maybe they do,and so this is where it can get

(23:15):
really fun with the manipulation.
But that's kind of like end ofdrafting, end of revision,
tweaking things we have thisjoke in our house.

I don't know if you're an office fan, but
there's this one episode wheredwight talks about like how to
solve a murder and he's alwaysthe person you least most
suspect.
So now, when we're watchingthrillers or mysteries on tv, I
was like who do you least mostsuspect?
So now, when we're watchingthrillers or mysteries on TV,
we're always like who do weleast most suspect?
That's probably who it is.
It's so funny.
We want to give your readers aperson you least most expect as

(23:43):
well as the true bad guy.
But okay, so you said somethingimportant, right?
There's different layers orlevels of when we need to think
about this.
So if I'm a writer, I might bethinking, yes, I want to do all
of these things.
What would you recommend I doin the planning stage versus the
drafting phase, versus theediting phase?

Great question.
So the planning phase I figureout the villain first, and then
I figure out how the protagonistexperiences the villain's truth
, and in that way I have thecore storyline and then I start
figuring out the mess on theirside.
So people, they're focusing onwhatever, and that'll get you to
.
Probably, if you were to writethat, then it would probably be
like 40,000, 50,000 words.
And so then we need to figureout what kind of will make it

(24:22):
expand more.
And that's when I start gettinginto interiority and having my
protagonist look and think aboutOK, well, my inner turmoil, my
major malfunction, is making meview this in this way, but of
course I haven't figured out mymalfunction yet, so everything
is through my own filter, andthis layer of the emotionality

(24:42):
is, I think, also what createsreally meaty mysteries that
aren't just this happened andthis happened and this happened,
and also gives your protagonista really good way of having
agency throughout the story.
Because that's another reallycommon mistake I see is that the
protagonist is just ploppeddown into a scene, and maybe
this is how your story doesstart.
There's a lot of great mysteriesthat start where the
protagonist sees something andthen gets sucked in.

(25:04):
Right, but what are they goingto do?
Are they going to try to getaway?
Are they going to lean into it?
I often wonder.
I thank God have never actuallydiscovered a body on my own,
but I wonder what would Iactually do?
Right, probably I'd call thepolice and run the other way,
right, like I don't want anypart of that in real life.
But I love writing about it andI love writing about people who
are like, oh, I'm going toinsert myself in this and that

(25:27):
agency is super important.
But that also is fueled by whothis person is, and so you can
expand a kind of bare bones plotabout just this happened and
this happened, with a ton ofinteriority and like not not a
ton enough to make itinteresting, right, but that
gets our character from A to B Abeing like their initial, like
I have a big chip on my shoulderabout something to B being the

(25:49):
end after I've realized my ahamoment and helps me conquer the
villain.
And then editing, like I liketo read through it with
different hats on, but I have togive myself a break in between
them and then I figure out.
I'm sure you've talked aboutthis a ton, but revision is like
big stuff first and then downto little stuff, because the big
stuff takes up a ton of time.

So yeah, and there was two important things
you said.
I was just jotting down a note,so one of them is you talked
about interiority, and that'ssomething I do see that tends to
go missing a lot in thrillersand mysteries.
And then when I edit a draft, Isay I don't understand why this
character did what they did, andthe writer will really know why
they did what they did.
It's just not on the page.

(26:30):
So in our weird little examplewe're making up today, it's you
know, imagine if the firstsuspect of your protagonist is
the person who cheated on hiswife and in the protagonist
backstory their dad cheated ontheir mom.
Like it makes sense why theywould potentially choose to
investigate that person oversomebody else.
Absolutely so sometimes it like,although it sounds, we're

(26:51):
talking about making a big messwith details and ideas.
Sometimes the mess is good,because you uncover all these
things that you don't know aregoing to connect and then, when
they do, you're like this ispretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, I like to you know some of my
favorite.
They always tend to be heroines, but whoever like, your
favorite protagonists are thepeople who sit there and they're
like, okay, I am making thisdecision in their interior.
I'm going to choose thisbecause I know this for sure and
that knowing can be themisbelief right.
Or like the filter.
So if we go with a child ofsomebody cheating on someone

(27:23):
else, they're going to have abig chip on their shoulder about
that.
They're going to make someprobably incorrect assumptions
about motivations and not seethings completely clearly or
with zero prejudice, right?

right, and even if there's a person who's in
love and they're like the dreamcouple they're gonna probably
judge that couple, because howcould they possibly be in love?

love's not real, exactly, exactly.
And then your emotional arcthere can be understanding that
love can be real, even if itdoesn't look like what you
thought it should look like,with your own filter.

