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ProWritingAid: Hey? Hello, everyone!

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ProWritingAid: I'm Stacy from providing aid. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you can see and hear me, please drop your name and location in the chat.

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ProWritingAid: See where you all are coming from today.

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ProWritingAid: Texas, Texas. I'm in Texas, too. Go Texas.

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ProWritingAid: Oregon, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Connecticut. Okay. Chicago.

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ProWritingAid: Arizona.

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ProWritingAid: Illinois.

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ProWritingAid: Oh, Canada, all right. Canadians.

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ProWritingAid: more from Arizona. Awesome.

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ProWritingAid: Scotland. I saw Scotland earlier.

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ProWritingAid: Okay, wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful.

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ProWritingAid: Excellent. So before we get started. We just have a few housekeeping items

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ProWritingAid: first, st you can access your crime writers. Week replays by going to the Hub page replays for Monday to Thursday. Sessions are available for everyone on the Hub. As soon as they're done processing by zoom.

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ProWritingAid: they will also be posted to our community page for all members to view. By June 28th

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ProWritingAid: Friday is our premium day for premium and premium pro members only. If you are a premium or premium pro user. You will receive an email on Friday morning with instructions for accessing those sessions.

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ProWritingAid: Okay, if you're interested in upgrading so that you can attend premium date, we have an offer for attendees this week for 15% off yearly pro writing a premium and premium pro subscriptions.

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ProWritingAid: You can upgrade by Friday morning to receive access to the Premium Day sessions.

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ProWritingAid: If you'd like to keep the crime writing conversation going, we'd love to have you in our private online writing community joining is easy. You simply visit the link below, and then log in with your pro writing. Aid account info. Then you can hop over to the live event chat to talk to other attendees.

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ProWritingAid: And lastly, just a few reminders for today. If you have a question for our speakers, please use the QA. Box. You can find that button in the center of your zoom screen

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ProWritingAid: if you like the chat with.

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ProWritingAid: please please use the chat and be sure to select everyone, otherwise your messages will just come to the host and the panelists

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ProWritingAid: links to your offers from providing aid, and our speakers will be available on the crime week. Hub.

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ProWritingAid: Okay, let me stop sharing.

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ProWritingAid: All right. So with that being said, I believe we're ready to begin today. We are joined by Samantha Ska.

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ProWritingAid: a fan of

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ProWritingAid: Hi, Samantha.

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Samantha Skal: Hi.

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ProWritingAid: Okay, I'll give you all an introduction to Samantha.

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ProWritingAid: a fan of the scary, mysterious and suspenseful. Samantha Skall is the co-director of thriller fest, the co-founder of shadows and secrets. Writing retreats. A series of thriller slash, mystery focus. Writing retreats.

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ProWritingAid: 2024 is 2024 is in sale of Massachusetts, most haunted hotel.

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ProWritingAid: and an author, accelerator, certified book coach, who specializes in coaching mystery thriller and suspense authors from novel planning through the delightful hell that is revision. An enthusiast of homemade sourdough and cheese of all kinds. Sam write stories that keep her up at night and lives in the beautiful Pacific northwest.

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ProWritingAid: So, Samantha, you can go ahead and take it away.

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Samantha Skal: Thank you, Stacy. Thank you so much for having me. I am going to share my screen successfully.

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Samantha Skal: Bear with me for just a second everybody.

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Samantha Skal: Oh, I did it! Alright, Stacy, can you still see me.

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ProWritingAid: Yes, I can.

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Samantha Skal: You're good. We're seeing. Okay? Awesome. Alright. Hi, everyone welcome to writing twists and reveals for maximum impact. This is a deep dive into twists. So hopefully, this is what you are here for. For all the people who maybe are gonna watch this later. Thank you for watching. Really appreciate it. And if you all have questions as I'm talking, please feel free to put them in the QA. Stacy is gonna rapid. Fire them at me at the very end, and I'll get through as many as I possibly can.

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Samantha Skal: So who you are. You are in planning or in revision plotters, plansters, discovery writers, all of you are welcome. Everyone's going to get something out of this which sounds very, I guess, full of myself. But I promise. It is actually useful, regardless of the genre you're writing. I give this presentation in other weeks as well, in very similar ways, because I believe that twists and reveals and pacing all of that is applicable to all genre figures.

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Samantha Skal: But particularly you are fascinated by twist and reveal mechanics in mystery, thriller, and suspense, which is, if you've heard me talk before one of my most favorite things to talk about. So who I am. As Stacy said, I am an author, accelerator, certified book coach. If you're curious about that, I have a link in my resources. Page at the very end. That will post to what author accelerator is. It's a wonderful company. I focus on mystery, thriller and suspense novel planning through agent pitching

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Samantha Skal: that and does include the holidays revision. My superpower is twist brainstorming. I am the co-executive director of Filler Fest, which just happened a couple of weeks ago. I'm actually like, still in recovery a little bit. It's a wonderful, wonderful week where you just don't sleep and meet your heroes, and it's incredible. I'm the co-founder of shadows and secrets. Riding retreats again. Haunted hotel. If that sounds interesting, please email me

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Samantha Skal: and like, she said, I love cheese. I also love canned corn. That's my fun fact and rainy day kayaking, which in the Pacific Northwest Northwest, is a very easy thing to have happen.

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Samantha Skal: And this is my little blurb for shadows and secrets, and that is the last I will mention about it. It's awesome. Come, join us alright. So in the next 40 min we are gonna talk about what twists and reveals are and are not. We're gonna talk about meeting genre expectations without being boring. We're gonna talk about how to ideate twists even when you're stuck. So, even if you've written your whole manuscript, or you get up to that point where you're in the climactic scene. And you're like, Oh, my God! I screwed up everything

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Samantha Skal: we're gonna talk through, how you actually get through that. And then I have a free handout for this one called Maximizing Beta. Reader, help that gives you a list of questions to ask your Beta readers, and then we'll end in the last, probably 1510 min with a QA. And a an ama I'm an open book. I love talking about this stuff, so please don't be shy and ask any questions you have.

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Samantha Skal: Alright. So what are twists, really? And, by the way, I have a number of haunted dolls in this presentation, so hopefully, that's not too scary. So when I think about twists. Twists are not a hard left turn with no previous clues. They're not some random new plot point to make it twisty.

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Samantha Skal: They're not a secret that the Pov character has been keeping from the reader the whole time. That's a true reveal, and I will explain the difference in just a second to what twists and reveals are but you know, if you ask somebody who hasn't thought about this in depth the common descriptions for twist might look like you know what? When you see it. It's unexpected. You didn't see it coming, but it's logical. It's twisty, which is one of my favorite things.

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Samantha Skal: It's like, Okay, yeah, it is. But like, how do you do that? Or tightly plotted as another one. But that's 1 that I use quite frequently when I describe twisty books that I love is because they all kind of come together in this delicious way. But the big question is, how the hell do you write them right like, where do you? How do you even begin to start? And that is why we are all here today is to talk about this. So in mystery, solar, and suspense, the villains journey is experienced

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Samantha Skal: by the protagonist. I am going to give you a series of pictures right now that that also explain this so that it. This isn't just coming out of left field. So I want everyone to picture a piece of cardboard. I'm not in a 3D world on the screen right now. So, or I am. But the screen is not so. Picture this cardboard as being like this. Right? This is your story.

