ajbrooks-writes

[ajbrooks-writes]

🔪 3 Plot Twists That Slap (and 1 that should be arrested) 🔪

hello and welcome back to me yelling on main about storytelling crimes. today we are talking about plot twists. specifically: the good, the god-tier, and the why-would-you-do-this-i-trusted-you tier.

let’s go.

✨ The Twist That Reframes Everything ✨ a.k.a. the “wait. WAIT.” twist. This is when you drop a twist that doesn’t just add drama - it recontextualizes the entire story. It makes the reader go back and reread earlier scenes like “was this character ALWAYS sketchy or am I just stupid??” It retroactively changes the emotional weight of everything that’s happened. Suddenly that offhanded comment in chapter three hits like a brick. The romance subplot becomes 500% more tragic. The villain’s motive makes SENSE now. Delicious.

✅ Best used when: the breadcrumbs are subtle but real. The twist shouldn’t come out of nowhere - it should feel inevitable in hindsight. Like Sixth Sense, Knives Out, that one betrayal in your favorite anime you still haven’t recovered from.

2.🧨 The Emotional Betrayal It’s giving: “i would’ve died for you” energy. This is the kind of twist that hurts. You thought they were loyal. You thought they cared. They did care - and still did it anyway. Or they never cared, and now you’re spiraling. This twist slaps because it’s not just about plot, it’s about trust. It stabs the characters AND the reader in the same motion. Bonus points if it’s a slow burn betrayal. Bonus bonus points if the betrayer feels genuinely torn up about it.

✅ Best used when: the reader is emotionally attached. Don’t waste this one on a side character we barely know. Save it for the love interest. The best friend. The mentor figure with dad energy. Make it personal. Make it RUIN lives.

3. 🧊 The “They Were Dead the Whole Time” but Make It Interesting Listen. This one’s risky. It’s a classic for a reason but also easy to flop. But when done well? Haunting. Creepy. Unhinged in a gorgeous way. It doesn’t have to be death either - maybe the character’s been possessed. Or they’re not real. Or the narrator’s memory is lying. The KEY is to not lean too hard on the shock. Lean on the vibes. Give it eeriness. Make it a slow unraveling. Give us dread. Give us melancholy. Give us psychological decay with a side of unreliable narrator.

✅ Best used when: you’re writing something surreal, gothic, speculative, or emotionally weird. This twist isn’t about plot logic, it’s about atmosphere and emotional rot.

🚨 The Twist That Should Be Arrested: “It Was All a Dream” 🚨 I’m sorry but. no. if I read 80k words of someone’s descent into madness just to find out it was their stress dream and now they’re normal again?? I will throw the entire book into a lake. This twist erases tension instead of escalating it. It invalidates everything the reader emotionally invested in. It’s the narrative equivalent of gaslighting. don’t do it. UNLESS - and this is a big unless - you’re doing it with INTENT. Meta intent. Dream-within-a-dream psychological horror intent. If you’re gonna do it, it better haunt me. It better RUIN me. Otherwise? Into the lake.

okay that’s all. go forth and commit plot crimes responsibly. bonus points if you use all three Good Twists in the same story and then look me in the eye like “oh was that too much?”

it wasn’t.

tag me when you emotionally destroy someone with it.

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

[ajbrooks-writes]

there really are few emotions i find more compelling in a story than "you should be afraid of me. please don't be afraid of me"

[ajbrooks-writes]

One of the greatest lies a writer can tell themselves is that they will remember the idea that they came up with while they were half asleep, so they don’t need to write it down right away.

[ajbrooks-writes]

*staring sternly into the mirror* you've had a wild week, you haven't eaten today, you've barely interacted with people today. do not trust the Vague Sense of Unease

[ajbrooks-writes]

Guys I. I wrote the book you've always known was coming... HOW TO WRITE A FANTASY BATTLE: BASIC MEDIEVAL AND MODERN MILITARY TACTICS FOR AUTHORS

The forces of good are arrayed against the minions of evil on a storm-swept battlefield, and someone is about to yell “Charge!”—Now what?

We’ve all been there. Many fantasy novels end with a climactic battle scene, yet few authors have a solid understanding of how battles are planned, staged, fought, and won. The answers are locked within dense history books—but never fear: I read them so you don’t have to.

This short, accessible book not only gives you a crash course on basic military strategy and tactics across history—it also contains invaluable tips on how to adapt real-world battle tactics into a thrilling scene for your fantasy novel. Along the way you’ll learn:

How socio-economic forces affect the ways that battles are fought.

The importance of factors such as surprise, terrain, fog of war, and more.

Different categories of fighters.

How your world-building and magic system may affect your battle.

The typical phases a battle may go through.

Where to find more advanced resources.

This book contains countless examples from real and fictional battles, collected during the ten years I’ve spent reading up on medieval and modern military history—and put into terms which anyone can understand.

Read How to Write a Fantasy Battle, and tackle that battle scene with confidence! Pre-order live now at Amazon, coming to all retailer platforms 11 July, 2025.

[ajbrooks-writes]

Those letters pouring out of your fingertips can create beautiful words, can create whole universes. Or they can form barely comprehensible sentences.

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i love when characters lie to themselves in the complete privacy of their own minds

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Unreliable narrators are one hell of an idea. You can just write whatever, and if a reader points out "hey the way this scene happened should not be physically possible if it's done the way this character described it", you can just be like "yeah I don't trust that fucker either."

[ajbrooks-writes]

Prompt #1187

"You've changed."

"I had to."

[ajbrooks-writes]

You are the highest paid member of your Adventuring Party. Not because you can fight, or have magic. You'd die to a cat, let's be honest. But because you can cook, clean, set up camp, also have a fierce sense of business. All things they more or less completely lack.

[ajbrooks-writes]

May your prose be gut-wrenching to readers and unintelligible to AI

[ajbrooks-writes]

biggest reason i make so many flop posts on here is because everything i do reeks of the desperation to make a popular tumblr post. this is deliberate, because it is what protects me from ACTUALLY making a popular tumblr post. so long as i crave it, tumblr fame will never find me. it is only when i turn away, and accept my fate of obscurity, that people will lay their eyes upon me. and it WILL be because i tripped and fell on my stupid face while i was turning

[ajbrooks-writes]

For the last goddamn time...

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Good grief....

[ajbrooks-writes]

sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four

[ajbrooks-writes]

Chanel 1992

[ajbrooks-writes]

[ajbrooks-writes]

You’ll rewrite it later anyway, so stop staring at the blank page like it owes you money. Just start.