How do you perfect the art of writing a mind-blowing twist ending for your screenplay?

In movies, the ending is everything.

You
can have compelling opening hooks at the beginning of your cinematic
tale. You can throw in a plot twist here and there in the second act.
But if you don’t leave the script reader or audience satisfied, shocked,
or thrilled at the end, the whole experience is a disappointment.

After certain movies, we often hear people say, “The movie was great, but the ending kind of sucked.”

Or worse yet, “That ending came out of nowhere.”

The lasting impression can make or break the read for the script reader or the cinematic experience for the audience. And if you’re writing that coveted twist ending that people crave, you have to master how to deliver on that revelation properly.

Here are five reasons why your twist ending may not have worked in your latest draft.

1. You Didn’t Know Your Ending Before You Started the Script

The
first step in crafting a solid twist ending that delivers is knowing it
before you type a single word. How can you possibly build to any
cinematic climax meant to shock or thrill audiences without knowing the
ending while you’re writing the script?

You can’t simply get to the third act, blind to where you are leading the audience, and just wing it.

“I think I’ll kill the main character off.”

“Maybe everybody dies?”

That’s lazy screenwriting. You have to do the work.

Going
into the development stage of your script, know your general beginning,
midpoint, and end. Yes, you can always change your mind. But once you
do, you’ll have to go back and do your job to deliver that twist ending
throughout the whole script.

2. You’re Trying to Please Everyone

Here
is the thing about twist endings. Half of the audience will love it,
and half of the audience will hate it a majority of the time.

Cinema
is a subjective medium. Everyone brings their own baggage to the movie
theater. Different people respond to different aspects of a film’s story
and characters.

Script readers are the same way. They will have
personal preferences as to how the story should progress and where it
should all lead to in the end. Some will love your twist ending. Some
will hate it. And it’s not entirely your fault in the end.

So
don’t try to write a twist ending that somehow pleases everyone. It will
dilute the impact of it. This often leads to double twist attempts that
offer something for each side of the spectrum.

Pick the ending that YOU love the most and stick with it.

3. There’s No Logic to Your Twist Ending

Big mind-blowing ideas aren’t always that great. Going big has to also make sense in the end.

Despite some lackluster characterization and plotting, Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes
remake had some great concepts, sets, and makeup design. But where the
film truly tanked was the attempt at reinventing the wheel of the
original’s twist ending.

In the original 1968 film of the same name, Taylor discovers that he’s actually not in an alternative universe or another planet. He’s returned back to his home planet of Earth — only thousands of years in the future where humans destroyed their world and apes evolved.

But in the remake, the pod that astronaut Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) launched from the space station has crashed thousands of years in the past due to relativity. Davidson decided to set his course back to present-day Earth where he crashes and discovers that the Lincoln Memorial is now a monument to Ashlar’s General Thade (Tim Roth). And the authorities and onlookers that show up at the crash site are apes.

So Thade invented time travel, went back to America in the 1850s, and
future ape Americans replicated Earth’s history precisely? And the apes
are driving the same types of present-day vehicles humans did? It makes
no sense.

Sure, they wanted the ending to this remake to be
different. But just because the idea was big and considered to be
mind-blowing doesn’t mean it’s a logical ending. Suspension of disbelief
can only be allowed to a certain extent.

So be smart and think of smart twist endings.

4. You Didn’t Leave Fun Clues Throughout the Whole Script

The
first thing a script reader will do when they read your twist ending —
whether they like it or not — is go back throughout the whole script and
look for any clever, subtle, or substantial clues that you hopefully
left behind leading up to that twist ending.

Those clues can be as
simple as visuals in the form of featured props, elements in the
background, or lines of dialogue that don’t necessarily make complete
sense until the reader or audience knows the ending.

They can also
be bigger plot holes that seemingly went nowhere during the first and
second act but now come full circle by the end.

That’s part of the fun of writing scripts that have twist endings. You get to pepper your script with little Easter Eggs that readers and audience members can go back and discover. This is what made M. Night Shyamalan’s career.

5. You Left All of the Twists and Turns for the End

You enhance the impact of your twist ending best by misdirecting the reader and the audience.

They
are smart. They are movie lovers. They have seen enough films to pick
up on those clues and figure out where you are going in your story.

So
it’s your job as a screenwriter to take them on a wild ride of twists,
turns, and surprises. You want to shake their psyche up. You want to
mislead them in clever fashion every five to ten pages.

Take them
down multiple roads. Make them think you’re going to go right and then
take a quick left. Pull into some dead ends and head back onto a
different road. Reveal some hidden paths that are shortcuts to roads you
already took them on.

Everything has to connect, mind you. You
can’t just throw them off course for no other reason than to confuse
them. You’re going to have to connect a lot of these dots you’ve
created.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to explain
every little detail and element of your twist ending. Some of the thrill
of these types of rollercoaster rides is giving the eventual audience
something to talk about with their family and friends while walking out
of that theater — which hopefully leads to those watercooler moments at
work as coworkers discuss the ins and outs of the story building up to
the big reveal in the end.

But the main elements leading up to the twist have to connect to each other and offer a plausible explanation, albeit with a few talking points that may be left open to interpretation.

Culled from The Script Lab