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Samantha Skal: Your protagonist is bopping along the top. We'll call it like this, and experiencing the story until he or she or they comes across a hole in in this, at which point the you know you have what's going on underneath the surface. And that's actually what your villain is doing so. Protagonist is here experiencing the story, and the villain is bopping along underneath, and that's not really gonna show up until

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Samantha Skal: they pop out of that hole, and the protagonist reveals gets to experience what actually was going on this entire time. Hopefully, you like cats. I do. I also like dogs, but this was too good of a picture not to include so twists are the reveal of a villain's truth. And, like, I said before, a reveal can also be a secret that somebody is keeping, that you, the author, are deciding when to reveal for maximum impact. But if we're talking about twists as the reveal of what the villain is actually doing.

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Samantha Skal: It is twisty because the truth is unexpected for the protagonist and the reader, and what the protagonist feels is what the reader is going to feel as well because our protagonist it's our guide to the story, and they're unexpected because the protagonist made incorrect but logical assumptions about what was going on.

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Samantha Skal: So the villain's journey. What does that look like again? That's off screen. So if this is the surface of your story. This is what's happening underneath, and you don't really have a mystery thriller or suspense novel without understanding what's going on with the villain. And so this is what the true villain is actually doing. The protagonist is going to translate and experience the story for the reader. But there's going to be these little like pop up moments where they're going to see what happens with the villain, and.

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Samantha Skal: you know, make some assumptions about it, and filter things, and make up things about what their true, what the true villains identity and motivations are. That is misdirection. I'll keep going with this, but hopefully, that all makes sense because it's kind of a core concept for what this whole presentation is about.

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Samantha Skal: The true villain is the ultimate person doing the bad thing. So this is not the person that the true villain, has

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Samantha Skal: framed or hired to be doing the bad thing. This is the person who's kind of the Machiavellian behind everything and in modern thrillers, you know, you probably have seen this time and time again where you get to that like 98% mark. And there's like a new villain, right? Or they, the climactic scene has somebody that they face off. And then that person dies, or it turns out that they weren't even the people behind it the whole time it keeps going. That's how we keep pacing going from the climactic scene all the way to the end. And why so many thrillers nowadays are kind of the

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Samantha Skal: blood.

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Samantha Skal: you know. Something ha! Happens on page one, and then you are absolutely hooked. Understand who this person is, what their motivations are. Why, they won't stop at anything to achieve their goals and have logical reasons for doing what they're doing, Stacy, I'm just gonna interrupt myself for a second. It just told me my Internet connection was unstable. Can you still hear me.

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ProWritingAid: Yes, I can hear you, and I can still see your slide.

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Samantha Skal: Okay, great. I apologize. If I pop in and out hopefully, that won't happen. I tried really hard not to make it happen, so we'll keep going. The assumed villain might be somebody that was framed or hired by the true villain. It might be someone that the protagonist is assuming did the bad thing.

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Samantha Skal: And the protagonist can go the entire story up until the climactic scene with making assumptions about who the villain is and then be wrong. That's 1 way to handle this. That's also what we call a red herring in the writing industry. I'm sure you've all heard this term a billion times. But this is where the protagonist made assumptions about something that were logical and then faced it and realized that oh, that wasn't actually the truth.

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Samantha Skal: The identity of the true vulner is not revealed until the climactic, or sometimes this final twist.

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Samantha Skal: So those are kind of some concepts about how to make twists work and what they are. So how do we meet genre expectations without being boring? Because

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Samantha Skal: readers expect twists in mystery, thriller, and suspense. We we literally pick up thrillers because we want twists. So part of our job as authors is to give the readers what they want or risk like very intense wrath right like, if you look at the reviews for something that readers don't tend to be considered twisty and enough, we definitely don't want that. And so just to kind of name the high level genre expectations. I'm combining things here a little bit, because mysteries and

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Samantha Skal: mysteries and thrillers are slightly different mysteries. There's usually a dead body on the 1st page, and the protagonist is going through trying to figure out what happened. Thrillers might be more along the lines of like, they're facing something the entire time. And there's someone actively trying to kill them. In the modern genre. Mts space, there's a lot of overlap that happens between all of that. And so if you have questions about.

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Samantha Skal: you know what those genre sub subtleties are I'm happy to talk about at the end. But just for now Mts includes the mystery is gonna be solved. We're gonna have chaos to order. There's going to be life and Death stakes. This isn't, you know, if you're even if you have a cozy mystery, someone has died in a cozy mystery and they're trying to solve it. The killer is still out there, even though they might not be endangering the person who's trying to solve it. We have suspense throughout. We have twistiness right? We have these unexpected reveals of truths that come out throughout. But they're logical, because

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Samantha Skal: what the villain's doing underneath the surface of the story still makes sense.

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Samantha Skal: and in chapter one, something scary is going to happen. That could range anywhere from in Cozy's like, you actually find the dead body. But there's nothing described about it all the way through someone hunting somebody else in the woods, and it's absolutely terrifying.

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Samantha Skal: So keep all of that in mind and understand what your particular genres expectations are before you set out to write a story in that genre so that you don't upset any readers. I can tell you like, you know, if somebody is expecting to read like

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Samantha Skal: a steamy romance, and they accidentally pick up a thriller. They're not going to be very happy. So think about that.

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Samantha Skal: Suspense is, reader stickiness. We know how it ends as readers, but we don't know how we're gonna get there, and we're here to get sucked in to find out how it all goes down. So, even though we understand that when we pick up a thriller the protagonist is probably going to survive. They're probably going to conquer whoever the person doing bad things is, they're definitely gonna solve whatever mystery this is. We're here to find out how we get from, you know, A to Z. There is kind of no mystery when it comes to readers about

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Samantha Skal: like whether or not this is going to happen. We just know it's going to. And so we're here for the roller coaster ride. And so our job as authors is to give this to them. Right? We want to think about this big picture and what we're doing when, so that we are giving the reader the best experience as they play possibly can have.

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Samantha Skal: We're gonna have twists and turns. Our goal is to make the reader not be able to stop turning those pages again like starting on page one all the way through the end. The goal is to not let them go to sleep at night. Right? We want them to start reading it like whatever their bedtime is, and then have it be 4 h later. And they're still reading because they just can't stop

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Samantha Skal: so very quickly. Typical twist structure. We have a midpoint twist at about 50. And when I say about 50%, I have been doing a deep dive study of a bunch of different solars, and time and time again the midpoint twist. Is it exactly 50% on the kindle which is just like wild to me? And it really brings me a lot of joy. This is also called, like the midpoint turn. This is very common in all kinds of all kinds of genres. Right? So

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Samantha Skal: it's the point at which our protagonists cannot go backwards. They have to enter into the story. There's no option to turn around and go back.

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Samantha Skal: It's the hero's journey as well. Right? There's like this midpoint, where things just totally change in Mts. This could be new information that proves previous assumptions incorrect. It could be a shift to a new prime suspect. It could be a new way of looking at the entire thing that's happened, that changes everything about what the protagonist does to move forward in the story.