And then how does that translate into the
crime?
Yes, start connecting all thesedifferent things, which is kind
of fun.
Maybe we should write a booktogether.
I know, yeah, let's see thespeakeasy, the death of the
speakeasy.

It's going to be a cozy mystery with a title
like that, but I'm okay with it.

Cozy cat mystery at the speed of easy Even
better.
The second thing you said I'mtrying to remember it was around
oh, like, how do we get someonepersonally invested in the
crime to give them agency?
This is something I see a lotof writers struggle with because
they might say okay, well, ifI'm a woman walking down the
street and I find a dead bodythat I don't know, how do I make
someone personally invested inthis if they have no connection
to the body?

Yeah, great question, and I think that gets
into their backstory, right?
Maybe our protagonist has justbeen fired from her job and she
secretly has always wanted to bea detective.
Maybe the dead body is herneighbor or someone she sees at
the coffee shop every day orsomething.
There's something just enoughto make her curious.
It doesn't have to be something.
It's like their brother orwhoever someone super close to

(28:54):
them.
But even if it's just, I can'tjust walk away from this right,
like just that human nature oflike this terrible thing
happened and I am witness to it,so I need to help.
Maybe there's a romance subplotand she falls for the cop.
I don't know, you know.

Yeah, this book I was editing and I know the
writer won't care if I sharethis because I've talked about
her stuff on the podcast beforebut she has a mystery subplot in
a fantasy world.
And the kind of tie between thevictim and the protagonist is
that they are both treated assecond class citizens.
So when this protagonist seesthat someone with her skin color

(29:27):
is murdered.
She doesn't know her, shedoesn't know anything, she just
sees herself in that person andthat's enough to make her take
action on it.
So it really can be anything.
But I think without that,either the story falls apart and
writers are like what the heckam I even trying to do?
This makes no sense.
Or the draft happens and it'sexecuted, and it might be
executed well, but without thatinitial connection or that

(29:50):
motivation that makes sense, itreads weird, totally.

Yeah, and that's honestly one of my favorite
places to come in and helppeople is when they have a solid
idea about what they want thestory to look like, but we're
missing the connections.
The way my weird brain works isfinding those connections, and
so I've had so manybreakthroughs with people where
it's okay, well, we have this asyour villain right now.
What if it wasn't?
What if it was this otherperson?

(30:14):
What if the reason that they'reconnected is because of this
long lost thing and not acoincidence?
You know it's always there fora reason.
Just open your mind as ifyou're stuck like that and just
think, what if this wasconnected?
And see what you come up with.
Sometimes you can break yourown way out of it.

Yeah and I've actually found that to be true
too that sometimes it's like ourfirst ideas are great red
herrings.
So if your first idea of avillain might be actually a
really great red herring, thatcould be like the next to last
suspect that cross off the list.
And then, or it's okay, maybeyour villain is correct, that
person is correct, but maybe youneed to swap motivations with

(30:53):
someone else you were ideating.
So I totally agree, likethinking what if?
Thinking outside the box,thinking like what would readers
least expect right now?

and then maybe playing into that.
That can be fun too yeah, andyou can also play with, like the
structure of the twist, right?
So the climactic twist, as Imentioned earlier, always has to
answer the story question.
It has to be who killed theperson or who stole the thing or
whatever, right, but thatperson can be the villain that
the the protagonist is focusedon from 50 to 75, 80 percent,

(31:23):
and the final twist is that theydidn't have a choice in doing
the thing, or they were doing itbecause of something that the
protagonist couldn't ever haveunderstood except by viewing it
through this certain lens andall the clues on the page.
And that leads us to the finaltwist, which is the mastermind
villain is what I like to call.
It is the person pulling thestrings and being like ha ha,
you know, they're following mypath that I've laid out for them

(31:45):
, or I've done all this to keepmyself safe, and so I'm like
throwing people under the busright and left.

Yeah.

And yeah.

Which probably I'm imagining.
In the work you do with peopleyou have to think about theme
and stuff.
I mean, I know for every storywe do, but in that example you
just said, it's like if theperson is guilty, but they're
guilty because someone else didsomething worse, yeah, what are
we saying about justice, right?
What are we saying aboutpunishing someone who did
something bad, but maybe for agood reason?

