Amateur authors love to write dramatic red herrings and surprise endings that come out of nowhere because they enjoy fooling the audience into thinking one way and then taking them another way — even if it doesn’t make sense.  I call these writer tricks — “The Twilight Zone Effect” — because in that famous television series, the ending of each show was always “unexpected” and “scary” and, perhaps, more often than not, “dreamlike” where a mere “waking up” nullified everything that happened.

Continue reading → The Twilight Zone Effect and Tricksy Audience Endings