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Samantha Skal: It could be that something fundamentally changes in how the protagonist is living their life, you know, like, maybe something horrible happens to them, something good. Whatever it is. There's gonna be this huge turn at 50, and it's going to change the course of the story. Fundamentally, at 8 to 85 is when we have the climactic scene, and this is tied to an emotional Aha moment for the protagonist. I'm not gonna go too much into this on this presentation.

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Samantha Skal: But just so, you know, kind of a typical structure. And there are absolutely exceptions to this is, you have this climactic scene, and you have dark night of the soul. It says, like consecutive

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Samantha Skal: dark night, the soul leads to the Aha moment, where the protagonist realizes like I can do this, or I am strong enough, or whatever it is, and that allows them to conquer the person doing the bad things in the climactic scene. Very broad strokes. There are exceptions, but just can you keep keep that in mind when I say emotional haha moment?

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Samantha Skal: You can think of the climactic scene as a sacrifice or rock hard place to quote story grid like second bad choice, right? So the worse you can make it for your protagonist in the climactic scene. The better. The more that we can have a villain that makes sense that the protagonist is fighting, and the reader has empathy for the villain, the better the more complicated it'll be right. So you want your reader to sit there and be like Whoa!

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Samantha Skal: I have no idea what I would do in this situation that really sucks for them. I'm glad I'm not actually in this terrible story. The mystery is gonna be solved. Mostly your story questions gonna be answered. But you might have a new question about the villain, something that you know. It challenges the assumptions that you, the reader, and the protagonist, you, the protagonist, have had the entire time, and that can lead to who the true villain is.

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Samantha Skal: I know I'm talking in like big, high, level stuff, and we'll get more granular in just a little bit.

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Samantha Skal: And then the final twist. That is the reveal of the true villain, or possibly a new votive. New motivation revealed, or possibly some little aspect of the mystery wrapped up, that could or could not change the entire way that you think about it. These are hard to sort of cite and literature without spoiling anything. And so if you I guess if you want to email me or go on my website and fill out the contact, for

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Samantha Skal: I'm happy to spoil some stuff for you. But this is ultimately where the mystery is wrapped up and we have chaos to order for now. It doesn't mean that everything is perfect, doesn't doesn't mean that everything is completely solved. But the story question has been wrapped up, and whatever the person doing bad things has been ultimately stopped, or maybe they run off into the sunset, or whatever, but they're not like in the here and now.

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Samantha Skal: This is one of those things where, to quote myself from earlier, like you know it when you see it. And I truly don't want to ruin any books by telling you that there are these things that exist, but they are out there, and they're really great when they happen.

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Samantha Skal: Alright. So all this means is that villains are just as important as the protagonist. So to create twist. We have to know our true villains, logic, motivations, goals, their journey. We have to know what happens underneath the surface before we can start to really construct what's going on on the top.

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Samantha Skal: And if you are a pantser and you're listening to me and saying like, Hey, you told me I would learn something from this. I promise this is still relevant, because you can pants your way through a whole story. You can use little chunks of this as you pants. But it's more just thinking about like, okay, here's my protagonist moving through this story. What did they find?

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Samantha Skal: And then thinking about? Well, what really is that? Is that an actual clue? Is that a true clue from the villain poking up? Or is that something else? Is it? Is it a red herring. And so just keep this stuff in your mind as you're writing. If you're a plotter, this will fit very well into your into your way of approaching things, and if you're somewhere in the middle, like I am, you know, it's kind of just puts boundaries on what you're trying to write and how you move through writing your story and gives you a lot more ability to have that like tightly plotted end result.

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Samantha Skal: So what makes a satisfying twist like I've said it's unexpected but logical. Your pov character your protagonist was dead sure of in their logical answer the whole time, like they were looking at things and being like that is definitely this person who's the person doing bad things. And I'm a hundred percent sure of why they're doing it.

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Samantha Skal: And then the course they're wrong, right? That's misdirection. Pete. Twists are earned and not out of nowhere. So they have on screen clues. These little poke up moments. Throughout, and those are very well balanced, so that the reader doesn't look at them and be like on page 5 and think, oh, it's definitely this person who did it. And the Beta reader stuff will help you keep track of that cause. There's not really a better way to do it. Besides, have new eyeballs on your work.

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Samantha Skal: The tiny reveals of these villains truth. Those are there for the Pov character and the reader to see. So when I say on screen and earned and not out of nowhere, this is not something where you, the author, know about it, and we're sort of hinting at it. This is like, I'm looking around this tiny office. I'm in right now, and I'm seeing a vase with fake flowers and a half empty water bottle and my laptop and my screen and my light.

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Samantha Skal: And it turns out the half empty water bottle is the bill include because someone stuck in here and drink half of it or something, right? So I'm clocking it, and it's on the page. But I'm not paying attention to it. What I'm paying attention to is possibly, you know, blood spatter in the corner, or something. There's not just for the record, but like that would be the thing that I would focus on, because that seems the most suspicious.

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Samantha Skal: misinterpreted by the Pov character, and therefore your readers going to misinterpret is the same, and then logical twists will not work without these on screen clues. People will feel cheated. People meaning readers will feel cheated. Your protagonists can't possibly just randomly solve something, if they aren't seeing things and looking back and saying like, Oh, my God! I paid attention to blood spatter! But actually I should have paid attention to that half empty water bottle.

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Samantha Skal: Unsatisfying twists, on the other hand, are convenient. They're not earned like I just said the reader couldn't possibly have guessed without just being wildly lucky.

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Samantha Skal: They're expected. If you have too many clues, which, again, is where Beta readers come in. Too many villain poke ups are gonna lead the reader straight there. Well, before you, the author want them to get there.

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Samantha Skal: Predictability it ends up being a little bit unsatisfying, right? Because we we want to be played with as readers and Mts. We want to be forced to think about what the readers clocking and what they're not we want to be. We want to understand that the author is playing with us about what our expectations are about tropes and what we might be assuming and then turning it on its head. So, for example.

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Samantha Skal: does this really really well? So his book, The House across the Lake. I still remember when I 1st picked it up it was like, Oh, my God! Did he write another one of these like woman in cabin 10 like, you know, kind of drunk woman watching a house with like the neighbor's house and figuring out, and he totally played with all the trope expectations for that, and I won't go any further without spoiling it. If you haven't read it. It's a great book.

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Samantha Skal: But he did exactly this. He freshened with new motivations and assumptions about what the reader was assuming about the trope, and then turning it on its on its head. So you use the known trope to misdire, misdirect the reader into what you want them to think. And if this sounds like manipulation, it 100 is because that's what we do as authors and Mts.

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Samantha Skal: So one thing about the truth like this villain truth is that it's going to change over time.

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Samantha Skal: So your Pov character is going to be like, I said, 100% sure of what's going on right up until a truth, a poke up is revealed.

