But once again, the plot is most important. And in this story, the most important aspect of the plot is the twists. Coming up with all those revelations and making them work plausibly is what I worked hardest at. This fanfic called for a particular kind of plot twist. It had to impact the story somehow, change the way events work out from the way they would have happened before. The old "I was abused as a child" trick isn’t going to cut it. Remember, the plot takes priority, and the twists have to affect the plot or reveal something about it. The trick in a story like this is to have the right number of such revelations. Having just one can make the entire story seem like a gimmick. Having too many becomes implausible and forced. It is true that I started out writing with the central plot twist about Hikaru’s true identity in mind, but I knew that wouldn’t be enough. After all, that revelation was going to come at the middle of the story. Without any more secrets to the story, an entire half of the fanfic would be devoted to just drawing out the consequences of that revelation, and that doesn’t really make for a good story. Thus, I filled in the spaces in between with stuff about how Hikaru was actually dead and her killer worked for UM and her parents weren’t really what she thought they were and Logan had done a terrible thing in the past. The powers of coincidence were stretched a little, but that’s the way it works in any story like this. The trick is to know how far you can take it before it starts becoming flat out ridiculous, and that is not something I can tell you how to do. You just have to write for a while and get a sense for yourself.
Plot twists are also no fun without a little foreshadowing. If there are no clues that something is afoot, that things aren’t quite what they seem, then the revelation will seem arbitrary and unnecessary. Take the classic plot twist about Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. If you watch the Star Wars movies carefully, you’ll notice Darth Vader getting puzzled every time he gets near Luke and that he and Obi Wan Kenobi seem to know each other among other things. Thus, when we finally learn who Darth Vader is, we think, "Aha, so that’s how it goes." Of course, foreshadowing can’t be overdone or else it gives away the revelation altogether. That’s also no fun. This is the tight balancing act that I had to travel when writing "Perfect Dark: Onryou," made all the more important because the story sinks or flies on its plot. The more foreshadowing I could fit in, the more fun the plot twist would be when it was revealed. But if I went just a little too far, it wouldn’t work. To this end, I employed some subtle and underhanded techniques to supplement the conventional clues. Here’s a partial list of underhanded foreshadowing techniques that I used
- Simple math. If you plot out events on a timeline, you see that Joanna disappeared the same time Hikaru’s parents died and that the girl Logan killed is the same age as Hikaru.
- This one takes some figuring. A bio-android with bulletproof bones can hit something else as hard as he likes without possibly breaking his hand (after all, he would have to punch with greater force than a bullet to do any damage to himself). And there are very good chances that whatever he punches will break, especially if it’s something like human bone. Yet, Hikaru gets into a fight with one such bio-android and suffers nothing more than some bruises. It could very well be that Stoker, the agent who died in the prologue, had his arm broken from the impact of a punch.
- In one instance when Hikaru is looking at Joanna’s files, she looks at the portrait in the file and thinks, "Where are you, Joanna?" At this moment, she is situated in such a way that Joanna’s face in the picture is staring right back at her.
- At one point, Eric Pearson vows to make Hikaru die a slow, lingering death. We now know, of course, that he has already done it.
- Hikaru takes special note of the scars on Eric Pearson’s face. The flashbacks reveal that she deeply wounded her killer’s face.
Some of them are very subtle to be sure, but that’s the whole point. The reader isn’t supposed to pick up on them until after the secret is revealed at which point he or she is able to go back and find all the clues.