Well, and that creates a very interesting
climactic scene that can leadvery lovely, lovely, that's not
the word but into yourprotagonist having an emotional
aha moment, which can happen,you know, in all number of
places.
But I love those where, youknow, we view the villain, the
fake villain, climactic villain,in a in a new light and see
their motivations and weunderstand their why and all of

(32:35):
a sudden have empathy for them.
And most protagonists in booksare not just going to go nuclear
on people and like destroyeverything.
They're going to try to havesome understanding and it
creates some really interestingstories and I love those
mysteries that make us think too, you know particularly if
you're writing, kind of leave uswith an echo of like, what
would we do?

Yes, yeah, exactly, yeah, okay, I love that
so much, so we kind of alreadyspoiled.
I wanted to ask you aboutcommon mistakes people make and
we said probably the number oneis not playing fair with the
reader.
We talked about not having asolid enough red herring to
distract us.
So maybe it's too obvious,maybe it's not there.
And then we talked aboutputting the spotlight on the

(33:14):
wrong clue or maybe too long.
What are some other things yousee, people do?

Not having the villain be on the page is a
pretty common one.
It's this delicate balancingact between having the villain
enough on the page that yourreader can clock them and
dismiss them for logical reasonsbecause your protagonist clocks
them and dismisses them andhaving them not be so obvious.
Right and this is one of thosethings that comes with betas and
like final drafts honestly, isgiving it your best shot and

(33:42):
thinking like, ok, I think noone's really going to get who
this person is until like 85percent or something.
But your betas read it andthey're like everyone gets it on
40%, you're like okay, well,what happened?
to 40% that I need to pull outso that people don't get it
quite so quickly.
But what we don't want is somenew character to come out of
left field at 90% of the waythrough the book, unless they've

(34:04):
already been mentioned or theydon't have to have physically
interacted with the protagonist.
But they do need to be known.

Yeah, and that's definitely a hard balance.
I see people trying to figureout too because sometimes it's
about having the villain bephysically present whether it's
like as kind of a shapeshifter,where they appear to be one way
and then we find out later thevillain, or it's like how do we
just have them mentioned,Because sometimes they can be
off the page while still beingon the page, so they're

(34:34):
mentioned.
Or maybe we see effects of thevillain that we don't understand
until later.
So I know we're not talkingabout middle grade fantasy,
we're talking about thrillersand mysteries, but I love the
mystery part in the first harrypotter book and everyone knows I
just spent forever digging intothat book and there's things.
Why was har Harry attacked atthe Quidditch match?

(34:55):
We have a suspicion of who itis.
We think it's Snape, but that'san effect of the villain, even
though we don't see him liketaking action on the page.

Yeah, that's a really good example, totally.

Yeah, and so the other thing you said, too.
That made me want to ask youbecause this is what people ask
me all the time how do webalance having a book, one
antagonist, with a biggerantagonist or series antagonist?

Yeah, connection right.
So each story in a series.
Let's say you have like a sevenbook mystery series.
There's a lot of those outthere.
I'll just plug my friend TessaWeggert's Shana Merchant series
are amazing and she did afabulous job of having these
books work over a big arc andeach one stands alone in their
different little mysteries, butthey're all focused on and

(35:42):
somehow related to this I'm notgoing to spoil anything but
somehow related to this initialbig crime that she needs to,
shana the character needs tosolve.
I still want to interview Tessaabout whether or not she knew
the entire thing before shestarted writing.
Yeah, they're great if you wantto check them out, but I think
that the biggest thing is tohave each little chunk of story,
each of these seven, stand ontheir own but have that

(36:04):
overarching connection.
That's your mastermind villain,right?
So it's almost like I mean, I'mnot going to quote Hero's
Journey because I don't that'san area that I know is in
mysteries.
The Hero's Journey is somethingI don't know as well, but like
that bigger arc of we havelittle pebbles on the way to
this final standoff and thatfinal standoff can be like book

(36:24):
four, but there's going to besomething new that gets revealed
.
That means we still havesomething to solve, and that can
be internal, that can besomebody that caused this
initial person to do this otherthing, or yeah, it's hard to
answer in short.
But I do think that that focus,knowing what your overarching
scope is, will be very, veryhelpful.
And then figuring out thekinsey milhoun series is another

(36:47):
great example.
Those were incredible books andthey managed to have each one
stood alone, but they also tolda story about what it was like
to be a pi in santa barbara inthe 90s.