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Samantha Skal: And so, you know, if you have your villain coming along down here, and the the Pov character screws something up for them. They might show themselves, they might not. They might leave a clue. They might need a clue that they didn't mean to. The Pov character is going to see that and ignore it or not. But they're going to be 100% sure of what their theories are, even if 100 sure is, I have no idea what's going on. But I'm really scared. There's gonna be surety about what's going on with them.

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Samantha Skal: And this truth changing applies to all the main twist. So 50, they're gonna be sure of something up until that point from 50 to 85. They're gonna be sure of what's going on at 85. They're going to confront some sort of like villain truth. And then when they get to the end. And they actually see actually what's going on. They look back. The truth has to be accurate in the final twist. If you don't want to in the climactic twist. It's gotta be accurate in the final twist, because that is when everything is revealed and the mystery is solved.

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Samantha Skal: So remember your Pova character is your guide. It's your readers guide through the story what the protagonist thinks the readers going to think the protagonist can call out a trope, if it's logical, so knives out, I believe. Did this please correct me if I'm wrong. I looked it up a couple of days ago and immediately forgot. So you know, if you've not seen that it's basically clue the game, but a movie format and very brilliantly done. But I feel like somebody in there was like the butler. Really, you know, like you, this can't possibly be the butler who did it.

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Samantha Skal: You can have your Pov characters call that out in this story right? They're solving murder mysteries they're

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Samantha Skal: doing. They're like exploring horrible things. They're having people chase them. And so you can play with things like that and mislead the reader. By, you know, maybe making it the butler in the end, after they spent the entire time being dead sure it's not. That might be a touch unsatisfying. But I think you probably see what I mean.

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Samantha Skal: Alright. So how do we ideate twists, just checking the time we're doing. Great! How do you ideate twists even when you are stuck? So I don't want you to ideate a twist. I want you to come up with the mastermind villain, this true villains truth, and then ideate misdirection, which, of course, means we have to understand exactly what's happening underneath the surface before we can back into it.

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Samantha Skal: And so when you're stuck, you know, this happened to me on my 1st manuscript that I wrote. I got to my climactic scene and realized that I

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Samantha Skal: had written myself into a corner. Basically like I thought I knew who the villain was.

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Samantha Skal: turned out that they needed to die for various reasons. And so then it was like, Well, who's going to be my villain? And how does this actually work? And who would have the motivation to be able to do all of this, and blah! Blah, blah blew it all up right.

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Samantha Skal: You can back into things like this by figuring out, Okay, what if? What if somebody else was doing this? How much do I actually have to change on screen to make this work? And the answer may well surprise you, because these on screen clues only pop up every now and again, and you have this whole thing with your protagonist, not understanding what's actually going on and making logical assumptions. So come up with.

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Samantha Skal: figure out your mastermind villain, if you get stuck, and then ideate the misdirection, move backwards from there.

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Samantha Skal: So step one is to know your mastermind. Villain very, very deeply. Why do they want what they want? Why do they not take the easy way out, IE. Stop. Why don't they just stop doing the bad thing that they're doing?

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Samantha Skal: What motivates them? What keeps them going? And you don't have to know, like full character Bible level. I think that's actually more useful if you know that kind of stuff for your protagonists, because your protagonists is on the page a whole lot more than your villain. Typically. But we do need to know these people. We need to understand what's actually happening beneath the surface at every single moment in the story, so that we can understand where these clues pop up and how they are going to be on screen enough for the reader to be able to understand them.

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Samantha Skal: So when you are designing this, when you're you know whether you're stuck or you're coming from the the start of the story, or whatever write down a logical progression of the villains. Actions. This is very, very short, very, very high level, and I have an example in just a minute, but aim for like 10 to 11 sentences or bullet points, and connect the sentences with because of that. So this might sound familiar from the Pixar story spine, which is also something that Jenny Nash, of author, accelerator.

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Samantha Skal: and the author and adventure of the inside outline and blueprint for a book. And the link to Jenny's website is there tons of free resources? If you're curious, if you've not seen me talk about her before, she's amazing. The Pixar story is fine, is the concept of looking at the story like a Disney movie. So it's once upon a time, which is like set up. You know there was a girl one day she did this because of that. She did that because of that. She did that until finally this happened.

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Samantha Skal: and you can trace an entire arc of a story from a very high level by doing this, and it really helps expose what might be going on with what's wrong if you're stuck, and if you're ideating, it tells you whether or not it has legs, and if it's going to be twisty enough. So here are 2 very terrible examples, and I say terrible, because, despite the fact, I love Mts. Which you know usually ends in somebody dying, this little story ends happily.

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Samantha Skal: There is a dead body. But I'll leave this up here for you to read, but it's just like it just explains, you know, once upon a time there was a person. One day she ran to a dead body because that she did a whole bunch of stuff, and ever since that day, you know, she re until finally she confronted this person. That's your climactic scene, and they revealed they had reasons for doing that. And so now she has a new, best friend.

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Samantha Skal: So that's the that's the protagonist level.

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Samantha Skal: The villain level is coming from the opposite side, right? So it helps to think of it like a

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Samantha Skal: like a pyramid, or something like you're looking at it from different sides of the same thing. So your stories in the middle, and you have your protagonist view. You have your villain view. Your villain view is that you know she was living on this lake. Minding her on business and then had to kill someone because this person was trying to kill her. Because of that she did what she had to do, but did a really bad job. And so the body floated to the surface, and because of that a nosy neighbor got in her way, it's really

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Samantha Skal: ruining her life.

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Samantha Skal: and so she had to confront her until she decided to come clean. Admit her secrets. And this is the part where it goes off the rails, because it's not really a thriller

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Samantha Skal: and ever since that day they're bffs, right? So you can see, like

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Samantha Skal: you have 2, you have the same story, but told from 2 different perspectives. The villains that's the one that's underneath. The protagonist is the one on the top.

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Samantha Skal: So ask yourself.

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Samantha Skal: once your protagonist enters the story. How did they thwart the villains, plan what happened to the villain up until you know? What were they doing until the protagonist ruined their day by coming in and seeing what was going on, or if they haven't seen something, maybe they maybe they know something. Maybe you know, they discover something. Maybe they find a clue. Maybe they, you know, there's all kinds of ways to do this. Just name your favorite thriller, and we can pick it apart.

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Samantha Skal: But the question is, what does the villain do about it when the protagonist ruined their life? And what does the protagonist do about it? When the villain starts pushing back at them right? Because the villain has very good reasons for doing what they're doing.

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Samantha Skal: Does the villain plant fake clues? Do they actively mislead the protagonist. Do they run and not really succeed at it? There's all kinds of ways that you can handle this. I'm trying to get you to think like the what ifs right?

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Samantha Skal: And then your climactic action? This is this is step 3. This is where you're going to really get into it, because this is usually when people get stuck when they're writing. This is when the protagonist faces the villain or the person they think is the villain. The main story question, who did the thing is going to be answered, even though we may not have captured the person who did the thing and the question at stake here the question is, what's at stake for the villain? What choice does the villain make in this scene? And oftentimes this is going to be

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Samantha Skal: like a really bad choice, right? They may have to just dive in. They may have to

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Samantha Skal: decide to run. They may have to give up on all of their goals. They may have to reveal their secrets, you know, but this rock, hard place next bad choice, this sacrifice that applies to villains, too, and it's very important to understand, as from a author perspective, how far this person's going to go, because that will dictate what this climbactic scene looks like. You know, as your protagonist is coming in and think certain things.

