I know I said I liked to twist things but I'm not sure I do super well at it. I read stories by Mary Higgins Clark and other suspense authors and wow at how they keep everything straight (even though I figure out who it is early)
That's one of the things that makes me marvel the most at book series like Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings. Every single little detail ties together - from book one to the end. Like even little things that most people overlook completely was explained later in the series and turned out to be crucial for the plot. It blows my mind. Esp. LOTR because Tolkein like literally invented a whole language (there's literally alphabets and dictionaries in elfish that he wrote) just as backstory.... stuff he never intended to actually publish, but that he needed in order to create the world that the characters lived in.
For me, as weird as it sounds, when I start writing, I never know where the ending is gonna turn up. I reread the whole thing every time I add to a story, or at least the last 2-3 chapters. Things fall into place on their own, there's a natural order that comes from that, and it makes for plot twists that
fit but are so unexpected because hell, even I had no clue until I really analyzed it a 2nd time. Whenever I TRY to set up a plot twist, its too obvious (ie., the double agent in STDFB2), but twists that I don't try to force are more shocking (I have one written for Time Watcher that hasn't been posted yet that even I didn't see coming when I started the story... but falls in naturally and throws back to something else perfectly).
In my opinion, it's not always the writer that creates the story. Sometimes, with the right story and the right character, the story really creates itself. Characters are created by the writer, but once they've been created they run on their own, and a lot of times I find that a well written character will write the story better than the author could.... lol I definitely attribute my writing skill to the characters that I write about (both in fan fic and original fic).
