A popular kind of short story is the "Twist In the Tale" kind. (Please read yesterday's the previous blog before you read this one.)

I have several cribs with short stories with Twists. Some Twist stories really make me mad. For example, the stories in which the twist is achieved by suppressing information throughout the story and then revealing it at one go in a couple of sentences in the end. In such stories the author sets traps which are supposed to hit you in retrospect once you have read the ending. You are supposed to think "Oh that's why the author said that sentence in that particular way." In the story I posted yesterday, for example, Chief Vhonoff sees the aliens with "an extra eye, an ear less". He doesn't see an alien with "Two ears and two eyes". I don't think too much of these kind of twist stories. I think the twist should be in the events of the story not in the way the story is told. Jeff Archer once wrote a story in the first person as a female cat. The cat is narrating and her emotions are like a human being and all and so is the language. Not once does the cat say meow. That is still ok. We can assume translation. But there should be some reference to a tail or some mice or fur or something. Come on, a cat can't have human feelings through-out. I think info-suppression when describing a first person story very unpardonable. I say to such stories "What's the big deal?". You are welcome to say the same to the story I posted yesterday. I feel the narrator should tell the reader all relevant information that he can gather as an observer of the scene he is describing. If there is no way the narrator could have known its OK.

Most of the times I know that I am reading a Twist story. Either a friend tells me before I start. Or I know the writer writes only Twist Stories. Or I can tell generally after the first few lines. (The stories you can tell are Twists by reading a couple of lines are the really painful ones.) As soon as I know its a twist story I am in a hurry to get to the end and so hardly enjoy what I am reading. Then I feel helpless because I know that info is being suppressed all around me and there's nothing I can do about it. Then I start to try and catch those hints which will probably hit me in retrospect. Its all very painful.

The stories I can read at a relaxed pace, inspite of knowing there might be a twist in the end - because there are other thing, there is humour and there is description and there is good relaxed storytelling - those are the stories I like. Basically the twist shouldnt be the point of the story. The story should be readable and original and different and worth your time even before the twist comes. That would be a good twist story. And there are lots of them as well.