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Samantha Skal: and they have their Aha moment, and they're like, I am strong enough to do this. How are they going to out thwart someone who's thinking exactly the same thing, and that you can imagine is where you get those very tension filled, very suspenseful like ripping through the pages scenes.

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Samantha Skal: And then, of course, because it's Mts. We have a climactic explanation. So we have things like overlooked clues and misinterpretations explained. So that moment where you have the villain, you know, the protagonists is like tied up on a chair or something, and the villains like well, here's why I did the thing. It feels really cheesy, but it's a very, very needed part of the genre expectations. We, as the reader, do, need to know

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Samantha Skal: why this person is doing something. So I think I can say this without spelling anything. Taylor Adams. The last word which I have referenced on every single webinar I've done the last year because it was just a master class. And how twists are revealed. This climactic explanation doesn't happen when you think it does, you sort of think it happens. And then

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Samantha Skal: there's more. And so that's another way to to look at how you can do this. It does need to happen at some point, but it doesn't have to happen right at that 85%.

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Samantha Skal: But when we are ideating twists and we are ideating a story or trying to get out of being stuck. It is very important to understand what this exclamation explanation looks like, so that you, the author can put it on the page. Very important for, reader satisfaction.

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Samantha Skal: We want to know why not? Just what we want to know. What? If they did something else, you know. Did they get away?

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Samantha Skal: Did they like kill themselves? Because it was just too much, which is almost kind of a boring exit for them. Is there a fate that's worse than death that they might face? And this could lead to a realization that again leads to the mastermind villain final twist. But the climactic threat is conquered. So we may be, con. You know we may be conquering the person who did the bad things, and we still have this this final threat to conquer, but, like

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Samantha Skal: most of attention, has been taken care of.

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Samantha Skal: and then villains are not flat, despite what they may appear. And some of the popular I'll say, shows out there, you know, even if a villain is a scary or scary serial killer. To what end are they doing this? Why are they doing it? You know it's a very popular thing to

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Samantha Skal: have a serial killer in your book. It sells all the time because people are fascinated by this, like what makes someone tick, that they would do these truly awful things to someone else. And so let your readers know why not just what the thing is? The villains! Actions are always gonna make sense to them.

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Samantha Skal: Villains believe they will succeed. Otherwise why would they even try? And this could include a tiny bit of reader empathy for your villains. So you know the villains that I personally like best are the ones where you're like. Oh, damn! I see how you got there, you know, and it's like I would hope I would never make those same choices, but like a series of bad choices, can lead you to a very slippery slope, right? And those kinds of stories are really really interesting readers love them.

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Samantha Skal: And then, once you have your villain perspective. Look back at that piece of cardboard, you know, with the cat jumping out and overlay your protagonist, journey on your on top of your villains. Journey those intersections, those on screen villain truths, those moments are your misinterpretations, and so you may have to do some tweaking right. Sometimes the villains journey starts here, and the protagonist starts here. Sometimes it's overlapped, sometimes protagonist, and then the villain is here, and it's more of a coincidence that they met. Try to avoid that if you can.

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Samantha Skal: But there's tiny, tiny holes that are poke up throughout, and then it rips through cat jumping out of the bag at the climactic scene, and then again at 98.

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Samantha Skal: And then I want you to iterate and play with it and have fun. And so, particularly if you're trying to fix things and you're you're stuck and you're trying to find a way out, ask yourself, what if? Look at your entire cast of characters, and for every single person? Ask yourself, what if they were the person doing the bad things. What if they had a reason to be controlling this person, that I have them facing.

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Samantha Skal: they being the protagonist? And when I have my protagonist facing in the climactic scene. What if somebody else was kind of puppet stringing them along? What if there was some motivation for? Why, they're doing what they're doing that has to do with this other person. All of a sudden you've got a final twist, and so think about other logical explanations, for on screen truths are there? Could they be red herrings? Could they be actual truths that the protagonist looks at and then dismisses?

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Samantha Skal: In every case the Pov character or protagonist is going to interpret and then take action. That is what keeps moving things along. Action leaves the suspense because we don't know the outcome. And again, we know this is all going to be solved in the end. We're here to see how it does this throughout.

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Samantha Skal: As you make this document, which will end up being maybe a page in total by the end. Maybe 2. Use it for on screen clue tracking, too. So if you have, you know a scene, a big chunk of scene. And you're figuring out like, okay. My protagonist did this because the villain did this

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Samantha Skal: keep track of what actually poked through there. What kind of clue did the protagonists see? And how did they misdirect it? Clock your emotional beginnings? And Aha! Moments, you know, when you have this moment of like. I am strong enough, or I can do the thing.

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Samantha Skal: What? Where did they start? That made them think that they couldn't do it. And then what really happened? Bullets are kind of below. It's like the off screen moments. Those can be incredibly helpful for you as the author, as you start to flesh out this story, or if you're a pancer and you get stuck,

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Samantha Skal: it can help you start to understand what you have to change that you've already written, or where you want to go from here. And so again, this isn't like full outlining. I'm not telling you to make a 70 page document that tells you exactly what happens. It's more like bumpers on the edge of your scene, so that you understand what has to be there so that you can make these satisfying twists throughout.

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Samantha Skal: So plan, but also be flexible.

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Samantha Skal: And it's okay to pivot unexpected villains happen

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Samantha Skal: new fake villains, new mastermind, villains, new subplots, all those things are totally fine. What is most important is these on screen clues that poke up so the reader can see them.

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Samantha Skal: and then I always leave people with this. Remember that books in the book sort of not spring forth in their final state. Do not compare your work in progress to something that's been on that's on the bookshelf that's doing really well on the store that you just read, you know, like. There are pancers, magical unicorn pancers. Who can?

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Samantha Skal: I believe I'm not one of them. But I have heard of stories of this where someone can sit down and write an entire thriller, and then just tweak it and be done, and all of it makes sense, and it all fits together, and it's very tightly plotted.

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Samantha Skal: 99.9 9 9% of the population can't do that. The rest of us have to sit there and like, do a draft we have to figure out who our characters are. We have to figure out who our villains are, and why everyone's doing all the things and then put it together, and then do like 5 to 10 to 15 revisions on it, to make sure that we're hitting all those spots, and we are achieving our goals and our vision for what we want the reader to feel throughout the entire book.

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Samantha Skal: So you know, do your best write your stories we want. We always want more thrillers in the world. We always want more crime fiction. And if you feel like you have a novel on you, by all means go ahead and do it and so I will leave this here stacy will probably also post it in the chat. This is a link to my web page with the resources, including this Beta reader, feedback. Question is just a little mini deck that explains like how to use betas and

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Samantha Skal: spoiler alert. Don't send it to 15 at a time. Pick like 2 or 3, particularly for mysteries and suspense, because they will understand who the villain is once they read it once, and it's very hard to get them to not see it in the future, and then also asking them very specific questions, and as they go through things, and then, if you're interested in shadows and secrets, or signing up for a free checkout, call with me for coaching. That would be wonderful, by all means. I also have links to free

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Samantha Skal: the reading I recommend, including a list of the links in this presentation, and I think I have one more shout out for shadows. I do. And then this is our QA. And Ama. Time, and I was actually faster than I thought. Stacy, we're at 39 min. So we have exactly 11 min to

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Samantha Skal: talk through questions.

