A small ponder about twist ending fiction
I think I have a bad sort of head for certain types of stories. Anything that depends on the reader figuring out what actually is going on or the author outwitting the reader and doing clever twists is very likely to leave me cold. Agatha Christie novels were fun, unless I worked out what she was doing, in which case I used to flip to the end, read the last unmasking chapter, and close the book. (I still have no idea what happens in most of the The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, as I figured it out somewhere in the second chapter, read the last chapter to see if, yes, I’d worked it out correctly, and put it back on the shelf.)
On the other hand, books where I have no idea what’s going to happen, or in which every different scenario I come up with while reading is equally satisfying, make me happy. So do books in which there may be twists, but the book doesn’t depend on them, and you can reread the book with increased pleasure even if you know the twist.
Right. Back to writing a story for other people. I hope it will be the second type of story. (FWIW, I’m not saying any kind of fiction is better than any other kind here. Just that, as I age, I learn things about my own likes, dislikes and prejudices in fiction as in other areas.)