Right, yeah yeah , I think that's all great, like
all great points to think about.
If we're writing a series andsomething that I see because you
said connection and that's theword I got hung up on I see
writers struggle with that kindof connection too, because they
might say well, I have amastermind villain and I have an
idea for book one villain and Idon't really know.
They don't know each other,they come from different parts

(37:18):
of the world or whatever, andit's okay, that could be true.
And then that's when I thinkyou can get into the mastermind
villain's head and say could hesee this person or what they're
doing as an opportunity to getwhat he or he or she or they,
whatever, what they want?
yeah, totally so sometimes youcan make the connections without
having it be like well, that'shis father yeah, it can be like.

it can be like is there like a mid-villain,
like you have stacks of villains, you have the person who's
being ultimately manipulated,who's your villain in book one,
and then it turns out they werebeing manipulated by this person
.
And then this person I'm movingmy hand up.
Yeah, it's just.
What are the layers of powerbasically?
I mean those tend to get biggerand bigger, because the person
who's manipulating five levelsof people tends to be very

(38:01):
powerful and you get more intolike filler territory in that
point, because it's usuallyworld ending and it's bigger
stakes.
That's the other thing isescalating stakes throughout
each book.
Yeah, hunger Games.
We started small-ish and thenwe just get bigger and bigger.

Worldwide.
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
So yeah, I think that's great.
We can think about connections.
They can be very literal orthey can be kind of like once
removed or a little bit morefigurative.
That's okay too, as long as weunderstand it and this relates
back to another mistake I see,which is not closing out each
book's plot.
Yes, you can definitely openfor a series at the end of each

(38:37):
book, but you still need toanswer that story question of
who done it in this book, orlike why did we do it?
Or things like that.

Absolutely.
Yeah, it's like chaos to orderon a small scale, like you may
not control the entire chaos ofeverything, but absolutely
agreed, story question must beanswered and knowing your story
question is another good way ofideating.

Yeah.

Right, and in mysteries that can be as simple
as who killed this person andanswering that, but then the why
becomes your twist breedingground.

And speaking of that, you just reminded me of
something we talked about a longtime ago in one of the book
clubs we did.
We were looking at the GuestList by Lucy Foley.
And we were talking about howit's really interesting that you
know there's someone has died,so that question.
Because we were talking abouthow writers sometimes they leave

(39:25):
open so many story questionsthat we're like what are we
supposed to be reading about?
So I thought that book was acool example of we close the
story question of someone hasdied, so it's not about did
someone die.
That's not what we're readingfor.
We're reading to find outliterally who did it and why
they did it.
And then once we know who didit, that question's closed.
So it becomes why.
So sometimes it's helpful tothink about your story like that
and you can totally give awaymost mysteries right in the

(39:48):
beginning.
We know exactly who died.

Exactly, yeah, and I was.
You just made me think of theguest list.
That's a good example ofsomething being kind of the Venn
diagram of mystery and thriller.
Yeah, you know, because we knowwe don't know everything, and
so that's the thriller part ofit.
Nor do we know the initialmystery, except that like
someone's going to die, so it'sin the future, but it already
happened and it's like yeah.

Yeah, so it's.
I think it's great to know,like, what that question is for
you.
And there's people who arewriting books like that and
they're like, well, I don't know, am I mystery, am I thriller?
And I think you laid out a goodway to think about it, like, is
it in the past?
Are we reading to find out whathappened in the past, or are we
reading to understand so thatwe can prevent something in the
future?
And you know, of course there'sgoing to be some crossovers and

(40:31):
things like that.
But that's like another thing Isee that writers do a lot is
they just leave all these thingsopen and they're so vague
because they think it's going topull us forward and make us
curious and really it's justlike we have nothing to latch on
to.
I don't care about anything.

Yes, god, so well said.
One of my critique partnerssaid this really well, and she
said confusion does not equalsuspense.
So it's just we think, when wefirst start writing, this is
such a common thing that, like,the more we leave open, the more
engaged people are going to be,and it's the exact opposite.
It's give us.
Lead me into this.

(41:05):
Author.
Tell me what I should focus on,tell me exactly what I should
be questioning, and then I wantyou to suck me in so hard into
this book that I don't get upoff the couch for four hours,
because I'm not hooked.

Yeah, and I find the same to be true.
It's all.
It really is the opposite.
So I feel like there's alistener out there who needed to
hear this.
So we are literally telling youit's the opposite.
Be more specific, be morepurposeful and then focus on
what is that central question,because we don't need to have a
thousand open questions.
We need to have a central openquestion, and then things that
lead us to that answer, and andthere can be many questions, of

(41:39):
course, but vague is never theanswer- it is not.