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ProWritingAid: Okay, perfect.

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ProWritingAid: Alright. So our 1st question, I think I can answer these.

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ProWritingAid: Let's see. How many are too many twists and reveals.

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Samantha Skal: Real great question. So I kinda think there's no upper limit. But it's 1 of those things where.

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Samantha Skal: if it starts to feel like too much to ask the reader to keep track of. That's that's your upper limit, right? So it depends on the story like a cozy mystery. Gonna be chiller. There's gonna be 3, maybe 4 big moments where things are revealed. But you're gonna have these little reveals along the way where they're solving the mystery. If you're talking like a high octane

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Samantha Skal: thriller where you know they're constantly going up against somebody who's actively trying to sort them or take them out. Then there's gonna be all kinds of twists and turns. And you know, sharp direction changes. And all of that. So

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Samantha Skal: yeah, it's it's kind of it's gonna feel like a cop out answer, but it's kind of if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. This is kind of what Beta readers are for is like, if you give your book to somebody, and you ask them like, Were you overwhelmed? Did you get confused? Tell me the page number, and they list 30 page numbers on that answer. Then you have too much. If they list like one or 2, then you can look in and see like, okay. Well, on this, you know, on this page I had

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Samantha Skal: this big reveal, and then I had a very close second, and so maybe I should change one of them or paste it out a little bit further.

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Samantha Skal: so hopefully that helps.

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ProWritingAid: Oh, thank you.

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ProWritingAid: Oh, okay, this is a good one. What what do you recommend in handling twists and reveals with an ensemble cast.

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Samantha Skal: Yeah, super interesting. So I didn't really talk about this. I'm glad you brought this up. So when I say pov character that can apply to 5 different Pov characters. Right? So cj, tutor, the drift is one that just came out in the last year or so. There are 3 different Povs, and I will not say very much more about it, because it is a wonderful master class level book on twists and turns, and she manipulates the hell out of you, and it's great.

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Samantha Skal: But each of those separate Povs was like its own Mini thriller. And so you can think about

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Samantha Skal: different Povs as being their own mini thriller inside your big filler and having each of their own independent twists and turns. So they're each gonna have a 50% midpoint. They're each gonna have a climactic push up against the fake villain. They're each gonna have assumptions about what's going on. And that's a really good way to keep pacing up, particularly if you have like.

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Samantha Skal: you know, kind of a smaller overarching story that maybe wouldn't feel quite like it was a full novel, like, what if you tell it from 3 or 4 or 5 different perspectives? I will say that that gets very complicated. And if you're just starting out I wouldn't recommend it. I would stick with like one, maybe 2. One. Pov has its own set of problems, because you can only tell it from that perspective, and you don't have like what the reader knows, that the character doesn't

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Samantha Skal: and so, for example, like, if you have

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Samantha Skal: somebody watching somebody and somebody in the house, the person in the house, and the reader may not know that somebody's watching them, and you flip to the person watching them. And all of a sudden the suspense is like completely jacked up, because we know that somebody is watching this person, and we're like, Oh, my God! Don't open the door, you know.

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Samantha Skal: So it's something to play with, for sure. And it just it just gets infinitely more complicated the more Povs, you add, because they all have to have their own little arcs.

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ProWritingAid: Wow, okay, I have a similar question.

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ProWritingAid: Related to kind of what you just said, let me

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ProWritingAid: get it pulled up. Okay. So this person. This is actually from Carly. I see her name. She says that my supernatural mystery, thriller or Nts. Story, has appeal. V. With my main villain a couple of times throughout, but I keep subtle and brief.

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ProWritingAid: So the reader is aware that there's something there, but I feel like I'm making my billing too obvious from the get. Go, get go. So I'm interested in in learning. Is there better way to do that?

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Samantha Skal: Yeah. Hmm, okay. So I will say before I answer the better way, because I'm not sure I have an answer to that yet. Is that when you have little villain Povs like that, it can be very, very effective to increase suspense right? Because you can have, like someone in the woods, or someone watching through binoculars, or like someone with a knife outside your house, whatever it is that you're doing like watching, seeing a ghost like behind you. You know, you can have that different.

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Samantha Skal: that different viewpoint. It's going to feel obvious to you as the author, because you know what's actually going on. So that's 1 thing I should have mentioned in this, and thank you for bringing this up is like, once you go into this this sort of thinking, of figuring out what's going on beneath the surface, and what's going on on the surface, what the reader experiences.

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Samantha Skal: All of this is going to feel like so obvious. And you're gonna sit there and be like Samantha's call. You are full of it, like you told me that this was gonna work, and I just did this, and now everyone knows everything, and I've ruined my book, and I promise you you have not, because you have now this full like 3 60 knowledge about what's happening. And so each little clue is gonna feel like you've thrown up a red flag and like shut off fireworks. And like all of this.

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Samantha Skal: and it probably will not be that way for your reader, and if it is, it's an easy thing to back off of right like, add more misdirection, have

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Samantha Skal: more blood spatter in your office instead of the empty water bottle, like, you know you can play with with what your reader receives by how much you misdirect them, by what your boss, the reader is paying, what else the protagonist is paying attention to? And so is there a better way to do it. There might be. It kind of depends on your story, you know. Like, does it have to be the villain, or can it be somebody seeing the villain?

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Samantha Skal: Can you have

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Samantha Skal: more clues that that pop up that the protagonist looks at and doesn't understand? That's 1 way to sort of seed. A lot of doubt and creepiness is to be like, where did that come from? And I have no idea, because I wasn't expecting to see this thing. And now this thing is here and now I'm completely terrified to even just like be in this space.

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Samantha Skal: You know what I mean.

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Samantha Skal: so play with it, is the answer, and eventually you're going to arrive on something that you feel works, and you'll send it to some beta readers, and they'll tell you

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Samantha Skal: whether or not it was too much or too little or

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Samantha Skal: yeah.

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ProWritingAid: Okay. Great. Thank you.

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Samantha Skal: Yeah.

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ProWritingAid: Okay. So this one is from Angela? She asked. Do I need to explain the logic of my villain for doing what he or she is doing?

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Samantha Skal: at a certain point. Yes, right when you have this face off. And that explanation can be a letter at the very end, you know, like, it can be this, like, we're having this conversation about, why did the bad thing like, you know, kind of typical action movie, when somebody's trapped. It can be

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Samantha Skal: somebody talking to. The person they don't know is the villain, and the villain reveals their motivations. But they're misunderst. The protagonist is misunderstanding what they've said, and making the assumption about something else. It's another way to build a twist is like, reveal your villain a little bit earlier, and have your protagonist not understand that that was actually the person they should have been afraid of the whole time.

