Secretary of Carbohydrates

so here’s the thing: not every plot twist you write has to come as a surprise to your audience. 

sometimes the best way to tackle a plot twist, is simply to let your audience in on it, and instead put the emotional burden on your characters.

you’ll still have your audience at the edge of their seats, not out of suspense of what’s going to happen, but how the characters they’ve grown to love is going to react, and how the plot twist is going to change the dynamic between them. 

for all they know, this plot twist could potentially ruin everything, and it can turn characters against each other, and for your audience to sit there, with this huge secret, not knowing how it’s going to affect their favorite characters or relationships when it’s finally revealed, can sometimes make just as much of an emotional impact as a regular plot twist. 

We… were not. 

War had ravaged us, and sickness, and war once again, until our population dwindled beyond the point of recovery. We struggled against that, of course… we used genetic manipulation, and cloning, and even more desperate measures. None succeeded. When the humans came, we were sinking into apathy, only a few tens of us left. We had begun to discuss whether we should commit a mass suicide, or simply wait to fade away. 

And then the young species came, in their clumsy ships, and they asked us why we were so few. 

“We are becoming extinct,” we told them. “We have passed the point of recovery.” 

It is custom to avoid the races that are dying – once a species reaches the point of inevitable extinction, even war is suspended, and the fiercest enemy pulls back. The custom was born of plagues and poisons that could be carried forth from a dying world to afflict a healthy one, but it has the implacable weight of tradition now. After we are gone, after they have waited for the prescribed period of quarantine, there will be a fight for our world. Habitable worlds are few, and this is a good one, with plenty of free groundwater and thriving vegetation. It is a bitter thing to be grateful for the custom that allows us to die in peace, but we are grateful.

But the humans don’t know that custom, and they do not leave. They seem distraught, when we tell them we are dying, and try to offer their aid - but their technology is behind ours, and it is too late. When they realize that they can’t save us, though, they do something that bewilders us. 

friend: Why are you up at 4am drawing kacchako