Yeah, and that just reminded me like big big
plots or big big cast lists.
That's another pretty commonthing I see, and particularly
with mysteries, I like to thinkthat readers can handle probably
about eight people withoutlosing track of everybody.
But six, especially if you killsomebody off right away.
That always helps, but the morepeople you have, the more
you're asking your reader toremember and clock.

(42:06):
I know Game of Thrones has alot of fans and critiques and
whatever, but, like DianaGabaldon too, like huge cast
lists and people havecompendiums that they keep to
keep track of all the characters, and so if you want someone to
sink in, you don't want to riskconfusion, and confusion is what
causes people to put down abook.
So keep it tight, answer thequestions that need to be

(42:28):
answered for the reader tounderstand and then leave open
the stuff you want them to belike ooh, what's going to happen
?

Yeah, and most of the time on that cast note,
it's like you need to have apurposeful reason to have the
eight characters.
So I see a lot of writers startfrom the opposite angle and
they're like I just want eightbecause that sounds really cool,
or it sounds like I can cast alot of suspicion on a lot of
people, and it's sure, but it'sgoing to be a lot harder for you
to pull off and harder forreaders to engage with.

(42:54):
So I always say start small andimprove why you need more.
Because also, too, I see in thedrafts I edit it's like you
might start with eight and thenyou realize four of them are
duplicates of the other four.

Yes, and you have to trim anyway, and
combining characters is a goodway of fixing twists too.
If you're at that point whereyou're just blocked when you're
writing, who can you combine onthe page and then go back and
fix it later?

And also kind of layering things, Like if you
know someone's motivation butthe other person has means and
opportunity, that's a greatthing to combine them.
Yeah, totally.

And round them out.
Or people working together thatwe don't expect are working
together.
Those are always fun.

Yes, I love that too, so I love all this.
I think this is going to be asuper helpful episode, and I
know you have a very coolresource for listeners, so can
you talk about that?

Yeah, sure.
So I came up with kind of 17ideas for how to ideate your
thriller and particularly whyyour villain would be doing what
they're doing.
It's a free download, it's fun.
Hopefully it'll spark yourimagination and think like, ooh,
what would happen if thisperson saw this?
I mean, does your protagonistsee a dead body, or do they
witness a crime, or do theythink they witnessed a crime,

(44:03):
like rear window or whatever itis?
But there's just I justbrainstormed and just it's out
there free on my website.
Love for you to download it andgood luck.
Thrillers and mysteries are anabsolute delight.

They are a delight.
They're hard but they're soworth the challenge.
You know they are, so we'lllink to that freebie on Sam's
website.
We'll also link to where youcan find her on social media and
all those good things.
But any parting words of wisdomfor our listeners.

Don't compare yourself to mysteries on the
shelf and thrillers.
I am guilty of this myselfsometimes when I'm having a bad
day writing.
I'm an author too.
I get it.
It's really hard to have like avery tightly packaged, tightly
plotted book that you see that'sgone through 17 iterations to
your first draft, and so justgive yourself some grace, have
fun with it, ask what if?

(44:50):
And know that we are a avidgroup of readers over here in
the MTS Mystery Solar Suspensecommunity and it will never be
enough.
So please write your book.

Yeah, please write your book, and I love that
message to not compare, becausethose books definitely don't
pop out that way, and don't youwish?
We could see it behind thescenes of like how something
like the guest list started, oryou know, yes.

My God, what a dream interview that would be
yeah.

I would love that too, maybe someday.
But yeah, don't compare.
And then definitely go grabthat freebie from Sam and check
out all her resources, and thankyou so much for being here
today, sam.
I think this was such a funconversation.

So fun.
Thank you so much for having meand to everybody listening,
thanks for being here.
This is a blast.

So that's it for today's episode.
As always, thank you so muchfor tuning in and for showing
your support.
If you want to check out any ofthe links I mentioned in this
episode, you can find them inthe show notes listed in the
description of each episodeinside your podcast player or at
savannahgilbocom forward slashpodcast.
If you're an Apple user, I'dreally appreciate it if you took

(45:58):
a few seconds to leave a ratingand a review.
Your ratings and reviews tellApple that this is a podcast
that's worth listening to and,in turn, your reviews will help
this podcast get in front ofmore fiction writers just like
you.
And while you're there, goahead and hit that follow button
, because there's going to beanother brand new episode next
week, full of actionable tips,tools and strategies to help you
become a better writer.
So I'll see you next week anduntil then, happy writing.

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