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Samantha Skal: That's a great way to have a final twist pop up, because when they're like haha, you know, I was the person behind it all. The logic, I think, is really important, because readers want to know why readers are sophisticated, particularly in today's world like we read these because we want an escape. We wanna be a little bit scared. We want suspense. We want something to take us out

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Samantha Skal: of our normal lives. And you know, hopefully, no one in this crowd is a murderer.

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Samantha Skal: But you know, like we read this stuff because we're curious about the dark sides of humanity. And we want to know why people do what they do, not, just what they do, because that's far scarier, right?

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ProWritingAid: Right? Right? Right? Right?

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ProWritingAid: Yeah. Okay.

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ProWritingAid: let's see here.

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ProWritingAid: this is from an anonymous attendee. So they say, I'm writing a novel with a twist ending. Can you recommend a few novels or movies to study that, drop the clues to successfully make the twist ending work?

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ProWritingAid: She had. They had to step away for a few minutes. Okay, so.

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Samantha Skal: Okay.

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ProWritingAid: Have any recommendations.

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Samantha Skal: Yeah. Hmm.

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Samantha Skal: I mean.

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Samantha Skal: yeah, are we talking about? Just like.

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Samantha Skal: okay. So any thriller that has a lot of good stars on Amazon probably is going to have some twists that are very satisfying, otherwise readers would not have rated them so highly. The ones I've read in the past, you know, like 6 months that I've done some deep dives on like.

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Samantha Skal: you know, classics, or I mean gone, girl, the classic, for a reason. But that's 1 that everyone cites because it master master class level like misdirection for the whole thing. If you've not read the last Mrs. Parish by love, Constantine, that one's another good one. The last word by Taylor Adams. Anything by Riley Sagar.

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Samantha Skal: The heiress by Rachel Hawkins, is one that was kind of like. Feels like it shouldn't quite be so intense. And it actually really is. The drift by cj, tutor.

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Samantha Skal: yeah, there are so many out there. It's kinda just I would find the genre that you most admire and what you want to write in and then read as much of that as you can, because twist satisfaction is also a very personal, subjective thing, right? Like what I find to be

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Samantha Skal: really amazing in a book has changed from before I started doing deep. You know, deep dives into this stuff like, I'm now fascinated by the structure and the mechanics of how someone pulls off a twist, even if I see it coming. And the ones that I don't see coming. It's harder to get harder to get past me now, but the ones that I don't see coming are particularly satisfying. But even if I sort of see it like

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Samantha Skal: it still works. A lot of movies are like that now, like the thrillers that are out there.

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Samantha Skal: What did I just watch

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Samantha Skal: was with Anna de Armus and one of the hot guys?

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Samantha Skal: And it's like this action thriller, and she's like a super spy. And

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Samantha Skal: does it? Is this ringing a bell for anybody? And he doesn't.

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ProWritingAid: Is it the guy who played Thor.

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Samantha Skal: Maybe. Yeah, you know, yeah.

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ProWritingAid: Maybe I don't know. Okay.

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Samantha Skal: Anyway, like.

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ProWritingAid: Sounds, familiar.

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Samantha Skal: Pick your pick, your average action movie. That's like Re decently rated. And you're gonna see the midpoint twist the the climactic twist, and then

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Samantha Skal: the final it like it'll be there, and it's pretty phenomenal to see it happen, and in real life.

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ProWritingAid: And I think someone saying that it's with Chris Evans, and it's on, or

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ProWritingAid: is it Chris Evans? Or it's 1 of the Chris's.

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Samantha Skal: The craziest.

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ProWritingAid: Yes.

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ProWritingAid: okay, thank you for that. Let's see. Oh, someone has asked. So Linda Linda wants to know. Is there a difference between an antagonist and a villain?

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Samantha Skal: Yeah. Good question. So yes. Especially in genres. Besides, Mts, those people are often very different people, because you can have an opposing so opposing force to the protagonist. That's your antagonist by definition. Right? Protagonists want something. Antagonist wants the opposite in Mts.

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Samantha Skal: It's typically antagonist and villain of the same person, because your villain, the person doing bad things is the one who does not want to get caught or stopped by the protagonist and your protagonist. If it's a mystery. Solar suspense wants to stop the person doing the bad things, the twisty part, twisty part of that sorry, the unexpected part of that is that sometimes your who the person thinks is the villain

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Samantha Skal: is not, is not actually the true villain. Right? And so, if you want to, you know, want to get granular on that, like your antagonist might be your mastermind villain, because they're kind of behind the scenes, and not actually the person doing the bad things, and then your villain is kind of your fake villain. But really think about it like, who are the 2 sides of the story? And what do these people want? That's opposite of what your main people over here want?

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Samantha Skal: And when you get even closer into that, you're gonna have one person, your protagonist who wants this? Even if you have a lot of Povs, and you're gonna have one person over here who wants it more than anyone else. And that's typically gonna be your your mastermind person. True villain, whatever.

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ProWritingAid: Alright.

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ProWritingAid: We have Mara, I believe. She says. I'm writing a historical Mst. With some fictional characters and also real people. Is it acceptable to have some villas appear on screen to challenge and endanger the protagonist. But have the mastermind to be referred to? Wait.

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ProWritingAid: let me reread that. Is it acceptable to have some villas appear on screen

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ProWritingAid: the challenge and endanger the protagonist. But have the mastermind be referred to, but never appear on screen. Okay.

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Samantha Skal: yeah, absolutely. You can do. You can do anything right. But I would say that the expectation from readers is that they're going to meet this person at some point. The only way I can think of to sort of get around that is like, if this person is like operating beyond the grave like through letters, or there's some kind of like backstory that comes to light. That includes like this person who's who's already run away, or has already, you know, I don't know.

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Samantha Skal: exited.

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Samantha Skal: If there can be some kind of showdown, it's much more satisfying for the reader, but I can think of a dozen examples where that wasn't the case. And it worked

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Samantha Skal: right? So it's 1 of those things where like, try it and see if it works and maybe get a reader or 2 to tell you if they felt satisfied with it, and then tried a different way.

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Samantha Skal: And see how that's received, and also what fits your vision right? Like Mo, like the thing about book coaching and about doing all this stuff and like giving these craft talks that I love. It's like we all are such unique writers and unique voices, and every single one of us can be. We can be given the exact same.

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Samantha Skal: Go write a story about a woman trapped in the building, or you know whatever, and we'd come up with 10,000 different stories that have that same premise. And so what is your vision for your story? And how does that come out at the end? Are you envisioning something where it's a little bit left open.

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Samantha Skal: Maybe that's great, you know, horror has that whole genre concept. It's like chaos to order, kind of maybe, or maybe it's worse. I don't really know. And so maybe you're not really writing Mts, maybe you're actually writing like historical horror.

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Samantha Skal: I don't know.

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Samantha Skal: See what works.

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ProWritingAid: Okay.

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ProWritingAid: Alright, what is our time? Okay, we can do a few more. Okay.

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ProWritingAid: okay, so this is from David. He has, like a 2 part question.

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Samantha Skal: Excellent.

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ProWritingAid: Can the real villain be left for the last part of the of a book series? So he has 2 books.

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Samantha Skal: Hung.

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ProWritingAid: He also asked, What if the final threat is not really conquered?

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Samantha Skal: Yeah. So 1st question, can it be left to the very last? Absolutely, you're just gonna need something that's a climactic scene that, like, you know, answers part of the story, question and book one

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Samantha Skal: assuming there's 2. And then the second book is going to be conquering the actual threat right so like.

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Samantha Skal: My God! Why do I always forget the name of this with catness.

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Samantha Skal: Help people

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ProWritingAid: Oh, you know!

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Samantha Skal: What I'm all talking about. The hunger games, right? So, trilogy. There are climactic scenes in each of those books. There are midpoints in each of those books, and the final villain isn't conquered until the very, very end, because she didn't know who the final villain was until the very end of the 1st book, and even then she wasn't really sure.

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Samantha Skal: Right? And so that's that's 1 of those things with series. It's like it's worth figuring out who your final villa villain is at the very beginning. You know there's lots of. There's lots of advice out there about people who have written series who do know

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Samantha Skal: kind of as as like a loose concept at least what they're gonna be conquering in the very last book. And then they sort of write the story from there. There are probably people who can just sit down and do it. But I don't recommend that.

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Samantha Skal: Okay.

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ProWritingAid: Right, right, right.

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Samantha Skal: And then there was a second part to that question that I don't think, I answered.

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ProWritingAid: Let me see if I can get it.

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ProWritingAid: Can the real villain be left? Oh, what if the what if the final threat is not really conquered?

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Samantha Skal: So again, that may not be. That could be chaos to order, sort of

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Samantha Skal: right. And so maybe the final threat is still open ended. That's a that's fine, you know. It may not be quite as satisfying for somebody who expects to

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Samantha Skal: have everything wrapped up very neatly. So it's potentially, you're writing more of a solar than you are a mystery. Because mysteries do have this concept that, like neatly tied, every little aspect of this is going to be solved, if any. If there's anything left open, it's going to be something pretty minor

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Samantha Skal: which, of course, often leaves a thread for a series which we all love, but in a thriller you can have, you know, like James Bond does this quite a bit. We're like the the villain rides off into the sunset, and is like off to ruin somebody else's life. But we have conquered it, for now, in the confines of this story, right this second

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Samantha Skal: and so absolutely that can work it. Just kinda so depends. It depends on your vision. Right? Like, do you wanna have this be something that's an ultimate series. Do you want people to feel unsettled when they finish the story? If the answer that is yes, then

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Samantha Skal: play with it.

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ProWritingAid: Hey, cool!

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ProWritingAid: This one is from Richard. Can this story be written in 1st person? How do you get to the villain side of the story?

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Samantha Skal: Yeah. So Lisa Unger, the new couple in 5 B is a book I'm reading right now, and hers is entirely in 1st person. And I don't. You don't see that that often in thrillers, because it's a little bit tougher. I might mentioned earlier, like

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Samantha Skal: there are pros and cons to having multiple Povs and having just one pov

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Samantha Skal: And the reason for that is because we don't often see the interior of the villains head. If you have well, you wouldn't ever see it if you just have one person. So the way to handle it is to have a conversation, or to have

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Samantha Skal: some kind of other way of ex of describing or disseminating that information about the logic about what this person is doing. The most common is the conversation, like protagonists, face this villain. They talk protagonists, understands where they're coming from, and villain and protagonists make a choice, and off we go, right often with disastrous consequences, because stillers and so yeah, it's totally possible to write a tiller in 1st person. I myself am working on one right now.

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Samantha Skal: Fingers crossed. But you know it. It's a little bit tougher, because you are more like strapped down in terms of what you can do. If you have multiple Pov like 2 or even 3 Povs. All of a sudden you have ways of viewing the story for the reader from different sides, and that can tell a lot about what's actually going on and motivations.

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Samantha Skal: But ultimately your protagonist in no matter, the situation is going to have to understand why the villain is doing what they're doing and face them at some point, because genre expectations.

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ProWritingAid: Hey? Okay, it is almost time. But there is a question that I'm actually also curious about. This is from Lumari. How do you find Beta? Readers.

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Samantha Skal: Aha, yeah. So

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Samantha Skal: RAM,

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Samantha Skal: writing conferences if you can, if you can figure out how to go in person, are an excellent place to meet new friends. I'll just plug international thriller writers right now. We have something called online Biller school. And we also have thriller teak, which is an online critique group where you can trade pages with people. There are all kinds of local writing groups, and like my very 1st writing group was from Meetup.

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Samantha Skal: I looked on. I don't even know if that's still around as a website or any anymore. I think it is. Yeah. But you can go on there. You can start one, you know, if you don't know any of the thriller writers in your area. You don't see anything you or Mts. Whatever whatever you're writing, libraries like you can post, and just see who pops up

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Samantha Skal: One of the silver linings of of the pandemic, which was a truly awful time for all of us is that people are very, very used to using zoom now, and very, very used to the concept of like showing up online in a way that nobody was comfortable with before. Right? So your critique group need not be limited to your geographic area. It can be all over the world like, I have 2 personal critique groups, and people are spread out all over the Us.

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Samantha Skal: And so it just it just opens the doors a lot but conferences are my best advice, and then also joining just as much of this stuff as you can like, you know, these chat groups being a part of providing Aids community Instagram books to gram like you'd be shocked at how friendly people are

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Samantha Skal: if you kind of put yourself out there, and make it clear what you're looking for, and that you're willing to trade. It's it's a 1. We're just a wonderful community. It's particularly crime writers. We like to say that it's because we've worked out all our stuff on the page. We're very, very friendly. And so you know.

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Samantha Skal: yeah, be brave and good luck, and you know, just just do your best to kind of meet people who are your fellow

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Samantha Skal: fellow. Weirdos.

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ProWritingAid: I love that. Thank you so much, Samantha.

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Samantha Skal: Yeah.

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ProWritingAid: Such a great session, seriously.

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Samantha Skal: Class.

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ProWritingAid: Yeah, this is so interesting. Thank all of you for joining us today.

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ProWritingAid: Yeah. So as always, you can find the re, the replay to this session and the other sessions in the crime writers. Week Hub, you can find the links again in the chat. Now let me go ahead and share those resources one more time. So we all have this.

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Samantha Skal: Oh, and, Stacy, can I do a plug, for I'm doing a premium day? Friday workshop as well. So if you've not signed up for premium day. And you were interested for this week. I'm going at

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Samantha Skal: noon on Eastern, and we're gonna doing. We're doing 1st 1st page critiques. I'm gonna be doing like live coaching for some people? It'll be super fun. And should be a blast. So yeah.

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ProWritingAid: Definitely. Oh, that sounds great. I'm gonna have to attend that one.

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Samantha Skal: It's open.

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ProWritingAid: Cool. Thank you. And yeah, I think that's it. Everyone. Thank you all again. And we hope to see you again in some other sessions. Thank you. So thank you.

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Samantha Skal: Guys enjoy the week.

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ProWritingAid: Thank you. Bye, bye.

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Samantha Skal: Bye.